Richard Wolff on the Left’s New Openings in 2026
As American hegemony falters and a new global order emerges, Richard Wolff argues the crises around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz reveal capitalism entering another era of historic upheaval — and the need for a socialist alternative.
Many around the world are again asking the old question, What is to de done? — as well they should. (Spencer Snyder / Jacobin)
In the second half of the nineteenth century, as Russia’s feudalism ended and its empire tottered, the great Russian novelist, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, reflected the deepening concerns and anxieties of his time in his 1863 novel, What Is to Be Done? It offered a socialist answer. Forty years later, a crude and rapacious capitalism had rushed in to replace Russian feudalism. The ex-serfs then began to understand that they had not escaped from exploitation as they had hoped and dreamed. Rather, they suffered a new form of it as industrial workers.
Vladimir Lenin reflected the concerns and anxieties of that form in his pamphlet, with its deliberately repeated title, “What Is to Be Done?” It too offered a socialist answer. Today a declining US empire upsets and undermines US capitalism as it rattles and shakes the world economy. International laws are increasingly ignored, and crude authoritarianisms increasingly haunt domestic politics. Many around the world are asking that old question yet again — as well they should. Here is yet another socialist answer.
The Collapse of the Old Empires and the Rise of the American Empire
Emerging from the fogs of politics and war, each continuing the other by different means, a historic global reset is now underway. On the surface, the world today is caught up directly or indirectly in the US-Israeli war on Iran, the Russia-Ukraine-NATO war, and their effects. Below the surface, as the reset’s contours become visible, they can help us to better grasp our own history and thereby better shape where we go from here.
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