That might have contributed to his split with David Harvey, maybe? Harvey is not good about imperialism either. Vijay Prashad called him out on describing imperialism (and not too badly), but completely avoiding the actual word "imperialism", dancing around the issue. But at least Harvey centers capital as "value in motion". A socialist state with central planning is clearly fundamentally different from a society, where a huge mass of capital spirals economy into worse and worse crisis on the quest for profitable investment. The socialist state doesn't need growth or rising profits or any profits to reproduce itself. A specific bureaucracy might be inefficient or even corrupt, but it doesn't need to be to reproduce itself. Capitalism causes crisis necessarily.

I think Wolff is reaching some people in a positive way, but only as a stepping stone. I used to listen to him a lot, but my understanding developed further. Eg he has a good take on inflation as basically class warfare. But he can't explain some important crisis tendencies without understanding capital.