The Age of Supraliberalism: A Requiem for Neoliberalism, Capitalist Democracy, and the American Unipolar World

By Joshua Lew McDermott

The Death of Neoliberalism, The Birth of the Supraliberal Age

The present political moment is often only fully understood in hindsight. Analysts will one day look back on the Trump era, especially his second term, as marking a point of departure, the world’s entrance into a brave new world. But we don’t have to wait. To change the world, we must understand events as they unfold or, better yet, we must anticipate them given what came before. And the neoliberal age has given way to something new: the supraliberal age. 

Yet contemporary thinkers remain shackled by the norms, concepts, and logics of the past, namely the unipolar world dominated by neoliberal policy and American Empire. 

But the neoliberal age is dead. It had been dying since 2008. Yet the concept still looms large in the intellectual zeitgeist. Neoliberal fascism, authoritarian neoliberalism, post-neoliberalism, late neoliberalism, late-stage capitalism; these are just a few of the proposed concepts for understanding this moment. But these concepts have thus far failed to adequately capture the impetus for and radical nature of the historic break.

Neoliberalism was premised on two fundamental principles: the unrestrained free-market and limited but functional liberal government defined by “good governance,” efficiency, and technocratic elitism. In the supraliberal age, alternatively, the invisible hand has choked the last breaths of life from the already frail liberal polity. A zombified liberalism remains, with government institutions simultaneously rendered impotent in the service of the working class and weaponized to new heights of power and overreach in the service of the elite classes. 

The analysts were right when, in the wake of the global economic crash that began in 2008, they predicted the end of neoliberalism was near. Many assumed, in the wake of Obama’s election, that the system was destined to turn to a multi-racial Keynesian social democracy to save the world economy, the same way the world had done in the 1930s (sans the racial pluralism, of course). On this front they were wrong; financial and industry elites were too entrenched, free-market ideology too self-assured and institutionalized, the financial and tech monopolies too big and too concentrated for reform, the courts too corrupt, the government regulatory framework too brittle after decades of neoliberal onslaught, and the bulk of the American public too virulently racist, reactionary, and anti-socialist to accept even the semblance of pro-working-class policies. What we got instead was the intensification of class warfare, an escalation of essentialist identity politics, and, ultimately, the maturation of neoliberalism’s problems.

It is not just neoliberalism as an economic policy that advocates for free trade and the invisible hand that has died. We have not just reverted to protectionism or to regulation. No, it is more complicated than that. For every restriction on trade thrown up by Trump or Biden, a different sector of the U.S. economy and the American state has been deregulated, disempowered, captured, and/or privatized. As one barrier to free trade is erected, regional integration and imperial domination elsewhere continue to undermine the possibility of national economic sovereignty, especially for the smaller nations. American industry is now more unregulated than at any time since The Great Depression.

Nor is it just that we have descended into fascism. For all its lip-service against the decadence of global finance and capitalism itself, classic fascism did, of course, depend upon the support of Europe’s barons of industry and many of its liberal elites – it decimated organized labor and the socialist movements swiftly, violently, and accordingly. Yet it is also true that the classic fascist regimes did not hold the same abiding faith in the free market as the contemporary right, nor were they demonstrably subservient and beholden to oligarchs in the way that Trump, Biden, Meloni, Macron, Starmer, and the other Western leaders are to the tech, oil, defense, and finance titans of our day. Yet our age does contain undeniable fascistic elements; idiotic nationalism, fetishized militarism, censorship, anti-intellectualism, subservient and corrupt courts, impotent and dysfunctional legislatures, and an unrestrained individual executive. Trump is, in many ways, a conglomeration of Mussolini with a billionaire, a social media celebrity, and a nepotistic CEO. And that combination – the nationalism, fundamentalism, and corruption intertwined with corporate, celebrity, libertarian logic is novel and demands a novel conceptualization of its characteristics, trajectories, and roots.

So if the neoliberal age is rubble and we have not merely reverted back to a fascist one, where are we? We are in the unknown, unchartered waters of history in the making. We are in the supraliberal age, the age where even the appearance of a compatible marriage between capitalism and liberal democracy has withered away. We are in the supraliberal age where the state has not disappeared or weakened, it has transformed into a mere enforcement mechanism for brutalizing dissent, exporting arms, enabling capital accumulation, and facilitating wealth transfer from the working class to the elites. We are in the society of the spectacle, a society where propaganda, celebrity, and self-aggrandizement become a means in and of themselves.  

And while we may just be at the start of the supraliberal age, that we are in it is undeniable.

That is also not to say that liberalism is gone or that liberalism was, fundamentally, better; supraliberalism was always the destiny and true character of the neoliberal era. It is just that the hypocritical and contradictory nature of liberalism is now explicit and manifest in the heart of the imperial homeland, has finally and totally supplanted the remnants of the postwar order that It gave birth to, its free-market fundamentalism finally having displaced any guardrails, even if meager ones, it ever had to reign in the monopolies and oligarchs of the neoliberal age.  

So like the vestigial wings of a flightless bird, the liberal institutions and the rule of law they represent remain merely as ornamental and ceremonial formalities in contemporary America and Europe.

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The most jarring policies, ideological extremities, material logics, and novel institutions of the neoliberal age that undergirded its inherent contradictions and violent episodes now persist and become the defining features of the supraliberal order of today.

The authoritarian violence imposed by Pinochet and the neoliberal logic of the Chicago Boys in Chile, once thought by analysts to represent only an unfortunate but necessary far-off occurrence in the hinterlands of a U.S.-led world-order, today define the ruling class regimes in the metropole. The oligarchs imposed upon Eastern Europe by neoliberal shock therapy and animated by ethnic and nationalist sentiments enflamed by American interference were not exotic anomalies; they were a foretelling of what was to come in the West. The violent religious fundamentalism nurtured, trained, and armed in the Middle East to displace leftist movements and topple non-compliant regimes has emerged in the American heartland as violent paramilitary, white supremacist, and Christian nationalist actors turn to intimidation, violence, terrorism, and suppression to impose their extremist worldviews on their neighbors.

The embarrassing contradictions of the liberal capitalist system are no longer able to be exported abroad or glossed over with ideology; in the supraliberal age, the brutality comes home and intensifies. In the process, the entire geopolitical economic order is transformed, starting with America.

The Neoliberal Age

The foundations upon which the neoliberal era was erected can be traced to the U.S.’s emergence from World War Two as the world’s clear economic and military leader, a position the U.S. used to give itself, and its vassal states in Europe, commanding control in the new international governance and financial institutions such as the U.N. Security Council and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Apart from U.S. domination of the international institutional system, the postwar era was defined by robust welfare states in the West that were erected thanks to class struggle and assented to by elites to head off the attractiveness of socialism to workers. The era also saw successful anticolonial movements throughout the Third World (led often by socialist and communist parties), rising competition for Western industry due to an industrializing world, and the entrenchment of powerful trade union movements in the Western democracies.

Throughout this period, the U.S. (and its allies) attempted to assert its dominance, undermining radical elements in the anticolonial movements and using all means necessary to prevent the emergence of an economically independent third world that would challenge the existing order. However, given countervailing dynamics, and along with the oil shocks of the day, the contradictions of the postwar Keynesian order came to a head; the economic boom years devolved into crisis. In response, the U.S. ruling class leapt at the chance to again remake the world order even more to its liking. The new system it constructed was built in response to the power of labor domestically and socialist and anti-imperial resistance internationally, e.g. neoliberalism.

Neoclassical economic theory, tied to a contradictory ideological commitment to liberal governance, would become the justification for U.S. economic policy and imperial dominance of this new era. The birth of neoliberalism was cemented with the transformation of the Breton Woods Institutions into technocratic neoliberal machines as the new Washington Consensus imposed free trade and austerity policies around most of the globe (often in return for predatory loans or political support for corrupt regimes) to bolster U.S. dominance and transnational capitalist class power (a transnational capitalist class that was, nonetheless, always beholden to the mighty dollar and the U.S. banking system).

The U.S. also abandoned the gold standard in the shift from the postwar to the neoliberal era, giving it the ability to use the dollar, the global reserve currency, to fund an immense and meaningless national deficit in the face of deindustrialization and impose brutal unilateral sanctions on adversarial nations. In the new era it also doubled down on its training of paramilitaries, funding of proxy wars, and destabilization efforts around the globe in the name of combatting socialism (and subsequently drugs and terrorism). It financialized its economy to procure a fictitious economic growth in the face of the decline of American manufacturing, working class living standards, and declining economic dominance. The rest of this history of this era is more-or-less well known today: the Chilean Coup and the larger Dirty Wars in Latin America, the Wars on Terror, the deregulation of industry, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the crushing of the labor movement, the passage of NAFTA, the intensification of globalization, the explosion of consumer debt, the opioid epidemic, the rise of inequality, declining living standards in the West, etc. etc.

The Eleven Features of Supraliberalism

The past does not disappear, it echoes. But as it echoes, it is transformed and molded to fit the realities of the present moment. Accumulative quantitative change eventually reaches an inflection point, and qualitative ruptures occur.

Despite the obvious democratic deficiencies and hypocrisy of U.S. claims to upholding liberal values like human rights, equality, transparency, democracy, a free press, etc. in the neoliberal era, the claims could nonetheless be made with an air of plausible deniability and sincerity that, at the very least, provided a semblance of ideological cover. In the supraliberal age, not only are such claims objectively absurd, but such values are actively maligned – if not in rhetoric then cynically in practice.

Supraliberalism is defined by eleven features, all of them emergent from the trends and ruins of neoliberalism and all of them intertwined, inseparable, and mutually reinforcing: First, the return of multipolarity in the global sphere. Second, the implementation of pragmatic hodgepodge of free-trade and protectionist policies enacted by, and for, the benefit of the oligarchy of the various multipolar blocs. Third, the rule of economic elites and the end of any form semblance of legitimate democratic government. Fourth, the private sphere and the state become indistinguishable, the capture of the regulatory state finalized and total. Fifth, postmodern, post-truth identity essentialism (of both supposed progressive and reactionary varieties) becomes the defining inter-and-intrapersonal worldview of the age. Sixth, the total militarization and securitization of society. Seventh, the commodification of all aspects of life and nature as they become subject to market dynamics. Eighth, a blowback of the violence once reserved for the hinterland of empire deep within its metropoles. Ninth, the dominance of tech/platform capitalism and the normalization of its social engineering and surveillance appetites. Tenth, the intensification and leveraging of the climate catastrophe for the benefit of elites. And eleventh, a fundamental anti-communist, anti-socialist, and anti-humanist ideology that underlies and justifies it all.

1. Multipolarity: It is not just that we have entered a new multipolar world, but that is certainly an important piece of the puzzle. For all the superficial similarities to the interwar period or to the imperial competition and arms race of the early 20th century, 2025 is not 1910. Nor does the New Cold War promise to be a meaningful battle of ideologies, socialism vs. capitalism, like the Old Cold War. No, the supraliberal age will be defined, first and foremost, by neo-imperialist global blocs competing for the loot of a permanent global periphery defined by urbanization-without-industrialization. It remains an open question if the class struggle within China can and will revitalize an actual socialist character that could, hypothetically, give meaning and direction to the New Cold War. The first real hope for a socialist resistance to the American supraliberal bloc lies in a new non-aligned movement and whether the leftist governments of Latin America can solidify their positions and overcome the contradictions of their present part-way socialism. The second real hope lies in new anti-capitalist struggles emerging victorious across Africa, Asia, and even within the metropole itself.

2. Cynical Free Trade: To an extent, the free trade of neoliberalism was always free-trade for me, not for thee; free trade for the working class and small nations, protectionism for elites and for the critical industries of the metropole. In the supraliberal age this is truer than ever: protectionism becomes widespread and celebrated as a backlash to neoliberal free trade agreements that decimated the working classes of the world. But the question becomes: protectionism for who and to what end? Protectionism for the oligarchs, of course. Protectionism for the entrenchment of nationalist, anti-working-class elites like Trump, Musk, and their ilk. Now that behemoth America cannot compete on the unfair grounds with the developing world like it once did, thanks to the rise of China, it turns its back on the ideolog of Free trade; Chinese technology and EVs must be stopped at all costs in the name of national security. But make no mistake: free trade continue to be forced down the throats of countries in Latin America and Africa and American workers will be expected to compete with the working classes of the international order as their meager unions and welfare protections are finally stripped away.

3. Oligarchy: The supraliberal age is oligarchy manifest. The supposed genius and merit of oligarchic influencers like Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, and Sundar Pichai become the animating logic of popular culture and popular politics. Citizens United is just the tip of the iceberg in the role of moneyed interests will play, both publicly/proudly and clandestinely/nefariously, in the supraliberal age; any semblance of republican elections free of the corrupting influence of money are a thing of the past. Democracy, in any meaningful sense, is dead.

4. Regulatory Captured: The supraliberal age is also defined by the total capture of the regulatory state by industry. Not only that, but the dividing line between private industry and the state disappears; in its place, a Frankenstein emerges, an abomination comprised of corporate and public mixture of arms, legs, eyes. The Chevron Environmental Protection Agency is legitimized, the Department of Labor is managed like the Chamber of Commerce, the courts and justice itself becomes the subject of power and ideology. Every function of government is run as a business for the profit of private stakeholders. 

5. Identity and Cultural Essentialism: The postmodern displacement of universality, humanism, and truth becomes absolute in the supraliberal age; identity essentialism and the death of truth reach their apex, with one’s nation, culture, and race/ethnicity becoming the undisputed measure of morality, truth, and individual character. This aspect has supposed progressive and reactionary wings, but the underlying logic remains the same: identity is everything. Anti-intellectualism, identity politics, cultural literalism, fundamentalism, outrage, and puritanism reign. 

6. Militarization and Securitization: In the supraliberal age, all aspects of social and political life become militarized and securitized. Economic policy is a matter of national security; the border is a matter of national security; education policy is a matter of national security. Municipal police are armed and trained in the logic and practice of occupying militaries, consumer culture and capital accumulation themselves become the end goal of military conflict. Everything is war, and war is about making money.

7. Commodification: The trend of the commodification of all aspects of life, human, social, natural, becomes intensified to previously unimagine levels in the supraliberal age. Animal life, nature, human intellect, love, empathy, spirituality; all become subject to the profitizing logic of the market. A mother holds her child after giving birth – a fee is charged. You send your love a poem which is then shared to social media and monetized. You attend church and your tithing is used to invest in real estate ventures. You call your father on Father’s Day and your call data is recorded, leveraged, and sold to an advertising firm. The ecosystem itself is given a dollar amount, human and animal life measured in terms of dollars. Alienation, isolation, and objectification become the beating hearts of our social existence.

8. Blowback: A defining feature of the supraliberal age in the United States is the boomerang of America’s previously exported wars, war crimes, austerity, genocide, authoritarianism into its own living room. America itself becomes the criminal narco-state, the kleptocracy, the military dictatorship, the religious fundamentalist regime it once used to control Mexico, Colombia, Indonesia, Afghanistan. Protestors are treated as enemy combatants, environmental activists as terrorists, labor unions as violent heretics.

9. Social Engineering, Ubiquitous Surveillance, and the Worship of Tech: In the supraliberal age, the tech industry and technology generally, especially information and communications technology, become the saviors of the world, the panacea to all social problems, the utopian horizon. The world will become unlivable? Technology will take us to distant stars. People can’t afford to eat? Technology will devise a pill to give us all necessary nutrition. Under supraliberalism, the power of technology begats more powerful technology; our social interactions, our sense of self, our political sensibilities become filtered through the algorithms of communications technology. Our thoughts and dreams are anticipated and summarized with Artificial Intelligence programs before we even express them. Technology is used to commodify us and to train us: buy this now, buy this then, here is a news headline for you, here is your favorite genre of music. Our personalities are no so much born of our volition as given to us from on high, from the Gods in the Cloud.

10. The Monetization and Leveraging of the Climate Catastrophe: In the supraliberal age, the climate crisis becomes the climate catastrophe. The warnings of disastrous ecological future become the present reality. Why was this not avoided? Because it was profitable, and it because it could be leveraged by the ruling class to cement and entrench their rule. Los Angeles burns and the real estate private equity firms descend; New Orleans sinks and the French Quarter gentrifiers circle like sharks. Mark Zuckerburg is safe in his bunker in the cool mountains. The segregation and securitization of elite life is completed. The rich watch the last forests burn from their golden helicopter.

11. Anti-communism: The supraliberal age is defined by an ideological madness which is, first and foremost, anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-Marxist. In the supraliberal age, all kinds of dissent, protest, and personal eccentricities are acceptable in the name of personal and market freedom: the freedom to shop, the freedom to discriminate, the freedom to worship God, the freedom to kill anyone deemed a threat to your property. What cannot be abided, though, is an organized, radical, and effective movement of the people against the logic of capital accumulation and the rule by elites. Thus, a rabid anti-communism abides. And not just anti-communism in the sense of the vilification of any and all real-world attempts to supplant or even just to reform capitalism, whether domestically or internationally, but an anti-communism which reviles, crushes, and mobilizes against communism as an idea and an ideal; communism as a rationally planned democratic society wherein social class has been eliminated – this is the true enemy and only sustained bogeyman of the supraliberal age. Any violation of elite sensibilities – be it religious heresy, gender nonconformity, feminism, racial justice, etc., is but a manifestation of the deeper and more nefarious sin of Marxism.

Only the Working Class 

The only force on Earth capable of challenging the dystopia of the superaliberal age is a united and broadly defined working-class (aka all those not aligned to profit or benefit from the ongoing and coming destruction). United, only they have the power to overthrow the supraliberal ruling class and the society they have built for their benefit. Only they have the power to arrest the climate crisis with rational, eco-responsive policies and technologies. Only they have the power to end inequality and immiseration forever with humanist, universal policies that equitably share the abundant resources produced by the cumulative history of human labor, knowledge, and sacrifice. Only they, as a class, can provide the vision and the practice for achieving a new kind of society – one that is not a utopia, but an actual and concrete effort that learns, develops, and evolves over time. Only they can imagine and implement a society wherein not just human beings but all living beings, even nature itself, is afforded value. A society driven by rationality, cooperation, and equality. In short: working class revolution is our only hope.

It remains to be seen, of course, if the ravages of supraliberalism will give way to such an attempt and vision. But that we have no other choice if we are to save the planet, our own humanity, and civilization is clear.

Hard Truths About the US Labor Movement: An Interview with Chris Townsend

By Michael D. Yates

Republished from Monthly Review.

hris Townsend has been organizing workers, conducting political work for labor unions, and teaching young workers to organize for almost all his adult life. He is, as we say, “the real deal.” While most of us opine and pontificate about labor, Chris does the dirty work. He organizes. His contributions over several decades have played a key role in rebuilding the United Electrical Workers (UE), rekindling new organizing and campaigning in the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), helping to initiate what has become the Starbucks movement, and contributing in countless other ways to the work of the labor movement. He declares without hesitation that, “the workplace in the United States is a dictatorship,” and proposes dramatically expanded union organizing as one antidote. Chris is also a committed socialist, someone who understands that the labor movement must be much more than just disconnected and isolated labor unions, politically adrift, organizationally stagnant, and taking blows from all sides. Organized labor must return to its roots, when bringing capitalism to an end was the ultimate goal. —- Michael D. Yates

Michael D. Yates: Chris, how and when did you first become active in the labor movement?

Chris Townsend: I joined the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) in Tampa, Florida, just after I got out of high school. I grew up in Pennsylvania, and in 1979 the economy was at a dead stop. Every mill, mine, railroad and other employer had a layoff list a mile long. A young kid like me had zero chance of finding any job. Mass unemployment was a scary thing to see when hundreds of people would line up for a handful of jobs. I was on my own and took off for Florida where I had an Uncle I could stay with. He said there were at least a few jobs down there. I got hired as a sanitation worker and I found out that the ATU was organizing the entire municipal workforce of the City of Tampa. I fell into it by accident. ATU took the lead because for twenty years they had represented the bus operations which were eventually run by the city. By the time I arrived the public sector had been allowed to officially organize through a State of Florida process. The organizing drive included over 3,600 workers in every city classification, from Accounting Clerk 1’s to Zookeeper 2’s, and everything in-between. I jumped into the union with both feet, doing just about everything you could think of. Some of the old-timers who ran the local were Cuban Americans, but they were communists and sympathizers who had fled the Batista regime. The Cuban Revolution was their political North Star so to speak. These guys trained me and put me to work. I was a volunteer organizer who did anything they needed me to do in just about every corner of the city. I became a shop steward for a while, then was elected to the local Executive Board in late 1981. Somehow, I got nicknamed, “the kid,” and I hated it. There were lots of other young workers there, but I guess at 17 and 18 and 19, I was the youngest who was that active.

MY: Did you move to the left before or after your entry into the labor movement?

CT: I became a leftist in high school, by listening to shortwave radio and reading. One of the things I read was Monthly Review, it was carried by the Franklin and Marshall college library. They put it out with the newspapers and magazines, and their library was open to the public. I saw my future prospects declining day by day under the Nixon regime, then Jimmy Carter. I figured out bit by bit that this “system” we have is not our system, it’s the bosses’ system. It robs people, oppresses people, torments people, and crushes them. And it does not hesitate to massacre on a gigantic scale when it wants to. The U.S. genocide on Vietnam was sickening. When our puppet regime in the South finally collapsed at the end of April, 1975, we all saw it on live TV. It was the way that we abandoned and just ditched most of our supporters and hangers-on in the final bug-out that ironically convinced me that I was a socialist. If these people were dumped so fast, why on earth would I think that these same ruling forces would ever help me if I was in a jam? This rotten boss system is in it for the money, the power, the bloodlust. They don’t give a damn about workers.

Once I learned about the class system, the class struggle, and class interests, my loyalty became crystal clear. I owe my allegiance to my class, the working class. Period. I’m lucky I learned that when I was young. I suppose there are more complicated ways to become a Marxist, but that was mine. I didn’t need to read Marx’s Capital to realize as a worker that I was at the bottom, always at the mercy of the boss and his gang. I have read plenty of socialist literature over the decades and it doesn’t take a 400-page textbook to explain all this to a worker. I thought then, and I still think, that the constant tendency to grossly overthink these basic realities is one of our greatest and most debilitating diseases on the left. As I turned left, I was also pushed along by Carter’s revival of military draft registration, which I flatly refused. My family also lived twenty-four miles from the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown in March of 1979. Seeing the nuclear industry in cahoots with our government and endangering everyone for their superprofits just put me over the top. I also read Lenin’s article, “The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism” about that time, and the door opened for me. Every worker needs to read that short article.

MY: You worked for many years with the United Electrical Workers (UE). Tell us about this time in your life. What is special about the UE? What lessons did you take from your work there?

CT: I was recruited to work for UE in 1988. I joined a squad of organizers who were assigned to try to organize the plastics division of General Electric (GE). There was no bigger, more powerful, or more anti-union corporation than GE. UE was the original union that organized huge portions of that conglomerate in the 1930s. But by the time I joined UE, the combined forces of GE, Westinghouse, Congress, the FBI, the CIO, the AFL, practically all the Democrats and Republicans, and the news media had thrown every punch there was to try to kill them off. While enormous damage was done, they failed to completely liquidate UE. It really is a “rank and file” union, a “democratic” union, a “militant” union. The salaries of union leaders and staff are very modest. Militance is encouraged, not crushed. New organizing is a top priority of the union, not just an afterthought. Political positions are arrived at democratically, by the members. I saw all that up close. Go to the UE web page and read their Constitution. That’s the document that mandates how the union is run. You won’t see anything like it anywhere else, sadly. UE represents today a living fragment of William Z. Foster’s TUEL (Trade Union Educational League), the TUUL (Trade Union Unity League), and the early CIO. There were other unions similar to UE in many ways, but they were the unions wrecked and destroyed by employer and state repression in the 1940s and 50s. The business unions were also eager to feast on the wrecked left-led unions, but UE and ILWU managed somehow to survive.

After four years in the field as an organizer, UE sent me to Washington, DC, to run their Washington Office. It was quite an assignment for a guy like me. No other union would have ever, I mean ever, selected a guy like me to staff their political action work. That’s another UE “difference”. Being “just a worker” really meant something. For twenty-one years I conducted the federal and state level political work of UE, its political education work, and I also kept a big hand in organizing and bargaining. As the political staffer I still participated in new organizing, independent union affiliations, strike struggles, and bargaining. I joined the General Electric UE bargaining committee at that time. During this assignment I was also able to work closely with Bernie Sanders. The AFL-CIO had banned him, wanted to oust him from his House seat, but he was extraordinarily supportive of our UE locals in Vermont, and our new organizing. We were happy to work with him, and I had five or six years where UE was practically the only union who would deal with him in DC. I am considerably to the left of Sanders, and it was always fun for me when I was introducing him to a UE group as “My conservative friend from Vermont.”

In those years UE was grappling with the need to diversify from being a strictly manufacturing union. Plant closings and layoffs were draining away tens of thousands of members, and new organizing in factories was at a low ebb. Where it remains today. We continued to try to organize in manufacturing, but practically all the results were found in other sectors. When I retired from UE in 2013 after twenty-five years, we were already a majority non-manufacturing union. There was no alternative.

Today, UE has experienced a major rebirth with the addition of more than 35,000 workers in the higher education field. We first organized graduate and research workers in 1996 in Iowa, and today UE is composed of workers in seven different industrial sectors with the higher ed grouping now the largest by far. And I have to point out that today, in mid-2025, UE is once again larger than the IUE, the right-wing union started in 1949 with the sole goal of destroying UE. The dwindling IUE fragments merged with the CWA about twenty years ago. They have rejected significant new organizing, and it was sometime in the past two or three years that UE passed them up. I wish that the tens of thousands of IUE victims, now gone, could see this day.

UE is known today for lots of things, its left character perhaps one of the most widely known aspects. But the really amazing thing is that UE has survived and is rebuilding. Most embattled unions just fold up and merge with another union, never to be heard from again. We were determined to survive and preserve as best we could the member-run and left principles of the union. All serious labor students should examine UE for its history, its character, its methods of bargaining with and dealing with employers, and its political stands. If you are in a union today, looking at our current moment, I would say that you had better study how UE suffered immense blows for decades and has still somehow survived. And now grown again, without resorting to gimmicks like union mergers that get labeled as “new organizing.” UE defies convention, and they prove over and over again that there really is an alternative to the failing business union model that we are all saddled with today.

MY: You have belonged to and worked for other labor unions, and you have been a successful organizer everywhere you went. You have also trained many organizers. Give readers a rundown of your organizing activities, including recently through your union organizing schools. How is it that you have succeeded? What is your secret, so to speak? Why are workers receptive to what you do? Why aren’t there many more of you out there, because if there were, we might now see our labor movement being revitalized?

CT: I have belonged to four unions over forty-six years in the labor movement; ATU, UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers), SEIU, and UE. All very different kinds of unions. My short time in UFCW was as a successful salt, and my brief stint at SEIU was characterized by my jerking the local union forward by restarting its new organizing and adding almost 500 new members. In 2013 I retired from UE and rejoined ATU after a break of twenty-nine years since I had been a member in Florida. Larry Hanley, a bus operator from New York City and a force determined to revitalize ATU, was elected ATU President and recruited me to start his mobilization department and restart their new organizing. My time at ATU was a whirlwind. I kicked new organizing into gear and today ATU is at its largest membership ever in 133 years. Almost 10,000 new members have been added by winning more than 235 campaigns in the U.S. and Canada. And we built a campaign apparatus that now allows the union to conduct bargaining support and strike struggle, and to defend transit workers from political attacks.

Almost one-third of that organizing success has been in the South. The AFL-CIO is well aware of this success, but they sit camped-out today in several southern states, claiming to “organize.” They should take a look at ATU’s experiences in the south, but they won’t. They are busy spending a lot of money, organizing little, and diligently carrying on the AFL-CIO tradition of organizing failure. In my time at ATU we also engineered one of the greatest victories against transit privatization when we defeated the privatization of 175 bus operators here in Washington, DC. And won their return to the public transit agency. We did this after an 84-day strike in 2019, in Lorton, Virginia, of all places. We followed an initial game plan devised by ATU President Larry Hanley, myself, and my co-worker Todd Brogan. Big ATU Local 689 in Washington, DC, was won over after initial resistance. Hanley’s bold goal was to try to win a reversal of privatization someplace and then launch this movement in other places to combat and turn back the spreading privatization cancer in the transit industry. But he passed away before the final success of the campaign, and his successor regime immediately abandoned any notion of continuing this work. Today it’s as if this remarkable victory never happened. When I decided to retire from ATU in 2022, this was one of the reasons. The post-Hanley leadership is quite content with privatization. Business union lethargy and small-mindedness comes in many flavors, always at the expense of the rank-and-file.

My most remarkable feat at ATU was when Larry Hanley, myself, and longtime organizer Richard Bensinger started a union organizing school in late 2017. We needed a means to train ATU leaders and local officers to expand the new organizing program. Bensinger raised the idea of the training work being done in the context of a multi-union collaboration to encourage “salting” as an organizing tool. Each participating union could rely on the overall experience of the volunteer collective as they engineered their own campaigns. A number of unions including ATU were able to organize new shops through the school, and in 2020, even under the cloud of the pandemic, Bensinger and the Workers United, Rochester, New York, Joint Board launched what became Starbucks Workers United. Salts were recruited and deployed to three Starbucks stores in Buffalo, New York, where the first three NLRB elections were won in later 2020. As of mid-2025 more than 600 Starbucks stores have been organized through NLRB elections. It is still amazing for me to think about how that drive is in large measure an outgrowth of the homemade organizing school that we had constructed under the ATU umbrella. I worked to get William Z. Foster’s collected works, American Trade Unionism, back into print to use with the school. Nearly a thousand copies of Foster’s book have been used with the Starbucks workers and in 250 other workplace campaigns since then.

What is even more amazing than the historic success of the Starbucks movement is the near complete lack of interest in this actual upsurge by the rest of the labor movement. The AFL-CIO is thoroughly disinterested in listening to the details of how the school, the salting, and the early campaign was put together. I have personally spoken to the top leaders of 15 unions to try to coax them to sit for an hour and listen to how the school was started and how the salting was conducted. No takers. This same near-total lack of interest goes for the academic labor programs and the labor nonprofit world. You might think that the story of how one of the most successful campaigns in recent decades was started would be a curiosity. Not at all. I have, thankfully, had considerable success with young workers, some local unions from a variety of unions, and left organizations who have listened to the story of how we started the organizing school and by extension the Starbucks movement. Through probably 125 different Zoom sessions and meetings, I spread the story and have promoted Foster’s book. Many of the participants go on to attend one of the organizing schools I run, or teach at, and dozens have become volunteer salts in campaigns in ten different industries.

MY: Following the previous question, the labor movement continues to lose ground and most unions do little organizing. Nor do they do anything to educate their members, especially to teach workers the truth about the political economy in which labor has to operate. Yet, some academics and popular organizations and magazines continue to claim that there is taking place a resurgence of the US labor movement. Every strike, every time a “dissident” wins high office in a union, every new contract is greeted with unadulterated joy and a sign of good things to come. What is your assessment of the US labor movement? Why, given that the facts do not match this optimism, do we keep seeing what we might call “the good news only” school of reporting and commentaries?

CT: We have slid into a period in our labor movement where decline, decay, stagnation, and timid leadership have become formalized. The “leadership” today in many unions is at best an administrative layer: functionaries carefully tending to the decline, keeping things on-track as we are pushed towards oblivion. There are examples to the contrary, but not very many in my experience. Our left and labor press also suffers during this period, as increasing numbers of writers come forward who have virtually no substantial experience in labor work. We have to be careful not to blame the inexperienced, especially in an era when getting any real experience is difficult, and sometimes impossible. But we should not excuse the editors of these publications, who dutifully cram all sorts of “good news only” stories into the publications. We have folks writing articles and even entire books on new organizing today who have organized few, if any, new workers in their own careers. I use the example of someone with a car repair issue; How many of us take our cars to the shop and then tell the service manager to assign the least experienced “mechanic” to fix our problem? That’s patently absurd when we think of it that way, but this is today how labor staffs most of it organizing work, and it certainly applies to how many of our left writers are selected. And to top off this problem, there seems to be little to no curiosity or desire to go out and find the people who are, or who have, done the difficult organizing work. And really debrief how they are actually winning the campaigns they are. Our movement leadership just puts the “organizer” hat on almost anyone, offers little guidance and even less training, and then hires another crop of “organizers” when they quit—or are fired.

This state of labor journalism also doesn’t inform very well. Who is Liz Shuler, the head of the AFL-CIO? Of course, that’s a trick question, since she is one of the absolutely least experienced labor “leaders”—ever— at her level. She was given the top spot in the labor movement with virtually no trade union experience to speak of. Writing about that I suppose might explain a lot of how we got into the jams we are in, but god forbid we would say something unkind about “the first woman” to run the labor federation. The reality is there are 10,000 women unionists out there, toughing it out in the shops, winning grievances, leading, bargaining, striking, and organizing. But none of those things are requirements for holding the top spot in the labor federation today apparently. Any one of them could outrun Shuler.

Everyone oohs and ahhs when some new progressive looking or sounding labor face pops up, but who are they? What have they actually done in their labor careers? Half of the labor articles written today are just fluff, tiny episodic reports on the passing of resolutions, quickie advertisements of one-off events with little context for readers, or labor travelogs repeating the obvious. I blame the editors—if there are any—for this low-calorie offering. Of course, let’s not let the unions off the hook. Their reporting and writing, if it exists in any substantial way at all, is frequently an embarrassment. No substantial reporting or researching is produced by most unions. The web sites are bare minimum on content. This history of unions who have struggled for more than 100 years are covered in two paragraphs—maybe.

I am a vigorous promoter of labor books and deeper reading on our rich history of labor movement struggle, and I’ll say that 95 percent of the books I sell and promote are completely unknown to the readers. The unions, with only a few exceptions, do nothing to educate their members in any significant way. And there is certainly no discussion about the disasters we are experiencing, and no explanation about how the Democratic Party has systematically participated in our destruction—by literally setting the stage for Trump. Union conventions and meetings are few and far between today and cut to minimum to allow a platform for the incumbent leaders only. And let’s not forget the generous socializing and casino time. The money spent on any one major union Convention these days could double the new organizing of dozens of unions. This is a disaster in so many ways, and one not to be minimized. It is no wonder that we have lots of members wandering around in a daze, or if they are not in a daze they might actually think that we are moving forward because they read an internet blurb about some incidental win someplace. The facts are that organized labor in the United States continues to be ground-down across all fronts. We cannot face our many crises for many reasons, including that there is little understanding of the real gravity of our situation.

MY: Needless to say, there are many unions that could use new leadership, However, those who champion union dissidents almost never ask themselves, change for what? The same goes for organizing. Cesar Chavez and the UFW leaders had periods of success, and they taught others to organize. But then what? What about building a radical labor movement as a goal, even as you fight for better working conditions, better pay, shorter hours, etc.? How can we avoid creating institutions and elevating leaderships that, in the end, refuse or fail to challenge the most critical foundations of capitalist society? Capitalism tends to create and shape, in effect, the people and institutions it needs to reproduce itself. How can this be challenged?

CT: Many top labor leaders are largely content, smug, immune to challenge in most cases. They construct staff and crony machineries to stay in office. They make 2-3-4 hundred thousand dollars year upon year, and pretty soon they are millionaires. They will do anything, and I mean anything to keep those jobs. Even the better labor leaders all strike me as overwhelmed, isolated from outside ideas, and just plodding forward reacting and not leading. Grinding away until their own retirement arrives. The so-called “Change-to-Win” movement of twenty years ago was led by some of the labor millionaires. Whatever that was, it was a monumental fizzle. We all had to witness that huge multi-year uproar just to re-learn that highly paid leadership and staff regimes are incapable of self-reform. There is more political life at the local level, and for the honest elements and the left that is where time must be spent. We need the left to dive-in and learn how these unions really work and then run for office. Staff jobs at a certain level can allow for influence, but not nearly enough to really alter the disastrous course of things. We also need to reach the “center” elements in the labor leadership, that large layer that is uneasy, worried about the decline, have some basic trade union principles, and are willing at times to put their support to attempts to correct course. The path to power in these unions has always been a principled left-center alliance. The members overwhelmingly support change, forward motion, and frequently even hard struggle. But the conservative elements, the corrupt elements, the self-serving elements in the leadership want to hang on to that power and money. And we won’t build the momentum needed to drive those elements out of the unions by running around yelling about political issues remote from the workplace, passing endless resolutions, or by not doing any of the work required. Our unions are in desperate need of a revival of new organizing and recruitment, something the existing leadership largely wants to avoid at all costs. If they even think of it at all. The members instinctively see the need to bring the unorganized into the unions, not to do them a favor but to defend our weakening situation. A center-left alliance in the union is the only path forward for the required new organizing. I run new union organizing schools regularly and there is huge and expanding interest out there from workers. The problem is that most of the unions are inward-focused, some are asleep, and most are structured to ignore outsiders such as the unorganized. And when was the last time that left elements raised the call to “organize the unorganized!”? Never.

The same goes for what we ultimately want from this labor movement. What do we want at the end of this ordeal? A slightly better deal in this rigged game? Or how about “A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work?” the old AFL beggary? What the hell does “fair” mean, anyway? Don’t we want something bigger, something to upend this rotten system? It astonishes me how timid, how narrow, and how docile the unions are. How will we get through the coming 80 percent of Trump’s term with this mindset? By trying to reason with unchecked corporate power? Relying on suspect judges and failed Democrats? We better think harder about the need to not just challenge this system, but replace it.

MY: As one example of the struggles of a prominent union today, you and I have had correspondence about the state of the United Auto Workers union. How do you explain its current difficulties? Shawn Fain, the union president, has been a hero of the social democratic left. According to The Nation’s president, Bhaskar Sunkara, who also owns Jacobin magazine, has declared Fain “labor’s greatest voice,” and he applauded Fain’s support for Trump’s simple-minded tariff policy. Yet, Fain is now accused by some of running the UAW in a dictatorial manner, with not much to show for his leadership in terms of new organizing and member education. What is your take on all of this?

CT: The UAW was delivered to its current dilemma on account of a federal government takeover and a leadership election that was compelled by government decree. The ideological corruption of runaway “labor management cooperation” eventually created a corruption rot that permeated entire layers of the auto union leadership. Is the U.S. government the best force to address a mess like that? Of course not. But like in many unions there was zero chance that the membership would ever find the means to get things cleaned up. And let’s note that the federal government control mechanism is paid for by the UAW members, another price to be paid by the membership for the miserable leadership of past decades. Millions and millions of dollars each year are paid out for this government monitor. Imagine this; the corruption gets found out and is prosecuted, and the “remedy” is for this federal government to meddle for as long as they want, and it’s all paid for by the members!

Shawn Fain was elected several years ago in this huge mess, and he defeated the old guard – but just barely. He takes over running a union afflicted with all sorts of corruption, a staff where many had been associated with all that, and with a membership that has never, ever, in living memory had to face playing much role in running their union. I think he did as well as could be expected with the Big 3 auto negotiations and strike in his very first months, and the union was able to organize the VW plant down south. These are significant things for any labor leader today. As for the left media and all of its chatter on the union, I would dismiss most of that out of hand. Most of these writers have no experience running a union, nor do very many of them have any idea of the dynamics in this – or any union. A few of them who thought Shawn Fain was some sort of far-left force are just lost in their own fumes. The intrusive and perpetual federal monitor rarely even gets mentioned. His job is to run around and collect incidental complaints and grievances, and then report it all as something substantial. This is ludicrous. One thing the federal monitor – or the left reporters – will not investigate is the fact that the UAW has lost 80% of its membership in the last 50 years. All in just the time I have been active in this labor movement. Is that an issue we need to consider? Or is it some ridiculous he-said-she-said jotted-down by the federal monitor, so he can allege some sinister activity is afoot? We have to consider the unaccountable roles of these federal monitors in any thinking we do about the state of the auto union today.

Yes, I have some opinions about how Fain has operated, of course I do. But I am rooting for the union to get back on something like a sustainable and relevant course, so the UAW can play a far larger role in a positive way. We need that. We need the UAW to get back heavy on the organizing front. But I don’t see that yet. I see some odd staffing decisions and not a lot of results, at least so far. I would counsel Fain to not get roped-in to the staff-driven habit of commenting on everything. So far as Trump’s tariff frenzy, let’s get a few things down for the record. Tariffs are a federal tax on imports to supposedly protect domestic manufacturing. One problem is, what is “domestic” manufacturing? And we all know— Shawn Fain most of all knows—that the “domestic” companies like the rest will lie, scheme, collude with competitor companies and governments, and do anything to squeeze more profits. That is how the U.S. auto industry was reduced to the fragment that it is today. Trump has made so many claims on tariffs that it’s safe to say that nobody knows where it is at. They are on, off, up, down, this is his deliberate style of bamboozling. The fact is it will be months and years before this calms down and it will be possible to see their real impact. Brother Fain is also in an epic jam. Democrats have imposed free trade for forty years. Look at the obvious destruction visited on our manufacturing sector. How many jobs lost, fifty million in fifty years maybe? Then along comes Trump, and he tells the working class he is going to reverse that. If you want to know how Trump was elected twice just read the last page of Karl Marx’s speech on free trade from 1848.

Can our auto industry be defended and rebuilt? And if it is rebuilt, even a little, will it be organized, or unorganized? And doesn’t the UAW have to deal with Trump’s tariffs no matter their opinion of them? A too-big section of UAW members support Trump. Or they did for last year’s election. Is the union addressing that? How? And as for the “reform” forces in the UAW, the two opposing trends have fallen out, the organization which was a part of the election of Fain is now dissolved. Where does all this go now? There are a lot of questions here. It is time for all of us to spend more time considering the entire puzzle here with the ongoing UAW story, as opposed to falling for cheap internet click bait based on the federal monitor’s skullduggery. That’s good counsel on a lot of things.

MY: When the left-led unions, which included the UE, were disastrously expelled from the CIO in the late 1940s, the US labor movement lost its most progressive forces. Those that favored the extension and deepening of the best features of the New Deal, organizing workers in the South, and promoting international working-class solidarity. There has been no recovery from this. You have always maintained your radical, communist, and anti-capitalist principles, whether it has been playing your role in building a left bloc in the unions, resurrecting the organizing thinking of William Z. Foster, or relentlessly promoting new and expanded union organizing. Global solidarity has been strikingly absent from the labor movement ever since the expulsion of the left-led unions. Which, by the way, had the most progressive collective bargaining agreements. Why is it that today’s AFL-CIO is, to put it bluntly, so politically backward?

CT: William Z. Foster observed 100 years ago that the U.S. labor movement was small, weak, industrially scattered, and politically backward. Yet he saw that it possessed immense possibilities for forward movement—if it could be stirred to action. I see the identical situation today. He also observed that, “The left wing must do the work.” I have been a mostly out-of-the closet communist in my many years in labor, although I was always careful. You have to be. I want people who work with me to know that the largest part of why I have been successful, and have made whatever contributions I have, is because of my underlying Marxist understanding of how things really work. I find it curious that so many leftists manage to exclude “communism” from their list of approved beliefs, yet in case after case they have to confess that it’s the communist movement that must be credited for so much. They harken back to the 1930s and the explosive growth years of the communist movement, yet refuse to adopt the same methodologies for their work today. They daydream about those decades of great working-class advance, and then apply the same loose, fuzzy, and unscientific methods in their struggles that communists reject. This is not a specific U.S. defect, but we do face it. And in my opinion, it’s why our left today is incapable of crystallizing out of the several million people who would hold communist or socialist views any organizational form that possesses coherent structure or power. Our movement is also weakened, and finds its vigor and discipline sapped, by an addiction to a myriad of identity politics. And with the bulk of the left today unconnected to workplaces we have little contact with the working class that is all around us. Everyone wants to glory in what divides us, but rarely does anyone care to explain what it is that unites us—the class system, and the class struggle. As for the AFL-CIO, last year the federation paid a consultant lots of money to dream up a new slogan. They came up with, “It’s Better In A Union.” Now they are driving around the country in a big bus emblazoned with the same label. I presume AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and Secretary Treasurer Fred Redmond, with assorted staff and functionaries are out meeting members in different places. Ok, the members appreciate a visit from the top brass, but since “it is better in a union,” what is the Federation doing to reach out to the more than 100+ million workers who are unorganized? Who labor increasingly for dictatorial bosses. Who work with few, if any, benefits. Working to pay for their health care. Have no retirement pensions. But who overwhelmingly support unions, as public opinion polls have shown for years? Well, the AFL-CIO does virtually nothing to organize the unorganized masses. That’s the job of the affiliate unions. What if they refuse to do it? Then it doesn’t get done, like it has not gotten done for many decades. The union bigs will however talk about one thing on their bus trips, which is “Elect Democrats!” Never mind that this corrupt and collapsed Democratic “Party” is in large measure what delivered Trump to us not once, but twice.

MY: One final question: There can be little doubt that the United States is moving steadily toward fascism. Yet, organized labor has done little to actively resist what has been and will be a disaster for workers. The presidents of two labor unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Workers (AFSCME), recently quit the Democratic National Committee (DNC), presumably in protest against the weak response of the Democratic Party to Trump’s predations. Now, we might ask why any union president would be a member of the DNC. But beyond that, these two labor “leaders” have salaries well in excess of $400,000 a year. And to the best of my knowledge, neither ever organized a single worker. I couldn’t find any evidence that either one has endorsed Zohran Mamdani for Mayor of New York City. The AFL-CIO hierarchy has shown little intention of a no holds barred battle with Trump and his legion of fascists. Seriously, how can this be?

CT: When I retired from UE in 2013, in my final Convention report as their Political Action Director—for twwenty-one years—I told the members point-blank that Obama had already been overthrown. His governance was no longer his own. He was a stuffed-suit giving speech after speech, but the big moneyed interests, military and intelligence agencies were clearly operating to suit themselves. I mention that because Trump now returns to power in that environment where many of the firewalls and safety valves that might protect our weak democratic processes are already shut off. For labor, what have we done so far to resist? Wrung hands with Democrats, paid for an endless stream of lawsuits, posted things on social media, and… what else? We have lost at least half a million union members in the federal service alone. When is the new organizing and recruiting program to be launched? It doesn’t exist. It’s not coming. Not from this labor leadership. As for the Washington, DC, tempest in a teacup recently when the AFT and AFSCME union leaders quit the Democratic National Committee (DNC), I expect they will be back shortly. Labor has nothing without the Democrats, and that’s the way the Democrats like it. The New Jersey and Virginia elections this November may provide a Democratic Party boost, but Trump couldn’t care less. He obviously plans to expand his unilateral war on working people, and the courts are going to allow it. This guy is governing like any crazy boss that the unions see all the time. Bosses who ignore the contract and do illegal things. Because they know that it is unlikely that you will rise up. They know that time is on their side, not our side. They control most aspects of the situation. So just like when this happens in a union context, we need to reconsider our entire position, our response, our tactics. We need union leadership who will consider bold responses, militant responses, tactics that defy conventional wisdom.

My last thoughts are again on the dire need to mobilize the unorganized, to move them to organize, and put them in direct confrontation with the employers. Bringing new blood into the unions will act as a catalyst in many ways, it will destabilize the ossified unions and open the door to a possible revitalization. Enormous new openings for the left are in sight, if we choose to move into that territory. But our current left is largely allergic to workplace and union work. We are instead drawn over and over and over again into harmless and feel-good projects far removed from the shops, garages, stores, and offices. If we see the trade union realm as the means to confront the economic powers while at the same time reaching the masses of working-class people, we might make progress in rebuilding a substantial socialist movement.

That’s where we are at, in my opinion. Thanks for asking.

MY: Thanks, Chris. I hope readers will take the truths you have told to heart and begin to do the work that needs to be done. Private sector union membership as a proportion of wage laborers was more than twice as high 100 years ago than it is now. And the public sector unions are now under ruthless attack. The future looks bleak, unless reality is faced. We owe you a great debt of gratitude for trying to open our eyes.

Capitalism, Fascism, and the First American Dictatorship

By Jeremy Cloward

“Neither blindness nor ignorance corrupts people and governments. They soon realize where the path they have taken is leading them…Most see their ruin before their eyes; but they go on into it.”

 - German historian Leopold von Ranke

Introduction: Capitalism & Fascism

Capitalism generates two classes – the working class and the owning class. Either you own the productive forces of society or you work for someone that does. Profits are “made” in a capitalist economy by the owning class paying the working class less than the value of the product the working class produces. The business or industry may differ but the method of capital extraction is always the same. It is a zero-sum game with basic arithmetic explaining the dizzying heights of wealth that the owning class has been able to extract from what is often the grinding labor of the working class. When fascist states develop in a capitalist economy, historically the state has always come down on the side of the owning class. Conversely, while fascist regimes have advanced the class interests of the owning class – namely, capital accumulation – the very rich have used their class power to help carry out the policy aims of the ruling class. Which has always included the destruction of any kind of political opposition or attempt at economic gain by the working class.

The Historical Examples of Chile & Argentina

This was certainly true in Chile during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). With the secret support of the CIA and the Nixon Administration as well as the obvious support of the business classes of the US and Chile through their massive “investments” in the Chilean economy, Pinochet and his traitorous officers ordered the outrageous bombing of the Chilean “White House” La Moneda with the democratically-elected socialist president of Chile, Dr. Salvador Allende, still inside the presidential palace. The attack led both to the death of Allende – one of the brightest figures ever to grace the political stage in the history of the world – and the collapse of his emerging socialist government. After taking power, the Pinochet regime ripped away all of the productive forces of the Chilean economy from the working class and poor. Including more than 350 factories as well as the powerful mining and copper industries which had been primarily owned by US corporations before they had been nationalized under Allende which were then returned by Pinochet to the US and Chilean owning classes.

The Pinochet regime then went about reorganizing the Chilean economy along neoliberal lines (i.e., slashing the social welfare state, privatizing state-owned enterprises, deregulation of commerce, and growing the military in general) as developed by the “Chicago Boys” which was, if nothing else, the exact type of politico-economic theory that was hoped for to be imposed on the Chilean economy by the US and Chilean rich. To fully lock-in his rule and the owning class’s place back atop the politico-economic and social order, in the days immediately after the coup and in the years to come, Pinochet brutally repressed all dissent through arbitrary arrests, torture, murder, and “disappearances” of tens of thousands of Chileans with the full support of the US government.

A similar story took place in Argentina from 1974-1983 when a military junta took power and waged a Dirty War against the Argentinian people as part of Operation Condor which was a program initiated by Pinochet and backed by the US to destroy leftist opposition throughout Latin America. In following the brutal example set by Pinochet, the junta in Argentina, led most prominently by General Jorge Rafael Videla, initiated a state-sponsored war on Argentinian-leftists with its own abductions, torture, murder, and disappearance program which they carried-out with merciless cruelty. Today, the junta’s rule remains one of the most brutal examples in Latin America of the terrible achievements of Operation Condor for Argentina’s near unmatched record of human rights atrocities. Which included, among other horrors, throwing leftist opponents and “dissident nuns and mothers” from helicopters and planes into the ocean to be disappeared for all-time.

A number of multinational corporations worked with the Videla regime in carrying out its “terror campaign”. Most notably, Ford and Mercedez-Benz. In assisting Videla and his officers with their nearly unspeakable repression program, Ford assisted the junta by providing the military with a list of workers to kill, how to identify them, an incarceration center on its grounds, and the company’s head of security to torture workers that the military had arrested. In fact, the regime’s death squads car of choice during its Dirty War was the Ford Falcon which it used to disappear people off the streets of Buenos Aires.

Nazi Germany of the 1930s & the United States Today

In Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler’s time, it was Porsche, General Motors, Prescott Bush (i.e., the Bush Family patriarch), Deutsche Bank, and Mercedes-Benz who did business with Hitler, including weapons manufacturing, loaning funds to help build Auschwitz, and developing his touring car. While in the US today, it is the pathetic looking “tech-leaders” of Amazon, Meta, and Tesla who helped bring Donald Trump to power and then stood side-by-side each other and him on inauguration day. In fact, the titans of commerce of nearly every significant sector of the American economy, from the oil industry to the NFL, lined up behind Trump to get him reelected in 2024 by spending hundreds of billions of dollars on his presidential campaign.

Why? Because, they agreed with his views on abortion? No. Instead, because they agreed with his views on capitalism and stood to benefit from his deregulation of almost everything as well as their appreciation for his decidedly hyper pro-business personal and political history. A thoroughly frustrated American working class may have been fooled by his antics for the last eight years but the American rich never were. They knew a class-confederate when they saw one. No matter how grotesque he may appear in manner or as the living embodiment of the economic system they rule over, he is still better than the alternative – a rational president (i.e., Kamala Harris or Joe Biden) who would have placed some guardrails on the never-ending pursuit of the accumulation of capital by the American owning class.

Moreover and just as telling, there is not one politically significant difference between Nazi Germany of the early 1930s and the United States today with the exception of Adolf Hitler having vastly more talent than Donald Trump and Hitler receiving less of the popular vote for president in Germany in 1932 (i.e., 36.8%) than did Trump in the US in 2024 (i.e., 49.8%). Indeed, consider the following:

Rule by decree by a convicted felon; dismantling the state to concentrate power in the hands of the executive branch; arrests and deportations of “undesirables;” white supremacy and segregation; undermining women’s rights as well as a civil sexual assault conviction against Trump (though not Hitler); anti-LGBT, anti-communist, and anti-immigrant policies which include a national registry for “unfavored groups” (i.e., Jews in Germany vs. undocumented workers in the US with the IRS now working with ICE to identify migrant workers for deportation); anti-union and anti-working class policies; ultra-nationalism; forcing institutions such as universities to adopt the regime’s racist ideology including the suppression of dissent; attempting to control the arts; book banning or book burning; the ever-present and extreme-valuing of the military; and each regime’s contempt  for science, the Truth, the rule of law, the people in general, and most importantly, democracy itself.

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Yet, unbelievably, the whole world is staring down the destructive power of an American regime that is potentially worse than the hell the Nazis and Adolf Hitler brought to Earth eighty years ago with their initiating of a world war that brought about the deaths of some 80 million people. However, the German military of the 1930s was not even close to possessing the military power of the United States today – the most powerful military in the history of the world – with troops stationed in over 150 countries and a nuclear arsenal powerful enough to bring about the sudden sixth mass global extinction of virtually every living thing on the planet. While the Nazi’s motto may well have been, “We will rule the world or bring half of the world down with us,” the Trump regime can actually do it.

Indeed, in just the first 100 days with the fate of the world in his hands, Trump has begun to dismantle the republic by destroying nearly every federal department, program, and agency from the Department of Education to the Environmental Protection Agency. He has cut tens of billions of dollars from the social welfare state for the poor, children, minority groups, the sick and disabled, and the very old. All the while firing tens of thousands of federal workers. And, like a mob boss, extorted law firms to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars that have been deemed political enemies and who must now work for him for free.

At the same time, Trump is threatening to expand the empire – and distort it – to heights never seen before in American history. His imperial aims now include taking by force if necessary, Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal, and the Gaza Strip. What’s more, almost unbelievably, he has now sided with North Korea and the murderous dictator of Russia in the United Nations against the West; sanctioned the International Criminal Court; withdrawn from the WHO, the Paris Agreement, the UN Human Rights Council, USAID, and continues to threaten to pull the US out of NATO. Doing so would guarantee a global realignment of power creating a US vs. the world state of affairs with new international alignments that may not be easy to predict nor be beneficial geo-politically for the United States. Finally, he has imposed chaotic global tariffs on nearly every country in the world, with the notable exception of Russia, which make no sense to any thoughtful person. Taken all together, the decisions made by this shockingly ignorant, thin-skinned, and impulsive ruler who is unable to admit to making a mistake make clear the Caligulan madness (and stupidity) the whole world is now facing.

The Psychological Component & Neoliberalism

If Hitler was an intelligent psychopath with a dark charisma as most historians agree, then Trump is a destructive psychopath who is unable to learn as many psychiatrists have concluded. In fact, the noted Yale expert on violence, psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee, has commented that his mental pathology is easy to predict and not difficult to know. What is it? To destroy. To force a death spiral. For her there is no real political ideology coming from him so much as a “dangerous” disorganization of the mind. Moreover, Lee argues that not only does Trump exhibit “dangerousness” but is unfit for almost any job and much less the president of United States, as “he could not meet the most basic criteria for [mental] fitness for making decisions” which real political leadership is based almost solely upon. Indeed, for Lee, the US and the world are not facing a political problem so much as a public health problem where an individual with a highly disordered mind has been placed in a position of power and whose symptoms have now spread to weak-minded, childhood-traumatized, and societally stressed individuals.

The creation of a significant number of these socially stressed people are not only largely from the American working class but have been made so as a result of 45 years of the societal stresses of neoliberalism that have been imposed on the United States, western society, and in fact, the world in general. Worse still, the United States is experiencing the most extreme formulation of neoliberalism the world has ever seen with the consequences not entirely predictable. But to even speculate, one cannot help but imagine a dystopian future that may not benefit anyone except the rich and powerful. For instance, we may find in a coming American society that is not so far off, “social unrest” which has been created by the Trump regime through its destruction of the republic which is then suppressed by the state and key sectors within the US owning class. As things stand now, those in line to benefit the most from future government contracts to control segments of American society who are out-of-step with the Trump regime are the tech industry for surveillance and identification of “unfavored groups,” the private security and transportation industries for the arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants, and the prison-industrial-complex to incarcerate political opponents and migrant workers.

The Institutional Creation of the Dictatorship and a Dark Future?

Yet, what is just as dangerous as Trump’s personality disorders (whatever they might be) and the ongoing impact of neoliberalism is that he is the beneficiary of the most important case to ever come before the once highly-respected Supreme Court in Trump v. United States (2024). The case addressed the question of “presidential immunity” in the overturning of the presidential election of 2020. In Trump, the Court held that, “the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” With those words, these great practitioners of law from the best the Ivy League has to offer, shot a poison bullet right through the heart of what was already the staggering American republic, elevating the presidency to that of a ruler without restraint.

Indeed, the Court created an American dictatorship that is protected by the institutional powers of that institution itself. Now with the complete acquiescence of the Trump-Republican dominated congress there is no need for a “Reichstag fire.” With the final check, the courts, which he ignores, who or what is to stop him from anything including imprisoning, torturing, murdering, or disappearing US citizens whom he considers to be political enemies as was the case in Chile, Argentina, or Nazi Germany? The current regime is already arresting and deporting foreign nationals with legal standing who oppose the politics of this mad king by daring to call the massacre in the West Bank by the US-backed Israeli government, a massacre. As well as deporting some who are not “political” at all.

In fact today, in trying to bring that future dystopian society into existence, the Trump regime now wants to contract out “round-ups” of undocumented workers to corporations and run the program like “Amazon Prime.” This, of course, would enormously increase the amount of people that the regime can return to decidedly poor or violent countries for what is still no discernible reason at all. Will the arrests of American citizens be next? Certainly, it is the hallmark of a tyrant if there is one. What horror or atrocity could come afterward? Will we have our own “Kristallnacht” carried out by some of the regime’s loyalists against our own scapegoats? If the US continues down this dark path, will it finally fall into the abyss of mass murder? We don’t know. But if we are to look to Nazi Germany as our guide down this Dantian-road into Hell then the final outcome is only too clear. Without question, driven by his basest instincts, the powers of this (or any) dictatorship are tailor-made to go wrong for a criminal like Trump.

The Way Forward…

The ruling and owning classes of any society can never be trusted. If for no other reason, it has always been the rich and powerful who have sent everyone else to their deaths against the sword and the machine gun for their benefit. When the political power of the state and the class power of the rich bind together and slip into fascism, then the true enemy of the people, if not obvious already, becomes clear – the owning class and the state, itself. In a capitalist-fascist state there is no turning back. There is no redemption of the social order without an outright removal from power of the ruling class and rich.

This has always been true in history as was the case in Chile, Argentina, and Nazi Germany. The collapse of the government and prosecution of the criminals that ran the state (i.e., Pinochet in Chile, Videla in Argentina, and the Nazi politico-military high command at Nuremburg) was required to restore any kind of faith in government. Even if none of these societies ever moved economically farther to the left than the progressive fiscal policies made possible by the new liberal states that had replaced the fascist regimes. This was not possible because the owning classes were never removed from power in any of these societies that emerged from the ashes of the collapsed or defeated fascist governments.

With the truth of today now staring us squarely in the face maybe we can all see the coming death of our republic – if it hasn’t died already with our mad dictator on the loose now saying that he thinks he can run for a third presidential term. Regardless, hopefully we can all see what has to be done – the death of the dictatorship and the restoration of the republic. Only formulated in a way unlike it has ever existed. A true republic governed by the people and for the people; by the working class and for the working class. Not merely a return to the outlines of the republic that was founded by the ruling class and the rich of the late 1700s with its built-in social, political, and economic inequalities which have brought us to this hour in history. Instead, today the American republic requires that we respond in a totally original manner with a complete reorganization of the state, economic system, and society where each is rooted in justice and complete equality. It is the only way forward.

For this to happen the American working class needs to awaken to its class position within the national capitalist order, and in fact, the global capitalist economic system itself. In so doing, it will then understand not only its class interests but the true dimensions of its class power and see that the political concerns of the working class have nothing to do with the politics of a billionaire president or any of his class in the United States or the world over. Once done so, the American working class can then take aim at bringing to an end an economic system, and its most horrifying political overlord, fascism, which from their inception promised to reap only a bitter harvest for the many while providing power and riches for the very few.

Indeed, they will emerge from the “motor force of history” as the new creators of a better society for all. It will truly take a Herculean-effort to do so but one that is not without historical precedent. However, if we deny it or choose not to do anything about it instead of facing the painful truths made clear by the dark light shining from this new American dictatorship, then our downfall is inevitable. For certain, our country will be just one more nation on the pages of history that rose and fell according to what should be the timeless maxim of all countries – “In the end, all nations get the government that they deserve.”

Jeremy Cloward, Ph.D. is a political science professor and author living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area.  He has taught at the junior college and university level for the past 19 years and is the author of three books and multiple articles that have been published in the Oakland Post, the Hampton Institute, Socialist Worker, Project Censored, and the East Bay Times. His college-level American politics textbook, Class Power and the Political Economy of the American Political System, is now in its third edition and has been endorsed by the progressive author Michael Parenti, the director of Project Censored, Mickey Huff, and the professor and former Central Committee member of the Black Panther Party, Phyllis Jackson. The book is currently being marketed to a national audience of political science professors throughout the country. In addition, Dr. Cloward has run for public office on three separate occasions (Congress 2009, 2010, and City Council 2012) and has appeared in a variety of media outlets, including FOX and the Pacifica Radio Network (KPFA).  Today, he continues to remain involved in the politics of peace, justice, and equality for all.

On the Limits of Legalism Against Empire

By Ibrahim Can Eraslan

It is well known that imperialism has long maintained an aggressive stance toward Iran. This includes periodic attacks on Iranian territories, the assassination of personnel, economic sanctions, and even the use of propaganda tools aimed at regime change. The reasons behind these actions by imperialist powers are beyond the scope of this article, but it is evident that the ultimate target is China. On the other hand, Iran also holds significant importance for Russia. The Caucasus region, after all, is crucial to Russia’s security interests.

In order to achieve all these objectives, imperialism carries out its dirty work through Israel — as even German Chancellor Merz has stated — and the West responds to this with so-called “respect.”[1] Israel is able to carry out these actions in front of the entire world. All of this is framed by the West as a kind of civilizational war against Arabs or Muslims, with Israel cast as the protagonist.

What makes this possible is, of course, the fact that Israel is not merely a nation-state acting on its own. It is an indispensable tool of imperialism in the region. Moreover, the global reach of Zionist media propaganda and the immense financial support it receives from the West (which Trump himself actually criticized during his election campaign) provide Israel both the courage and the means to construct its own narrative.

In other words, Israel is acting with a specific mission. It serves as a battering ram for Western imperialism in the region, aiming at the destruction of anti-imperialist forces and the redrawing of borders. In this context, the increasingly aggressive stance toward Pakistan also gains significance, and it is meaningful to highlight the close ties between India and Israel. After all, without such a comprehensive campaign, halting China's economic rise becomes an extremely difficult scenario for Western imperialists. The elimination of anti-imperialist forces in the region simultaneously opens up new centers of exploitation for the West. This is why the targeting of China and Israel's role as the battering ram gains strategic importance for imperialism.

Thus, Israel’s assignment here goes beyond the ontological foundations of the Zionist narrative. Israel’s history —and its deep entanglement with imperialist powers — reveals that the matter at hand is not one of religion or culture, but fundamentally a class struggle. Accordingly, the stance of international legal mechanisms toward Israel should also be interpreted through the lens of class struggle, and the hypocrisy of international law must be understood in this context as well.

In its recent conflicts with Iran, it is clear that Israel is the aggressor. From the perspective of international law, this is not a disputable claim. Moreover, within the last six months, Israel has launched attacks on Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria — and in three of these cases, it continues to maintain a de facto occupation. What is being done in Gaza and the West Bank is evident to all.

So then, why do the United Nations and its conventions not apply equally to all states? Why is there discrimination?

Undoubtedly, the concept of “humanity” as referred to in United Nations rhetoric is a costly one. In a world dominated by capitalism, this means that, whether under the label of “humanitarian intervention/aid” or “the fight against international terrorism,” imperialism can intervene in any conflict, rebellion, or — as in the case of Iran — against an official government, using any method it chooses. Or, as recalled from the Iraq invasion, it’s not merely about seeking authorization from the UN, but about CIA agents obtaining “diplomatic or other official identities”.[2]

Of course, the principles laid out in various international legal texts regarding human rights or the use of force by states may initially create a positive impression for many. However, as I mentioned above, these are concepts lacking in substance and are costly within the capitalist system. The universalization of these costly concepts is problematic precisely because of their Western origin. In capitalism, if you invest in something, you expect to profit from it. Therefore, investment in “humanity” is only measured in terms of its profitability. In this sense, a set of principles that emerged in a particular historical context and in response to specific social developments — and that bear the cultural and political imprint of that environment — being declared valid for all humanity is ethically questionable from many angles.

Imperialism reveals itself even within the principles of international law, as international law is fundamentally shaped by the logic of unipolarity.

From this, it can be said that Israel and the unipolar essence of international law are mutually compatible. It follows logically that international law would not punish a “child” born from its own core — or if it does, the punishment would still serve to protect that same core.

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However, a core issue here is that Israel’s actions cannot be justified even within the narrative of capitalist legality. Israel’s defense relies on the doctrine of “preemptive self-defense,” or in other words, “preventive attack.” To understand what these terms mean, one must examine Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which regulates the right to self-defense. Article 51 is the exception to the prohibition on the use of force as established in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.

So, what is preemptive self-defense?

In short, preemptive self-defense is an expanded interpretation of the traditional right to self-defense. Let us take a look at Article 51 of the Charter:

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”[3]

It can thus be seen that this right is not one that entirely sidelines the United Nations or turns warfare into a fundamental exception to general international legal norms. Rather, it is a provision intended to address potential defense gaps in situations where the UN is unable to intervene immediately.

Of course, the use of force in self-defense is a legitimate right. However, as the term “self-defense” itself implies, this right must first be triggered — it must be born out of a concrete threat. The primary condition for the emergence of this right is that an armed attack must be directed against the state. In other words, Israel cannot invoke the right of self-defense based on a mere suspicion of nuclear weapons and the hysteria that “Iran might use them” — especially when the only nuclear arsenal in the region belongs to them.

It is also important to emphasize that Iran is a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), whereas Israel is not. Israel is estimated to possess between 80 and 200 nuclear warheads.[4] If there is no attack to be defended against, then there is also nothing to defend, meaning that in such circumstances, “preemptive self-defense” does not fall within the scope of Article 51.

Of course, since the term “armed attack” does not have a universally accepted definition, this issue remains open to debate. However, the relevant provision in the UN General Assembly’s Resolution A/3314 of 14 December 1974, titled “Definition of Aggression”, is as follows:

“Aggression is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations, as set out in this Definition.’’[5]

Therefore, as can be seen, this is not a general right but an exceptional one. Iran is also not acting in violation of the relevant regulations and resolutions. In other words, this exceptional right does not grant states the authority to strike others simply because of hostile relations; it is merely a provision designed to address a potential gap in defense.

One might argue, as part of Israel’s defense, that Iran supports terrorist attacks against Israel. However, in this regard, the Nicaragua Case offers a clarifying precedent. In its judgment, the International Court of Justice ruled that a state’s support for armed groups operating in another state does not amount to an armed attack and therefore is not equivalent to one.

“The Court has already indicated (paragraph 238) its conclusion that the conduct of the United States towards Nicaragua cannot be justified by the right of collective self defence in response to an alleged armed attack on one or other of Nicaragua's neighbours. So far as regards the allegations of supply of arms by Nicaragua to the armed opposition in El Salvador, the Court has indicated that while the concept of an armed attack includes the despatch by one State of armed bands into the territory of another State, the supply of arms and other support to such bands cannot be equated with armed attack.’’[6]

It is clear that this situation has not been considered equivalent to an armed attack. In fact, it would be more appropriate for Iran — rather than Israel — to invoke such a defense.

Therefore, putting aside the vast ocean of doctrinal debates and legal terminology, the truth is that imperialist powers are able to cast aside the very laws they wrote, the international legal principles and norms they themselves defined, whenever it suits them. This same defense once appeared in the form of the Bush Doctrine, and we all know the consequences. In short, the concept of preemptive self-defense can be described as a notion fabricated by imperialism to override its own legal order.

The concept is better understood not by looking at processes through the lens of law, but by looking at the law through the lens of political processes. For example, Trump once threatened to intervene in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) under the pretext of preemptive self-defense.[7] But perhaps, unlike Iran, maybe the reason such an intervention was never carried out against DPRK is that DPRK actually possess nuclear weapons…

Finally, what I want to emphasize is this: attempting to challenge imperialism through existing legal norms is a well-intentioned effort, but believing that international legal mechanisms can take real and concrete steps against imperialism is, frankly, naïve. What South Africa has done should be applauded by all of humanity, and such examples must be multiplied. Only then can international law shed its one-sided character and begin to embody a multipolar structure — and once again, in today’s conditions, international law can only gain real applicability through a stance taken against imperialism.

Notes

[1]  Germany's Merz says Israel doing 'dirty work for us' in Iran – DW – 06/18/2025

[2] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/022399ritter-book.html

[3] https://legal.un.org/repertory/art51.shtml

[4] https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-leaked-emails-colin-powell-says-israel-has-200-nukes/

[5] A/RES/29/3314 - Definition of Aggression - UN Documents: Gathering a body of global agreements

[6] Nicaragua v. United States of America, ICJ Decision of 27 June 1986 p.12

[7] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/9/19/trump-threatens-to-destroy-north-korea-if-necessary

The End of an Empire: Systemic Decay and the Economic Foundation of American Fascism

By Colin Jenkins

If you live in the United States and feel like everything is caving in around you, like you are being attacked and fleeced from every angle, like you can’t breathe, like you can’t ever seem to catch a break despite doing everything seemingly right, like you are on the verge of a mental-health crisis and/or homelessness, your feelings are justified.

We are living in the middle of widespread societal breakdown. We are witnessing the erosion of an empire. We are experiencing the effects of a rotten system (capitalism) coming to its inevitable conclusion. Simply put, the capitalist class and their two political parties have run out of ways to steal from us. Because we have nothing left for them to take. So, the system is responding like a vampire who is unable to find the blood it needs to survive… erratic, rabid, frenzied, and increasingly desperate and violent, while frantically searching for new avenues of exploitation to keep it churning.

The collapse of the United States is not just happening on a whim. There are very clear, systemic reasons for it. It began in the 1970s/80s, mostly due to the inevitable trajectory of capitalism, which went through a series of late-stage developments throughout the 20th Century. These stages interacted with the realization of a globalized capitalist economy near the turn of the 21st Century and a conscious policy shift implemented by the capitalist state, commonly referred to as neoliberalism. An era of financialization, buoyed by monetary policy that caters to finance capital by feeding it a seemingly never-ending stream of free money, has paralleled these other developments to culminate into a desperate and destructive effort to feed the capitalist class during a time when the system’s profit rates are decades deep in perpetual decline.

How Capitalism’s Perpetually Falling Rates of Profit Have Shaped the Modern World

The moves that have been made by the capitalist state in the US are typically done under the rhetoric of “stimuli” or “recovery.” Historically referred to as monetary policy, they are designed as a system of life support for capitalism and advertised as necessary steps to “protect the economy.” They are desperate measures that defy the reality of capitalism’s falling rates of profit. In other words, despite the apparent success of US corporations, which have amassed unprecedented amounts of profit and wealth during the neoliberal era (1980s – 2020s), the truth is the underbelly of capitalism is slowly rotting away due to countless internal contradictions inherent to the system. This perpetual degradation, which was long ago recognized in part by classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo, exists in addition to the system’s cyclical need for crises and is one of the main phenomena that is driving capitalism to its grave. In his pivotal work, Capital, Karl Marx expanded, in detail, how this process develops over time:

“… proceeding from the nature of the capitalist mode of production, it is thereby proved logical necessity that in its development the general average rate of surplus-value must express itself in a falling general rate of profit. Since the mass of the employed living labor is continually on the decline as compared to the mass of materialized labor set in motion by it, i.e., to the productively consumed means of production, it follows that the portion of living labor, unpaid and congealed in surplus-value, must also be continually on the decrease compared to the amount of value represented by the invested total capital. Since the ratio of the mass of surplus-value to the value of the invested total capital forms the rate of profit, this rate must constantly fall.” [1]

Simply put, as surplus value (the extraction of unpaid labor) represents the lifeblood of capitalism, it must remain constant for the system to return the same rate of profit over a given time. However, as capitalism matures, and as capitalists constantly seek to lower costs by introducing machines, laying off workers, keeping wages low and stagnant, etc., the extraction of surplus value from human labor experiences a perpetually decreasing rate, even as cumulative profits seemingly grow. “Marx’s LTRPF (Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall) argues that the rate of profit will fall if the organic composition of capital (OCC) rises faster than the rate of surplus value or exploitation of labor,” Michael Roberts summarizes. “That is the underlying reason for the fall.” Marx explains further,

“Take a certain working population of, say, two million. Assume, furthermore, that the length and intensity of the average working-day, and the level of wages, and thereby the proportion between necessary and surplus-labor, are given. In that case the aggregate labor of these two million, and their surplus-labor expressed in surplus-value, always produces the same magnitude of value. But with the growth of the mass of the constant (fixed and circulating) capital set in motion by this labor, this produced quantity of value declines in relation to the value of this capital, which value grows with its mass, even if not in quite the same proportion. This ratio, and consequently the rate of profit, shrinks in spite of the fact that the mass of commanded living labor is the same as before, and the same amount of surplus-labor is sucked out of it by the capital. It changes because the mass of materialized labor set in motion by living labor increases, and not because the mass of living labor has shrunk. It is a relative decrease, not an absolute one, and has, in fact, nothing to do with the absolute magnitude of the labor and surplus-labor set in motion. The drop in the rate of profit is not due to an absolute, but only to a relative decrease of the variable part of the total capital, i.e., to its decrease in relation to the constant part.” [2]

Marxian and (some) non-Marxian economists alike have recognized a virtual ceiling for the global capitalist system that seems to have been touched in and around the 1970s, for various reasons. Despite the post-World War 2 boom that benefited the United States and, subsequently, the imperialist core countries throughout the West, in their service to global capital, this phenomenon of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (TRPF) has remained the ultimate Achilles heel in that it seems immune to supercharged imperialism, neoliberalism’s monetary policy, ending the gold standard, multiple bouts of quantitative easing, and nearly every trick pulled out of the bag by the capitalist state since then. Thus, the reality is: capitalism is no longer viable, even for capitalists. Yet, the billionaire class (and soon-to-be trillionaire class?) which came to being during this era still needs to be fed. So, the system, and its imperialist state, continues to suck every ounce of blood available from the masses. In this process, the former industrialized “middle class” has been destroyed, big capitalists and landlords are devouring small capitalists and landlords (so-called “mom and pops”), and the US state has seemingly embraced at least some form of modern monetary theory (MMT) to benefit the capitalist class while pretending to play by the old-school rules determined by taxation, “controlled” spending, and debt when it comes to the working class.

The US government (the capitalist state), mainly through the Federal Reserve and its monetary policy, has kept capitalism churning, and thus kept capitalists wealthy, by constantly increasing the flow of new currency into the system and by using so-called public funds to purchase private assets that are deemed too toxic, or “too big to fail.” These golden parachutes, as they’ve become known, are introduced in true classist fashion, only benefitting large financial institutions, big capitalists, and wealthy shareholder. Marx predicted such a development, telling us

“… a fall in the rate of profit hastens the concentration of capital and its centralization through the expropriation of the smaller capitalists, the expropriation of the last survivors of the direct producers who still have anything to give up. This accelerates on one hand the accumulation, so far as mass is concerned, although the rate of accumulation falls with the rate of profit.” [3]

And, being consistent with the entire era of neoliberalism, this newfound creation of “unproductive capital” almost never trickles down because those who are awarded it are no longer incentivized to invest in the types of productive ventures that may have existed during the early days of capitalism and industrialization, as well as during the post-WW 2 boom. Now, with the arrival of globalization (1990s) and the subsequent death of the industrialized “middle class” within the imperial core (due to offshoring), the backbone of the US economy is an array of hollow service industries, which are buoyed by the arms industry, the highly speculative and unproductive financialization racket known as the stock market, and the rapidly dying staple of home ownership. Thus, capitalists can become extremely wealthy, relatively quickly, by merely moving fiat currency in and out of Wall Street through legalized strongarming that is only available to those with large amounts of capital and access to loopholes (i.e., hedge funds). For instance, the practice of artificially shorting stocks, a tactic that was exposed by the historical 2021 runup of GameStop, which was spurred by retail investors who miraculously destroyed the gargantuan Melvin Capital despite unethical steps that were taken to eventually halt buying of the stock.

Simply put, the capitalist class and its empires like that of the United States are running out of tricks to keep this decaying system alive. They are stuck in a cycle of creating seemingly unlimited amounts of currency to counter falling rates of profit, finding creative ways to take more value out of our labor without going over the tipping point of complete societal breakdown, and constantly shifting rates and numbers to keep the sinking ship afloat. This is all being done to keep capitalists wealthy, especially in relation to the working-class masses, who as always remain the sacrificial lambs in this process. So, for working people like ourselves, we may see rising wages like the recent move by some states to increase the minimum wage to $15/hour; however, such steps are naturally met with rising costs implemented by the owning class – capitalists and landlords alike – who don’t need to increase prices to maintain profit, but do so because (1) they own and control our means of survival, and (2) they utilize these means as a form of power to siphon all of our earned income, which they view as exponentially rising rates of return on their “investments.” This is, after all, the entire point of capitalism.

As with every such dynamic that exists under capitalism, the foundation of profit is merely unpaid labor. So, as wages appear to grow, this growth will almost always translate into more forceful actions made by the owning class to further exploit workers. Thus, maintaining growing profits amongst the systemic phenomenon of falling rates of profit requires hitting the working class harder and harder as time goes on, from all different directions and in increasingly creative ways.

While capitalists have employed their own army of economists to challenge both the surplus value of labor and falling rates of profit, Marx’s law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall has been bolstered by substantial evidence over the past century. Starting with the empirical evidence alone, Roberts explains,

“…the formula is s/(C+v), when s = surplus value; C= stock of fixed and circulating means of production and v = value of labor power (wage costs).  Marx’s two key points on the LTRPF are 1) there will be a long-term secular decline in the average rate of profit on capital stock as capitalism develops and 2) the balance of tendential and counter-tendential factors in the law explains the regular booms and slumps in capitalist production.” [4]

Roberts and Guglielmo Carchedi’s “World in Crisis: A Global Analysis of Marx's Law of Profitability” provides a collection of analyses that streamlines evidence of “empirical validity to the hypothesis that the cause of recurring economic crises or slumps in output, investment, and employment in modern economies can be found in Marx’s law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit.” As the editors explain, “Marx believed, and we agree, that this is ‘the most important law in political economy.” [5] Thus, understanding this perpetual decomposition of capital can help to explain many things, especially with regards to how the superstructure responds to this economic reality. It tells us why capitalist states like the US implement so many policies that are ultimately detrimental to its masses, who are viewed as collateral damage in the real business of serving and saving capitalism, buoying capital, and allowing the rich to continue accumulating wealth and property despite perpetually falling rates of profit.

Within this valuable collection, Esteban Ezequiel Maito explains how the recognition of this law has transcended theoretical spheres over the past few centuries, only becoming “irrelevant” within the neoliberal Chicago and Austrian schools that developed as more of a justification for capitalism rather than schools of analysis or critical thought. “In classical political economy, there was a concern about the downward trend in the rate of profit,” Maito tells us. “Adam Smith and David Ricardo, among others, noted that there was such a trend. The systemic tendency to crisis and insufficient profits generation has also been discerned by exponents of other economic schools (like Schumpeter or Keynes). All accepted the immanently real nature of this trend, despite the theoretical particularities of each of these economic schools.” [6]

As the United States is the clear forerunner of both capitalism and imperialism, its economy provides the greatest insights into the life cycle of global capitalism. The country has gone through the most advanced stages of capitalist development, has dealt with falling rates of profit by increasingly involving the government in the market (ironically under the guise of a “free” market), and has shown numerous signs of material degradation, most notably following the period of post-industrialization, which has especially impacted the American working class. Roberts and Carchedi argue that profit rates for US capital began to experience significant downturns even in the “boom” era, as early as 1948, before hitting a cyclical bottom in 1982:

“Empirical evidence confirms this. We shall focus on the United States since World War II. 4 Figure 1.1 shows that the rate of profit has been falling since the mid-1950s and is well below where it was in 1947. There has been a secular decline; the rate of profit has not moved in a straight line. After the war, it was high but decreasing during the so-called “Golden Age,” from 1948–65. This was also the fastest period of economic growth in American history. Profitability kept falling from 1965 to 1982, as well. The growth of gross domestic product (GDP) was much slower, and American capitalism (as did capitalism elsewhere) suffered severe slumps in 1974–75 and 1980–82.” [7]

In looking at not only the trajectory of global capital, but more specifically the US system in general, we can also see that a historic profitability crisis occurred in or around the 1970s. This crisis was temporarily halted during the first sixteen years of the neoliberal era, specifically between 1982 to 1997, due to many factors, including globalization, financialization schemes, and increased exploitation of workers within the imperial core. Roberts and Carchedi go on to explain this temporary halt and the real effects it had on profitability during this period:

“Then, as figure 1.2 shows, in the era of what is called “neoliberalism”— from 1982 to 1997—profitability rose. Capitalism managed to bring into play the counteracting factors to falling profitability: namely, greater exploitation of the American workforce (falling wage share), wider exploitation of the labor force elsewhere (globalization), and speculation in unproductive sectors (particularly, real estate and finance capital). Between 1982 and 1997, the rate of profit rose 19 percent, as the rate of surplus value rose nearly 24 percent and the organic composition of capital rose just 6 percent…

This “neoliberal period” had fewer severe slumps, although economic growth was still slower than in the Golden Age because profitability was still below that of the latter, particularly in the productive sectors of the US economy. Much of the profit was diverted away from real investment and into the financial sector. Profitability peaked in 1997 and began to decline. Between 1997 and 2008, the rate of profit dropped 6 percent and the rate of surplus value fell 5 percent, while the organic composition of capital rose 3 percent. This laid the basis for the Great Recession of 2008–2009.” [8]

The aberrations that occurred during this period, which allowed for not only a break in the downward trend but also an increase in many sectors, was never sustainable and ultimately represented a crossroads. It was also relatively insignificant, as we can see in Figure 1.1. As many economists across the spectrum have noted, the crisis that began in the 1970s now appears to be unique in both scale and in its effects on the reproduction of capital, to the point where some have pinpointed it as the peak of capitalism’s potential and beginning of the system’s overall decay.

The historical significance of the profitability crisis of the 1970s has also been backed by empirical evidence. In a 2020 paper published by Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, Paris Yeros and Praveen Jha illustrate how the reproduction of capital and profit have been on a permanent downward turn since, characterized by chronic recessions within the imperial core and residual depressions within the semi-peripheries:

“Overall, there has been a long-term decline of the rate of profit in the productive sectors of the leading capitalist state. This decline began in earnest in 1965 and persisted all through the 1970s. Then, a partial recovery occurred from 1982 to 1997, at roughly two-thirds the 1965 level. This was followed by another drop after 1997 and then another recovery in 2006, back up to 1997 levels. But this was then followed by a sharp fall in the course of the 2008 crisis, which took the profit rate down to roughly one-third of the 1965 level. Thereafter, another weak recovery ensued. This, indeed, makes for a long crisis—and on this we can agree. It has been a long systemic crisis punctuated by crashes, recessions and even depressions in some countries, particularly in the peripheries and semi-peripheries, including inside Europe. Indeed, it is no longer odd to encounter conditions comparable to those obtaining among advanced countries after 1929, with dramatic losses in gross domestic product (GDP) of up to 30 per cent and unemployment levels surpassing 20 per cent.” [9]

By examining the trajectory of capital over the past fifty years, especially regarding the relationship between technological advances and the system’s reliance on imperialism, Yeros and Jha expand on Marx’s TRPF to shows the uniqueness of the neoliberal-era crisis:

“If we take Marx’s law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall ipsis litteris, we could easily reach the conclusion that the current crisis of capitalism is essentially like any other…

Yet, this is not a crisis essentially like any other, nor is its primary contradiction reducible to that between capital and labor. Some historical and analytical perspective on the long transition remains in order for a fuller explanation of what is at stake. We are witnessing not just a re-run of capitalist crisis, but the dramatic denouement of a 500-year-old social system. We cannot agree with Roberts (2016, p. 6) that ‘there is no permanent slump in capitalism that cannot be eventually overcome by capital itself’. This can only become clearer if we illuminate the mechanisms of systemic crisis by building on the original formulation of Marx’s law. For the exclusive focus on technological change and the construal of crisis exclusively to the organic composition of capital obscures the operation of imperialism and its modes of rule, reducing imperialism to a mere add-on—when considered at all. Even in Marx’s time, the connection between technology and profits was perched on a colonial relationship of primitive accumulation; this was observed, described and denounced, but never properly theorized. We would be remiss if we persisted with this flaw.” [10]

Finally, in representing perhaps the most substantial evidence to how this historic crisis has doomed this system to the dustbin of history,

“The financialization of profits has taken hold in an unprecedented manner. Industrial firms have become dependent on financial profits, even against industrial profits, and debt has ballooned among corporations, governments and households, with the USA at the forefront and with the active support of monetary authorities. This policy has reached the point today of obtaining negative interest rates across the Eurozone, Japan and the USA (in real terms)—to no good effect. We can, indeed, speak of the establishment of an enduring, systemic financialization logic, or monopoly-finance capital (Foster, 2010), whose great feat has been the perpetuation of a ‘wealth effect’ by the systematic inflation of asset prices, against falling profits in production. This has placed monopoly capitalism on life support and explains its perseverance, if not also the magnitude of its foretold collapse.” [11]

Imperialism, Globalization, and the “New Imperialism” as a precursor to domestic fascism

Analysis on imperialism’s relation to capital began to appear at the turn of the 20th century. VI Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism remains perhaps the most important contribution to this topic, and was written in response to both the first world war and the works of John Atkinson Hobson (1902), Rudolf Hilferding (1910), and most directly, Karl Kautsky, a fellow Marxist who had contributed much to the topic.

Lenin’s critiques of Hobson and Kautsky are especially useful in understanding the context of his own work. In Hobson, Lenin appreciated much of the analysis, although stopping short at the typical blind spots of social liberalism, which fail to recognize the revolutionary proletariat as the only force capable of combating the ills of imperialism. Ultimately, Hobson was unable or unwilling to view the matter through a Marxist lens.  In Kautsky, Lenin had a more piercing critique that arose in response to two main points. First was his belief that Kautsky erroneously identified imperialism as a mere “policy choice” made by competing capitalist nations, rather than a byproduct of a later stage of capitalist development. Lenin summarized this as “divorcing imperialist politics from imperialist economics, and divorcing monopoly in politics from monopoly in economics.” [12] Second, Lenin believed Kautsky’s motivation to separate politics from economics was to “obscure the most profound contradictions of imperialism and thus justify the theory of ‘unity’ with the apologists of imperialism and the outright social chauvinists and opportunists.” [13] To Lenin, the social chauvinists and opportunists were the petty bourgeoisie and upper echelons of the proletariat within the imperialist nations, which he referred to as a “labor aristocracy” who had been “bribed out of imperialist superprofits and converted to watchdogs of capitalism and corrupters of the labor movement… on the backs of Asia and Africa.” [14] This echoed the words of Friedrich Engels in 1858, which he wrote in a letter to Marx,

“The English proletariat is becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation that exploits the whole world, this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.” [15]

Lenin recognized that six decades of accumulation had only intensified this development, now extending far beyond the UK and infesting a group of imperialist nations, led by the US.  Most importantly, Lenin tied this social phenomenon directly to the concentrations of capital within each nation, as well as the inevitable decay that occurs with falling rates of profit, reconnecting the political with the economic and identifying this development as a distinct stage of capitalist production:

“As we have seen, the deepest economic foundation of imperialism is monopoly. This is capitalist monopoly, i.e., monopoly which has grown out of capitalism, and which exists in the general environment of capitalism, commodity production and competition, in permanent and insoluble contradiction to this general environment. Nevertheless, like all monopoly, it inevitably engenders a tendency of stagnation and decay. Since monopoly prices are established, even temporarily, the motive cause of technical and, consequently, of all other progress disappears to a certain extent and, further, the economic possibility arises of deliberately retarding technical progress.” [16]

While written a century ago, Lenin’s work remains as relevant as ever, especially in the United States, where these developments and effects have continued to manifest in various ways and within different theaters, both domestically and internationally. The post-Soviet global order, which left the United States as the sole superpower for the past three decades, has brought some developments perhaps unforeseen by the likes of Lenin and Marx, but still mirror many of the systemic tendencies they pinpointed so long ago. The most important of these remains their predictions of capital inevitably concentrating into the hands of fewer and fewer, leading to both the death of free competition and the birth of a bevy of corporatized states that become necessary for protecting the interests of capital against a constant growth of discontent among the masses. Lenin’s prediction of big capital eventually devouring small capital can especially be seen in the modern-day United States, where so-called “mom and pop” stores and small landlords are being pushed out by the ever-growing tentacles of private equity firms and finance capital. Lenin described this transition as the socialization of capital, which he predicted would lead to the development of a new social order where large corporate states are forced to subsidize the concentration of capital, or the capitalist class, leading to a scenario where gains are privatized, but losses are socialized (absorbed by the state and passed down to the people):

“Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialization of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialization…

Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few. The general framework of formally recognized free competition remains, and the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable.

…Here we no longer have competition between small and large, between technically developed and backward enterprises. We see here the monopolists throttling those who do not submit to them, to their yoke, to their dictation.” [17]

Lenin foresaw not only the structural developments that we have experienced throughout the latter part of the 20th century and beginning part of the 21st century, but also the inevitable reactions to them. In the 2025 United States, we see small capitalists and more privileged sectors of the working class which had meshed with the bourgeoisie through property ownership or inclusion into the stock market now railing against finance capital as some sort of aberration, even ignorantly referring to it as a form of socialism. So-called “libertarians” are most known for this type of emotional response, believing it to be rooted in analysis provided by their revered Austrian School economists. What they do not realize, however, is that the concentration of capital was inevitable, as was the need for a corporatized state to form and strengthen alongside this concentration. Additionally, the “free market” that they most often associate with capitalism never actually existed, even during the system’s earliest days. Rather, capitalism has always required a highly-interventionist state for everything from destroying the commons (enclosure acts), enslaving Africans, forcing peasants into factories and mills, and breaking strikes to maintaining domestic exploitation, enforcing property laws, destroying socialist movements, and forcefully extracting resources from abroad. Lenin explains,

“Translated into ordinary human language this means that the development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still “reigns” and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the “geniuses” of financial manipulation. At the basis of these manipulations and swindles lies socialized production; but the immense progress of mankind, which achieved this socialization, goes to benefit . . . the speculators. We shall see later how “on these grounds” reactionary, petty-bourgeois critics of capitalist imperialism dream of going back to “free,” “peaceful” and “honest” competition.’ [18]

The pinnacle of US capitalism occurred within a relatively small window that opened after World War II and was only made possible by the near-total destruction of Europe, which allowed the US to use its geographical advantage to emerge as the global forerunner of capital. This, in turn, led to the US becoming the most advanced capitalist state the world has seen. The US working class experienced residual benefits from this advantageous position, but this was relatively short lived, essentially ending when US capitalists successfully globalized the labor market, began offshoring production to exploit cheap labor, and kicked off the neoliberal era of monetary policy in the 1970s and 80s.

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Not coincidentally, this also paralleled the profitability crisis of the 1970s, which has been identified as a significant period of stagnation caused by falling rates of profit. As mentioned before, this period is viewed by some as the point where capital reached a permanent breaking point in terms of representing a force of innovation and productivity. As such, a shift from industrialization to financialization occurred within the US to address the essential deadening of capital, which has since taken on a vampiristically toxic presence in advanced capitalist nations like the US. In simple terms, capitalism outlived its usefulness during this period and has been on life support ever since, for the mere purpose of appeasing the monopolistic conglomerates and financiers who both control the capitalist state and benefit from its interventions, which of course come at the expense of everyone else (from the most precarious of workers to even small capitalists). Lenin foresaw this development as well, telling us,

“Under the general conditions of commodity production and private property, the “business operations” of capitalist monopolies inevitably lead to the domination of a financial oligarchy.

…Finance capital, concentrated in a few hands and exercising a virtual monopoly, exacts enormous and ever-increasing profits from the floating of companies, issue of stock, state loans, etc., strengthens the domination of the financial oligarchy and levies tribute upon the whole of society for the benefit of monopolists.

…A monopoly, once it is formed and controls thousands of millions, inevitably penetrates into every sphere of public life, regardless of the form of government and all other “details.” [19]

Understanding the period in and around the 1970s as a crucial turning point for the capitalist system is important in understanding every development – whether social, political, or governmental – that has occurred in the US since then. This new form of capitalism, which would quickly become intertwined with the capitalist state out of necessity, is most easily viewed as the pinnacle of monopoly capital: the natural concentration of capital into unchecked monopolies that use unprecedented wealth to destroy competition via political power. John Bellamy Foster explains,

“Monopoly capital” is the term often used in Marxian political economy and by some non-Marxist analysts to designate the new form of capital, embodied in the modern giant corporation, that, beginning in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, displaced the small family firm as the dominant economic unit of the system, marking the end of the freely competitive stage of capitalism and the beginning of monopoly capitalism.” [20]

In further explaining how this new form of capital materialized through the system’s evolution, Bellamy Foster calls on Marx:

“The battle of competition,” he [Marx] wrote, “is fought by the cheapening of commodities. The cheapness of commodities depends, ceteris paribus, on the productiveness of labor, and this again on the scale of production. Therefore, the larger capitals beat the smaller…. Competition rages in direct portion to the number and in inverse proportion to the magnitude of the rival capitals.” Hence, capital accumulation presupposed both a growth in the size of individual capitals (concentration, or accumulation proper) and the fusion together of many capitals into “a huge mass in a single hand” (centralization). Moreover, the credit system, which begins as a “humble assistant of accumulation,” soon “becomes a new and terrible weapon in the battle of competition and is finally transformed into an enormous social mechanism for the centralization of capitals.” [21]

In the political realm, this new form of capital came to overwhelm the capitalist state in its liberal democratic form, leading to a shift in monetary policy from Keynesianism to neoliberalism, and the eventual formation of a full-blown corporate state that was realized at some point between the 1970s and 1990s. The formation of corporate governance is often blamed on individual players like Reagan, Carter, Nixon, or Milton Friedman, or entities like the much-maligned Federal Reserve. However, when analyzed from a materialist perspective, we can see that the corporate state was an inevitability — a structural necessity to address the monumental shift from entrepreneurial and industrial capitalism to corporate capitalism and what became known as financialization. It wasn’t created in opposition to capitalism, but to support it as a means of wealth creation, beyond its usefulness as an innovative force. More specifically, this shift was a systemic response to (1) the basic laws of capital accumulation, which led to large concentrations of wealth, as well as (2) perpetually falling rates of profit, which required increasing amounts of state intervention to manage. Thus, the large concentrationsn of wealth naturally transformed into large concentrations of political power for capitalists. And since “unproductive capital” now represented the dominant form, this power flowed to the financial sector while no longer offering avenues of innovation from below. The individual players who helped usher in this era just happened to be in power at the time of this necessary shift.

Therefore, it is not merely coincidental that the state became fully intertwined with capital to offset falling rates of profit and, in doing so, began to directly address systemic constraints that were compounding the negative effects of capital accumulation, such as the gold standard. As Ted Reese explains, with this structural understanding of the system, we can see that rather than neoliberalism serving as a turn away from Keynesianism, it more accurately represented a bridge to neoliberalism. [22]

The shift away from a productive and innovative form of capitalism is explained in detail by Bellamy Foster, who calls on the 1966 classic, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order by Paul Sweezy and Paul A. Baran:

“Capitalist consumption accounted for a decreasing share of demand as income grew, while investment took the form of new productive capacity, which served to inhibit new net investment. Although there was always the possibility that altogether new “epoch-making innovations”—resembling the steam engine, the railroad, and the automobile in their overall scale and effect—could emerge, allowing the system to break free from the stagnation tendency, such massive, capital-absorbing innovations were by definition few and far between. Hence, the system of private accumulation, if left to itself, exhibited a powerful tendency toward stagnation. If periods of rapid growth nonetheless occurred—Baran and Sweezy were writing at the high point of the post-Second World War expansion—this was due to such countervailing factors to stagnation as the sales effort, military spending, and financial expansion (the last addressed at the end of their chapter on the sales effort). All such countervailing factors were, however, of a self-limiting character and could be expected to lead to bigger contradictions in the future.” [23]

Fully merging with the capitalist state between the 1970s and 1990s allowed monopoly capital to further consolidate into an insurmountable political force, which would eventually consume both capitalist political parties in the United States. This marked the end of traditional liberalism in the US, which had been the source of periodic concessions made by the capitalist class to the working class throughout the 20th century, most notably with New Deal and Great Society legislation. With the implementation of neoliberalism, a concentrated effort to unleash monopoly capital from any remaining constraints tied to the Keynesian model, the arrival of a newly globalized labor/consumer market, and the subsequent fall of the Soviet Union (which had served as the only formidable check on global capital), monopoly capitalists in the US were set on a clear path of global domination.

Referring to this as the “new imperialist structure,” Samir Amin explains,

“Contemporary capitalism is a capitalism of generalized monopolies. What I mean by that is that monopolies no longer form islands (important as they may be) in an ocean of corporations that are not monopolies—and consequently are relatively autonomous—but an integrated system, and consequently now tightly control all productive systems. Small and medium-sized companies, and even large ones that are not themselves formally owned by the oligopolies, are enclosed in networks of control established by the monopolies upstream and downstream. Consequently, their margin of autonomy has shrunk considerably. These production units have become subcontractors for the monopolies. This system of generalized monopolies is the result of a new stage in the centralization of capital in the countries of the triad that developed in the 1980s and ’90s.” [24]

Expanding on the dynamics of this new paradigm, Amin tells us,

“These generalized monopolies dominate the world economy. Globalization is the name that they themselves have given to the imperatives through which they exercise their control over the productive systems of world capitalism’s peripheries (the entire world beyond the partners of the triad). This is nothing other than a new stage of imperialism.” [25]

This new imperialism, which became an extension of the corporate state that had already nestled in much of the world via market globalization, has allowed the United States, along with the West, NATO, and global capital, to run roughshod over much of the world, culminating into over 800 US military bases worldwide. Meddling in foreign governments and elections, carrying out coups, destroying and sabotaging socialist movements, stealing natural resources, and establishing new labor and consumer markets have all been included in this decades-long agenda that has continued without much interference. Despite trillions of dollars of “new capital” (i.e. exploited labor) created by this globalized racket, the corporate state has maintained its negligence of the US population, continuing to privatize most of the US infrastructure for the benefit of capital at home, and using monetary policy such as quantitative easing (under the TANF umbrella) to bail out corporations and financial institutions through the purchasing of toxic assets in wake of the 2008 housing crash.

This new stage of capital, combined with the formation of a fully intertwined corporate state and the development of a “new imperialist structure,” has ironically begun to reverse the process of bourgeoization that Engels and Lenin had pinpointed in the past, increasingly harming the upper echelons of the working classes within the imperial core. Unfortunately, rather than decoupling this group from the interests of capital, it has created a phenomenon where the privileged children of the former middle classes are largely turning to more overt forms of fascist politics, mostly at the behest of capitalist media. This development is useful in explaining the hard right-wing shift of Democrats and the political rise of Donald Trump, as well as the coordinated attacks against immigrants and more ambiguous things like “wokeness” – all of which have been designed to redirect attention away from the capitalist system. In a sense, what we are seeing play out in the US could aptly be viewed as a petty-bourgeois revolution, where more privileged sectors of the US working class are joining up with small capitalists and landlords to unknowingly bolster the corporate agenda via Trump, who has been falsely advertised as an outsider coming in to “shake things up.” [26]

Needless to say, in material terms, all of this has come at the expense of the American population as a whole, which now includes a sizable portion that is chronically unemployed and underemployed, a working class that is mostly living paycheck to paycheck, a housing market that is no longer accessible to a majority of working people, and costs of living that continue to grow out of control.

Marxism (DIALECTICAL/HISTORICAL MATERIALISM) is Needed to Decipher the Matrix

It is impossible to understand not only the present world but also modern global history without understanding capitalism. And the only way to truly understand the inner and outer workings of capitalism is to view things through a Marxist lens. This is why Marx, and the Marxist school of thought and analysis, is so widely demonized and suppressed within the United States. It is quite literally the key to exposing the corrupt power structure, both in terms of the economic system itself and those who serve the system from the halls of Congress, the oval office, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, the DoD, the Federal Reserve, mass media, executive offices, board rooms, courts, police stations, etc. In other words, every aspect of our society stems from the arrangements set by capitalist modes of production.

As Shane Mage describes it, Marxism provides “sheer intellectual power” to the masses of people, as Marx “provided the concepts, categories, and structural analyses that were, and largely remain, indispensable for understanding the human historical process over past centuries and in the immediate historical present.” To think in a Marxian way is to seek mass liberation for the human race via working-class emancipation. Simply put,

“To be revolutionary, and truthful, all social thought must be essentially Marxian. Only two conditions are obligatory: awareness that there is something basically and gravely wrong with the human condition as it exists and has existed throughout the history of class society; and seriousness in the reading and study of Marx’s writings and those of his professed followers. Anyone who fulfills those conditions necessarily starts to think in a Marxian way.” [27]

Thus, in order to understand capitalism’s current slide into a more overt form of fascism, one must understand that capitalism, in and of itself and in its purest form, is already deeply rooted in fascistic tendencies. It is, after all, the latest stage of what Thorstein Veblen once referred to as the “predatory phase of human development,” which has been characterized within Western society by transitions between feudalism, chattel slavery, and capitalism (wage slavery), all of which include similar exploitative dynamics of a wealthy minority feeding off a toiling majority. As the Marxist historian Michael Parenti explains,

“There can be no rich slaveholders living in idle comfort without a mass of penniless slaves to support their luxurious lifestyle, no lords of the manor who live in opulence without a mass of impoverished landless serfs who till the lords' lands from dawn to dusk. So too under capitalism, there can be no financial moguls and industrial tycoons without millions of underpaid and overworked employees.” [28]

With this understanding of capitalism’s foundation, we can begin to develop systemic analysis that pinpoint stages in its development. However, this can only be done accurately through a Marxist lens. And this is precisely why the capitalist class in the US, as well as its government and all institutions that anchor capitalist society, have made such a massive effort in both obstructing people from Marxism as a school of analysis and wholly demonizing it as some vague force of evil. Because, ultimately, Marxism is the key to understanding capitalism, not through dogmatic beliefs and childish rejections, but through scientific analysis. Marxism is not a magical blueprint for society, nor is it a utopian leap of faith, but rather it is an analytical tool for understanding capitalist modes of production as a stage of human development, class struggle as the driving force behind societal change, and the social offshoots of these modes of production, which make up what we refer to as society. Marxist economist, Michael Roberts, sums this up nicely by explaining,

“If we do not develop general theories then we remain in ignorance at the level of surface appearance.  In the case of crises, every slump in capitalist production may appear to have a different cause.  The 1929 crash was caused by a stock market collapse; the 1974-5 global slump by oil price hikes; the 2008-9 Great Recession by a property crash.  And yet, crises under capitalism occur regularly and repeatedly.  That suggests that there are underlying general causes of crises to be discovered.  Capitalist slumps are not just random events or shocks.

The scientific method is an attempt to draw out laws that explain why things happen and thus be able to understand how, why and when they may happen again.  I reckon that the scientific method applies to economics and political economy just as much as it does to what are called the ‘natural sciences’.  Of course, it is difficult to get accurate scientific results when human behavior is involved and laboratory experiments are ruled out.  But the power of the aggregate and the multiplicity of data points help.  Trends can be ascertained and even points of reversal.

If we can develop a general theory of crises, then we can test against the evidence to see if it is valid – and even more, we can try and predict the likelihood and timing of the next slump.  Weather forecasting used to be unscientific and just based on the experience of farmers over centuries (not without some validity).  But scientists, applying theory and using more data have improved forecasting so that it is pretty accurate three days ahead and very accurate hours ahead.

Finally, a general theory of crises also reveals that capitalism is a flawed mode of production that can never deliver a harmonious and stable development of the productive forces to meet people’s needs across the globe.  Only its replacement by planned production in common ownership offers that.” [29]

In capitalist society, we are bombarded with superficial definitions of capitalism through what Antonio Gramsci referred to as cultural hegemony, which are normalized interactions and sources of information and values that extend from the economic base, thus portraying the system in a positive light to manufacture consent even from the masses of workers whose exploitation fuels it. The before-mentioned bourgeoization of the working classes within the imperial core like the US makes this process of conditioning easier for the capitalist class as it can separate workers of the world into various sects. From our schools to our media, capitalism is described as a “free exchange of goods and services,” as being synonymous with “freedom and liberty,” or simply as the “free market.” Most, if not all, of these definitions and descriptors intentionally omit both the foundations and fundamental aspects of the system. Granted, Marx himself, and more importantly, the scientific methods that guide Marxist analysis (historical/dialectical materialism), view capitalism as a necessary evil in the progression of human civilization, especially in terms of creating the productive capacities necessary to sustain life. But, the scientific method also allows us to understand why this stage of production, which is aptly described as the most advanced stage of the “predatory phase,” will either (1) give way to the formation of socialism or (2) destroy both human civilization and our planet.

Parenti goes on to explain the illuminating effects of seeing things through a Marxist lens:

“To understand capitalism, one first has to strip away the appearances presented by its ideology. Unlike most bourgeois (mainstream) theorists, Marx realized that what capitalism claims to be and what it actually is are two different things. What is unique about capitalism is the systematic expropriation of labor for the sole purpose of accumulation. Capital annexes living labor in order to accumulate more capital. The ultimate purpose of work is not to perform services for consumers or sustain life and society, but to make more and more money for the investor irrespective of the human and environmental costs. An essential point of Marxist analysis is that the social structure and class order prefigure our behavior in many ways. Capitalism moves into every area of work and community, harnessing all of social life to its pursuit of profit. It converts nature, labor, science art, music, and medicine into commodities and commodities into capital. It transforms land into real estate, folk culture into mass culture, and citizens into debt-ridden workers and consumers. Marxists understand that a class society is not just a divided society but one ruled by class power, with the state playing the crucial role in maintaining the existing class structure. Marxism might be considered a "holistic" science in that it recognizes the links between various components of the social system. Capitalism is not just an economic system but a political and cultural one as well, an entire social order. When we study any part of that order, be it the news or entertainment media, criminal justice, Congress, defense spending, overseas military intervention, intelligence agencies, campaign finance, science and technology, education, medical care, taxation, transportation, housing, or whatever, we will see how the particular part reflects the nature of the whole. Its unique dynamic often buttresses and is shaped by the larger social system — especially the systems overriding need to maintain the prerogatives of the corporate class.” [30]

To use a Marxist lens is to see human history as an ongoing development in response to material reality or, more specifically, how a particular society arranges its means to produce and distribute the needs required to sustain human life. For instance, under capitalism, private interests own and control not only the means to produce/provide everything from food and shelter to medical care, but also the actual land that we inhabit. Thus, access to capital/currency (backed by a particular state) determines who can own and control natural resources. Then, in turn, those who take ownership (capitalists) deploy laborers, or what they refer to as “human resources,” on and with natural resources to produce commodities that can be sold back to the laborers, or general public, for profit. In this arrangement, those of us who make up the working-class masses are compelled to sell ourselves as commodities to capitalists because they have eliminated the commons (i.e. our ability to live off the land) and tied our survival to their for-profit commodity production.

The fundamental relationship between capital (the wealthy minority) and labor (the landless majority) naturally creates class division in this society, and understanding the class division that is inherent to privately-owned means of production (capitalism) is crucial to understanding nearly every other development within that society. When one is able to see it for what it is, understanding how it was constructed and how it functions in historical terms, it becomes clear as day; yet the institutions that extend from it – including schools and media – naturally obscure this reality to protect the interests of the owning class, who also control and disseminate the means of information. And they do this through various avenues, with the total obstruction and demonization of Marxist analysis/understanding being one of the primary aims of the US ruling class.

So, what this creates is a massive blind spot in mainstream (bourgeois) “reality,” to the point where many are unable to even see the reality that we live in. Thus, living in capitalist society without a basic understanding of a materialist conception of history and its subsequent developments is like being plugged into the Matrix, blind to your bondage and living a lie. From a working-class perspective, bourgeois analysis is largely impotent. And, whether intentional or not, this severe lack of understanding leaves most to rely on emotion – or reaction – in responding to structural developments that affect us on an individual level. For instance, take the current hot button issue of illegal immigration that is being pushed by mainstream media. From a bourgeois perspective, so-called “illegals” are easily decontextualized into mere criminals who are crossing the border to rape, steal, and take advantage of the “entitlements” offered in the US. Hence, the hysterical and irrational attempts to label this crisis as an “invasion,” something that is even more effective when sold to an already highly indoctrinated, racist, and xenophobic population.

Without a Marxist lens, issues like immigration — and poverty, homelessness, crime, child abuse, etc. — appear to occur in a vacuum, completely unattached from the capitalist/imperialist system and caused by mysterious “forces of evil” or simply “poor choices.” Or, as Parenti puts it, “lacking a holistic approach to society, conventional social science tends to compartmentalize social experience.” [31] So, we see in this development the same phenomena that Lenin saw in Kautsky’s analysis of imperialism – a divorce between the political/social and economic. This is precisely what the owning class wants because it knows that an informed and aware working class would become increasingly uncontrollable and, thus, unexploitable.

To understand this further, it is useful to compare the differences between mainstream/bourgeois perspectives versus the Marxist lens. Using racism as an example, Parenti contrasts the differences between the liberal and Marxist views:

“Consider a specific phenomenon like racism. Racism is presented as essentially a set of bad attitudes held by racists. There is little analysis of what makes it so functional for a class society. Instead, race and class are treated as mutually exclusive concepts in competition with each other. But those who have an understanding of class power know that as class contradictions deepen and come to the fore, racism becomes not less but more important as a factor in class conflict. In short, both race and class are likely to be crucial arenas of struggle at the very same time.

Marxists further maintain that racism involves not just personal attitude but institutional structure and systemic power. They point out that racist organizations and sentiments are often propagated by well-financed reactionary forces seeking to divide the working populace against itself, fracturing it into antagonistic ethnic enclaves.

Marxists also point out that racism is used as a means of depressing wages by keeping a segment of the labor force vulnerable to super-exploitation. To see racism in the larger context of corporate society is to move from a liberal complaint to a radical analysis. Instead of thinking that racism is an irrational output of a basically rational and benign system, we should see it is a rational output of a basically irrational and unjust system. By "rational" I mean purposive and functional in sustaining the system that nurtures it.” [32]

This understanding of an intimate connection between the base (capitalist modes of production/distribution) and superstructure (the social and political extensions of that base) is what made the original Black Panther Party, as Marxist-Leninists, so dangerous to the oppressive capitalist power structure in the US. It is why J. Edgar Hoover was adamant about killing Fred Hampton. It is why the US government was so heavily involved in sabotaging Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the black power movement, and much of the anti-war movement. It is why McCarthyism and the Red Scare developed, why people-powered movements of self-determination (mostly of which are Marxist/Communist) throughout the Global South – from Latin America to Africa and Asia — are so fiercely opposed by global capital and its military forces from the US, Europe, and NATO. Because these movements figured out (or were on the verge of figuring out) that things like colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, etc. are all extensions of capital’s need to grow, expand, and dominate like a cancer cell.

Imperial Boomerang, Fascism, and the Collapse of the American Empire

Viewing the history of capitalism through a Marxist lens allows us to identify stages of its development. Chronologically, these stages can roughly be broken down into agricultural capitalism, merchant/entrepreneurial capitalism, industrial capitalism, and monopoly/finance capitalism. More nuance can and has been applied to these stages. For instance, the American Marxist Erik Olin Wright referred to “a schema of six stages: primitive accumulation, manufacture, machinofacture, monopoly capital, advanced monopoly capital, and state-directed monopoly capitalism.” [33] Within these macro-stages include micro-stages, which can consider anything from geographical significance to state interference through monetary policy. Some, like world-systems analyst Giovanni Arrighi, have identified four systemic cycles of primitive accumulation that occurred in different eras, centered around the successive spheres of influence from European colonization:  “the Genoese cycle: from the 15th century to the beginning of the 16th century; the Dutch cycle: from the end of the 16th century to the middle of the 18th century; the English cycle: from the last half of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century; The American cycle: in the 20th century.” [34]  

Other world-systems analysts like Emmanuel Wallerstein and Samir Amin have used this lens to analyze how both colonialism and imperialism have interplayed with capitalist development, separating regions and countries into three distinct categories of “core, semi-periphery, and periphery,” all of which are determined by their relation to capital (from the oppressive and parasitic imperialist core to the oppressed and colonized/underdeveloped periphery, and those which fluctuate in between representing the semi-periphery. [35]

The United States has become the apex predator of capital over the past few centuries, benefitting from its geographical position/size and its early reliance on chattel slavery, which amounted to countless trillions of dollars’ worth of forced labor over the course of 241 official years (1619 – 1860) and is widely considered to be “the capital that jumpstarted American capitalism.” The invention of “whiteness” and the systemic perpetuation of white supremacy has allowed the capitalist class to create a distinct underclass based on racial identity, both internationally and domestically. This has been a significant factor in creating a strange bond between capitalists and working-class whites, many of whom willingly assumed the role of sycophantic class traitors in return for a more worthy designation of being white. W.E.B. Du Bois illustrated this powerful dynamic in his historical classic, Black Reconstruction in America:

“Most persons do not realize how far [the view that common oppression would create interracial solidarity] failed to work in the South, and it failed to work because the theory of race was supplemented by a carefully planned and slowly evolved method, which drove such a wedge between the white and black workers  that there probably are not today in the world two groups of workers with practically identical interests who hate and fear each other so deeply and persistently and who are kept so far apart that neither sees anything of common interest.

It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule.” [36]

Historically, the invention of “race” became an integral part of capitalist development, which was rooted in both European colonialism and the forced transformation of feudal peasants into proletarians. The former process occurred externally through the conquering and domination of foreign lands, while the latter was an internal process of exploitation whereas European Lords gave way to the European bourgeoisie, a new class of wealthy landowners who became the capitalist class. Both processes were rooted in the forced extraction of natural (land) and human resources (labor), the two elements required for capitalists to establish their means of exploitative production for profit. But these simultaneous developments were not easy to balance, especially since the forced creation of an industrial working class (which occurred through the destruction of common land) caused significant blowback in the form of peasant revolts. The capitalist class learned from this and used notions of gender/sex (in the Old World) and race (in the New World) to divide and weaken this newly formed industrial working class. In Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, Cedric Robinson touches on this historical development that paralleled the birth of capitalism:

“The contrasts of wealth and power between labor, capital, and the middle classes had become too stark to sustain the continued maintenance of privileged classes at home and the support of the engines of capitalist domination abroad. New mystifications, more appropriate to the times, were required, authorized by new lights. The delusions of medieval citizenship, which had been expanded into shared patrimony and had persisted for five centuries in western Europe as the single great leveling principle, were to be supplanted by race and (to use the German phrase) Herrenvolk, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The functions of these latter ideological constructions were related but different. Race became largely the rationalization for the domination, exploitation, and/or extermination of non-Europeans.” [37]

The formation of the United States brought this entire process to a head, with the extermination of a Native population, the forced takeover of land, the introduction of a massive slave trade, and the establishment of a new ruling class made up of wealthy landowners and merchants who relied on both stolen land and bodies to be used as tools for economic development. This was the foundation of not only American capitalism, but also of the global system that came to dominate the modern world. But it is now coming to an end, as capitalism has run its course, and the American ruling class has seemingly run out of targets to exploit. The capitalist state in the US has exhausted its efforts in keeping capitalists extremely wealthy and, in doing so, has effectively impoverished a large majority of its own population, which has essentially joined the rest of the world in a race to the bottom.

This latest development of mass degradation has occurred in the neoliberal era due to (1) the systemic breakdown of capital (driven by falling rates of profit) and (2) a concerted reaction to the working-class rebellions of the 1960s, which were described by the ruling class as a dangerous “excess of democracy.” Six decades later, we have reached a point of no return, as this system has become a husk of toxicity that leaves no room for reversal. As Amin explains,

“The system of generalized monopoly capitalism, “globalized” (imperialist) and financialized, is imploding right before our eyes. This system is visibly incapable of overcoming its growing internal contradictions and is condemned to pursue its mad rush. The crisis of the system is due to nothing other than its own “success.” The strategy used by the monopolies has always resulted in the sought-after results up to this very day: austerity plans, the so-called social (in fact antisocial) plans for layoffs, are still imposed in spite of resistance. The initiative still remains, even now, in the hands of the monopolies (the markets) and their political servants (the governments that submit their decisions to the so-called requirements of the market).” [38]

Now, the US imperialist state must turn inward, and will call upon tactics that it has deployed throughout the world, especially in the Global South, to punish its own citizens. The difference between the US empire and other such states that have experienced “imperial boomerang” is that it already has a large network of internal systems of oppression, most notably in regard to its own black population which has historically been corralled into internal colonies complete with police forces that resemble foreign occupying militaries. The country’s prison industrial complex, which boasts the most prisoners per capita in the world, also serves as a useful proving ground for targeting a growing portion of US citizens in the coming years as more and more are cut loose from the decaying system.

Much like Keynesianism served as a bridge to neoliberalism, neoliberalism has served as a bridge to overt fascism. This fascism is forming from two distinct directions within the United States:

• First, through the foundation of a fully merged corporate state (a necessity to address capitalist decay from the economic base),

• Second, through cultural developments that are responding to the material degradation of capitalist decay (this includes organic reactions from within the population as well as the likely occurrence of government psyops designed to protect capitalists from retribution by redirecting anger and thus feeding reactionary politics).

From a structural standpoint, the economic base in the US has been ravaged by both the falling rates of profit, as discussed by Marx as a natural phenomenon, and the shift to a post-industrial society, which was the result of American capitalists moving overseas in droves during the 1990s to chase cheap labor. Since then, the capitalist state has relied on the military/arms industry and financialization to maintain so-called wealth, with financialization relying solely on fiat currency being moved around by big players in a way that represents unproductive capital disguised as wealth – meaning that it produces nothing of value in ways that manufacturing industries do. Ironically, this has created a snowball effect for the already-disastrous results stemming from falling profit rates, to the point where US capital has become further squeezed by its inability to reproduce itself without massive consequences for the population. As Roberts tells us,

“Until this overhang of unproductive capital is cleared (“deleveraged”), profitability cannot be restored sufficiently to get investment and economic growth going again. Indeed, it is likely that another huge slump will be necessary to “cleanse” the system of this “dead” (toxic) capital. The Long Depression will continue until then. Despite the very high mass of profit that has been generated since the economic recovery began in 2009, 10 the rate of profit stopped rising in 2011. The average rate of profit remains below the peak of 1997.” [39]

The capitalist state (i.e. the US government) realized long ago that it must become increasingly authoritarian in its service of capital (the rich) against the working-class masses who are being decimated by debt, rising costs of living, underemployment, etc. despite working longer hours than ever before. This is both an organic development in response to the downward trajectory of capital and a conscious attack against the masses for the protection of the wealthy. It is class war personified, and it is being carried out on multiple fronts, including everything from monetary policy, austerity, and increased police budgets to smothering propaganda campaigns, the criminalization of debt and poverty, and the likely formation of government psychological operations that are promoting culture wars. This centralization of power has developed out of necessity to keep capitalism churning. In doing so, it has brought capitalism to a very late stage in its lifespan, transforming into what many have come to refer to as “crony capitalism.” Amin explains,

“The centralization of power, even more marked than the concentration of capital, reinforces the interpenetration of economic and political power. The “traditional” ideology of capitalism placed the emphasis on the virtues of property in general, particularly small property—in reality medium or medium-large property—considered to purvey technological and social progress through its stability. In opposition to that, the new ideology heaps praise on the “winners” and despises the “losers” without any other consideration. The “winner” here is almost always right, even when the means used are borderline illegal, if they are not patently so, and in any case they ignore commonly accepted moral values…

Contemporary capitalism has become crony capitalism through the force of the logic of accumulation. The English term crony capitalism should not be reserved only for the “underdeveloped and corrupt” forms of Southeast Asia and Latin America that the “economists” (the sincere and convinced believers in the virtues of liberalism) denounced earlier. It now applies to capitalism in the contemporary United States and Europe. This ruling class’s current behavior is quite close to that of the mafia, even if the comparison appears to be insulting and extreme.” [40]

This concentration of wealth and power has manifested itself in very real ways throughout the country. For example, the agents of the surveillance state, which include everyone from police, prosecutors, and judges to ICE, FBI, and National Guard soldiers, are being emboldened to serve as a protective cushion between (1) the corporate state and its wealthy beneficiaries and (2) the increasingly desperate masses. However, these authoritarian mechanisms are nothing new in the US. As George Jackson told us in 1971, “The police state isn’t coming — it’s here, glaring and threatening.” It has always existed, only targeting certain demographics based on racial and class identities. McCarthyism was an extremely authoritarian process of targeting citizens based on political ideology. COINTELPRO consisted of spying, sabotage, and even political assassinations (most notably of Fred Hampton), and so on.

While it has always existed, the police state is now being expanded to target a much larger portion of the population, with the construction of an all-encompassing security state underway since the 1990s, and especially after the World Trade Center attacks that occurred on 9/11. Both capitalist parties have participated in expanding and strengthening this state, creating the 1033 program in 1997, which transfers military equipment and weaponry to police departments across the country, passing the Patriot Act in 2001, approving multiple bouts of the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), bolstering the NSA (National Security Agency), expanding FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) reach, creating the US Department of Homeland Security in 2002 and ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in 2003, exponentially increasing police and military budgets, building “Cop Cities” (for urban warfare training) across the country, and bringing tech companies on board to spy on citizens via social media, computers, and cellular devices, with the latest incarnation of such being Trump’s 2025 contract with Palantir to create a database that streamlines private information of citizens (bank accounts, tax returns, social media accounts, etc).

However, even this powerful security state is not enough to protect the rich from the mass discontent and unrest that has become inevitable. The working class still far outnumbers the ruling class. And, the second amendment still exists. So, for fascism to truly cement itself as the ultimate defender of capitalism within the US, a significant portion of the exploited masses must become supporters of the corporate project. This can only be accomplished by convincing many of its necessity. Thus, in the modern US, propaganda campaigns seeking both “manufactured consent” and “active participation/collaboration” are targeting the upper portions of the working class and/or the modern petty bourgeoisie, which consists of small business owners, landlords, and a more privileged sector of the working class that has inherited boomer wealth. These targeting campaigns are being carried out by both politicians and capitalist media, exploiting the lack of material analysis that exists within the US population to pull emotional strings that are rooted in insecurity and fear. The manufactured hysteria about illegal immigrants, which is a common tactic being used by all Western/capitalist governments in these times, is a classic example of misdirection via propaganda. As Frances Moore Lappe and Hannah Stokes-Ramos explain,

“Americans are struggling not because of immigrants taking their jobs and using up their resources. The real threat is the worsening and highly alarming concentrations of wealth and income in our country—more extreme here than in over 100 nations. The top 1 percent of Americans control 30.4 percent of the wealth. Just 806 billionaires hold more wealth than the entire bottom half of all Americans.”

In other words, the historic transfer of wealth that has occurred in the US over the past several decades is not due to immigration, but rather to conscious and deliberate moves being made by the capitalist class to further enrich itself in the face of falling rates of profit. Put simply: the American working class has been robbed by the American capitalist class. Capitalist media – both liberal and conservative – are certainly not going to focus on this fact, so it must find distractions and formulate misdirection. First and foremost, the capitalist class must obstruct the formation of a class-conscious population that would see this truth and then, in turn, seek solutions through class struggle. To date, they not only have been successful in doing so but have also convinced a significant portion of the population to support more authoritarian forms of government to their own detriment. In the short-term, these enablers of fascism may feel secure in their calls for violence against fellow citizens, but this collaboration will inevitably end poorly for them in the long-term as the corporate state will be forced to extend its brutality over time.

Conclusion

In its attempt to protect the sanctity of profit, we are seeing that capitalism will completely give in to its fascistic tendencies centered around (1) property/wealth dynamics, (2) the inherently exploitative relationship between capital and labor, and (3) minority dominance over the masses, especially within a dying US empire that is spread thin externally and unraveling internally. The fascist reality that has always existed for the hyper-oppressed (poor, homeless, black, brown, immigrants, women, LGBT) members of the working class has begun slowly extending into more privileged sectors (most notably, former “middle class" whites) since the 1970s. The difference is, rather than organizing with fellow workers against capitalism/fascism by embracing socialism, many of these white workers who have been decimated in the neoliberal era are being swayed to support the overtly fascist transition to maintain their privileges, at least in the short-term. In doing so, they are becoming willing foot soldiers for the corporate government, spurred to action by racist narratives and irrational fears disseminated by capitalist media.

This unfortunate development shows us why social identities that exist within the superstructure, while ultimately secondary to one's relationship to the means of production, cannot be ignored or separated from class – because such an approach creates massive blind spots that are already being exploited by the ruling class. And, conversely, this is also why class cannot be ignored or separated from identity, as the ruling class has already fully coopted "identity politics" to be used as a smokescreen to obscure the class struggle. This process is well underway since corporate governance was fully cemented during the Reagan years, under the banner of neoliberalism, and has rapidly progressed before our eyes over the past decade alone. The Republican party is pushing the fascist envelope, while the Democrat party is enabling and steadying the transition. An authentic people's movement, grounded primarily in class struggle with a firm understanding of how identity is used to both intensify class domination and obscure avenues of working-class liberation, is needed.

People must come to understand that the liberal democratic order which replaced monarchy and feudalism is no longer viable. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It cannot be regulated. And the US cannot be reindustrialized under capitalist control. Those days are long gone, as the system has reached its inevitable conclusion and, since the 1970s, has come to a fork in the road with only two paths: full-blown fascism (corporate governance with an authoritarian police/surveillance state) or socialism (working-class/community control of the means of production). The former is winning outright, but the game isn’t over.

Notes

[1] Karl Marx. Capital Vol. III, Part III. The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall, Chapter 13. The Law As Such. Accessed at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch13.htm

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] Michael Roberts. A world rate of profit: important new evidence. January 22,2022. Accessed at A world rate of profit: important new evidence – Michael Roberts Blog

[5] World in Crisis: A Global Analysis of Marx's Law of Profitability, edited by Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts. Haymarket Books (October 2018)

[6] Ibid

[7] Ibid

[8] Ibid

[9] Paris Yeros and Praveen Jha, Late Neo-colonialism: Monopoly Capitalism in Permanent Crisis. Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy 9(1) 78–93, 2020 (Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South: CARES) Accessed at Late Neo-colonialism: Monopoly Capitalism in Permanent Crisis

[10] Ibid

[11] Ibid

[12] VI Lenin, Imperialism and the Split in Socialism (October 1916). Accessed at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm

[13] Ibid

[14] Ibid

[15] Marx-Engels Correspondence, Engels to Marx in London (October 7, 1858) Accessed at https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1858/letters/58_10_07.htm

[16] VI Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). Chapter 8: Parasitism and Decay of Capitalism. Accessed at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch08.htm

[17] Ibid, Chapter 1: Concentration of Production and Monopolies. Accessed at Lenin: 1916/imp-hsc: I. CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION AND MONOPOLIES

[18] Ibid

[19] Ibid, Chapter3: Financial Capital and the Financial Oligarchy. Accessed at Lenin: 1916/imp-hsc: III. FINANCE CAPITAL AND THE FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY

[20] John Bellamy Foster. What is Monopoly Capital? (Monthly Review: January 1, 2018). Accessed at Monthly Review | What Is Monopoly Capital?

[21] Ibid

[22] Ted Reese. Keynesianism: A Bridge to Neoliberalism. (June 20, 2022) Sublation Magazine online. Accessed at Keynesianism: A Bridge to Neoliberalism

[23] John Bellamy Foster. What is Monopoly Capital? (Monthly Review: January 1, 2018). Accessed at Monthly Review | What Is Monopoly Capital?

[24] Samir Amin. The New Imperialist Structure. (Monthly Review: July 1, 2019) Accessed at Monthly Review | The New Imperialist Structure

[25] Ibid

[26] The Corporate State and its Fascist Foot Soldiers: Understanding Trumpism and the Liberal Response. (Hampton Institute: February 17, 2025). Accessed at The Corporate State and Its Fascist Foot Soldiers: Understanding Trumpism and the Liberal Response — Hampton Institute

[27] The Intellectual Power of Marxism: An Interview with Shane Mage. (The Platypus Affiliated Society: December 2020). Interview by CD Hardy and DL Jacobs. Accessed at The Platypus Affiliated Society – The intellectual power of Marxism: An interview with Shane Mage

[28] Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader (City Lights Books: 2007)

[29] Michael Roberts. The profitability of crises, an interview by Jose Carlos Diaz Silva. March 2018. Accessed at The profitability of crises – Michael Roberts Blog

[30] Michael Parenti. Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism. (City Lights Books: 1997)

[31] Ibid, p. 134

[32] Ibid

[33] Erik Olin Wright, Alternative Perspectives in Marxist Theory of Accumulation and Crisis. Enriching the Sociological Imagination: How Radical Sociology Changed the Discipline (Brill: January 2004)

[34] Giovanni Arrighi and Jason W. Moore, Capitalist Development in World Historical Perspective. Phases of Capitalist Development: Booms, Crises and Globalizations (Palgrave: 2001)

[35] Luis Bresser-Pereira, Phases of capitalism – from mercantilism to neoliberalism (São Paulo, 2023). This paper was prepared for the book being, “The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Rentier Capitalism.” Accessed at https://www.bresserpereira.org.br/248-phases-of-capitalism.pdf

[36] WEB Du Bois, Black Reconstruction In America [1935], p. 700-701.

[37] Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, (University of North Carolina Press: 1983), p.26-27.

[38] Samir Amin. The New Imperialist Structure. (Monthly Review: July 1, 2019) Accessed at Monthly Review | The New Imperialist Structure

[39] Michael Roberts. The rate of profit is key (2012). Accessed at https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/the-rate-of-profit-is-key/

[40] Samir Amin. The New Imperialist Structure. (Monthly Review: July 1, 2019) Accessed at Monthly Review | The New Imperialist Structure

Debunking the Myth of "Taxpayer Money": Economic Justice Starts with Monetary Reality

By Clinton Alden

Republished from the author’s substack.

For decades, the ruling class has perpetuated one of the greatest economic deceptions of our time: the myth that federal government spending is funded by taxpayer money. This narrative has been used as a bludgeon against working-class movements, reinforcing austerity, denying economic rights, and keeping the proletariat in a state of economic dependence. It’s time to shatter this illusion.

The Constitutional Foundation of Currency Issuance

The United States Constitution, in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5, grants Congress the exclusive power “to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin.” This is a foundational statement that makes it clear: the United States government is the issuer of its own currency. It does not need to “collect” dollars from the public before it can spend. It creates them.

The implications of this are enormous. If the government can create money at will, then taxes do not fund federal spending. The idea that programs like Social Security, Medicare, or infrastructure development are constrained by tax revenue is simply false. Yet this lie persists because it serves the interests of the bourgeoisie—the ruling class that seeks to maintain control over labor and resources.

Taxes as a Tool of Control, Not Revenue

If taxes don’t fund spending, then what are they for? At the federal level, taxes serve three primary functions:

• Regulating Inflation – By removing money from circulation, taxes help control aggregate demand and prevent runaway inflation.

• Redistribution of Wealth – Taxes can be used to reduce inequality by imposing higher rates on the wealthy and redistributing purchasing power.

• Incentivizing Behavior – Tax policy can be used to encourage or discourage certain economic activities, such as carbon taxes to reduce pollution or tax breaks for renewable energy investment.

But what taxes do not do is pay for federal programs. The government does not need to collect dollars before it can spend them. It spends first, then taxes afterward. This is a reality that modern monetary theory (MMT) has long pointed out, yet both mainstream economists and political leaders continue to deny it.

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The Political Weaponization of the "Taxpayer Money" Myth

By convincing the public that federal spending is limited by taxes, the ruling class manufactures consent for austerity. Consider the arguments we hear whenever economic justice policies are proposed:

• Medicare for All? “How are we going to pay for it?”

• Student debt cancellation? “That’s taxpayer money!”

• Universal housing? “We can’t afford it.”

These are not economic arguments. They are ideological weapons meant to keep the working class from demanding what should already be theirs. The reality is that the U.S. government can fund a Green New Deal, universal healthcare, and a federal job guarantee without raising taxes at all. The barrier is not money—it’s political will.

Meanwhile, when it comes to war, corporate bailouts, or tax cuts for the rich, these concerns vanish overnight. No one asked how we would pay for trillion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one demanded offsets when Wall Street received billions in bailouts. The hypocrisy is glaring.

The Path to Economic Justice

If the Left, Socialists, and Communists want to win the fight for economic justice, we must stop accepting the terms of debate as set by the ruling class. We must reject the myth of "taxpayer money" and educate the working class about the monetary reality of a currency-issuing nation.

This means:

• Demanding public investment without apologies or hesitation.

• Refusing to engage in debates over "how to pay for it" when we know the government issues currency.

• Exposing the austerity rhetoric as a tool of class warfare.

Redirecting the discussion from funding to power—who benefits from public spending, and who is left behind?

Economic justice begins with truth. And the truth is that the United States, as a sovereign currency issuer, can afford to meet the needs of its people. The only question is whether we will force the political class to act in the interests of the many rather than the few.

The working class has been deceived for too long. It’s time to tear down the illusion of "taxpayer money" and build a system based on economic rights, not economic myths

Trump Exposes the Elite Classes

[Pictured: Columbia Unversity]

By Margaret Kimberley

Republished from Black Agenda Report.

While Trump dedicates himself to making every conservative fantasy come true, millions wonder who will save them from the onslaught of the right wing fever dream. The answer is no one but ourselves.

Institutions led by members of the ruling class theoretically have the power to oppose anyone who should dare to confront them, even if the confrontation in question is led by the president of the United States. Actions taken by Columbia University and the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison (known as Paul, Weiss), were stunning as they obsequiously met Trump administration demands to stifle protest and to provide pro bono legal services to conservative causes. Closer inspection of how these supposedly august institutions operate should end any questions about why they responded as they did.

Columbia University donors include billionaires such as Robert Kraft and Mort Zuckerman. The university’s endowment is valued at $14.8 billion . One would think that heavy hitters with resources would consider fighting back when Donald Trump threatened to withhold $400 million in federal funding from that ivy league school.

Yet there was no fight back, none whatsoever. Columbia acceded to Trump’s demands that the school give the president power to expel students who engage in protests, ban masks, adopt a definition of anti-semitism that includes prohibition of “double standards applied to Israel”, and change in the leadership of the departments of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies. The decision to go along with Trump was met with great consternation both within and outside of the school but those opinions availed little with $400 million on the line.

Columbia’s lack of fortitude should not have been surprising to anyone. Many donors were already in sync with the Trump administration’s demands. When Palestine solidarity protests began in 2024, donors such as Kraft began to question their financial commitments . Their actions went further, as many wealthy Columbia donors and other New Yorkers used a Whatapp chat group to push mayor Eric Adams to send police to the campus and arrest demonstrators. Not only did Adams do as they asked in sending the New York Police Department to end the protest, but his Deputy Mayor for Communications accused the Washington Post of promoting an “antisemitic trope ” for reporting on the story. 

Recently a former Columbia graduate student named Mahmoud Kahlil was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and sent to a detention facility in Louisiana. A group calling itself Columbia Alumni for Israel has been demanding such actions for many months as they too operate in a Whatsapp messaging group. They are unsatisfied with the easy punishment of demanding the revocation of student visas and even deporting green card holders such as Khalil. They also have U.S. citizens in their sights. “If anyone can trace any of their funding to terror organizations, not a simple task, they can be arrested on grounds of providing ‘material support’ for terror organizations. That is the key to getting these U.S. citizen supporters of Hamas, etc. arrested.” The writer of this missive is a former Columbia professor.

The capitulation at Paul Weiss shocked many in the legal profession who expected their profession to be vigorously defended. Like Columbia, Paul Weiss is doing quite well, with $2.6 billion in revenue in 2024. A dubious Executive Order required Paul Weiss to provide pro bono legal services to conservatives in exchange for keeping security clearances and the ability to access federal buildings. The shakedown succeeded however, and made the possibility that other targeted firms would also comply more likely.

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How shocking is it really when the ruling classes rule over the institutions they control? White shoe law firms and ivy league schools depend on money, big money, in order to operate. The individuals in question may be republicans or democrats but at the end of the day money is the determining factor in how they make decisions. It is time to end the naivete about the elites who run universities and powerful law firms. They take the path of least resistance, which is always the path of placating politicians and the rich and the powerful. Both Columbia and Paul Weiss have the resources to take on the president and both had good chances of winning their disputes with the Trump administration yet neither was prepared to take the risk.

Of course the people who could fight Trump but don’t are also the same people who fund the Democratic Party. They are the same group who provided the Kamala Harris campaign with a $1 billion war chest in her losing effort. No one should be surprised now that the Democratic Party also appears to be confused about how to fight Trump as he is determined to make every right wing fantasy come true. Like all other recipients of billionaire largesse, the democrats have run for cover.

The reality is that the ruling classes do not represent the people. They wouldn’t be the ruling classes if they did. We may be taken in by notions of prestige and elitism but that means the people and the institutions in question will behave like the proverbial cheap lawn chair and fold up without any resistance because they either fear losing their positions or happily ask, “How high?” when a president orders them to jump.

This current political moment is difficult after several decades of weak mass organizing. Students who protested the U.S. and Israeli genocide in Gaza were living up to a great tradition of young people showing the way when political action is called for. Now they are paying the price as their institutions are targeted by the threats of losing millions of dollars. In the case of Harvard University, latest on the Trump hit list, the amount of funding in question is $9 billion .

The student encampments were popular because they spoke to the outrage felt by millions of people as the bipartisan consensus demanded that war crimes be committed in the name of the people of this country. Now others must take up the charge as the Trump administration sends foreign nationals to prison camps in El Salvador and shakes down colleges and law firms as gangsters would do.

Federal judges have ordered that detainees not be moved only to watch as their rulings are ignored. Perhaps a brave jurist will find a Trump administration official in contempt and put the full weight of the law on conduct that has been found to be illegal and unconstitutional. That hope is understandable but is no more likely to happen than a school depending on the 1% to defy the authorities that keep it running.

There is no one to appeal to but ourselves. Mass movements may have been in existence years ago but unless they are revived the assaults on our civil and human rights will not just continue. They will grow ever more brazen.

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents . You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter , Bluesky , and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com .

What Correctly Defines Pan-Africanism in 2025 and Beyond

By Ahjamu Umi

Republished from Hood Communist.

Since its initial organizational expression in 1900, the phrase Pan-Africanism has been expressed in many different forms. For some, its current meaning is defined as unity between all people of African descent across the world. For others, Pan-Africanism is an ideology defined by nebulous elements of the type of unity previously described. For still many others, Pan-Africanism is represented by social media famous individuals who claim Pan-Africanism as a set of beliefs without any clear defining criteria.

For those of us who identify Pan-Africanism not as an ideology, but as an objective, we define Pan-Africanism as the total liberation and unification of Africa under a continental wide scientific socialist government. This is the framework for revolutionary Pan-Africanists who endorse the concepts of Pan-Africanism laid out by the ideas of Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Amilcar Cabral, and others. The reasons we humbly, yet firmly, advance one unified socialist Africa as really the only serious definition of Pan-Africanism are connected to dialectical and historical materialism. By dialectical and historical materialism we mean the historical components that define matter and the conflictual elements that transform that matter. In other words, the history of a thing and the forces that have come to shape that thing’s characteristics over time.

For example, for African people (“All people of African descent are African and belong to the African nation”—Kwame Nkrumah—“Class Struggle in Africa), the reason we live on three continents and the Caribbean in large numbers in 2025 is not the result of higher desire on our part to see the world. It’s not because God placed people who look like us in every corner of the planet. The only reason is because colonialism and slavery exploited Africa’s human and material resources to build up the wealth of the Western capitalist world. As a result of this irrefutable reality, it makes zero sense in 2025 for African people to imitate the logic of other people in defining ourselves based solely upon where we are born.

This approach is illogical because African people were kidnapped from Africa and spread across the world. Even the Africans who left Africa on their own to live in the Western industrialized countries, did so only because colonialism made the resources they seek unavailable in Africa. Consequently, an African in Brazil can and does have biological relatives in the Dominican Republic, Canada, Portugal, the U.S., etc. These people will most likely never meet and even if they came across each other, they probably could not communicate due to language barriers, but none of this changes the cold stark reality that they could easily be related. So, it makes no sense for Africans to accept colonial borders to define ourselves i.e., “I’m Jamaican and have no connection to Black people in the U.S., etc.”

Secondly, and more important, wherever African people are in 2025, we are at the bottom of that society. The reasons for this are not that there is something wrong with African people or that we don’t work hard enough and don’t have ambition. Anyone who has arisen at 5am on any day in Africa knows those conceptions of African people are bogus. Any bus depot at that time of morning shows thousands of people up, hustling, struggling to begin the day trying to earn resources for their families. The real reason we are on the bottom everywhere is because the capitalist system was built on exploiting our human and material resources. As a result, capitalism today cannot function without that exploitation. In other words, in order for DeBeers Diamonds to remain the largest diamond producer on earth, African people in Zimbabwe, the Congo, Azania (South Africa), etc., must continue to be viciously exploited to produce the diamonds. Its this system that has made the zionist state of Israel one of the world’s main diamond polishing economies despite the fact diamond mines don’t exist in occupied Palestine (Israel). Apple, Motorola, Samsung, Hershey, Godiva, Nestle, etc., all rely on similar exploitative systems that steal African resources and labor to continue to produce riches for those multinational corporations while the masses of African people die young from black lung, mining these resources, often by hand.

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Meanwhile, since the wealth of capitalism is dependent upon this system of exploitation to continue uninterrupted, the mechanisms of the capitalist system have to ensure that African people are prohibited from waking up to this reality. Thus, the maintenance of systems of oppression to keep the foot of the system firmly placed on the necks of African people everywhere. Whether its police, social services, etc., this is true. This exploitation marks the origin of the problem, and therefore, logically, it is also where the solution must be addressed. In other words, while we can recognize that the consequences of this exploitation have global dimensions, we cannot expect the problem to be resolved solely through actions taken outside of Africa, such as in the U.S. or elsewhere.

All of the above explains why one unified socialist Africa has to be the only real definition for Pan-Africanism. Capitalism, as the driving force behind the exploitation of Africa and the global African diaspora, cannot serve as the solution to the suffering it has created. Instead, Africa’s vast resources—including its 600 million hectares of arable land, its immense mineral wealth, and the collective potential of its people—must be reorganized into ways to eradicate poverty and disease, including

Ways to educate all who need education to increase the skills to solve these problems. And, in accomplishing all of this, our pride as African people based upon our abilities to govern our own lives, coupled with the necessity for others to respect us for the same, eliminates the constant disrespect—internal and external—which defines African existence today.

This Pan-Africanist reality will eliminate the scores of African people who are ashamed of their African identity overnight. Now, what we will see is those same people clamoring to instantly become a part of the blossoming African nation.

Revolutionary Pan-Africanism cannot be mistaken in 2025 as a pipe dream or simply the hopes of Africans everywhere. Building capacity for this reality is the actual on the ground work that many genuinely revolutionary Pan-Africanist organizations are engaging in on a daily basis. The work to forge that collective unity based upon the principles cited by people like Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Amilcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara, Robert Sobukwe, Lumumba, Marcus Garvey, Amy/Amy Jacques Garvey, Carmen Peirera, etc. Principles of humanism, collectivism, and egalitarianism.,the Revolutionary African Personality articulated by Nkrumah, the understanding of how to build political party structures as documented by Ture,the understanding of the role of culture in guiding our actions as expressed by Cabral, etc., and many of these types of cultural and principle approaches to building society have been seen in recent times through the work of the former Libyan Jamihiriya and what’s currently happening in the Sahel region. These efforts will only increase and become even more mass in character.

We challenge a single person to express why revolutionary Pan-Africanism is not what’s needed for African people. Not just as one of many ideas, but as the single objective that would address all of our collective problems. Hearing and seeing no one who can refute that statement, the next step is how we collectively increase African consciousness around the necessity to contribute to on the ground Pan-African work. The first step is getting people to see the importance of getting involved in organized struggle. The second step is ensuring that those organizations have institutionalized, consistent, ideological training as a priority.

To seriously embark upon this work brings no individual recognition. It brings no prestige. It requires a clear focus and a commitment to detail, but what it will produce is an ever increasing capacity that will one day manifest itself in the type of revolutionary Pan-Africanism described here that will fulfill the aspirations of African people everywhere while placing us in the position to contribute to all peace and justice pursuing struggles across the planet earth.

Is the Genocide in Congo Due to Human Hatred or Corporate Profit?

[Pictured: Congolese march near the border with Rwanda in 2023. Credit © Getty Images]

By J.B. Gerald

Rwanda has broken international law with the visible presence of Rwandan troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alongside Rwanda's covert M-23 militia. M-23 is reported to have captured Goma (again) and the civilians are in a state of emergency. This is familiar because M-23 previously took over the city in 2012 but had to withdraw because it wasn't equipped to administer the city of two million. As the M-23 rebels and their allies increase their takeover of the East Congo with reported vows of advancing to the capital of the DRC in a "liberation" of the country, it becomes clear Rwanda has invaded Congo again, possibly for keeps this time to maintain its hold on the East's gold, copper, and coltan mines.

The Congo's government has requested international sanctions against Rwanda. But the international community has allowed an ongoing genocide of the Congolese people for thirty years. The people of the Congo live under a genocide warning.

Paul Kagame began invading the Eastern Congo after he took over Rwanda in 1994. Subsequently, Uganda, which sponsored Kagame's invasion of Rwanda with U.S. funding, and Rwanda have maintained militias in the area. While genocide was brought under control in Rwanda, an insistence on mass killing was carried into the Congo by Kagame's Rwandan troops in pursuit of Hutu refugees who fled there. This also allowed Rwandan forces to protect Tutsi groups settled in the Congo, and access and control a portion of the mining resources.

But the resources belong to the people. As they do in the Sudan and South Sudan. As they do in Gaza and Palestine. All three areas are currently threatened by genocide against the people who have lived there.

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The U.S. Government's official site for the National Library of Medicine notes, “5.4 million people have died in Democratic Republic of Congo since 1998 because of conflict” (Peter Moszynski, Jan. 31, 2008, BMJ). However, since the “First Congo War” in 1996 to the present, the western press notoriously underestimates the death toll at six million civilians.

From the perspective of preventing genocide, the source of the problem rests in both the five lakes region of Africa and the Middle East, with corporate interests using national leaders to effect policy. This facile academic statement of the obvious covers the fact that millions on millions of innocent civilian lives are currently being sacrificed for corporate growth and profit. This is against any sense of ethics, knowledge of right and wrong, law, religious commitments to honour life, or the people's informed consent.

In the DRC, the genocide continues because it is meant to. It works. The mines are working, the resources are taken. The peoples’ deaths are not a corporate concern. The elites are not about to stop it. They are the reason Patrice Lumumba was assassinated in 1961 and the UN's Dag Hammarskjöld was killed. And why the Simba rebellion was crushed. And why Eastern Congo was thrown into the chaos of warring militias.

The Rwandan genocide, which suddenly occurred between tribes living in peace, brought in an Anglo-American-backed Paul Kagame. One could say Rwanda is responsible for the genocide of Congolese except that the benefits have devolved to International corporations, stock markets, manufacturers, and western economies. As with all such imperialist and colonialist dynamics throughout history, Kagame’s Rwandan forces are simply mercenaries for western capitalists.

Unfortunately, this is an all-too familiar history. European and American policies have used Independent Congo (Zaire, DRC) since its colonial bondage as a people enslaved to the uses of Western capital. China is now buying into the land as well, with the purchase of many previously American owned mines. It is unclear how or if this will be much different than the Western playbook. One thing, however, is clear: the genocide continues. With respect for conscience, a portion of UN peacekeepers are in place to lessen the civilian body count. But the guilty parties here are the same who engineered the “Rwanda” genocide, which the UN did not stop, and which served Western corporate expansion.

There is little hope of any justice for the people of the DRC until the ownership and control of the mineral resources in the East are in the hands of a just regulator that assures both the people’s safety and fair payment for their resources. And, any such arrangement, would have to be negotiated and agreed upon with not only strict parameters, but with the approval of the very people who labor in these harsh conditions. In our new multipolar global landscape, this would have to be UN administered to include Russian and China. It is an alternative to an ongoing genocide. Until then, all profits from the genocide should be tracked as evidence for eventual prosecution.

Global Philanthropy as an Artificial Plateau for the Bourgeoisie

By Dumi Gatsha

The past few weeks have shown how destabilized we are globally. Globalization has become too heavy for the modern neocolonial empire. As multilateralism, rules based order and global trade no longer serve the interests of those in power. We are seeing generations of progress wiped away by brutal military forces on one extreme end, whilst ideologies, knowledge, and history are destroyed on the other. We see the destructure through abuses in elected offices at all levels: from sporting code regulators, parent-teacher associations, or either of the three arms of a government. Transgender rights, overseas development assistance and intellectual property law trends reflect the regressive shifts in Global geopolitics. We are all at risk of compromised global health security, climate degradation, and state-sponsored gender disparities.

We are held at ransom by a global elite that has thrived off of capitalism, racism, and digitalization. The frontiers of social, activist and change movements haven't been absolved from this crisis. As the barriers to enablement, resources and funding remain largely pooled in the global minority. Asset managers, Donor-advised funds, and private foundations remain vehicles of tax inequity, avoidance, and wealth hoarding. This diagnosis can be applied to any context where war parallels corporate profit and economic growth propels failed governance. Somewhere amidst all of this, rests philanthropy in plateu. A system replicating the world as we know it: centers of knowledge and power, yielding to the whims of the elite, educated, and well heeled.

There are countless theories of change that are reported as “successful”, leaving an impression that progress can be sustained beyond resourcing or project lifespans. Those theories of change have no meaning in a world that enacts anti-LGBT and anti-abortion laws. Neither a world where safeguards for diversity and inclusion are politicized and revoked through state and corporate machinery. We are witnessing atrocious crimes in real time, documenting injustices via social media in a world where aggressors and perpetrators deploy violence with impunity. Activists and caregivers are exhausted. Social structures are slowly being dismantled and removed from any forms of mutual aid or solidarity action. These are the moments grassroots activists warned against. These are the hallmarks of a world with no peace for those most marginalised.

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As the world burns, grant application windows, requirements, and eligibility take away much needed time for organising. The increased heat warnings and cyclones in Southern Africa only aggravate the socioeconomic conditions for the many problems movements try to solve. Yet climate related opportunities rarely weave in queer or reproductive inequities. The coup de tats in West Africa brought economic renaissance domestically whilst enacting over-regulation of civil society and socially restrictive laws that target women and LGBT populations. Philanthropy remains unimaginative, held up in the hubris of self-serving strategies whilst INGOs navigate self-preservation. Remaining with growth targets and maintaining annual distribution percentages; it is intentional to keep ways of working and grant making business as usual. The hierarchy and value chain must be maintained so they can save face, income floors, and for a “rainy day.” The question is whose rainy day and what kind of rains?

Shifting power remains aspirational. As long as money and capital are not yielded and transferred, the risks and harm to communities will continue. Whilst there aren't any dividends paid out in grant making and partnerships; controls remain pre-determined to normative development aligned programming. This leaves little room for disruptive impact and change. Disruption would mean working ourselves out of activism and philanthropy ceasing to exist. It would mean recognising activism as work deserving of meaningful compensation and social protections — even at grassroots levels. It would look like a reparative system returning exploits and extracts to communities. Valuing circular social structures that do more healing and nurturing of the planet and all people. Systems that support our sense of becoming and belonging without reserving these for those who can assimilate or navigate to adopt. It would mean all of us can be saved from a rainy day without someone deciding whether one of us is deserving or not.

As the year of turmoil continues to unfold, those of us deemed undeserving of solidarity or sunshine remain in abundance. We will resist for our own survival, and rest for our own sanity. No one has saved us from our own people, governments or corporates — neither do we expect to be saved. We continue to share our stories and joy with the hope that the world will become kinder one person at a time. Whilst our dignity and personhood may be stripped from us in moments of inequity and injustice; our humanity remains in tact. This was captured harrowingly beautifully by Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela Mandela: “you are interrogated for 7 nights and 7 days without sleep… God provided a mechanism I had never thought of at the time. I reached a threshold where the body could not take the pain anymore, then I would faint. Those were the most beautiful moments. The body rested and when they threw a bucket of water to wake me up… I got up, I was so refreshed and I started fighting all over again.”

We continue to dream and cultivate our world as best as we can, with the little we have wherever we are. We have accepted that philanthropy, especially that which extends from global capital, will never have the capacity or compassion to meet us where we are. After all, communities remain behind when the donor, enabler, investor, INGO, or development program leave our countries. We will continue to speak truth to power, as capitalism continues without an end in sight. Toni Morrion's masters narrative beautifully captures how I view philanthropy's plateau. Void of any transformative disruption or imagination — whilst performing all the right words, keeping the same partners, co-opting participation and representation to maintain its systems. Its practitioners drawn from across development, volunteer, and civil society pipelines bear the hallmarks of Audre Lorde's masters tools. However, as a part of neocolonial Empires and in Gad Saad's words: philanthropy is bound to implode from within due to its own excesses. We will still be there to recreate, rebuild, and heal towards a queer, climate, and gender just world.

Dumi Gatsha (they/them) is the first ever gender diverse parliamentary candidate in Botswana, former facilitator of the #ShiftThePower UK Funders Collective and founder of Success, a grassroots organisation working in the nexus of human rights and sustainable development.