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

Black Literature: Beyond Bourgeois Pleading and “Achievement”

[Pictured: Richard Wright sitting on a sofa, Lido, Venice, 1950. (Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche/Getty Images)]

By Jerome Louison

What makes a Black novel (poem, play, or non-fiction work) truly great? Since the time of Phyllis Wheatley, Black writers in America, and their mostly white benefactors, have had to grapple with this question. The question also inspired the origins of this blog. As a lover of old books by Black writers, I’m constantly struck by how many incredible ideas and artistic works have been lost to time. This is due almost entirely to the nature of Black oppression in American society. Black writers and thinkers, regardless of their motivations, have historically conformed to standards imposed by external factors. This has left a legacy of Black writing that, for all its highlights and geniuses, never quite reached its full potential. It also never galvanized the masses of Black people long-term, nor maintained enough Black institutions to perpetuate it. But several thinkers saw this in real-time and warned against it. Richard Wright was one such thinker.

The Historical Role of the Black Writer

While immortalized for his fiction work, particularly his legendary novel “Native Son,” it is Wright’s non-fiction writings that we are concerned with. In particular, we’ll focus on his 1937 essay, “Blueprint for Negro Writing.”1 While a member of the Communist Party, Wright contributed this piece to the leftist magazine New Challenge, which he also helped edit. The essay was meant to underscore the theoretical foundation of the magazine. Wright begins the piece by delineating the types of roles Black writers had historically played in American literature. For white audiences, Wright states:

“[Black writers] entered the Court of American Public Opinion dressed in the knee-pants of servility, curtsying to show that the Negro was not inferior, that he was human, and that he had a life comparable to that of other people.”

As such, these writers were not offered any serious critique for their works on artistic grounds. For Black readership, folks were just happy to see accomplished writers of the race. The result was that, for Wright, “...Negro writing has been something external to the lives of educated Negroes themselves. That the productions of their writers should have been something of a guide in their daily lives is a matter which seems to never have been raised seriously.” Black writers thus had two roles: pleaders for Black humanity to whites generally, and models of “achievement” for the Black petty bourgeoisie to showcase, like trophies. Meanwhile, the lives, and particularly the social and political activity, of working-class Black people went almost completely neglected. Black union organizing and political organizing against lynchings in the South (and North) were absent from Black literature at the time. This was especially egregious to Wright, given that “Lacking the handicaps of false ambition and property, [the Black working-class] have access to a wide social vision and a deep social consciousness.”

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In addition, working-class Black people (who make up the large majority of Black people in America) have a unique culture, developed and recorded mainly through the Black church and folklore. Wright recounts how, through the church, Black people “first entered the shrine of western culture.” For millions of Black people at the time, the church’s teachings were all they knew of the world. On the other hand, Black people retained their deep thought through an oral tradition that included “Blues, spirituals, and folk tales…” Wright explains further:

“...the whispered words of a black mother to her black daughter on the ways of men, to confidential wisdom of a black father to his black son; the swapping of sex experiences on street corners from boy to boy in the deepest vernacular; work songs sung under blazing suns - all these formed the channels through which the racial wisdom flowed.”

In the late 19th to early 20th centuries, Black writers, on the whole, captured none of this. Instead, they strove to use their art to escape their conditions and the people attached to it. Black literature did not have a Black audience in mind.

Nationalism - Endemic to Black Life in America

As a communist writing in a Marxist magazine, Richard Wright makes great pains not to promote a nationalist perspective. The inherent internationalist and integrationist politics of the Communist Party were at odds with Black nationalism, at the time typified by the likes of Marcus Garvey and his UNIA-ACL. However, as Wright remarks, “...the nationalist character of the Negro people is unmistakable.” This “nationalist character” is held in the Black oral tradition and folklore more than anywhere else. Says Wright,

“Here are those vital beginnings of a recognition of value in life as it is lived, a recognition that marks the emergence of a new culture in the shell of the old.”

The plethora of Black institutions, from the church to newspapers to sports leagues, total “a Negro way of life in America.” And it is through these institutions that any progress for Black people is to occur, because, according to Wright, “...all other channels are closed.” Any Black writers looking to make an impact on their people’s conditions must grapple with the nationalist character as it is first, before anything else. It is worth quoting Wright at length here, as this is the core thesis of the essay:

“Negro writers must accept the nationalist implications of their lives, not in order to encourage them, but in order to change and transcend them. They must accept the concept of nationalism because, in order to transcend it, they must possess and understand it. And a nationalist spirit in Negro writing means a nationalism carrying the highest possible pitch of social consciousness. It means a nationalism that knows its origins, its limitations; that is aware of the dangers of its position; that knows its ultimate aims are unrealizeable in capitalist America; a nationalism whose reason for being lies in the simple fact of self-possession and in the consciousness of the interdependence of people in modern society.”

Collective Work and Responsibility

According to Wright, as the 20th century reached its midway point, Black writers had a new level of responsibility. They were uniquely qualified to fill the leadership void left by the “gradual decline of the moral authority of the Negro church, and the increasing irresolution which is paralyzing the Negro middle class leadership…” Through their art, Black writers could and should “create values by which his race is to struggle, live and die.”

Black writers thus need a framework to analyze society and Black people’s place in it. For Wright, a Marxist framework was necessary. Marxian dialectics, which Wright used throughout the essay, explained the dynamic nature of Black life and the various social and economic classes involved. It also imbues one with the will to change the world, not just describe it. True to his nature, however, Wright was not content with Marxist analysis alone. As he writes,

“Yet, for the Negro writer, Marxism is but the starting point. No theory of life can take the place of life. After Marxism has laid bare the skeleton of society, there remains the task of the writer to plant flesh upon those bones out of his will to live.” [emphasis mine]

Throughout the essay, Wright talks of writers having a consciousness. For him, this consciousness is not meant to compel Black writers to preach to their audiences, but to inform the writer’s perspective about the modern world and their place in it. Without that, the writer is “...a lost victim in a world he cannot understand or control.” It is through this consciousness, or “perspective” as Wright also calls it, that the Black writer can connect the daily lives of their people with the machinations of a global economic and political structure which defines the parameters of those lives.

This consciousness is also historical in scope. It involves some understanding of the African origins of Black Americans, and what was lost, as well as retained. With this perspective in place, the number of themes for Black writers is limitless. Dialectically, however, the limitless themes are themselves bound by the limit of the craft itself. Writing does not replace other forms of communication or artistic expression - it complements them.

That complementarity implicitly means that Black writers must work collectively, both among themselves and with other writers. Wright states,

“The ideological unity of Negro writers and the alliance of that unity with all the progressive ideas of our day is the primary prerequisite for collective work.”

Writing near the end of the Great Depression, on the eve of World War II, with the rise of Nazi Germany abroad, and the end of the Harlem Renaissance at home, Wright recognized the tumultuous moment he was in. His blueprint was meant to invigorate a new generation of Black writers to meet this moment. It feels fitting to leave Wright with the last word, which holds much resonance for our current time:

“These tasks are imperative in light of the fact that we live in a time when the majority of the basic assumptions of life can no longer be taken for granted. Tradition is no longer a guide. The world has grown huge and cold. Surely this is the moment to ask questions, to theorize, to speculate, to wonder what materials can a human world be built.”

Notes

[1] The essay can be found in “Richard Wright Reader”, edited by Ellen Wright and Michael Fabre.

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.

Where Despair Ends and Tactics Begin: The Invigorating Case of Luigi Mangione

[Pictured: Luigi Mangione is escorted into Manhattan Criminal court for his arraignment on state murder and terror charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Monday, Dec. 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)]

By Thomas King

What’s at stake in the Luigi Mangione case is where despair ends and tactics begin. On December 4th, an unidentified shooter (now suspected to be Mangione) exposed the alibis through which social power avoids being put right on the spot— as Raoul Vaneigem once wrote. We must resist any misattribution or denial of what this moment reveals; to do otherwise is to conceal how systematic terror breeds desperate acts of political violence in America. This demands that we reject the shoehorning of the alleged gunman’s inconsistent politics into a neat ideological framework, or the digging into his past as doing the state’s work. The truth behind the shooter’s actions lies in the parasitic design of a healthcare system that sacrifices lives to fuel its machinery. After an election where healthcare barely registered for either party, the desubjectivated entity took with him a gun, his despair, and, unsurprisingly, struck a chord with the public consciousness. The praxis was simple. Pain can radicalise anyone. ‘What do you do?’ he wrote.

Let’s not be deterred. Private health coverage spending will exceed $1.5 trillion this year as life expectancy declines. Since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, a measure the Democratic Party (aside from Bernie Sanders) has only sought to protect, UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, increased its annual share buyback program by 217%, funnelling $54 billion into stock repurchases. In 2023 alone, it pocketed $22 billion in profits on $371 billion in revenue—equating to $25 per share—and paid out $7.29 per share in dividends to investors. UHC had the highest denial rate of any U.S. insurance company, at 32 percent. Personal testimonies describe instances where the company denied coverage for essential treatments, including medications and hospital stays, despite their critical necessity for recovery. UHC was accused of using rigid algorithms to cut off payments despite ongoing care needs and was sued for a bot with a claimed 90 percent error rate. Meanwhile, a U.S. Senate committee found that UHC and other insurers intentionally denied critical nursing care to stroke patients, prioritising profit over survival. We lay bare the shooter’s motive when we recognise the healthcare system as a productive force of socialised violence. We must also recognise this violence as producing sad passions: fear, depression, and the suicidal urge. Franco Berardi reminds us, “Only by calibrating the abyss of the American unconscious can we decipher the roots of the social ferocity that is now in full manifestation.” From this point, we might decide where and to whom we must turn.

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The so-called ‘dark corners of the internet’ are, in fact, very bright. Talking heads decry the blurring of celebrity and criminality in the lionisation of Mangione, as if it's a new phenomenon, as if it marks a troubling new phase in the normalisation of violence in America. If violence is indeed normalised in America, it is because U.S.-supplied weapons kill civilians and fuel genocide. It is because both political parties have spent decades eroding public trust in the rule of law. It is because so-called ‘liberal democracy’ is on shaky ground. It is because neoliberal governance thrives on the precarity and commodification of relations. It is because, while Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro claims there is no place for violence, he signs his name on missiles. It is because Zoe Strimpel fears for the future because of ‘Gen-Z’ support for Mangione yet writes that ‘the Israel Defence Forces are the most moral soldiers in the world’. Why is violence only acceptable when carried out—or backed—by elites against the working class and marginalised? Why does a U.S. Congress report deem it necessary to issue a “call to arms” for bipartisan public support to reclaim the United States’ crumbling global hegemony? If we are witnessing the normalisation of political violence through chaotic revenge, it is because the reasons for revolution are staring us in the face. It is because pain and sad passions ignite the active forces within them.

We are fighting a war of information where major media outlets have become arms of the national security state. Mangione’s alleged manifesto remained hidden until Ken Klippenstein published it, despite being in the possession of major media companies, just like his notebook is now. Days later, the New York Times refused to publish Mangione’s image, citing fears of "amplifying the crime and inspiring others," according to Andy Newman. Meanwhile, other media outlets scramble to frame Mangione's alleged actions as 'bizarre' and 'brazen'— desperate to portray him as terrifying and erratic, because acknowledging the truth of the event would force them to recognise that he is, in fact, no different from the average American voter. Even those who appear to empathise with the cause often revert to reductive moralising.

A quick search of Luigi Mangione's name floods the screen with headlines like ‘Who is Luigi Mangione?’, ‘What we know about the New York killer,’ or ‘Tracing the privileged family of Luigi Mangione.’ This is journalism at its most insidious. Had Mangione not been arrested, the shooter may have become a stronger symbol of class antagonism—his image untainted by the specifics of his story. It is why we must resist such attempts to dilute his image. That said, as Will Conway, co-host of the Acid Horizon podcast, pointed out, the flood of comical or provocative edits and politicised videos surrounding the shooter’s assassination reveals how the truth of a politicising event disrupts the biopolitical fabric, where anyone can shape the mythology surrounding the propaganda of the deed. These posts fight back against those who seek to control the narrative, which is why the Times attempted to disarm the public in the name of national security, but it was already too late.

Americans are conditioned to love men who look like Mangione, which is why they dominate narratives in media and culture. If Mangione weren’t white, the universal support he now receives would undoubtedly shape a very different narrative. So, resisting the dilution of the motive also requires, as we should independently of this case, resisting the embedded racism that makes his attractiveness conventional. An obsolete romanticism—seemingly innocent, though it isn’t—will only help sustain the forces that shape who becomes a symbol of resistance and who doesn’t. We must remember the work remains unfinished, and the revolution will have no face. Destituting the political apparatus doesn’t rest on the murder of Brian Thompson— the world is full of Thompsons. With that said, this incident might have done the world a huge favour. It has given a nation, relentlessly beaten down by a for-profit healthcare system, a renewed sense of unity and a reinvigorated cause. What matters now is what we do next.

Vaneigem wrote,

“My sympathy for the solitary killer ends where tactics begin; but perhaps tactics need scouts driven by individual despair. However that may be, the new revolutionary tactics — which will be based indissolubly on the historical tradition and on the practice, so widespread and so disregarded, of individual realisation — will have no place for people who only want to mimic the gestures of Ravachol or Bonnot. But on the other hand these tactics will be condemned to theoretical hibernation if they cannot, by other means, attract collectively the individuals whom isolation and hatred for the collective lie have already won over to the rational decision to kill or to kill themselves. No murderers — and no humanists either! The first accept death, the second impose it. Let ten men meet who are resolved on the lightning of violence rather than the long agony of survival; from this moment, despair ends and tactics begin. Despair is the infantile disorder of the revolutionaries of everyday life.”

References

UHC Stats. Health Insurance, UnitedHealth, Shareholders, and Buybacks. Jacobin, December 2024. https://jacobin.com/2024/12/health-insuranceunitedhealth-shareholders-buybacks.

Vaneigem, Raoul. The Revolution of Everyday Life.

Berardi, Franco. The American Unconscious and the Disintegration of the West. Substack. https://francoberardi.substack.com/p/el-inconsciente-americano-y-ladesintegracion.

Strimpel, Zoe. The Israel Defence Forces Are the Most Moral Soldiers in the World. The Telegraph, April 27, 2024. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/27/israel-defence-forces-mostmoral-soldiers-in-the-world/.

Grounding with Koreans in the Belly of Another Beast

[Pictured: The western-induced border, commonly referred to as the DMZ (demilitarized zone), that separates the Korean people.]

By D. Musa Springer

Republished from Hood Communist.

In the short time between sunrise and boarding the 15 hour flight to Tokyo, all of my travel anxiety turned to excitement. In November 2023, I was invited to join the 2nd annual U.S. Peace Delegation to Chongryon (The General Association of Korean Residents in Japan), in a variety group of U.S. academics, journalists, high school youth, and organizers. The delegation was organized by Korean Reunification activists Dr. Kiyul Chung, a Visiting Professor at Tokyo’s Korea University and Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung University, and Derek R. Ford, a US-based activist and visiting lecturer at Korea University. The opportunity to join this exchange felt like a unique chance to build fundamentally anti-imperialist paths to solidarity, and proved itself to be. 

As an International Youth Representative for the Cuba-based Red Barrial Afrodescendiente, I’m familiar with organizing delegations for Africans struggling in the U.S. to ground with Africans struggling against the blockade in Cuba. Aside from it being the longest flight I’ve ever taken, this trip to ground with Koreans in Japan was my first time on the ‘attending’ end of a delegation, putting anti-imperialist politics into practice from that perspective. My time at Korea University, as well as touring the impressive Chongryon Korean National Schools, reaffirmed my commitment to the examples of Cuba’s internationalist politics, and presented much educational dialogue, valuable exchanges, and material pathways for further solidarity. 

I would especially like to thank Dr. Kiyul Chung, the only Korean born in the Southern portion of the Korean peninsula to ever teach at a Northern Korea university! The wonderful Korean comrade and longtime anti-imperialist organizer shepherded us throughout the entire delegation, losing his own sleep for the sake of ours. At 71 years old, Dr. Kiyul has more energy than the entire delegation combined, with his passion for his people and the Reunification of Korea beaming at all times. This experience provided me with further insights into the historical struggles of the Korean people under Japanese imperialism — both as an unrecognized, oppressed colonial diaspora within Japan, and in their Motherland as the target of limitless Western imperialist aggression.

I believe that traveling on delegations is a task that organizers in the U.S. should engage in, within an organized fashion, including domestic trips to share notes with organizers across the country. Our organizations must collaborate and strategize on how they, and in turn us, can do better in supporting a broad and fresh base of members within our ranks to experience the political transformations, solidarity, and exchanges that often come from delegations. In this context my reflection on my time grounding with Koreans, like my reflection on African power and politics in La Marina, is an attempt to offer some perspective on the broad map of global resistance to imperialism, the process of building ties to learn from our Global South siblings in struggle, and to share insights to both the experience itself and what I learned from it.

Koreans In Japan

One of the most staggering revelations of this trip was learning firsthand about the sheer scale of Korean suffering under Japanese imperialism. While the image constructed of Japan in the West is closely related to the island’s cultural exports — popular art, food, entertainment and fashion often associate the island and its history with all things fun and whimsical — the reality of its colonial violence is much less spoken. As Derek Ford details, the origins of Koreans in Japan is fraught with ‘profound violence’:

“From their founding after World War II, Koreans in Japan—who are sometimes called “Zainichi Koreans”, meaning “foreign Koreans”—have always had to struggle to create and maintain educational spaces and systems where they can teach and learn about their own history, culture, traditions, and languages, in addition to other essential disciplines and languages. This was a basic human right as well as a political struggle, as Japan’s colonization of Korea, which officially started in 1910 but began about 5 years earlier, forced over 2 million Koreans—about 90 percent of whom came from the southern part of the peninsula—to move to Japan through either physical violence, coercion, and deceit. The story of the formation of a Korean population in Japan in the 1900s is one of profound violence.

Some were “recruited” by Japanese companies after colonial forces stole their lands and gave them to landlords, promised great jobs and good pay but receiving the opposite. Many Korean women, hundreds of thousands, were kidnapped into Japan’s military sexual slavery network, which the U.S. [military] inherited after it replaced Japan as the occupying force in the south [in 1945]. In 1938, Japan forcibly conscripted and kidnapped workers from Korea and brought them to Japan as slave laborers, where they were forced to build the military, munitions buildings and construct secret underground bases and bunkers for the air force. In the latter instance, children were particularly valuable, as their small bodies and hands were essential for creating the tunnels with pickaxes.”

Koreans estimate upwards of 7-8 million were conscripted to Japanese colonial forced labor during the World War period, with at least 800,000 taken to mainland Japan as forced labor. Approximately 300,000 Korean women were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military, again, an operation later taken over by the U.S. military occupation. In their explanations of this history on our trip, the Koreans consistently made comparisons to the colonization of Indigenous people and chattel slavery of Africans in the Americas, and the plight of these individuals is a haunting testament to the universal brutality of colonialism. Similar to how African historians intentionally highlight and celebrate our resistance to colonialism and slavery, all of the Koreans made sure to remind us that they revolted consistently. One historian said that an estimated third of all Korean forced laborers actively resisted through guerrilla warfare, organized escape, and marronage, embodying a common anti-colonial spirit of resilience and defiance.

It’s worth noting the population dynamics among Koreans in Japan, because the Korean community in Japan has a complex and significant history, a main theme throughout the delegation. Japan’s policy towards ethnic Koreans living within its borders, particularly those who do not hold citizenship of either Japan or South Korea, reflects Japan’s enduring colonial policies and the greater geopolitical forces of the region. Japan only recognizes the Republic of Korea (‘South Korea’) as the ‘legitimate’ government of the Korean Peninsula. Consequently, Japan does not consider passports or citizenship issued by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or ‘North Korea’) as valid. This stance is rooted in Japan’s imperial legacy, subservient diplomatic relations with the U.S. who wages continual war against the DPRK, and its own colonial recognition policies. As one can imagine, immense issues related to things like traveling, housing, and education arise from not having your citizenship formally recognized.

Of roughly 1 million Koreans in Japan, thousands of them do not possess Japanese nor South Korean citizenship; the term “Choson” is used for them. This term is a reference to the Korean peninsula under the Choson Dynasty (1392–1897), before its division into North and South; from 1910 to 1945 the peninsula was ruled by the Empire of Japan under the name Choson. “Choson” is how the Japanese government categorizes these Koreans in legal, political, and administrative limbo, and it’s important to remember that many are descendants of Koreans brought to Japan during the colonial period who either only have DPRK citizenship, some combination of Japanese and Korean citizenship, or who have chosen not to obtain Japanese citizenship in place of citizenship to their Motherland, the DPRK. ​​In 1947, Japan enacted the ‘Alien Registration Law’, which relegated ethnic Koreans to the status of foreigners within Japan. Following this, the Nationality Law of 1950 removed Japanese citizenship from Korean offspring born to Japanese mothers, while Korean children fathered by Japanese men could retain their Japanese citizenship.

Learning of these dynamics forced me to reflect on the colonial obsession with regulating national identity, citizenship, and ethnic classification; from the centuries-old ‘One-Drop Rule’ that continues to dictate the racial class system of the U.S., to the apartheid segregation system imposed onto the Palestinians by the Zionists, to the dangerous blood-quantum eugenics preoccupation of Nazi Germany. Whether implicitly implied through legal and cultural means, as is the case with Koreans in Japan, or through explicit and violent exclusion, colonizers are always necessarily obsessed with sternly dictating national and ethnic identity, marriage, citizenship, population diversification, and racial classification.     

While some progress has been made, one can imagine the serious implications that these classifications have had for the identity, legal status, and discrimination of the Korean community in Japan for several generations. Those designated as Choson usually face challenges related to their imposed-statelessness, such as limitations on travel, difficulties in accessing most social services, ethnicity-based discrimination in housing and labor, and broader issues of societal oppression. 

One example that we learned from students at Korea University was during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Japanese government created a special program to support students struggling financially. Japan allowed for students across the entire country of all nationalities, including students at international schools in Japan, to request and receive state funds to help needy students afford a laptop to do remote schoolwork during quarantine, access protective gear like masks and sanitizer, and even help paying university tuition. All students, that is, except for students at Korea University. 

These students already faced a number of compounding financial and discriminatory issues long before the pandemic; students informed me that by simply attending Korea University, they have already curtailed the vast majority of their job prospects within Japan. Korea University was the only university where students were not allowed access to this COVID support, and Korean students launched a grassroots campaign in response to protest and calling out the Japanese government. 

Other examples are much more dramatic, but equally illustrative of the oppressive nature of life in Japan for the Koreans. As Ford notes:

“In 2018, a Japanese man attacked a young Korean man with a knife, and he admitted to police he did so “because he had ‘looked down’ on him.” That same year, two men shot up Chongryon’s headquarters in downtown Tokyo.”

During our visit, the mixture of this painful past with the tenuous present was palpable. 

“Just before the beginning of the COVID pandemic we had to crawl through a torn chainlink fence,” participants of the delegation from prior years told me, as we accessed the underground tunnels where thousands of Koreans perished as forced laborers. By November 2023 during my trip, the Japanese government had installed sparse lighting inside the opening of the tunnel, and had a small multilingual plaque acknowledging the historic nature of the site. Having legal access to these tunnels and the small commemorative plaque is itself the result of struggle by local Korean organizers and a small handful of Japanese historians, and remains a point of contention: the plaque doesn’t accurately describe the site, almost reading as a celebration of the horrors endured by Koreans in these tunnels, with absolutely no mention of forced labor. Of the roughly  1200 forced labor tunnels across the island, only less than a dozen are accessible by Japanese historians, who must receive tight-gripped government approval to enter.

These underground cave-tunnels were utilized by the Japanese imperial army, who moved most of their military operations underground to escape bombardments and military action during the World Wars. Once I ducked my way into the dark, humid tunnel, I quickly realized the space was filled with an ominous, heavy, and familiar feeling. We observed the physical marks on the walls of these underground tunnels painstakingly chiseled by the hands of Korean laborers, many just teenagers as young as 12, under the duress of Imperial Japanese guns. These marks are not just scars on stone; they are indelible imprints of a dark history, a somber reminder of the exploitation and suffering endured. 

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Exploring the legacies of chattel slavery causes a similarly chilling feeling for Africans in the Americas. At the Castillo de San Severino in Matanzas, Cuba, for example, historians point out where you can still see the bullet holes in the stone walls, where Africans who attempted to escape or revolt were punished by gunfire. There’s a level of reality that is communicated by experiencing the physical remnants of this deep oppression.

Dr. Chung and professor Curry Malott, another participant on the delegation, described that when there were no lights inside these colonial tunnels, only the guide’s flashlight, they were immersed in shadows and the echoes of brutal horror. To honor this, we turned off all the lights to experience just a few seconds of the darkness that plagued Koreans for decades. 

Interestingly, the Japanese public’s awareness of their nation’s colonial history is markedly absent, intentionally hidden and disallowed from public memory in any capacity. The nation’s imperial history is not taught in their schools, nor part of public discussion in any meaningful capacity. The lack of historical consciousness among the Japanese populace about their own country’s role in colonizing Korea is concerning, but not dissimilar to the absolute and proud lack of public knowledge in the U.S. of the atrocities their European ancestors carried out against many colonized and enslaved populations. It points to a broader issue of historical amnesia as a tool of the maintenance empire, the nearly inescapable dominating power of U.S. imperialism, and the importance of truthful historical education in acknowledging and learning from the past. 

Since at least 1948 the Koreans have engaged in organized resistance in the form of grassroots organization and DPRK-supported popular education. In 1955, this grassroots organizations would become Chongryon, a network of Korean schools that they began to build immediately following liberation. Chongryon now exists as a network of hundreds of Korean schools across the islands, cultural centers and businesses, and a humbly stunning university in Tokyo — all leading the struggle against the violent erasure of Korean people’s history, culture, and presence. And, as one professor made sure I understood clearly, all of this is achieved through belief in the values and principles of socialism.  

Microcosm of Regional Imperialist Aggression

The complexities of this situation reflect the ongoing tensions in the East Asian region — due primarily to the presence of U.S. imperialist forces that occupy all of Japan and the Southern Korean Peninsula — and the wider Pacific region through United States Pacific Command (USPACOM). 

In my short time in Japan, I was repeatedly stunned at the extremely visible and influential presence of U.S. military forces on the small island. Signs in some places read “U.S. Military Housing”, while others advertise “Best Car Rentals For U.S. Military Men.” When I ventured into the fashion district in my free time, massive and popular second-hand clothing markets were on most corners filled with used military paraphernalia, proudly sitting across from the McDonald’s on every block. In true ‘traveling while Black’ fashion, I sought out other Black people whenever possible; in Tachikawa, nearly every Black person I saw, including those who messaged me on social apps, were U.S. soldiers and their families. In some regards, what I observed and experienced of the U.S. Military presence in Japan was more visible and aggressive than their presence domestically in many places. The juxtaposition of Japanese culture and context with the U.S. military presence gave the same feeling as the police who occupy U.S. cities, who stick out within a society designed to cater to them. 

The U.S. has not only occupied and wedged its way into virtually every aspect of Japanese life and economy, it has also stunted and outright stopped virtually all attempts at Korean reunification, regional peace and stability, and sustainable diplomatic ties between the DPRK, its citizens, and Japan. 

One afternoon on the trip we drove up a winding, narrow road to park our van at a stunning mountaintop park, surrounded by cherry blossoms and lush greens. The beauty felt like a scene from a movie.

“Right there, you see it,” Said Dr. Kiyul, one hand on my shoulder and the other pointing at the various cargo and military ships in the ocean. “See that big U.S. ship right there? That’s where the nukes are!” 

The ship he was referring to was the unavoidable USS Ronald Reagan, a massive nuclear-powered aircraft ‘supercarrier’ sitting off the shore of Yokosuka. 

“That ship is readied with nuclear weapons and other devastating heavy artillery, aimed at the DPRK at all times. One may think that the Japanese, being the victims of the world’s most tragic and infamous nuclear attack by the U.S., wouldn’t cooperate with this nuclear chauvinism,” said Dr. Kiyul. 

Unfortunately, the U.S. uses the nonsensical guise of “deterrent diplomacy” and maintains a subservient Japanese government to assert that they are keeping Japan ‘safe’ from the DPRK and others, even if the opposite remains true. Most Japanese people I spoke with in my free time felt, for lack of a better term, deeply indifferent to the U.S. military occupation across their island, though some have said that the events in Palestine since October 7 have changed that. 

It’s important to underscore how deeply ingrained the U.S. military presence and militarization is in the Pacific region is. Similar to how U.S. AFRICOM has turned the entirety of the African continent to a subservient militarized zone, or how the U.S.  SOUTHCOM has designated Latin America as its “yard” to dominate, so too has the U.S. PACOM (Indo-Pacific Command) carved the entire Pacific region into its playground. U.S. military bases, naval carriers, occupation installments, and joint-training endeavors completely surround the DPRK and China, utilizing Japan, Southern Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Guam, and surrounding areas in the region to encircle those the U.S. deem as enemies.    

This all-encompassing military presence aligns with the U.S. strategy of “full spectrum dominance” to control all land, sea, air and space possible. Across the continent of Africa the presence of the U.S. AFRICOM resulted in a 100,000% increase in terrorism across the continent, deteriorated the already shaky regional stability, and left neo-colonial forces with new caches of U.S. weapons. In a similar manner, the U.S. presence in the Pacific has caused a breakdown of negotiations between the DPRK and neighborhooding countries like Japan, as well as the Southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. Each time the North and South Korean governments have attempted peace talks, let alone discussions of any potential reunification, the U.S. has swiftly halted such talks; the easing of Japanese hostility against the DPRK was also stunted by the U.S., who deemed the DPRK a grave safety and forbade the Japanese government from seeking peaceful solutions. The U.S. has consistently denied DPRK-initiated proposals to discuss a peace treaty to formally end the Korean war, for example, the longest war in U.S. history.  

What’s clear is that the U.S. prefers to continue an aggressive and antagonistic policy towards the DPRK, using its subservient “allies” in the region as mere launching pads from which they can target their regional enemies. Despite the DPRK remaining politically consistent on the question of peace talks, consistent on the common sense policy not relinquishing nuclear weapons (for fear of suffering the same fate of Libya’s Qaddafi), consistent on their expressed desire for reunification of Korea, the U.S. has been equally consistent in denying the region stability and demilitarized peace. The largest military occupation is in Luchu (Okinawa), which doubles as a U.S. and Japanese colonial occupation of these Indigenous islands. 

For Koreans in Japan, I was told by students, Japanese aggression and discrimination against internal Koreans tends to match the larger geopolitical situations they face. As the geopolitical sphere becomes more complex and contentious, local Koreans face knife attacks, are scared to wear their traditional clothing outside of their schools, are made into the society’s punching bags, and experience a microcosm of the larger regional warcraft by the U.S.

68 years of Internationalism, Popular Education In Practice 

The delegation took place just one month following the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation in Occupied Palestine on October 7, and therefore the consistent backdrop of most conversations on the trip was Palestine, the resistance struggle being waged there, and how it is related to the burgeoning potential of a multipolar world. The DPRK has long supported the struggles of the Palestinian Resistance both materially and politically, as they have to a lesser known extent African liberation struggles, including training various militant Black Panthers and supporting some seeking asylum. In fact the DPRK has never recognized the Zionist state, consistently calling for the liberation of Palestine. 

In the Korean elementary and middle schools, I flipped through pages in their history books and saw images of Martin Luther King Jr., Muamar Qadaffi, the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X, Ahmed Ben Bella, and other revolutionary figures in African history, which was particularly warming. While in in the U.S. the DPRK is extremely and harshly vilified, the Global South still largely recognizes the DPRK for having never surrendered to imperialism, and as an “unwavering ally of the South and the resolute torchbearer of anti-imperialism”, as the Communist Party of Kenya put it in their December issue of Itikadi. Reverence for the DPRK exists across Africa, with organizations like the Nigerian-DPRK Friendship Association highlighting the role that the DPRK played in supporting African liberation movements of the 60s and the 70s, and African development beyond that. This support includes providing tractors and agricultural supplies, helping to develop local infrastructure like roads and hospitals, exchange of academic training, import-export exchange, and technological cooperation.  

Inside each room of the Korean high schools and the Korean University, images of their anti-colonial heroes Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il hang proudly, similar to the endless images of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Jose Martí plastered across Cuban walls. The Koreans recognize their struggle as primarily a struggle against the contradictions of imperialism and colonialism, with the Korean Juche ideology guiding them, and sew this recognition into the fabric of their work inside Japan. 

In the middle school classes, a young Korean girl was asked to practice her English in front of the class by speaking to us; the students all turned their chairs around and sat quietly, attentively to show her respect. To our surprise, she didn’t simply introduce herself, but rather introduced her entire class, speaking almost exclusively in the collective “we” — telling us what ‘we’ as a class like to do, why they are excited to meet us, and so forth. We all noted the collective, communal nature of the Chongryan system, and the beautiful display of this collectivism in the student’s persistent use of “we.” 

Toward the latter half of our trip, I was able to guest lecture alongside other delegation participants for two different classes at Korea University. The topic of the class that I joined is itself a testament to the advanced nature of their revolutionary education: “End of the Unipolar World, Creation of Multipolar World: Histories of Korea-U.S., Russia-U.S., and China-U.S. Confrontation” taught by professor Kiyul Chung. We discussed the globalization of anti-imperialist principles of self-determination, the role of the DPRK in supporting a burgeoning multipolar world, and the active application of DPRK principles of self-reliance and self-defense. 

When it was my turn to speak, I put into context the struggles of Africans within the U.S. as an internal colony, highlighted several moments of joint history between DPRK and African liberation struggles, and discussed the strong commonalities between Pan-Africanism and Korean Reunification as strategies and political ideologies. The commonalities in these two ideological northstars needs to be further explored. The same way that Korean Reunification wishes to see the U.S., Japanese, and Western imperialist grip on Korea fall, we too wish to see this imperialist grip on Africa fall. The same way that they desire the reunification of the Korean Peninsula under scientific socialism, so too do we wish to see the unification of Africa under scientific socialism. In the same way that they envision safety and security for the Korean diaspora as being existentially linked to the reunification of Korea, we also understand the safety and security of Africans in our diaspora from imperialist racism as only being achievable through Africa’s unification.  

And as they wish to see the fall of the neo-colonial puppet governments of Japan and South Korea — who take their orders directly from the U.S. — we, too, wish to see the fall of the neo-colonial comprador class, who exploit Africa and Africans at the command of Western imperialists. 

The discussions highlighted the irony of certain academic narratives that focus exclusively on single-issue oppression with a U.S.-centric lens, while ignoring the broader history and experience of imperialism globally. While discourse of ‘global anti-blackness’ has gone viral in recent years, rarely have I seen this perspective properly contrasted with the experiences of Koreans under Japanese imperialism, including the mass rape and enslavement of Korean women, or other colonized populations. It underscored the importance of recognizing and respecting the diverse histories of both suffering and resistance across the world, rather than subsuming them under singular narratives of blanket oppression hierarchies.

This trip helped me to think deeper on the often cited concept of ‘the world being built on antiblackness’, critically examined in the light of the Pacific region’s experiences, the Arab (West Asia) region’s experiences, and so forth. The sufferings of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iran, in Korea, the Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii, and in other regions includes levels of dehumanization, mass murder, sanctions, exploitation, and slavery by Western powers that challenge the narrative that centers solely on anti-Blackness as the foundational for global oppression. This view feels reductive in light of serious engagement with the world history of imperialism, as it overlooks the multifaceted nature of imperialist violence and the diverse experiences of those suffering under it, in favor of grand narratives.

While I do not claim to be an expert on such subjects nor want this occasionally controversial topic to overshadow the overall reflections in this piece, I do hope that we can broaden our understanding of our own oppression in light of global struggles. Conditions of enslavement, colonization, vicious racism and discrimination emanate from a system of imperialism that dictates super-exploitation at all costs, that simply reappears in various forms and locations. We must resist the urge to claim a form of chauvinism which asserts a global preoccupation, consciously or subconsciously, with our oppression as the ‘psychic’ lifeblood of the modern world. In reality, imperialism is the lifeblood of the modern world-building project, with the U.S.-EU-NATO bloc dictating the terms of exploitation to the world. 

This, perhaps, is why the Chongryon school network is primarily based on Korean culture as their basis of community and education. “Korean culture is thousands of years old, and our oppression is not,” one student at Korea University told me. “That is why we focus on learning our Korean language, our mythology, our history. if we do not preserve it, Japan will squash it out of us.”

In Cuba, a similar phenomenon exists. The depth of African culture, from language and dance, to fashion and spiritual practice, help to unify and sustain the Revolution, by creating a common African identity that Afro-Cubans unif around. For the Koreans in Japan, their culture is not just an act of resistance against Japanese erasure, it is also a source of unity and great ethnic, national pride. For African organizers in the West, we have to remember that our culture is a powerful tool for unification and pride, taking the lessons from other colonized individuals who have proven as much. 

Under the guise of building a ‘battery factory’ and with firm belief in the power of their culture, Koreans in Japan secretly built Korea University without the knowledge of the Japanese government, which opened in 1956. On the basis of culture and popular education, they have turned this act of defiance into a network of contested spaces, where they are able to exercise their autonomy. Language, song, dance, history, traditions, clothing, all are celebrated as a basis for the socialist experiment in self-determination that is Chongryon. I couldn’t help but wonder, what it would mean for us to return to and celebrate our African culture in a similar and serious manner.

As we move forward, it is crucial to carry these lessons with us, fostering an empathetic and decisive discourse on resistance and liberation. Delegations are not simply to perform a more ethical form of tourism, but rather are crucial moments to witness and learn the opportunities that exist for colonized peoples who are organized and dedicated. After my trip to Chongryon to ground with Koreans in the belly of another beast, I am reaffirmed that our struggle as Africans must be decisively socialist and anti-imperialist, firmly rooted in notions of cultural power, and remain consistent in our solidarity with the Korean struggle. We have to join them in calling for the reunification of Korea and supporting the U.S. Out Of Korea movement, because the intertwined nature of our struggles are profound.

Dirty Break or Destruction: The Peculiar Politics of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

By Youhanna Haddad

Perhaps the critics were right.

The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest socialist organization in the United States. Founded in 1982 by a cadre of social democrats, the group has since swelled to roughly 100,000 official members. Virtually all of that growth occurred after Senator Bernie Sanders launched his first presidential run, which mainstreamed socialism in America. What was once a marginal bunch now regularly makes headlines and even has members in Congress.

Yet the Democratic Socialists of America is hardly uncontroversial on the American Left. A longstanding critique is that it’s too reformist and cozy with a Democratic Party it should be trying to destroy. Rather than mobilizing to build independent institutions, leftist critics believe the organization siphons socialist energy into the duopoly’s lesser evil. That is arguably counterrevolutionary as it may further lock us into a capitalist political system which only serves the elite.

Naturally, members forcefully resist this characterization of their organization. But recent events seem to have vindicated the critics in many ways. On August 6th, the Democratic Socialists of America’s official Twitter account posted the following:

“[Vice President Kamala] Harris choosing [Minnesota governor Tim] Walz as a running mate has shown the world that DSA and our allies on the left are a force that cannot be ignored. Through collective action… DSA members… organized… to support Palestinian liberation… and… pressured the Democratic establishment into… backing down from a potential VP with direct ties to the IDF and who would have ferociously supported the ongoing genocide in Palestine.”

The DSA seemingly believes Walz is a solid choice and that Democrats caved to leftist activists in choosing him. A closer look at Walz, however, reveals that he is no progressive. He is, at best, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Although much of his worse escapades have been so brazen that Walz is really a wolf in wolf’s clothing.

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For example, he regularly speaks before the Minnesota Israel lobby. The Jewish Community Relations Council has applauded the governor’s “pro-Israel record.” Days after October 7th, Walz addressed the Council “in solidarity with Israel against the terrorism of Hamas.” In the speech, Walz made it clear that he stands “firmly with the state of Israel and the righteousness of the cause.” That cause, recall, is apartheid and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians.

But that’s not all. When Palestinian constituents who lost family members in the Gaza genocide wanted to meet with Walz, he refused. The Minnesota governor originally agreed to the meeting under the belief that these Palestinians would merely share their stories. When they informed Walz of their intention to discuss divestment and other material policy, he ordered his staff to cancel.

At a conference of the extremist Zionist American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Walz called Israel “our truest and closest ally.” He touted the apartheid state’s supposed “commitment to values of personal freedoms and liberties.” As a federal congressman, Walz voted to condemn a United Nations resolution declaring Israel’s West Bank settlements illegal. This placed Walz to the right of longstanding State Department policy, overturned by Donald Trump, that considered the incursions illegitimate.

It’s clear where Walz’s sympathies lie — with the Zionists and against the innocent men, women, and children they’re slaughtering. So it appears the Democratic Socialists of America were wrong. The Democrats didn’t respond to their calls for a free Palestine. Instead, they installed another stooge who will gleefully abet the ongoing holocaust in Gaza.

Democrats aren’t listening to socialist organizers. Pretending they are sells false hope, and enables liberal politicians to take leftist votes and run. Throughout their careers, Harris and Walz have made it abundantly clear where they stand.

Neither has any real commitment to working people at home or abroad. Their lack of such commitment is precisely what allows them to thrive in the fundamentally irredeemable Democratic Party. Despite the DSA’s official line, many members understand this. Within the organization exists a robust movement for a “dirty break” from the Democrats. One member described the strategy as follows

In the short term, the DSA should keep “run[ning] candidates on the Democratic… ballot line.” But the crux of the dirty break is that, concurrently, the DSA should begin building an independent working-class party. Upon assembling a sufficient infrastructure and voter base, the DSA should abandon the Democrats and run candidates under its banner.

One thing the DSA could do to facilitate a dirty break is further broaden its big tent. Currently, the DSA’s constitution essentially bans members of “democratic-centralist organizations” from joining. This excludes many Leninists, who are some of the biggest advocates for an independent working-class party. And while there are numerous Marxist-Leninist organizations that already exist as an alternative to groups like the DSA — with the most recent iteration coming from academic Carlos Garrido, who is involved in building such a party — it would make sense for the DSA to welcome the inclusion of this radical energy, rather than continuing to buffer it. As DSA members have yet to make much progress toward a dirty break, they could use such vigor. 

While not all DSA members support a dirty break, the vision is there. That alone may help many DSAers avoid the Democratic ruse of courting progressives for their votes before summarily abandoning them. Historically, stumbling into this trap seems to be the DSA’s modus operandi. But it won’t lead anywhere good.

The organization should instead empower its dirty breakers and channel the energy the DSA undeniably possesses into independent institutions which challenge — not serve — imperialist hegemony. And if the DSA doesn’t do that, other groups should emerge to supplant it.

Youhanna Haddad is a North American Marxist of the Arab diaspora. Through his writing, he seeks to combat the Western liberal dogmas that uphold racial capitalism. You can contact him at youhannahaddad@gmail.com.

Debunking Myths About Venezuela: What's Really Going On?

[Photo Credit: MIGUEL GUTIERREZ/EPA/Shutterstock]

By Eli Morey

Republished from Liberation Center.

Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela’s socialist movement, won the July 28 Venezuela presidential election by a wide margin. In a near-repeat of 2019,  the Biden administration  immediately declared the election illegitimate and recognized their preferred—but badly defeated–candidate as the winner, Edmundo González as the winner, just as they supported Juan Guaido’s pitiful attempt to take power in 2019-2020. Similarly, the U.S. is fully supporting current right-wing violence in Venezuela to set the stage for another coup against the legitimate and widely popular government.

None of this appears in the corporate media, of course. Instead, we only encounter accusations of “corruption” and “illegitimate” elections.

What about the polls that showed Maduro losing?

Headlines in the U.S. cite polls as evidence of fraud in the 2024 elections. According to some polls, Maduro trailed the opposition by a wide margin in the lead-up to election day. A closer look reveals that these polls are not a reliable source of information about Venezuelan voter preferences. 

In fact, each of the four polls cited by Western media were run by organizations with a clear conflict of interest:

1. The Encuestadora Meganálisis poll is openly affiliated with the opposition, as their Facebook page filled with videos denouncing Madruo and the Bolivarian Revolution.

2. The Caracas-based Delphos poll is directed by Felix Seijas Rodriguez, an outspoken member of the Venezuelan opposition who has authored numerous articles attacking Maduro and even discussing U.S. military intervention against Venezuela.

3. OCR Consultores is a “consultancy” group whose Director, Oswaldo Ramirez Colina, lives in Miami, where the group is headquartered. Colina studied “Terrorism and Counterterrorism” at Georgetown University, which is notoriously cozy with the CIA. He has appeared on news segments and podcast episodes criticizing Maduro and questioning the legitimacy of Venezuela’s electoral processes.

4. Edison Research, whose exit poll claimed Maduro’s loss, has “top clients [that] include CIA-linked US government propaganda outlets Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, all of which are operated by the US Agency for Global Media, a Washington-based organ that is used to spread disinformation against US adversaries.”

Are elections in Venezuela free and fair?

While western media consistently accuses Maduro of rigging elections, there is zero evidence to support this claim. In both the 2018 and 2024 elections, thousands of international observers were present at polling stations across Venezuela. 

In fact, even mainstream liberal organizations like the Carter foundation have praised Venezuela’s electoral system. In 2012, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said that “as a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”

Who are the leaders of the opposition?

Maduro’s primary opponent in the elections, Edmundo Gonzalez Urritia, was not a big figure in Venezuelan politics until this most recent election cycle. He is primarily serving as a stand-in for Maria Corina Machado, who is the true face of Venezuela’s opposition. 

Machado is on the far right. Her policies would undermine Venezuela’s sovereignty by privatizing national assets and selling off Venezuela’s oil reserves to western corporations. 

She is also a proud and open Zionist. In fact, in 2018 she wrote a letter directly to Benjamin Netanyahu asking Israel to intervene militarily in Venezuela to conduct a “regime change” operation in order to overthrow its democratically elected government. In 2020, she signed a cooperation agreement with Netanyahu’s Likud party stating that they were in agreement on “political, ideological, and social issues” and “issues related to strategy, geopolitics and security.”

The right-wing’s violence is particularly directed against Afro-Venezuelans and the indigenous populations because the Revolution has greatly benefitted the sectors of society who have historically been excluded and oppressed. In 2014, a right-wing group beat a law student named William Muñoz, and doused him in gasoline. Fortunately, an ambulance rescued Muñoz before the mob could ignite the gasoline. In 2017, the right-wing went on a rampage targeting darker-skinned Venezuelans, setting them on fire and even lynching them.

Why and how does the U.S. try to overthrow the Venezuelan government?

It is not only the domestic reactionaries that constantly threaten the Revolution. Particularly since 2005, the U.S. has deployed numerous strategies to reverse the revolutionary gains of Venezuela.

A few years after the presidential election of Hugo Chávez, representing the Fifth Republic Movement, the U.S. ruling class started openly working to destroy Venezuela’’s socialist government since the Bolivarian Revolution began with the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, who ran as the Fifth Republic Movement’s candidate.’s government. Under Chávez’s leadership, Venezuela’s democratic processes expanded quickly and rapidly. In 1999, Venezuela adopted a new constitution that created a constituent assembly, bringing the people into positions of power to pass laws in their interests. Land was redistributed and social goods like housing and education were prioritized thanks to the massive oil reserves of the country.

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What became known as the Bolivarian Revolution, led by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV)—which formed in 2007—was a spark that set off a “pink tide” throughout Latin America. Progressive governments came to power in Brazil and Bolivia, and people’s movements surged across the continent. With state power, progressives and socialists formed new alliances to challenge U.S. domination and imperialism, including notably ALBA, or the Alliance for the People’s of Our America. Founded in 2004, ALBA enables Latin American and other countries to engage in non-exploitative trade and other inter-state projects and agreements.

Sanctions were the first tactic the U.S. deployed against the Revolution. By depriving the government of the ability to fund social programs, the intent was and is to create widespread poverty and misery to foment dissent and blaming the results of the sanctions on the policies of the Venezuelan government.

If Venezuela’s socialist government was allowed to engaged in “free trade,” they could make even more impressive advances for their people and inspire other countries to follow in their path. As a result, Venezuela is one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world, with over 900 unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States alone. The U.S. has actively worked for over a decade to destabilize the Venezuelan economy specifically by targeting its oil industry and its financial sector.

However, undermining the Venezuelan economy is just one element of the U.S. hybrid war on Venezuela. There have also been multiple coup attempts with links to the U.S. Here are a few:

• 2002: Socialist president Hugo Chavez was kidnapped and removed from power by military coup plotters connected to Venezuelan big business. After two days, huge protests in support of Chavez forced the coup government out of power and restored the constitutional order. Chavez was freed and returned to the presidency.

• 2019: In 2018 the opposition boycotted the elections, and as a result their candidates lost by a huge margin. In spite of this, they then declared opposition figurehead Juan Guaidó—who had not even run in the elections and won 0 votes—the new interim president of Venezuela. The United States immediately recognized Guaidó as the president of Venezuela. The following year Guaidó led a failed coup attempt against Maduro. 

• 2020: “Operation Gideon,” an armed invasion of Venezuela led by a former member of the U.S. Army special forces, was defeated by the Venezuelan military.

Why are so many immigrants leaving Venezuela?

Millions of people have left Venezuela in the last 10 years. While the U.S. media often portrays these people as political refugees fleeing a dictatorship, the reality is quite different. 

Global oil prices dropped drastically in the mid 2010s. Oil is a key component of Venezuela’s economy. This would not have been a problem if Venezuela was able to take out loans to cover shortfalls until the price of oil rebounded. Oil-dependent countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE are able to get cheap loans when oil prices decline because they are allies of the U.S. and EU. In Venezuela’s case, the U.S. did everything it could to undermine the Venezuelan economy in a moment of crisis, and prevent its economy from rebuilding in the wake of disaster. 

Most of Venezuela’s immigrants are in fact victims of the U.S’s harsh sanctions regime, which has damaged Venezuela’s economy and prevented it from accessing key goods including food and medicine. 

Why do I see posts on social media calling Maduro a dictator?

After every election there are outspoken people who are upset about the outcome. If you were to look on social media or talk to random people on the street after the 2016 or 2020 elections in the U.S, you would certainly find people angry or confused about the results. You would probably also encounter people claiming that the election was rigged. This does not amount to evidence of election fraud. 

In the U.S. and on western social media platforms, the anti-Maduro position is over-represented because of the number of expats living in the United States. Venezuelans living here have, for the most part, left Venezuela either because they had the money to leave when the economy took a downturn, or they left out of desperation when the economy was at its lowest point. These are the segments of the population most likely to be critical of Maduro, most likely to speak English, and most likely to be on American social media pages and platforms.

Alternatively, the social base of the Bolivarian revolution is in the working class, poor, and indigenous people living in the barrios and rural villages of Venezuela. These people are significantly less likely to speak English, have smartphones, or be active on social media platforms like Instagram. Their voices are never centered in conventional media like TV and radio in the United States, which is largely run by corporations with a vested interest in demonizing socialism.

What is the Bolivarian Revolution and why do the masses support it?

Under the leadership of Chavez and later Maduro, notable achievements were made in spite of ongoing attempts by the U.S. to sabotage Venezuela’s socialist project. The main vehicles for these achievements has been the mobilization of the working class and the misiones, or “missions,” which are long-term economic and social development programs. The Bolivarian government has built over 4 million new homes for poor people living in substandard housing as part of the Misión Habitat. Over 10 million poor Venezuelans have benefited from subsidized food under a program called Misión Mercal. Another program known as Mision Barrio Adentro built thousands of clinics and community centers in an effort to provide free healthcare and dental care to Venezuela’s poorest people.

A massive literacy campaign in the 2000s helped over a million people to read and write. In spite of economic hardships due to the oil crisis and U.S. sanctions, millions of Venezuelans continue to support the Maduro government because of the tangible benefits it provides in their day-to-day lives. This is even more understandable given the ruthless nature of the racist right-wing opposition.

On the Development of Political Consciousness

By Peter S. Baron

Political consciousness involves understanding how our lives are shaped by social, economic, and political systems, particularly within the framework of capitalism. By developing political consciousness, we can recognize how the capitalist system perpetuates everyday issues like poverty and inequality. Doing so, we can explore ways to work together towards a fairer, more cooperative society.

To develop political consciousness, we must understand that regardless of our class—whether lower, middle, or upper—we are part of the general population. We are not part of the small group who holds real power regarding how society is organized. Since we lack significant power to influence decisions that shape the structure of our society, it's crucial to recognize that our capitalist and hierarchical systems, which impose economic inequality, social stratification, and power imbalances, are not inherent to "human nature." These structures are artificially constructed—man-made—and therefore, they can be reimagined and changed.

Social ills like poverty, war, crime, poor health, long working hours, and job dissatisfaction are intrinsic to the capitalist system, designed to maximize profits and reinforce the power of the wealthy few. Capitalism thrives on inequality, ensuring a steady supply of cheap labor by maintaining poverty. Wars, driven by capitalist competition for resources and markets, not only benefit the elite through military-industrial profits but also open new markets, force rebellious countries into the capitalist world order, and dominate natural resources. Economic disparities lead to crime, which keeps people scared of each other instead of the capitalists producing these conditions and creates a perceived need for police, who are necessary to suppress social movements that threaten capitalism. The for-profit healthcare system locks out the poor, keeping them sick, irritable, and in pain, leading to more social problems in their communities and hurting their chances for upward mobility. Employers push for long hours and monotonous jobs to numb people's minds, conditioning them to accept an unfulfilling existence while draining them of the energy to resist. These issues are not accidental but are systematically perpetuated to maintain elite control and economic dominance, highlighting the need for systemic change.

We have the technology and resources to meet everyone's basic needs and more. However, within the capitalist system, owners of essential resources deliberately keep them scarce to boost their profits and maintain socioeconomic and political control over society. This enforced scarcity compels us to compete for money, which we need to purchase these essential resources. We compete by vying for jobs or by selling goods and services.

Remember, money doesn’t materialize out of thin air; it comes from our pockets, circulating among individuals and businesses, continuously moving from one person to another. Think of it this way: when you pay rent, your hard-earned cash goes straight into the landlord's bank account. The landlord then uses that money to pay for services, transferring the money to other workers and businesses. This cycle repeats in countless ways: your grocery store purchase goes to the store owner, who then pays employees and suppliers. This constant flow of money among us shows how our economic system is interconnected, continuously shifting money from one person to another. Each transaction becomes a competition for businesses and individuals to maximize their earnings at the expense of others. This pits us against each other, making us competitors rather than collaborators, and ultimately making it harder to work together for our common good.

The ruling elite (owners) maintain this system because it keeps us preoccupied with our own survival, ensuring that we don't challenge their power. By keeping us competing for resources, they maintain their control over society. We need to see through this manipulation and understand that cooperation, rather than competition, can help meet everyone's needs. Instead of competing, we can support and create systems where resources are shared fairly, like community food banks or cooperative housing projects.

Currently, we find ourselves competing with each other over slivers of wealth and power—small salary increases, slightly better apartments, marginally better schools for our kids, and slightly more powerful positions at work—while the corporate community and ruling elite hoard vast wealth and control. We undermine and exploit each other while competing for the limited resources distributed by the ruling elite, yet we often don’t even stop to think about it! By perpetuating these systems, we reinforce power structures that serve a select few at our collective expense.

Recognizing and Challenging the Capitalist System

We can live better lives without capitalism. We should question why we must compete. Wouldn't we rather work together to improve our quality of life? We have the power to choose to cooperate. It is a fool’s errand to continue upholding these oppressive structures when we can create a society based on mutual aid and cooperation, where everyone has access to what they need and the freedom to pursue their desires without harming others.

Importantly, such questioning requires a recognition that we, the people, have been conscripted to willingly, and often enthusiastically, do the rulers' bidding of perpetuating systems that serve ruling interests. We do exactly as they wish by competing with each other over shavings of wealth and power. How much longer will we allow ourselves to be driven by the spiritually bankrupt belief that accumulating wealth and power equates to a better quality of life?

At our core, we are all humans—essentially apes who share 99.5% of our DNA with chimpanzees—sharing the same planet (which capitalism is currently ravaging…). None of us are inherently superior to one another, regardless of the social constructs or values we use to measure each other. While intelligence tests, work performance, and other criteria may create the illusion of ranking and comparison, these are merely human-made constructs. They do not reflect the fundamental reality that we are all essentially the same. As humans, there is no true measure of being better at being human; these constructs fail to capture our shared essence and humanity. Ultimately, we are all just apes, and these rankings do not define our worth or existence. How can we look at someone struggling under capitalism and tell them they deserve this suffering? How can we be so cruel as to shame them into believing they are inferior because of mistakes, factors beyond their control, or simply losing in this ruthless, competitive society?

While some argue that individual agency, effort, and personal responsibility, measured through intelligence tests and work performance, drive personal and societal progress by incentivizing innovation, hard work, and excellence, this perspective overlooks a crucial aspect of human nature. Humans are inherently innovative and social beings who thrive on helping each other. We don't need money to drive our creativity. The wheel wasn't invented for profit, and Nikola Tesla pursued his groundbreaking work out of passion, not for financial gain. When we create a society where people can take risks without the fear of homelessness or destitution, we unleash a greater potential for innovation. Moreover, imagine a world where our inventors and entrepreneurs innovate out of pure passion and a genuine desire to help others. It's disheartening to think that self-interest alone should drive innovation, as this often warps the true potential and purpose of their creations. Isn't it far more inspiring to envision a society where the love for one's work and the commitment to collective well-being fuel our greatest advancements? By fostering a culture of mutual support and cooperation, we can inspire more people to contribute their ideas and talents for the collective good, leading to a more prosperous and innovative society for all.

The real culprit here is the capitalist system that warps humanity to such an extent that people commit inhumane acts. This system creates conditions of scarcity, competition, and alienation, driving individuals to extreme behaviors as they struggle to survive and succeed. When we encounter individuals who are “lazy,” “irresponsible,” or “antagonistic,” it's easy to overlook that these behaviors often stem from systemic pressures and the dehumanizing effects of capitalism. Similarly, when we see extreme cases like murderers or Nazis, we must remember that their actions are also the result of systemic traumas and distortions created by the same flawed system.

Mother Teresa’s compassion and service were commendable, but her worth wasn’t greater than anyone else's. I’m positive she would say the same. As Carl Jung reminds us, we must acknowledge our “collective shadow”—the parts of society that we’d rather ignore or vilify. Instead of scapegoating individuals, we need to dismantle the system that perpetuates these cycles of harm.

By understanding that harmful behaviors are symptoms of a deeply flawed system, we can shift our focus from blaming individuals to transforming society. This means fighting for a world where resources are shared, and where everyone has the opportunity to live with dignity and purpose. It’s not about excusing wrongdoings but recognizing that our collective liberation depends on changing the conditions that lead to such acts in the first place. Only then can we truly honor our shared humanity and work together for the common good.

The capitalist system continues because we support it daily, despite its burdens. We  must understand that the capitalist system inherently creates inequality and suffering, which pushes all of us into the position where we may either contribute to the problem or work towards solutions. We have the power to create a society where communities and individuals possess meaningful control over their own lives. We do not have to live according to the dictates of corporate overlords who shape the material conditions we must live within, forcing us to compete for marginally better status in a fundamentally oppressive system. We can build communities that work together, share resources fairly, and make decisions together. By focusing on mutual aid and cooperation instead of competition, we can make sure everyone has what they need.

But this, what we are doing today, is crazy! Look at how we treat each other. Our society is based on all of us competing with each other over money and power to determine how we allocate basic necessities like where we live, what we eat, and the quality of our healthcare. What kind of society plays such a sadistic game where “losing” or refusing to submit to ruthless competition results in a poor quality of life? It’s certainly not a “civilized” society. Yet, we continue to perpetuate these exploitative systems, harming each other for what? The benefit of a small elite who couldn’t care less about our well-being. This is ridiculous. This relentless competition is a brutal and dehumanizing way to organize our lives, and it's time we see it for what it is.

So, what do we do? How do we help each other realize these truths? We should help each other develop our political consciousness. We should understand the flaws of the current order while simultaneously envisioning a cooperative society. By living in ways that emphasize cooperation, without hierarchy, profit, or commodified life, we can experience the benefits of a non-exploitative system firsthand. This lived experience is crucial in fostering a deeper political consciousness.

Thus, the development of political consciousness and the building of a cooperative society go hand in hand. As we disengage from the capitalist system and start creating alternatives, we strengthen our awareness and commitment to a more equitable future. In this sense, helping each other reach political consciousness is not just a step toward revolution—it is the revolution itself.

Awakening

The journey towards political consciousness requires a profound psychological transformation that we undergo together. It's a process where we collectively change how we see the world and our place within it. This transformation involves several key stages, each marked by significant shifts in our awareness, understanding, and emotional responses.

Initially, many of us exist in a state of false consciousness; that is, a state in which we don’t realize our true interests as a collective group and instead accept things as they are. In this stage, we often internalize the dominant capitalist ideology, accepting the status quo as natural and unchangeable, perhaps even good for us. We might attribute our socio-economic conditions to personal success or failings, believing in meritocracy, which asserts the harder and more productive we are as workers, the more we deserve to receive. This way of thinking is kept alive by the promotion of “rags-to-riches” stories, media narratives, and education systems that hide the truth about class oppression and exploitation.

Envision working tirelessly, dedicating yourself fully, yet seeing your socio-economic status remain stagnant or even deteriorate. Imagine doing everything you were told to do growing up, graduating from college, only to enter a workforce that offers survival-rate salaries and benefits. Your employer piles on intense pressure for you to consistently meet targets to avoid demotions or termination. Your work feels mind-numbing, your apartment is a tiny, overpriced box, and you’re scrambling to make ends meet while drowning in a mountain of student loan debt that grows faster than your paycheck. When you complain, your friends and family tell you “That’s life, work harder.” 

The first psychological shift happens when we start to experience cognitive dissonance, a deep sense of unease born from the glaring contradictions between our lived experiences and the dominant ideology. This realization hits hard, maybe making you question everything you've been taught. It's a jarring wake-up call, filled with confusion and frustration, leading to a budding skepticism of the status quo.

In this stage, we often begin to look for things to blame. Demagogues will try to exploit this confusion, urging us to scapegoat minority groups like immigrants, claiming they are driving down wages. But this is where we must stand together and help each other see the truth. The real culprit isn't the migrant who traveled vast distances seeking a better life for their family, only to be exploited even more harshly than we are. The responsibility lies with the exploitative systems and the wealthy elites who perpetuate them, pitting us against each other to maintain their power and control. But let's be clear: these systems would collapse without our participation. We, the people, are the ones shouldering the burden and perpetuating these oppressive structures. It's time we recognize our power and refuse to uphold a system that exploits and divides us.

Spiral Dynamics of Political consciousness

From here, it’s helpful to conceptualize the development of political consciousness through the lens of “Spiral Dynamics,” as articulated by psychologists Don Beck and Christopher Cowan and explained eloquently by Ken Wilber in his book “A Theory of Everything.” Spiral Dynamics offers a framework for understanding human development and societal evolution through a series of stages. The journey towards political consciousness can be viewed as an ascent through various stages of the spiral, each characterized by a distinct way of understanding and addressing social issues.

Within the Spiral Dynamics framework, we can visualize two main tiers of consciousness development. Stages 1-3 make up the first tier, while stages 4 and 5 belong to the second tier. Completing the third stage prepares individuals to make a significant leap into second-tier consciousness.

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At this higher tier, individuals can appreciate the entire range of political consciousness development, recognizing that each stage is crucial for the validity of the overall spiral. Understanding the validity of the spiral means recognizing that every stage, even the lower ones, plays an essential role in the growth and development of human consciousness. We all have to start at the beginning. Each stage provides foundational insights and experiences that are necessary for progressing to more advanced levels of understanding.

In other words, in second-tier consciousness, people understand that earlier stages are not just obstacles to be overcome but integral parts of a holistic system. For instance, while stages 1-3 involve more basic levels of awareness and critique, they are necessary steps that lay the groundwork for more complex and integrated thinking. This perspective allows individuals to see the value in every stage, fostering empathy and reducing animosity towards those at different levels of consciousness, ensuring that no one is left behind and that the transformation process is grounded in a deep understanding of human development. This stands in opposition to those at the lower stages of consciousness (1-3) who often believe their perspective is the only correct one and may react negatively when challenged.

So, what exactly are the stages in the spiral dynamics of political consciousness? (Note: the stages described below are original and presented in broad strokes to provide a general overview for the purpose of this article.)

Stage 1: Viewing Individual Political Personalities as the Cause of Social Issues

At the first stage of political consciousness, individuals may attribute social problems to specific political figures, believing that changing leaders will resolve these issues. This perspective, heavily influenced by media portrayals, focuses on authority and order, viewing strong leadership as essential for stability. For example, liberals may blame Donald Trump or the GOP for various social ills, while conservatives target figures like Joe Biden or blame the liberal “establishment”, seeing them as symbols of corruption.

Individuals at this stage are often attracted to simplistic solutions, such as believing that removing certain leaders will resolve systemic problems (e.g., “If only the democrats could control all three branches”). Although this is the lowest stage on the spiral, it is widely perceived as the only valid perspective because media narratives, driven by corporate interests, emphasize personalities and scandals over substantive policy discussions.

This focus on individuals distracts from the systemic nature of issues such as capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. It perpetuates the illusion that we simply have the wrong leaders, but if we vote for the “good ones” they can bring about meaningful change. However, this perspective misses the point that simply changing leaders, especially when we are forced to choose from options essentially handpicked by the corporate elite, is akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. While it might appear to offer temporary relief, it does nothing to address the underlying problem. Additionally, this stage fosters divisive politics, weakening collective action and solidarity among the working class.

Thus, this stage represents a superficial understanding of societal issues, justifying its placement at the bottom of the hierarchy. It upholds the existing political and economic systems by implying they can function justly with the "right" people in charge. Ignoring the fundamental issue of power—the flawed belief that any leader should have the authority to make decisions for us—overlooks the inherent potential for abuse and denies individuals their inherent right to have a meaningful say in decisions that affect their lives.

To progress, individuals must engage in political education to understand systemic power dynamics, build solidarity among diverse groups, and develop a critical approach to media consumption.

Stage 2: Blaming Greedy Billionaires and Individual Corporations for Social Issues

At the second stage of political consciousness, individuals move beyond blaming political figures and start identifying greedy billionaires and individual corporations as the main culprits of social issues. People in this stage may target figures like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg for their immense wealth and exploitative practices. Corporations like Amazon, Facebook, and ExxonMobil are criticized for contributing to income inequality, data privacy violations, and environmental degradation. Solutions at this stage often include calls for higher taxes on the wealthy, stricter antitrust laws, and stronger labor protections to curb corporate excesses.

This sort of thinking is (sometimes) championed by people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While this stage is a step forward from blaming political leaders, it remains incomplete. Focusing on the greed and unethical behavior of billionaires and corporations still personalizes systemic issues, attributing problems to individual actions rather than recognizing these behaviors as inherent to capitalism itself. The pursuit of profit at any cost, driven by competition and the need to maximize shareholder value, is a fundamental feature of capitalism, not a deviation.

The proposed reforms, such as regulatory measures and higher taxes, do not fundamentally challenge the capitalist system. They might temporarily mitigate some of the worst excesses, but they leave the underlying structures of capitalism intact, allowing exploitation to evolve and continue in different, often stealthier, forms.

Notably, these reforms necessitate the existence of a powerful centralized government, which itself can become an instrument of oppression and control. True liberation requires dismantling these systems entirely, rejecting the illusion of top-down solutions, and embracing grassroots, decentralized approaches that empower individuals and communities to create a just and equitable society from the ground up.

Stage 3: Recognizing Capitalism's Inherent Inequalities

At the third stage of political consciousness, individuals move beyond blaming specific people or organizations and recognize capitalism itself as the root cause of social issues. Individuals at this stage, engage in a systemic critique of capitalism, understanding that issues like inequality, exploitation, and environmental degradation are inherent to a system based on year over year profit growth. They understand how capitalism alienates workers by separating them from the products of their labor, stripping away their sense of humanity, and isolating them from each other. They also see how capitalism intersects with other forms of oppression, such as racism and gender inequality, creating a complex web of inequality.

While this stage marks significant progress in political consciousness, it still overlooks a critical element: understanding the deeper psychological and existential factors that drive human behavior. It misses the crucial realization that it is us, the people, who enable the rulers to maintain the capitalist system.

Individuals at this stage often face the difficult challenge of balancing their anger at capitalism with the necessary effort to understand why people act and believe as they do, including those who perpetuate the system like billionaires and corporate leaders, as well as the managerial white-collar workers who comprise most of upper-middle class. This stage may still portray figures like Jeff Bezos as simply evil or greedy without considering the complex motivations and fears that drive such behavior.

The problem lies in failing to recognize the existential fears and psychological mechanisms that influence everyone. This includes understanding how fear of insecurity, mortality, and existential anxiety can shape beliefs and actions. Without this deeper understanding, the critique remains superficial, failing to address why people cling to harmful systems or resist change.

Stage 4: Recognizing Our Own Fear of Insecurity and Uncertainty as Holding Us Back

At this advanced, second-tier stage of political consciousness, individuals transcend systemic critique and develop deep self-awareness, recognizing that our fear of insecurity and uncertainty fundamentally impedes social progress. This stage integrates systemic thinking with holistic understanding, emphasizing the psychological insights of Ernest Becker's book "The Denial of Death" and Om Søren Kierkegaard's concept of the "automatic cultural man."

Capitalism not only exploits materially but also conditions people to internalize feelings of powerlessness and dependency. Becker argues that human behavior is profoundly influenced by our fear of death. To cope with this fear, we create "cultural systems"—the shared beliefs, values, norms, and practices of our society—that give our lives a sense of meaning. These cultural systems offer a symbolic form of immortality by allowing us to feel part of something enduring and larger than ourselves, thus providing psychological protection against our innate fear of mortality. The denial of our mortality thus often results in our irrational adherence to oppressive systems like capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. Kierkegaard describes individuals who conform to societal norms to avoid existential anxiety as “automatic cultural men.” These "automatic cultural men" uncritically accept systems such as consumerism, competition, and hierarchical structures, seeking security in conformity rather than challenging the status quo.

Ultimately, this fear of death is a fear of life itself. Many people prefer the manufactured security of societal norms and the capitalist status quo because it helps them avoid facing the harsh reality that nothing in this world can provide true security. Many of us advocating for social change hold onto the belief in gradual reforms and working within the system to bring about change for the same psychological comfort, driven by a fear of uncertainty, insecurity, and vulnerability in a ruthless world.

Yet, we are vulnerable beings on a ruthless planet, subjected to various dangers, including dangers from each other. There’s no escaping this reality. However, acknowledging this truth can be liberating. Accepting our vulnerability allows us to confront life head-on. Instead of each person seeking false comfort in societal norms and the capitalist system, which turn us into the “automatons” Kierkegaard describes, we can embrace our collective strength. Through solidarity, we can support one another and create a more secure and fulfilling existence.

Those in stage 4 understand it is important to recognize that billionaires, too, are "automatic cultural men," bound by a life philosophy that sees cold-blooded success in capitalism and the accumulation of wealth as the ultimate goal. They are held captive by this belief. Recognizing this, individuals at Stage 4 understand that everyone, including billionaires, must break free from these psychological constraints. However, the primary focus remains on the broader populace, particularly the most downtrodden and oppressed, since our liberation does not hinge on the billionaires awakening.

In the spirit of Rousseau's cry that "man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains," it is evident that our innate drive for power, which Nietzsche identified as the driving force of all life in his concept of the "will to power," is being grotesquely misdirected. In our current predicament, instead of channeling this “will to power” towards individually and collectively conquering life's challenges and mastering our own existence, we tragically seek to dominate each other.

We are social beings born with the potential to cooperate and help each other confront life’s obstacles directly. Yet, we elect to willingly rush headlong into the chains of capitalist cultural systems that confine us, blinding ourselves to our tremendous collective capacity. These systems, which we so readily accept, serve as deceptive sanctuaries, allowing us to hide from the profound realities of life and death. They seduce us into maintaining power structures that channel our energy for justice into judgmental and oppressive avenues, putting a smile on the face of our rulers.

We must unchain ourselves, reject the comfort of our accepted systems, and collectively confront life with the raw, untamed will to power Nietzsche envisioned. Only then can we realize the freedom Rousseau proclaimed was our birthright, casting off the chains that bind us and standing unflinchingly in the face of life's ultimate truths.

At stage 4, individuals realize these truths, understanding that overcoming the fear of insecurity and uncertainty is crucial for genuine social transformation. Addressing these fears unlocks human potential for empathy, creativity, and collective action. Recognizing that we psychologically and philosophically seek comfort and security to protect us from our fear of death, individuals begin to see that the only way out of the suffocating society we have constructed lies in enabling individual creativity and diversity to flourish freely.

Stage 5: Integrating All Stages with Negative Capability and the Perennial Philosophy

At the highest stage of political consciousness, individuals not only integrate the insights from earlier stages but also embody John Keats' concept of "negative capability" and Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy. This stage, characterized by a holistic, global, and transcendent perspective, represents a profound understanding of interconnectedness and a deep commitment to creating a just and equitable world. Here, individuals transcend ego and personal desires in favor of collective well-being.

In this stage, we move beyond simply recognizing the need for individuals and communities to flourish creatively and autonomously. We understand that such flourishing is only possible through mutual aid. This realization is grounded in the Perennial Philosophy, which posits that all existence is interconnected.

Picture a vibrant community where people actively support each other's growth and well-being. Artists collaborate on public murals, transforming blank walls into colorful expressions of collective creativity. Farmers share their harvests at local markets, ensuring everyone has access to fresh, healthy food. Neighbors form childcare co-ops, allowing parents to pursue their passions while knowing their children are cared for by trusted friends. Volunteers organize educational workshops where knowledge and skills are freely exchanged, empowering everyone to reach their potential.

In this interconnected community, self-interest and the interests of others are seamlessly intertwined. The success of one person directly contributes to the success of all, fostering an environment where everyone can thrive. This tapestry of mutual aid shows that our well-being is inextricably linked to the well-being of others—including all people, other living beings, and the Earth itself. This interconnectedness reveals that our interests are not separate, highlighting that mutual aid is essential for our collective flourishing.

Negative capability is a term coined by the Romantic poet John Keats in a letter written in 1817. It refers to the ability to remain comfortable with ambiguity, uncertainty, and doubt without the need to seek concrete answers or rational explanations. Keats believed that this capability allowed poets and artists to fully embrace the complexity and mystery of life, creating works that captured the depth of human experience. Negative capability is characterized by openness to multiple interpretations and the acceptance that not all questions have definitive answers. It contrasts with the drive for resolution and certainty, emphasizing the value of intuition and imagination in understanding the world.

Embracing negative capability, individuals at this stage navigate the uncertainties of creating this new form of social organization described above without clinging to rigid ideologies. They understand they cannot perfectly plan the future but must start building it by embracing ambiguity with confidence. They embrace the inherent uncertainties and complexities of dismantling existing structures without seeking immediate, definitive solutions. This openness to ambiguity fosters creativity and adaptability, enabling us to envision and implement more fluid and organic forms of social organization. This mindset asserts the means are the ends. It prompts action with the understanding that maintaining a holistic and integrative perspective will lead us to our goals. In fact, those in stage 5 realize that every moment they practice this mindset, they are already achieving their goals.

Ultimately, Stage 5 calls for a profound internal and external transformation. By understanding and addressing the psychological and existential factors driving human behavior, individuals adopt a compassionate, holistic approach to political consciousness.

Creating a just society requires taking a bold leap into the unknown. After all, let’s reflect on why so many idolize America's founding fathers. It’s certainly not because they were paragons of virtue. These men owned hundreds of slaves, were consumed by the pursuit of profit, and stood as the wealthiest individuals in the nation. Despite their deeply flawed characters, they are revered because they dared to take a leap of faith, striving to create a new nation in the face of brutal opposition from the British crown and resistance from their own countrymen. They exhibited undeniable courage.

We must channel their bravery into a new direction. Instead of perpetuating a system designed to protect capital and profit, we must harness our collective courage to create a system that truly facilitates human flourishing. It’s time to transcend the flawed ideals of the past and build a society rooted in equity, compassion, and the well-being of all its members. The true revolution lies not in defending the interests of the few but in uplifting the humanity of everyone.

This movement requires facing our basic vulnerability as animals on a dangerous planet and recognizing that no “cultural system” we manufacture can fully protect us. Fear will never totally leave us; we must learn to live in spite of it. There’s nowhere to run. We must begin embracing the uncertainty that is inherent in life, doing so with poise and confidence. Crucially, we must do so together. Life can be ruthless, but through solidarity, we can provide each other security.

We can overpower our innate fears as a collective. By embracing our vulnerability, we see that the unknown is precisely what makes life so beautiful. Embracing our vulnerability through decentralized mutual aid systems and maintaining a constant skepticism of power enables us to take risks, be adventurous, and pursue our creativity, all with the support of friends and community. Isn’t that what it means to be human?

But right now, we are shrinking in the face of life. We must stand up to life, and we must stand up together! We cannot allow fear to deter us. We must face it and realize that what we truly fear is our own potential—a potential so great it is impossible to imagine the forms it will take. By taking the leap to collectively reorganize society, we will unlock this potential and transform our world. The time to act is now; together, we can help each develop political consciousness and build a future where everyone thrives.

Peter S. Baron is the author of “If Only We Knew: How Ignorance Creates and Amplifies the Greatest Risks Facing Society” (https://www.ifonlyweknewbook.com) and is currently pursuing a J.D. and M.A. in Philosophy at Georgetown University.

Crisis in the Carolinas: The Lowcountry and Climate

By Erica Veal and Karl Malone

Republished from Hood Communist.

Africans are largely left out of conversations about environmentalism, despite the fact that we suffer from the triple threat of climatic, environmental and human rights crises. Our communities bear the brunt of the climate catastrophe, and this is especially true in the South Carolina Lowcountry where sea level rise threatens to wash away our Gullah Geechee homelands. Our relationship to environmental racism stretches back to the emergence of the local phosphate mining industry in the 1860’s and manifests today in the disproportionate exposure of Black and low income residents to environmental hazards. Today, Gullah Geechee communities disproportionately neighbor hazardous waste sites like landfills, sewage plants, incinerators and manufacturing facilities. Add to this gaping racial disparities rooted in the region’s history of chattel slavery, and it becomes clear why Black people should be the vanguard of the environmental movement.

Cooperation Jackson and the Black Environmentalist Movement

When people think about environmentalists, stereotypes about white, tree-hugging hippies come to mind. For Black environmentalist Kali Akuno, co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi, it is important for Black people to challenge these stereotypes by taking charge of the environmental movement. As someone who has closely followed the climate crisis, he calls attention to the fact that by 2050 the large portions of the Black Belt will be underwater if the predictions of environmental scientists are accurate. The Black Belt refers to the crescent shaped strip of fertile land in the Southeastern United States which has historically been home to an almost unbroken chain of majority (or near majority) Black counties stretching from Virginia to East Texas. It is the historic homeland of Africans trafficked to North America to build the wealth of this nation during the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and where the majority of their descendants still live today. According to Akuno, the land millions of Africans in North America currently occupy is some of the most vulnerable to climate change and, as such, Black people are most likely to be displaced as a result of climate change induced natural disasters. The rising costs of housing means finding new homelands for ourselves may prove an insurmountable task, which is why our stake in the environmental movement is so high.

Sitting less than 20 feet above sea level, Charleston, South Carolina is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise. For Gullah Geechee residents, the constant flooding, brought about by regular storms and unusually high tides, exacerbate the racial disparities we face. Flooding causes transportation delays and can mean missing work. It also causes property damage for residents whose homes flood constantly, as is the case for several public housing projects across the Charleston peninsula. Wading through flood waters can mean exposure to raw sewage, which can lead to adverse medical outcomes, medical expenses and the list goes on. For Black residents on fixed incomes, many of whom live below the poverty line, flooding is a constant nuisance and it’s only getting worse.

In the few weeks of lockdown we experienced during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic we saw how quickly the environment regenerated albeit temporarily. Industrial emissions dropped, the air became cleaner, as did waterways, migratory patterns of wildlife improved, and the list goes on. We saw that change is possible, but we live in a capitalist system that puts profits before people and the planet. We cannot afford to be silent and sit idly by while billionaires and private corporations continue to pollute our world and the people living on it to enrich themselves. Akuno says we’ve already surpassed the worst case scenario according to many climate models. Therefore to “curb ecological destruction,” Black people have a compound responsibility to organize against the systems that oppress us and take climate change seriously.

Learning from Cuba’s Fight Against Climate Change

We don’t have to reinvent the wheel in our effort to fight the climate crisis. We can learn from places like Cuba, a majority African, island nation in the Caribbean, that is largely the most sustainable country in the world. Cuba has embraced environmentalism like no nation has. It is the only country to meet the World Wildlife Fund’s definition of sustainable development. Its government has implemented policies to reduce the waste of natural resources and minimize its carbon footprint in the form of a successful 100 year plan to combat climate change called Tarea Vida (Life Task). Tarea Vida includes a ban on new home construction in potential flood zones, the introduction of heat-tolerant crops to cushion food supplies from droughts, and the restoration of Cuba’s sandy beaches to help protect the country against coastal erosion. Cuba is a leader in the environmental movement and all while struggling under an unjust and deadly 60+ year economic blockade imposed by the United States government.

Cuba underwent a successful, largely Black-led socialist revolution in the 1950’s, freed itself from the imperialist exploitation of the United States and naturalized its resources. In addition to leading the environmental movement, Cuba leads in medicine (sending doctors all over the world), has eradicated illiteracy, subsidized housing and food, has universal education from pre-K to PhD and is a shining example of what the world could be if we put people before profits. Although socialism in Cuba poses no threat to the United States, the government has kept the blockade in place and caused shortages in food, medicine, gas and other essential items at the expense of the Cuban people. Most recently, under the Trump administration, Cuba was added to the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list, further exacerbating shortages on the island.

In the face of all this, there are many parallels around the climate crisis between Cuba and Gullah Geechee communities in the South Carolina Lowcountry, e.g. soil erosion and sea level rise are clear. Additionally, when considering the racial disparities faced by Gullah Geechee people (and the entire Black Belt region), it is as if we, too, are living under a form of economic blockade. Africans in North America are more likely to face food and housing insecurities and less likely to have access to quality schools, day care, health services, and a living wage. We are more likely to be exposed to environmental hazards that expose us to adverse health outcomes and all of this is a direct result of the choices made by our bought and paid for government officials, both democrats and republicans alike. Yet, Cuba, the socialist capital of the western world, has shown us things do not have to be this way. For these reasons and more we should actively organize against the US economic blockade and the removal of Cuba from the SSOT list. The future of Gullah Geechee communities may literally depend on our ability to learn from Cuba’s people centered policies and innovations in environmental science.

Environmental Racism in North Charleston

The socio-economic state of the Gullah Geechee people is daunting and stretches back to the era of slavery. Africans in North America were never meant to be anything more than a source of cheap labor for Europeans to exploit. We were kidnapped, enslaved and trafficked here for our knowledge of rice agriculture and we transformed the landscape of the Southeast Atlantic coast from a vast expanse of Bottomland Hardwood Forests to a seemingly never ending complex of rice fields working in some of the harshest conditions as chattel slaves. As a result, Charleston became the richest city in colonial America and with the the largest slave port on the continent.

After the Civil War ended in 1865, phosphate mining became the most successful form of industry in the Lowcountry, replacing the major agricultural and textiles industries that could no longer be sustained due to the loss of the free labor of enslaved Africans. Since calcium phosphate was discovered in the beds of the Ashley River, it provided former the enslavers who owned this land an opportunity to “recoup some of their financial losses after the Civil War” by either selling their land, leasing it out to mining companies that began forming everywhere, or establishing mining companies of their own. The increasing demand for labor was quickly filled by newly “freed” Gullah Geechee people, who dominated this industry due to their being locally available and accustomed to working in the sub tropical Lowcountry climate.

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Though the rise and fall of the phosphate industry in South Carolina lasted roughly 20 years, the long term damage to the environment is still being felt today. This period marked the beginning of a long history of environmental racism in the Gullah Geechee community. Studies show that “exposure to these harmful conditions results in negative health outcomes, stressed communities, and reduction in quality of life and neighborhood sustainability.” The Environmental Protection Agency has identified many of these old mining and processing locations as hazardous waste sites. One such waterfront site in North Charleston, could potentially be developed into another heavy industrial boat manufacturing facility, but Black residents are actively fighting against this.

In 2015, the Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission (CCPRC) acquired the former Baker Hospital site off Azalea Drive in North Charleston with the intention of developing the 57 acre property into a waterfront park. It has since leased 11 acres to a local company called Sea Fox Boats. According to an online petition circulated in March 2024, although “The City of North Charleston has zoning in place that will keep industrial uses off of the park property,” CCPRC applied to change the zoning to either heavy or light industrial to accommodate their new lease agreement. CCPRC claims profits from the tenant will fund the environmental cleanup and development of the remaining 46 acres park site while representatives for Sea Fox claim the manufacturing plant will bring jobs to the community. Black residents like KJ Kearney, from communities surrounding the proposed park site, are pushing back on this saying they already have jobs and this segment of North Charleston has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the area. Others have said they don’t need or want heavy industry in their communities, particularly on a site that is already contaminated because of decades of industrial use. Jobs won’t matter if residents are sick from exposure to contaminants and they don’t want jobs that will lead to the death and destruction of the environment.

While North Charleston’s city planning commission voted to deny CCPRC’s recommendation to rezone the site in March, the ultimate decision is up to city council. On Thursday, April 18th, 2024, Black residents again voiced their concerns at a public meeting saying they felt left out of the decision making process. Yes, residents want a waterfront park in that area of North Charleston, but not at the expense of exacerbating environmental conditions and hazards. The controversy surrounding the Baker Hospital site is an example of environmental racism at its best. While proponents of Sea Fox push the narrative of job creation, Kearney says, “the community is not against jobs” rather they are against the idea that “the only value historically Black communities have to their city is as a labor force.” He went on to talk about how the plant will produce tons of hazardous air pollutants and that, for a community which ranks” in the 95 percentile for asthma,” that is a risk they cannot afford to take. He suggested that the paternalistic framing of the situation by Sea Fox supporters is clear– Black people should be grateful for the opportunity to work for a rich white man who wants to invest in their communities and simply ignore the impact of the plant on their quality of life. After a long and heated meeting, the council voted to postpone making a decision on the rezoning for another 60 days so the council can gather more information, but the people who live in this area have made their position clear.

While the city council in North Charleston is mostly Black and so is the new mayor, that is not enough to ensure the will of the people is carried out. The masses of Africans in the Lowcountry must continue to actively organize against this type of blatant environmental injustice to mitigate damage to our communities and the environment. We already suffer tremendously under the crushing weight of capitalism and its partners in crime (racism, white supremacy, sexism, gender bias, etc.), but this isn’t just about us. We know the success of our liberation struggles benefit all oppressed people. If we don’t act, the climate crisis will be the death knell that marks the permanent destruction of our communities. None of us will be free until all of us are free, but what use is freedom on a dead planet?

The authors represent the Lowcountry Action Committee, a Black led grassroots organization dedicated to Black liberation through service, political education, and collective action in the Lowcountry.

Sources

1. Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi, edited by Kali Akuno and Ajamu Nangwaya

2. “Is Pollution Poisoning Charleston’s African American and Low Income Communities?” https://charlestoncitypaper.com/2016/03/09/is-pollution-poisoning-charlestons-african-american-and-low-income-communities/

3. “Free the Land w/ Kali Akuno” Hood Communist Radio https://open.spotify.com/episode/789OXvt1LdjEJ5e8pFCMUp

4. The Black Belt Thesis: A Reader by the Black Belt Thesis Study Group

5. “Flooding Intensifies Charleston Region’s Racial and Wealth Inequalities” https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/flooding-intensifies-charleston-regions-racial-and-wealth-inequities

6. Could Covid lockdown have helped save the planet? https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/29/could-covid-lockdown-have-helped-save-the-planet

7. Cuba’s Life Task: Combatting Climate Change documentary by Helen Yaffe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APN6N45Q6iU

8. “Consequences of a Blockade of Cuba” 23 April 1962 Central Intelligence Agency https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79R00904A000800020016-7.pdf

9. “The State of Racial Disparities in Charleston County, South Carolina, 2000–2015” https://avery.charleston.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/The-State-of-Racial-Disparities-in-Charleston-County-SC-Rev.-11-14.pdf

10. History of the Corridor: Industry https://ashleyriverhistoriccorridor.org/history/industry/#:~:text=In%201883%20over%203%2C000%20African,well%20as%20state%20convict%20labor

11. History of the Corridor: Bulow/Long Savannah https://ashleyriverhistoriccorridor.org/sites/long-savannahbulow-plantation/

12. “A History of the Phosphate Mining Industry in the South Carolina Lowcountry” http://nationalregister.sc.gov/SurveyReports/hyphosphatesindustryLowcountry2SM.pdf

13. “Baker Hospital site to become a new county park” https://www.postandcourier.com/archives/baker-hospital-site-to-become-a-new-county-park/article_0630e058-999d-5de4-9319-5addea566537.html

14. “Public input process to start this winter for Charleston County Parks’ North Charleston Ashley River Site” https://www.ccprc.com/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/1423

15. “Preserve the Former Baker Hospital as a Park” https://www.change.org/p/preserve-the-former-baker-hospital-site-as-a-park?original_footer_petition_id=35513102&algorithm=promoted&source_location=petition_footer&grid_position=15&pt=AVBldGl0aW9uAEWcQgIAAAAAZe1wynNJJ%2BAxMzdmNTMxMQ%3D%3D

16. “N. Charleston argues plans for former Baker Hospital site, fate in council hands” https://www.live5news.com/2024/03/12/n-charleston-argues-plans-former-baker-hospital-site-fate-council-hands/

17. “Delay in North Charleston zoning decision fuels frustration over old Baker Hospital site” https://abcnews4.com/news/local/delay-in-north-charleston-zoning-decision-fuels-frustration-over-old-baker-hospital-site-south-carolina-wciv-news-4

The Exploitative Alliance: How Corporate Strategies and Union Investments Undermine Worker Security

[ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX NABAUM]

By Peter S. Baron

A major obstacle to the collective well-being of workers is how corporate employers connect retirement funds to the stock market. This linking means that workers bear the brunt, as publicly traded companies aim to maximize profitability through cost-cutting measures that negatively impact their wages, job security, and working conditions. Similarly, labor unions like the United Auto Workers (UAW) channel membership dues into investment funds that often hold stocks in the very companies they may confront or negotiate with.

Recent history has witnessed a significant transformation in the structure of labor's retirement portfolios; they are now primarily sustained by individual contributions, with companies only occasionally offering modest matching contributions. Individuals now shoulder the entire risk, while corporations benefit from reduced financial liabilities and greater predictability in managing retirement expenses. Insidiously, as corporations have shifted financial risk onto individuals, they have also directed these investments toward financial management behemoths. These entities hold control over each individual investor’s voting rights, effectively seizing the collective power of working-class retirement funds. This power is then leveraged to amplify the relentless profit-driven mechanisms at the core of capitalism. Running parallel, organized labor’s advocacy power has been undermined by union bureaucrats who have chosen to tether the union's financial health to the success of the same corporate giants it should be challenging, effectively making the union a complacent, and likely complicit, partner in the very corporate strategies that exploit its members. 

These financial realities, carefully engineered by corporations and meekly accepted by labor, are riddled with contradictions that reveal the blatant exploitation at the core of the elite’s oppression of workers. They serve as stark reminders that security and well-being, let alone collective liberation, won't come from corporate investment schemes or the leadership of corporate bureaucratic puppets, but only from the solidarity and unified strength of the workforce. The power to dismantle this exploitation lies in workers rejecting the illusion of corporate benevolence and instead building unwavering unity to reclaim their future through collective action.

Background

Traditionally, workers' retirement funds were managed through Defined Benefit (DB) plans, which ensured a stable pension for retirees and placed the investment risk on employers, who shouldered the costs of employees' retirement benefits. Though these DB plans were similarly invested in the stock market, the companies themselves were responsible for ensuring that the retirement fund has enough resources to meet those guaranteed payouts, meaning the employer must cover any shortfall if investment returns do not meet expectations. These plans became seen as economically burdensome by corporate executives who aimed to maintain steadily growing profits in an era marked by rapid market shifts and increasing global competition (https://livewell.com/finance/why-have-employers-moved-from-defined-benefit-to-defined-contribution-plans/).

The transition to 401(k) and other Defined Contribution (DC) plans offloaded these risks onto employees, fundamentally transforming the nature of retirement savings. Defined Contribution plans prioritize contributions over guaranteed payouts, requiring employers and workers to allocate set amounts into individual retirement accounts. With the employer no longer liable to provide a guaranteed income, workers must now shoulder the burden of their own retirement funding, gambling their hard-earned savings in the unpredictable stock market. Though favorable returns can occur, sustained gains are elusive due to regular market crashes that occur every six years on average. This means that when the market plummets, it's the employees who bear the brunt, not the employers, exposing workers' financial security to the whims of an unstable market while leaving them vulnerable to navigating a system designed to shift the risks and costs of retirement away from corporations.

The neoliberal ideological shift that encouraged employers to search for cost-cutting measures also aligned with broader economic changes, including a shift from manufacturing to service and IT sectors, where new companies were more likely to adopt DC plans. Furthermore, legislation like the Pension Protection Act of 2006 facilitated this transition by imposing stricter funding requirements on DB plans and enhancing the attractiveness of DC plans through various incentives (https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v69n3/v69n3p1.html).

Running parallel, the recent trend of labor unions—such as the massive United Auto Workers (UAW)—investing membership dues in the stock market, including in companies they might challenge or negotiate with, starkly illustrates how union bureaucracies are increasingly co-opted by the very corporate forces they are supposed to oppose. From the 1980s onward, the government-corporate alliance has evolved into a toxic web of aggressive market liberalization and ruthless deregulation. The calculated removal of oversight was a brazen move that handed corporations unchecked power while shredding public accountability. Worker protections were gutted, and investment returns soared on the backs of labor exploitation, as corporate greed flourished at the expense of those who toil.

The UAW, like many other unions, seized on the opportunity to increase their cash reserves and began channeling part of their dues and pension funds into the stock market. Superficially, this was a move to diversify and increase the assets available to serve and protect members. However, it effectively entangled the unions' financial interests with those of the very corporations they were meant to be monitoring and moderating, at the very least.

This alignment with corporate performance underscores a deeper ideological shift within the union bureaucracy, from champions of workers' rights to managers of complex financial portfolios. This shift has distanced the union's leadership from the everyday realities and immediate needs of their rank-and-file members, leading to decisions that favor long-term financial stability over aggressive advocacy for better wages, benefits, or working conditions.

In both scenarios, workers face a ridiculous contradiction: pursuing their true interest in collective emancipation from the exploitative capitalist class risks undermining their wages, benefits, and retirement savings.

The Paradox of Worker Investment in Corporate Profits

The transition from traditional pension plans to 401(k) plans encapsulates a critical transformation in the relationship between labor and capital, deeply embedded with ideological and material implications.

By investing their retirement savings in the stock market, workers are compelled to support, and indeed root for, the success of the very entities that exploit their labor. The corporate profits that boost their retirement funds are sourced directly from corporate strategies such as suppressing wages, reducing workforce sizes, and demanding increased productivity. This is effectively a transfer of wealth from workers to the rulers, who assume the title of “shareholders” and “executives.” Yet, this extraction of wealth is cleverly disguised as a harmless, or more often, benign, retirement savings scheme, misleading workers into passively acquiescing to their own exploitation.

Under the oppressive gears of capitalism, driven by the relentless hunger for perpetual growth, these savings plans don't just subtly coerce workers into endorsing their own exploitation—they force them to champion an ever-escalating cycle of exploitation. This vicious spiral is demanded by a system addicted to ceaseless profit increases year after year, chaining workers to a fate where they root for deeper cuts into their own flesh. Essentially, through these defined contribution plans, workers unwittingly empower their rulers to repeatedly enact the very cost-cutting measures that threaten their jobs, deny them raises, and increase their workload and hours.

Relinquishing Control

A troubling feature of 401(k) plans is the significant loss of control they impose on workers, who must hand over their financial decision-making to corporate giants like Vanguard, Blackrock, or State Street. Workers are compelled to hand over their retirement funds to corporations like Vanguard, Blackrock, or State Street because these financial goliaths contract with employers to manage 401(k) plans, effectively controlling the investment options and strategies available to employees. These management companies administer 401(k) plans, offering workers only a limited selection of investment options that are chosen to serve corporate goals rather than the financial needs or preferences of the employees themselves. This limited selection gives the appearance of choice, but in reality, it substantially diminishes workers' autonomy over their own retirement funds.

In other words, these managers make critical investment decisions without direct input from the workers, decisions that shape the potential growth and security of the workers' retirement savings. Consequently, workers are left on the sidelines, passive observers of their own financial destinies, reliant on the strategies and ethical considerations of entities that prioritize corporate profitability over individual security.

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Despite the fact that, collectively, the controlling stake in almost all publicly traded companies is technically "owned" by a broad base of worker-investors, the reality is starkly different. By channeling investments through entities like Vanguard, workers are stripped of any direct influence over corporate actions. When workers entrust their savings to financial behemoths like Vanguard, they effectively hand over their shareholder "voting rights," surrendering any semblance of control over the corporations their collective labor has built.

This arrangement starkly illustrates how capitalist structures co-opt workers’ assets for corporate gain, rendering them powerless in decisions that affect their own economic futures. Intermediaries like Vanguard wield our collective power to relentlessly pursue corporate profit growth, endorsing actions that ruthlessly undermine our interests as workers. They push for job cuts, relentless lobbying against fair wage laws, and environmental shortcuts—all leveraging our collective votes to bolster shareholder value at the expense of the very workforce that enables it.

The systemic channeling of worker investments into entities like Vanguard, Blackrock, and State Street is not merely a feature of modern financial management; it is a cornerstone of capitalist power dynamics. This process ensures that the vast pool of capital derived from workers' savings is used not to empower those workers as shareholders, but rather to fortify the very structures that oppress them. With our collective investments holding controlling stakes in nearly all publicly traded companies, the corporate elite deliberately divert this immense power into their own hands to maintain dominance. They design this system to crush any potential worker resistance, ensuring their agendas remain unchallenged while deepening economic disparities that empower the elite at the expense of the working majority.

Blindness to Class Antagonisms

The financialization of workers' savings essentially turns their labor into a commodity. By reducing their economic agency to numbers in an investment portfolio, workers are disconnected from the real outcomes of their own economic contributions. As their hard-earned money is invested in large capitalist enterprises, it's managed under the guise of seeking growth and security. However, this management actually reinforces the power structures that limit workers' autonomy and freedom.

Investment funds serve as tools that embed workers deeper within the capitalist system, presenting their subordinate position as a necessary efficiency rather than exploitation. This makes the process seem like prudent financial management, but it's really about maintaining the status quo. This creates a cognitive and practical dissonance, where the worker’s financial planning for the future is tied up with strategies that undermine their present livelihood and working conditions.

As workers see their retirement savings—invested in volatile stock markets—potentially jeopardized by decisive labor actions, there arises a rational general reluctance to engage in or support extensive strikes or vigorous protests. This caution stems from the fear that disrupting the market, even temporarily, could diminish their financial security, despite the potential long-term benefits such actions could have on improving working conditions.

Without the backing of unorganized laborers whose retirement funds are entrenched in the stock market, organized labor faces a much tougher challenge in gaining public support for substantial changes that would shift power from the elite to the people. This dynamic introduces a significant delay in the class struggle, reducing the momentum for radical change. Thus, the capitalist class gains a buffer period to adjust and refine oppressive strategies, reinforcing the status quo and perpetuating the cycle of worker exploitation, all while maintaining a facade of empowering workers through financial participation.

The capitalist class exploits this lag, not only through overt repression but also through more subtle forms of coercion. By shaping norms and expectations—such as the prioritization of market stability over the improvement of labor conditions—they manipulate workers into accepting, and even defending, a system that fundamentally works against their interests. This ideological control helps sustain the status quo, continually diverting attention from the systemic exploitation that underpins the capitalist system and muffling the calls for transformative change that might otherwise resonate through the working class. This clever manipulation of worker priorities ensures that any potential disruptions to capitalist accumulation are blunted, securing ongoing dominance by the ruling elites.

The UAW’s Investment Strategy and Worker Conflict

Even within organized labor contexts such as unions, bureaucratic structures often paralyze workers into a passive acceptance of a system that purports to aid their financial well-being while subtly undermining their real interests, just as unorganized laborers, with their retirement funds tied to the stock market, passively support the corporate entities they should be challenging. In unions, this dynamic is replicated through bureaucratic controls that bind workers to the same detrimental financial entanglements, ensuring that even within organized frameworks, the mechanisms ostensibly designed to empower workers instead reinforce their submission to a system that undermines their genuine interests.

For example, the UAW bureaucratic apparatus derives a substantial portion of its revenue from indirect auto company subsidies and Wall Street investments. These funds have been used not just for operational costs but to swell the ranks of its high-paid staff and finance extravagant leadership conferences, from which the ordinary union member is conspicuously absent.

Dues from UAW members are funneled into various mutual funds and stocks globally, including stakes in companies whose workers are represented by the union. In essence, the auto workers' union is investing in the very companies they are negotiating with for better wages and conditions! Notably, the UAW also has investments in notorious hedge funds like Bardin Hill Investment Partners and Kohlberg Investors IX, firms infamous for harsh worker cuts, operating out of places like the Cayman Islands. Thus, the UAW is investing in both the employers that exploit their own members and in corporate entities that extract wealth from workers generally.

As a result, net spending for the UAW, excluding strike payouts, escalated dramatically from $258 million in 2022 to $318.4 million in 2023, with compensation for headquarters staff rising from $52.57 million to nearly $59 million. This investment strategy has undeniably benefitted from the stock market's recent boom, driven largely by Wall Street's aggressive undermining of the working class's social standing, particularly through widespread layoffs, wage suppression, and the denial or reduction of benefits.

Ostensibly, these vast reserves bolster the UAW's strike fund, yet strikes are rarely called and are often restricted in scope. Last year's "stand up strike" saw most auto workers continue to labor, while the employers’ revenues actually increased. The strike fund, rather than serving as a militant tool against corporate power, increasingly appears as a financial cushion for the union bureaucratic elite, not the workers it claims to represent.

This arrangement embodies a conflict: while the union fights for better wages and conditions, its financial health and the ability of its strike fund to grow are largely dependent on the prosperity of the same corporate entities they may be contesting. This interdependence complicates the union’s role and its strategies in advocating for workers' rights.

Conflict Between Worker Advocacy and Financial Interests

The financial maneuvers of the UAW, particularly its investments in the very companies its members labor under, reveal a stark betrayal orchestrated by union elites. These leaders—career unionists who have risen through the ranks—are entrenched in safeguarding their own positions, power, and privileges at the expense of the rank-and-file workers they claim to represent. These bureaucratic elites have distanced themselves from the daily struggles of the workforce, becoming gatekeepers who often suppress radical initiatives that could genuinely empower workers.

This leadership stratum, with its grip firmly on the union’s strategic levers, has consistently shunned aggressive labor actions that might jeopardize their investment portfolios and their cozy relationships with corporate powerhouses, or possibly even invite state backlash. Their risk-averse, conservative tactics dilute the potential for revolutionary changes, favoring instead incrementalistic policies that do little more than maintain the status quo. In negotiations, these leaders are quick to prioritize job security over substantial wage increases or essential adaptations to industry evolution, such as retraining for emerging technologies. This strategy goes beyond mere conservatism; it is actively complicit. It represents a deliberate choice by a self-interested bureaucratic elite to align with corporations and a co-opted state, entities that actively resist transformative changes.

Reflection

The seismic shift from defined benefit (DB) plans to defined contribution (DC) plans marks a significant transformation in the landscape of worker retirement security. This transition encapsulates a broader trend in the neoliberal economic agenda, prioritizing market solutions and individual responsibility over collective welfare and guaranteed benefits. By shifting the burden of retirement savings to individuals, workers find themselves compelled to invest in and support the very corporate systems that may undermine their job security and wage growth. The involvement of financial giants like Vanguard in managing these investments exemplifies a deep entrenchment of capitalist interests in workers' lives. These firms, by controlling vast pools of retirement funds, not only influence corporate governance but also align workers' financial futures with the health of the stock market and corporate profitability, effectively muting potential collective dissent against exploitative practices.

In parallel, the role of unions like the UAW in this financialized landscape reveals a troubling convergence of interests between union leadership and corporate power. As unions invest in the stock market, including in companies they negotiate with, there arises a conflict between advocating for robust labor rights and maintaining the financial performance of their investments. This duality suggests a corrosion of union solidarity, driven by a bureaucratic elite more attuned to the fluctuations of the market than to the struggles of the rank-and-file members. Such dynamics underscore a broader erosion of labor power, where the traditional role of unions as bulwarks against corporate excess is compromised, making them less a force for challenging the status quo and more a part of the financial systems they should be critiquing.

It's time to disengage from these capitalist structures that exploit us and instead cultivate solidarity rooted in class consciousness. Only by recognizing our collective power and prioritizing mutual welfare can we dismantle the financial machinery that subjugates workers and reclaim our future.

Peter S. Baron is the author of “If Only We Knew: How Ignorance Creates and Amplifies the Greatest Risks Facing Society” (https://www.ifonlyweknewbook.com) and is currently pursuing a J.D. and M.A. in Philosophy at Georgetown University.