US imperialism: a colossus with feet of clay

The following is an excerpt from a new title, Colossus: The Rise and Decline of US Imperialism, written by John Peterson, chief editor of The Communist – paper of the Revolutionary Communists of America. The book provides an introduction to Lenin’s classic writings on imperialism and war with modern figures, following the rise and relative decline of US imperialism. As revolutionaries it is our duty to study this history and arm ourselves with the theoretical weapons to overthrow capitalism in the United States and around the globe.

[Originally published at communistusa.org]

Pax Americana is finished

We are living through the death spasms of a socioeconomic system in terminal decline. American imperialism’s postwar order lies in tatters, and the capitalists sit on a seething cauldron of working-class anger in every country on Earth. Neither the liberals nor the conservatives can offer a way forward, and there is no mass class-independent outlet for the distorted and deepening polarization. This explains the rise of Trumpism, the desperation of the liberals, the intensification of imperialist rivalries—and the rising interest in communism.

As the New York Times correctly noted in the aftermath of the 2024 election:

Mr. Trump’s victory amounts to a public vote of no confidence in the leaders and institutions that have shaped American life since the end of the Cold War 35 years ago …

If Mr. Trump and his coalition fail to create something better than what they have replaced, they will suffer the same fate they’ve inflicted on the fallen Bush, Clinton and Cheney dynasties. A new force for creative destruction will emerge, possibly on the American left.

For several decades after World War II, the capitalists could afford to buy relative class peace. A prolonged economic upswing accelerated capitalist economic integration, and two mighty superpowers dominated the planet. Despite its enormous power and reach, American imperialism was counterbalanced by Russian Stalinism and the deformed workers’ states under its aegis.

However, with the fall of the Soviet Union, US imperialism became the unchallenged master of the “New World Order.” Giddy with greed, the US ruling class announced the “end of history” and dreamed of “full-spectrum dominance” and “unipolar hegemony.” Some even referred to the US as a “crusader state.”

The American bourgeois truly believed they could remake the world, not only in the image of capitalism, but in the image of the United States. With capitalism already dominating half the planet, they thought it would be child’s play to impose their institutions and “values” on the rest of it. This arrogant optimism was reflected in Thomas Friedman’s 1996 assertion that “No two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.”

When institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization proved insufficient, the US Army, Marines, Air Force, and Navy were always held in reserve.

But everything eventually turns into its opposite. The so-called Pax Americana is finished, and the American Dream has been flushed down the toilet. The pace of history has accelerated, and the tectonic plates of world relations have shifted.

In less than thirty years, the post-Cold War order they imagined would last for centuries has unraveled. Instead of the promised “peace dividend” of post-Soviet prosperity, a new arms race has been unleashed and quality of life in the West has plummeted. Once the world’s biggest lender, the US is now its biggest debtor, living on borrowed money and time. In fiscal year 2024, the US federal government spent $892 billion on debt-servicing interest payments alone—more than the official military budget.

The productive forces have outgrown the artificial limits of the system and the objective conditions for building a new world are beyond rotten ripe. Due to the belated socialist revolution, many unforeseeable contradictions have been introduced to the equation and humanity has been dragged into a new epoch of war, revolution, and counterrevolution. Trade wars, cold wars, and hot wars are the new normal as China, Russia, and others attempt to expand their spheres of influence.

As the director of the CIA recently wrote:

China’s rise and Russia’s revanchism pose daunting geopolitical challenges in a world of intense strategic competition in which the United States no longer enjoys uncontested primacy and in which existential climate threats are mounting. Complicating matters further is a revolution in technology even more sweeping than the Industrial Revolution or the beginning of the nuclear age.

The CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, is also pessimistic about the future:

Recent events show that conditions are treacherous and getting worse. There is significant human suffering, and the outcome of these situations could have far-reaching effects on both short-term economic outcomes and more importantly on the course of history … several critical issues remain, including large fiscal deficits, infrastructure needs, restructuring of trade, and remilitarization of the world.

And according to the analysts at Verisk-Maplecroft:

In 2024, the global risk landscape will remain locked in a process of sweeping realignment that is amplifying a complex set of systemic risks that are increasingly transcending borders and sectors.

The top risk they identify is “geo-economic fragmentation”—a fancy word for rising protectionism and a reversal of global economic connections. Or, as some have called it, “slowbalization,” a process that has accelerated over the last decade. According to the World Bank: “This process [of unraveling] encompasses different channels, including trade, capital, and migration flows.”

After decades of increasing economic interdependence, we now have “reshoring,” “nearshoring,” and “friendshoring,” as the capitalists balance maximizing profits with risk exposure on their investments. This, in turn, has impacted Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), part of the lifeblood of capitalist globalization. As Global Finance magazine explained:

As recent history has consistently demonstrated, there is nothing more certain than uncertainty. A pandemic, geopolitical tensions, trade frictions, and even armed conflict have complicated the landscape for global foreign direct investment, leaving business leaders with no clear signals as they set priorities and make critical investment decisions outside their borders.

85% of investors polled said rising geopolitical tensions would impact their investment decisions, with 36% saying the impact would be “significant.” An incredible 96% of CEOs polled have reshored already, or were considering doing so.

By some estimates, FDI fell by 12% in 2022, another 7% in 2023, and as of mid-2024, the total remained below pre-pandemic levels. There have also been significant shifts in where FDI is going, with countries like Mexico and Morocco seeing substantial increases due to their proximity to the American and European markets. The explanation is simple enough: the bourgeois invest to make money, not for the sake of it. If the risk is too high and the profits are too low, they will look for safer and more profitable alternatives.

Needless to say, the national capitalists are backed in their foreign ventures by their respective states as they seek to gain an advantage. In pursuit of this, they weaponize trade, offer incentives to friends, and impose penalties on rivals. And when push comes to shove, they rattle their sabers, dispatch assassins, or launch cruise missiles.

That being said, imperialism is neither monolithic nor consistent. While there may be an inherent bias towards the threat or use of military force at the highest levels of the US government, the bureaucracy of state is riven by conflicting interests and views on how best to navigate the fractious world confronting the bourgeoisie.

The myriad ways in which economics, war, and the class struggle relate to one another—and US imperialism’s unique role in all of this—is the focus of what follows.

Concentrated economics

As Marx explained, it is the economic and class relations of a society that determine its parameters and limits:

In the social production of their existence, people inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.

The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of people that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto.

From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead, sooner or later, to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.

In other words, although there is a dialectical interrelationship between many moving parts, it is ultimately the contradictions built into the capitalist economy that lie behind the rising class struggle, instability, and intensification of imperialist rivalries we see everywhere today.

Lenin concisely summed up this profound idea with the phrase, “Politics is a concentrated expression of economics.” For Marxists, is ultimately an expression of the class struggle. Military power is ultimately a function of economic power and the class balance of forces. As Lenin showed, it is really through finance capital, not overt military might, that imperialism dominates our lives day in and day out.

Foreign policy is merely an extension of domestic policy—and vice versa. Just as individual capitalists are compelled, on pain of extinction, to expand their capital and maximize returns on their investments, every imperialist state does the same for its collective national capitalists in the world arena.

Capitalist imperialism rests upon the defense of private property of the means of production and the constant expansion of finance capital. It pursues this by any means necessary: alliances, treaties, embargoes, invasions, occupations, and annexations.

In the course of capitalist production and exchange, we see the rise, fall, and interminable changing of place of the petty and big bourgeoisie. Some small companies are transformed into giants, while former Goliaths fall into ruin. Likewise, the imperialist powers exist on a spectrum, and they jockey constantly to shift the balance of power between them. At times, these transitions occur without too much disruption; at others, they lead to all-out war.

One example is the “Great Game” of the mid-19th century, during which the British and Russian Empires fought for supremacy in Central Asia—a “game” that treated millions of people like pawns on a chessboard.

All serious imperialists understand that abstract morality has nothing to do with it. Capitalist morality is all about money, markets, and power, regardless of the human cost. As Lord Palmerston famously stated: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

Lenin concisely summed up a profound idea with the phrase, “Politics is a concentrated expression of economics” / Image: public domain

Or, as Winston Churchill put it in 1939, “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interests.”

Leonard Wood, who served as Military Governor during the US occupation of Cuba, saw the question of political stability on the island as a function of “business confidence.” As he wrote the US Secretary of War, “When money can be borrowed at a reasonable rate of interest and when capital is willing to invest in the island, a condition of stability will have been reached.”

And as the retired general-turned-anti-war activist Smedley Butler put it,

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. In China, I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

As Marx explained, “the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” And as Engels added, the “bodies of armed men” of the state, including the police and the army, are the enforcers of those common affairs, both at home and abroad.

Concentrated economics and the fundamental unity between foreign and domestic policy are the essence of imperialism, and the US is no exception. Whether directly or indirectly, the state has played a decisive role in nurturing the development of American capitalism at every stage of its history.

Why we need a class analysis

Capitalism breeds class struggle at home and abroad; just as you can’t have a revolution without counterrevolution, you can’t have imperialism without anti-imperialism. But not all anti-imperialism is equal.

There are reformist “anti-imperialists” of various stripes who believe in a “kinder, gentler” capitalism without militarism. Lacking an understanding of the class basis of imperialism, they view the world through filters such as “periphery versus core” or “Global North versus Global South.”

Some, like the late Antonio Negri, explicitly deny the existence of capitalist imperialism and propose the amorphous concept of “Empire” instead. Instead of a world of inter- and intra-class contradictions, including rivalries between imperialist nation-states, Negri sees a “decentralized network of power that encompasses the entire globe operating through global institutions, corporations, and cultural influences rather than through direct territorial control.”

However, the horrors of imperialism are not due to bad people or bad policies. They flow from the class divisions endemic to capitalism, the market economy, and the nation-state. They cannot be understood in the abstract or done away with in isolation. Moreover, an analysis not rooted in class leads inevitably to class collaboration and illusions in the trap of lesser evilism.

As we have seen, the foreign policy of capitalism is imperialist. Just as you can have capitalists large and small, you can have imperialist powers at different scales in different contexts in different regions, and their relations with each other can be highly convoluted. New imperialist powers and blocs of powers can emerge while others decline, and even relatively small powers can have an imperialist policy in their near abroad.

Remember: the US was also once “merely” a regional power. What matters, above all, is not a country’s size, but the class content and intent of its ruling class.

During the Balkan Wars in the early 20th century, Trotsky even considered countries like Bulgaria imperialist. As he wrote in 1912,

Bulgarian imperialism is of recent origin but is all the more bellicose and reckless for that. The Bulgarian bourgeoisie came late on the scene and at once began vigorously using its elbows in order to get ahead.

At the time, Bulgaria only had a population of around 4.4 million. How much more “vigorous with its elbows” can a country like China be, with its 1.4 billion people, no matter how late it came onto the imperialist scene? Nowadays, even countries like Sweden and Denmark qualify as imperialist, even if they are only in 23rd and 37th place, respectively, when it comes to GDP.

New imperialist powers and blocs of powers can emerge while others decline, and even relatively small powers can have an imperialist policy in their near abroad / Image: public domain

Marxists take a class position at all times and are not obliged to “choose sides” when it comes to inter-imperialist conflicts, no matter what the bourgeois media or the so-called left say. As Trotsky emphasized, quoting from Lenin’s writings on the question:

The objective historical meaning of the war is of decisive importance for the proletariat: What class is conducting it? And for the sake of what? This is decisive, and not the subterfuges of diplomacy by means of which the enemy can always be successfully portrayed to the people as an aggressor.

Just as false are the references by imperialists to the slogans of democracy and culture:

“The German bourgeoisie … deceives the working class and the toiling masses by vowing that the war is being waged for the sake of … freedom and culture, for the sake of freeing the peoples oppressed by Tsarism. The English and French bourgeoisies … deceive the working class and the toiling masses by vowing that they are waging war … against German militarism and despotism.”

A political superstructure of one kind or another cannot change the reactionary economic foundation of imperialism. On the contrary, it is the foundation that subordinates the superstructure to itself.

“In our day … it is silly even to think of a progressive bourgeoisie, a progressive bourgeois movement. All bourgeois democracy … has become reactionary.”

This appraisal of imperialist “democracy” constitutes the cornerstone of the entire Leninist conception.

In The Transitional Program, Trotsky elaborated further on how to apply a class analysis to war:

Imperialist war is the continuation and sharpening of the predatory politics of the bourgeoisie. The struggle of the proletariat against war is the continuation and sharpening of its class struggle. The beginning of war alters the situation and partially the means of struggle between the classes, but not the aim and basic course. The imperialist bourgeoisie dominates the world. In its basic character, the approaching war will therefore be an imperialist war.

The fundamental content of the politics of the international proletariat will consequently be a struggle against imperialism and its war. In this struggle, the basic principle is: “the chief enemy is in your own country” or “the defeat of your own (imperialist) government is the lesser evil.”

However, not all countries of the world are imperialist countries. On the contrary, the majority are victims of imperialism. Some of the colonial or semi-colonial countries will undoubtedly attempt to utilize the war to cast off the yoke of slavery. Their war will not be imperialist but liberating. It will be the duty of the international proletariat to aid the oppressed countries in their war against oppressors. The same duty applies in regard to aiding the USSR, or whatever other workers’ government might arise before the war or during the war. The defeat of every imperialist government in the struggle with the workers’ state or with a colonial country is the lesser evil.

The workers of imperialist countries, however, cannot help an anti-imperialist country through their own government, no matter what the diplomatic and military relations between the two countries might be at a given moment. If the governments find themselves in a temporary and, by the very essence of the matter, unreliable alliance, then the proletariat of the imperialist country continues to remain in class opposition to its own government and supports the non-imperialist “ally” through its own methods, i.e., through the methods of the international class struggle (agitation not only against their perfidious allies but also in favor of a workers’ state in a colonial country; boycott, strikes, in one case; rejection of boycott and strikes in another case, etc.)

In supporting the colonial country or the USSR in a war, the proletariat does not in the slightest degree solidarize either with the bourgeois government of the colonial country or with the Thermidorian bureaucracy of the USSR. On the contrary, it maintains full political independence from the one as from the other. Giving aid in a just and progressive war, the revolutionary proletariat wins the sympathy of the workers in the colonies and in the USSR, strengthens there the authority and influence of the Fourth International, and increases its ability to help overthrow the bourgeois government in the colonial country, the reactionary bureaucracy in the USSR.

In contrast to the reformists who would tinker with capitalism while leaving it fundamentally untouched, the comrades of the RCI are revolutionary anti-imperialists. We understand that only the total overthrow of capitalism through the socialist revolution can liberate humanity from this horror without end.