Q: Are American workers complicit in American imperialism? Do we benefit from it? I have a professor who calls himself a Marxist and has been making this argument. Does The Communist agree with him?
A: The imperialists speak about “American interests” and “American values.” They want to blur the class lines in society, to convince American workers to support American capitalists. Prior to invading Iraq, George W. Bush said, “If you are not with us, you are against us.”
But who is “us”?
Anyone with eyes can see the American working class is struggling. 77% of us live paycheck to paycheck. Rents, food prices, healthcare costs, and homelessness are historically high—and rising.
47 million Americans go hungry each year, including one in every five children. We suffer more and worse climate disasters. Infrastructure, schools, and hospitals crumble. The general misery is palpable on everyone’s commute to work.
Endless wars don’t only devastate countless other countries. They also bring home impoverished, PTSD-stricken veterans, and cause endless suffering for the families of dead soldiers—who, let’s remember, are mostly workers who had no other job options.
Imperialist lies
Harold Daggett, president of the International Longshoreman’s Association said, “ILA stands for ‘I Love America!’” to justify workers handling military cargo during a strike last year. / Image: ILA, Facebook
Meanwhile, the billionaires, bankers, and warmongers have never been wealthier. They rake in trillions from their wars and economic predation.
This is why they lie. Their schemes would never be accepted if they said, “We are going to have workers of different countries kill each other so we can make billions.” They lie to serve, not some mythical “American interests” in the abstract, but the interests of the American capitalist class—interests completely opposed to those of the American working class.
This is clear as day in a country like the US, which spends $892 billion on its military every year. Meanwhile, it would cost only $20 billion to end homelessness, $25 billion to end hunger, and $350 billion to provide everyone with healthcare. This amounts to less than half of the military budget.
Capitalist society is divided into opposing classes. This is what communists must expose every day.
Our duty, as Lenin said, is to “patiently explain” how the working class has no interest in defending “its own” national ruling class. As John Peterson, the Executive Editor of The Communist, wrote in our new book Colossus, “Class independence is our magnetic north.”
This means that communists defend the interests of the working class and clarify how these are opposed to the interests of the capitalists. But the working class is not yet organized around a revolutionary party with clear anti-imperialist politics. This party is still in the early stages of being built.
In the meantime, the workers’ movement is dominated by leaders who are “safe bets” for the capitalist class. As Lenin explained in Imperialism, the vast majority of proletarians don’t benefit from imperialism. But reformist union leaders and social-democratic apparatchiks—along with a small upper stratum of the working class—do indeed live off crumbs from the capitalists’ table. In exchange, they play a despicable role in the workers’ movement by defending capitalist ideas within it.
For example, Sean Fain, president of the United Auto Workers supports Trump’s tariffs, and Harold Daggett, president of the International Longshoreman’s Association said, “ILA stands for ‘I Love America!’” to justify workers handling military cargo during a strike last year.
Crisis of leadership
This is precisely what Trotsky meant when he said that the historical crisis of humanity is the crisis of the leadership of the proletariat. Reformist “leaders” don’t actually lead the working class at all. Instead, they act as mediators between the classes, striving to keep us complacent and in line with the imperialist policies of the class enemy. This is a crime.
Things don’t get much better if we look at the “left,” as represented by your learned professor. These petty-bourgeois intellectuals throw around radical-sounding phrases, like “imperial core,” “anti-imperialism,” or even “Marxism.” But they draw the same conclusion as the imperialists: that American workers and bosses have the same interests.
If we accept your professor’s argument, then it is not in the interest of American workers to fight American imperialism. Somehow, despite our miserable and declining living standards, we must be benefiting from “our” ruling class’s relentless plundering of more backwards countries. If we were to fight against imperialism, we would be hurting our own interests. This idea is reactionary from start to finish! It is in the material interests of the working class in the US to fight imperialism. As part of a world socialist federation, the productive forces would massively develop and the standard of living would rise for all workers across the world.
Some might find this confusing. Surely, we’re all “leftists” and anti-imperialists? As you can see, there’s anti-imperialism and there’s anti-imperialism, and there is a world of difference between “the left,” and the working class. The “left” lacks any type of class outlook, and this leads them to all sorts of class-collaborationist mistakes, whether or not their intentions are good.
Communists are not confused about where we stand. We fight for workers in the US and the whole world. Unlike your professor, who is almost certainly a demoralized pessimist with no program or strategy to offer anyone, we have the utmost confidence in the world working class, and are armed with a program that can end imperialism and capitalism once and for all. If that sounds good to you and your peers, then join us at the next meeting of your nearest communist cell!