It is a “rite of passage” for newly radicalized socialists or communists in the US to learn about the bloodstained reality of American history and foreign policy.

Having been told all our lives that the US government is a force for peace, democracy, and human rights around the world, it is scandalizing to learn the real story: one of coups, assassinations, imperialist invasions, and all manner of flagrant disregard for the rights of the oppressed and exploited.

It is absolutely correct and necessary to expose the hypocrisy of the ruling class, and to make our comrades, coworkers, friends, and family aware of American imperialism’s countless historical crimes.

And yet, left-leaning people often seem to continue grouping themselves with the US ruling class when they talk about this history! Sincere socialists and communists will talk about how “we” overthrew the Allende government in Chile, or how “we” dropped nuclear bombs on Japanese civilians, or how “we” invaded Iraq for its oil, or how “we” are funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

But did any worker have an opportunity to vote for these things? Did any of us have any say whatsoever? No. We live under the dictatorship of the capitalist class, a system in which all of the important decisions—including and especially the most heinous crimes, invasions, coups, killings, etc.—are taken in closed-door meetings by unelected officials and/or in corporate boardrooms.

We, the working class, had no say, and we take no responsibility for the crimes of US imperialism. They—the US ruling class, the US imperialists, the US capitalist government—are the ones responsible for all of that. This is not “our” system, this is not “our” economy,” and these are not “our” wars. It’s their system, their economy, and their wars. That all belongs to the capitalists—a decadent, historically regressive class that we have nothing in common with.

Lenin, the great Russian Marxist and revolutionary, was always careful to imbue even his most casual conversations with this sharp class line. Here is how Trotsky describes Lenin’s uncompromising class-independent worldview—on stark display in their first encounter:

I arrived in London from Zurich by way of Paris, in the autumn of 1902 . . . My destination was Lenin’s house . . .

Either the same or the next morning, Vladimir Ilyich and I went for a long walk around London. From a bridge, Lenin pointed out Westminster and some other famous buildings. I don’t remember the exact words he used, but what he conveyed was: “This is their famous Westminster,” and “their” referred of course not to the English but to the ruling classes. This implication, which was not in the least emphasized, but coming as it did from the very innermost depths of the man, and expressed more by the tone of his voice than by anything else, was always present, whether Lenin was speaking of the treasures of culture, of new achievements, of the wealth of books in the British Museum, of the information of the larger European newspapers, or, years later, of German artillery or French aviation. They know this or they have that, they have made this or achieved that—but what enemies they are! To his eyes, the invisible shadow of the ruling classes always overlay the whole of human culture—a shadow that was as real to him as daylight. (Leon Trotsky, My Life)