This July (2026), we will be subjected to official celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and this much-proclaimed “great country” which has been inspired by this Declaration.

As a basic response to this, there is the following simple but profound truth about this country:

Any country which began with its foundation in slavery (and genocide against the native peoples); which maintained, and expanded, slavery (on land stolen from native peoples and Mexico) for nearly 100 years after its founding; which for another 100 years after the Civil War carried out thousands of lynchings of Black people, with mass celebrations of this, including the selling of postcards of lynchings throughout the country; which still has thousands of monuments to the Confederacy and white supremacy; and which today continues racist oppression in every dimension of society, enforced by continuing police terror—any such country has absolutely no claim to any positive celebration of itself or its history and heritage!¹

In Part 2 of this series on the Declaration of Independence, I summarized what, in reality, was the actual nature of the conflict that led to the American Revolution, and what was the nature of the system that emerged in the “United States” of America as a result of this Revolution:

[I]n basic and essential terms this involved the increasingly antagonistic conflict between two different exploitative and oppressive forces: on one side, the British empire, headed by a king, and on the other side, American slave-owners, along with merchants and other elements of the developing capitalist class. As I stated clearly in my recent work HUMANITY ON THE BRINK:

At the beginning of this country, at the initiation of the war of independence (which they like to call a revolutionary war), it was declared that “all men are created equal.” But the whole history of this country from that time forward has proven that it is definitely not the case within this country that there is equality for all. Even at the time when the Declaration of Independence and then the Constitution were written, there were huge numbers of slaves. There were Native Americans whose land was being stolen and who were being subjected to genocidal atrocity. There were women who basically had no rights, and certainly none equal to men....[P]eople without property...didn’t have the same rights as rich men....

There was, in short, a system of exploitation which was given further impetus by breaking free of British colonialism.²

Also in Part 2 of this series, as indicated by its title—“Rights Are Not ‘Endowed’ By ‘God,’ And ‘To Secure These Rights’ Is Not the Reason Governments Are Established”—I dissected and refuted this famous passage from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.

In this final Part 3 of this series, I will further examine inventions and distortions of reality and history which, along with the Declaration of Independence, have been wielded in the service of—or, in any case, have served as a “cover” for—real and repeated atrocity (including the rank American Supremacist rationalization: “Ok, this country has many faults and many bad things have been done in and by this country—but it is still far better than any other country”).

What Was “Brought Forth” through the American Revolution Was Not a New Nation “Conceived in Liberty,” and Not a Nation “Dedicated to the Proposition that All Men Are Created Equal.” 

This is a reference to famous lines from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered in November, 1863, at a crucial point in the Civil War:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal....we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

What I have already indicated here (and examined more fully in the previous article in this series) reveals clearly that neither the American Revolution of 1776, nor the Civil War in the 1860s, was actually fought to establish, or to preserve, “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” The essential “liberty” brought about through the American Revolution was the removal of the constraints that the British empire enforced on the slave-owners and developing capitalists in the colonies, who were the “fathers” and basic beneficiaries of this Revolution.

Yes, for the reasons I examined in Part 2, the Civil War did eventually lead to the abolition of slavery (and in that sense did bring about “a new birth of freedom”). But “freeing the slaves” was not Lincoln’s initial intent in this Civil War—and this came about only as “it became clear that the basic interests of the northern states required the abolition of slavery.”³

Further, as also analyzed in Part 2:

On the one hand, the defeat of the Confederacy did result in the preservation of the country as a whole, with slavery outlawed. But, at the same time, after a brief period of Reconstruction (beginning in the mid-1860s, with the end of the Civil War), which provided certain basic rights for Black people, this was reversed only a decade later, with Black people subjected once more to the vicious exploitation of white plantation owners (many of them former slave-owners) and the terror of the Ku Klux Klan and the power structure in the South in particular, with the collaboration of the ruling capitalist class as a whole.⁴

With regard to the notion that what has existed (and exists today) in this country is “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” as I have shown in this series, what actually existed at the beginning of the country was government—and more especially state power, an actual dictatorship—of the slave-owners and developing capitalists. And, since the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, what has existed is government and state power of, by, and for the capitalist system and its ruling class—a system which has now developed into the extremely parasitic system of capitalism-imperialism, resting not just on the exploitation of people in this country but the even more vicious and predatory super-exploitation of literally billions of people, including 150 million children, throughout the world, in particular the Third World of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. (All this is analyzed in depth in the essay by Raymond Lotta Imperialist Parasitism and Class-Social Recomposition in the U.S. From the 1970s to Today: An Exploration of Trends and Changes, which is available at revcom.us.) 

The “Divine Right of Kings” and “Democracy”—Two “Cohering Mythologies” of Two Different Systems of Exploitation

This is the title of a section in my 2010 work Birds Cannot Give Birth to Crocodiles, But Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon. The reality captured in this statement (about “two cohering mythologies”) is concentrated in the following:

In feudal society, it was "natural" that everyone had their particular place....And then there is "the divine right of kings," a cornerstone of feudal society. This was considered such an outrage by bourgeois revolutionaries and bourgeois theoreticians. Recently, I was reading Thomas Paine again, and he goes on and on about what an absurd and criminal idea the divine right of kings and hereditary role of kings is....

Well, yes, this condemnation of the "divine right of kings" is understandable, from the point of view of the rising bourgeoisie....To them that really was an absurd and criminal idea—the divine right of kings and the absolute order of things as established in such a way that to try to change it would be to go against the very fabric of reality and of the universe as ordained by God and maintained by God's will. As much as those bourgeois theoreticians saw this as absurd and outrageous, in the feudal order it was just the opposite: to rebel against the king, the monarch, was to rebel against God and the God-ordained order. And everyone, from the nobles to the serfs, was supposed to know their role and play their role accordingly and appropriately.

Now, if we move a little bit further away from the bourgeois era and look back on it from the historical perspective of where things need to go and can go...we can see that the great talisman* of bourgeois democracy, elections and the right of the governed to choose those who govern them, in fact, in the reality of the functioning of bourgeois society, has no more absolute legitimacy than the divine right of kings. It is just another form in which the needs and interests of the ruling class are asserted in this particular kind of society, and a mechanism through which...the interests of the ruling class are maintained and enforced. It is their version—DEMOCRACY, ELECTIONS is, in effect, their version—of the divine right of kings. It is a cohering mythology of a certain system. It's not mythology that they have elections, it's mythology what those elections are purported to be all about and what happens through them. In reality, they are not an expression of "the will" or "the sovereignty" of "the people," but an expression of the process through which the capitalist class maintains its system of exploitation and its domination, its dictatorship, over the classes and groups in society that it exploits and oppresses. (Emphasis added here. *“Talisman” refers to something that is believed to have magical power.)⁵

(In Part 2 of this series—and in the works referenced there—I go more fully into how the electoral process under this system is not an expression of "the will" or "the sovereignty" of "the people," but an expression of the process through which the capitalist class maintains its system of exploitation and its domination, its dictatorship, over the classes and groups in society that it exploits and oppresses.)

In the current situation, with the openly tyrannical rule of the Trump regime, there is a widely expressed sentiment that what this regime represents is an attempt to return to the rule of a “king” (Trump). But, as much as this sentiment has mobilized masses of decent people in protest against this regime, and many of its atrocities, this idea that the Trump regime somehow represents a return to the rule of a “king” is as outdated as the notion of “the divine right of kings” itself. This is not the time of the American Revolution (250 years ago), when rebellion against the rule of a king served as a mobilizing factor in that Revolution which (as I have analyzed in this series, in particular Part 2) led to the rule of slave-owners and developing capitalists in the emerging “United States” of America. Today, it is the capitalist system (which has developed into the system of international exploitation, capitalism-imperialism) that is completely outmoded, and the essential understanding of what is happening now in this country is contained in the following from Part 2 of this series:

And now, a section of that ruling class—a fascist section—has emerged and risen to power which is determined that...trampling on basic rights and legal principles, within the country and internationally, is necessary for the maintenance of this system within the country and its dominant position in the world, in the face of serious challenges, especially from China. (Shortly after the death of Mao in 1976, socialism in China was overthrown and capitalism restored, and in the decades since then China has developed as an increasingly powerful capitalist-imperialist country.)

This crucial understanding is spelled out more fully in HUMANITY ON THE BRINK:

The political system in this country is the rule—the dictatorship—of the section of society that dominates the economic system—the capitalist-imperialist class—a dictatorship that finds concentrated expression in the monopoly of political power, and more especially the monopoly of “legitimate” violence, exercised by the political representatives of this system and its ruling class. All the dominant processes and institutions of this system (including its elections) fundamentally serve and enforce this dictatorship. In its “normal” form, and as administered by the “mainstream” section of the ruling class, this is a dictatorship representing the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, and this dictatorship is more or less disguised as “democracy” and “rule by the people,” with basic adherence to a “rule of law” which ultimately embodies and reflects the basic relations in society and serves the fundamental interests of the ruling class while being applied, however unequally, to people in society generally....

The rule of the Trump regime is the dictatorship of one section of the ruling class, which is determined to impose fascism as the form of capitalist-imperialist rule, utilizing the force and violence of the state (police and military forces and repressive institutions of government, such as the FBI, “Homeland Security,” etc.) not only against people in society as a whole but also against the “mainstream” section of the ruling class. With fascism, dictatorship is open, blatant, undisguised dictatorship, and the exploitation and oppression that is the actual basis and nature of this system of capitalist-imperialism, within this country and internationally, is blatant, undisguised exploitation and oppression, unrestrained by the “norms” and “rules” of “mainstream” capitalist-imperialist dictatorship.⁶

While massive nonviolent mobilization aiming to bring about the defeat and removal of the Trump fascist regime remains crucially important, even more crucially important is for masses of people to come to, and decisively act on, the scientific understanding that the fundamental solution to all this is not to bring about the restoration of the “mainstream” form of the dictatorship of this long outmoded and truly monstrous capitalist-imperialist system of exploitation and oppression—not to harken back to a Declaration and a Revolution of slave-owners and capitalists, 250 years ago—but instead: What is radically different now is that the revolution that has become possible, and urgently necessary, is a revolution—the communist revolution—whose fundamental aim is to do away with all exploitation and oppression, everywhere.

The Myth of “Multi-Racial Democracy” 

This idea that what existed before Trump came to power was a “multi-racial democracy” is propagated by representatives of the “mainstream” ruling class, and others whose thinking has not broken free of and beyond the narrow, constricting confines of this system of capitalism-imperialism.

In essence, the argument is that, in the decades after World War 2, through the gains made as a result of the Civil Rights movement, along with the extension of rights to women, LGBT people and others, this country, for the first time, became a real, and “multi-racial” democracy (which is now being seriously threatened by the Trump regime’s determined attacks on these rights, and on the basic principles of “democracy”). Here it should not be necessary to repeat all the analysis in this series (and other works available at revcom.us) which clearly demonstrate that the “democracy” in this country is in fact a form of the dictatorship of the ruling, economically-dominant capitalist class. On a more obvious level, if this notion of a real, and “multi-racial” democracy means that (at long last) everyone in this society has finally become equal—in the sense of having equal opportunity and “equality before the law”—that is glaringly not the case. 

Despite the significant increase in the Black petite bourgeoisie (middle class) and, on a smaller scale, the emergence of extremely wealthy Black bourgeois, “the reality (ceaselessly demonstrated in everyday life, and through countless scientific studies and investigations) is that segregation, discrimination and overall racist oppression continue, and continue to have terrible consequences, for Black people and others who have suffered the systemic, and often murderous, racism of this system—in housing, education, employment, health care, with police, courts and prisons—in every part of society.” (That is from Part 1 in this series, “Profound Inequality, Brutal Oppression—and Crude Distortion of the Actual Foundation and Nature of this Country,” which is also available at revcom.us.) 

In the book The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander thoroughly documents how profound inequality, in particular in policing and the so-called “justice system” (including practices such as “Stop and Frisk,” carried out by police departments across the country, well before Trump first came to power) has precisely involved new forms of systematic oppression, discrimination and repression, directed against Black youth (particularly but not only young males) in the inner cities especially. Alexander shows how the “war on drugs”—and in particular huge differences in how this has been enforced and punished with regard to Black youth, as compared to white youth (and white people overall)—has been a major factor in the huge increase in the mass incarceration of Black (as well as Latino) men. Elizabeth Hinton, in her book From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime brings to light very clearly how in fact the “war on poverty,” initiated during the Johnson administration in the mid-1960s, quickly became principally a “war on crime,” which contributed in a major way to “The Making of Mass Incarceration in America.” (Significantly, these important books by Hinton and Alexander were written during the administrations of Barack Obama, before Trump first became president.)⁷ 

Along with mass incarceration, there is the continuing outrage of murder by police, with Black people killed by police in disproportionate numbers. As I have emphasized in a number of works:

Since 1960 the police have killed more Black people than all those lynched during the days of “Jim Crow” segregation and Ku Klux Klan terror, and Black people as a whole live with the ever-present threat of being brutalized or murdered by police. 

All throughout this period since World War 2, the demonization, criminalization, and deportations of immigrants and the militarization of the border have continued, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, even before Trump escalated this with a whole campaign of terror against immigrants, trampling on due process and what are supposed to be basic constitutional rights.

At the same time as this all-around and literally murderous oppression of Black people, immigrants and Latinos, and other people of color people has continued throughout the period since the end of World War 2 (in 1945), there is the continuing brutal oppression of women. As I have emphasized before, statistics barely serve to capture the terrible dimensions of this: In this country (the good ole USA) a woman is battered every 9 seconds, and hundreds of thousands are sexually assaulted every year. Just as Black parents have to have the “talk,” with their young sons especially, about how to avoid getting brutalized or killed by police, women have to constantly fear being assaulted, including in many “ordinary” situations that they cannot avoid. And there is the sex trafficking that ensnares women and girls in the tens of millions worldwide, including millions within the U.S. itself—and U.S. imperialism is, in a number of dimensions, a major force driving sex trafficking, which involves literal enslavement of masses of women and girls, enforced with the most grotesque brutality. As analyzed by Raymond Lotta, in The “Industrialization” of Sexual Exploitation, Imperialist Globalization, and the Descent Into Hell, along with sex trafficking, there is the phenomenon of widespread pornography and strip clubs—which do not involve an expression of the “agency” of the women caught up in this, but represent the sexual exploitation and degradation of not only the women directly involved but women overall.⁸

Even before the fascist-dominated Supreme Court ripped away the right to abortion as a national right, in 2022, there have been decades of continuing attacks on abortion, as well as birth control. This has been driven by the rising forces of fascism in this country—while representatives of the “mainstream” section of the ruling class have over decades conceded more and more ground, politically and morally, to this misogynistic (woman-hating) fascist offensive. (Democratic Party politicians, including the Clintons and others, adopted the position that abortion should be safe and legal—but rare. Why “rare?”—why impose an unnecessary and harmful restriction like that if you are actually upholding the right to abortion?! This, again, was just a political and moral capitulation to the fascists and their offensive against the right to abortion). 

Now, with the rise of the MAGA fascist forces and the “second coming” of the Trump fascist regime, the all-around assault on women has continued to intensify—but the reality is that the oppression of women has been built into this system, from the beginning of this country and down to today, and it continued to be a part of the overall oppressive nature of this system all during the supposed “multi-racial” democracy, which in fact has existed only in the imagination of representatives of the “mainstream” section of the ruling class, and others desperate to cling to, and promote, the illusion that, before Trump, this country had continued to advance toward a “more perfect union,” when this system has in fact become increasingly outmoded and increasingly poses an existential threat to humanity as a whole.

Along with the very real and truly terrible forms of oppression that are essential and unavoidable components of this system—racial oppression, patriarchy and the oppression of women, discrimination and brutality against LGBT people, and others—there is the accelerating destruction of the environment and the once again growing danger of war between the U.S. and its rivals in Russia, and especially China—all nuclear-armed capitalist-imperialist powers. At the same time, in addition to the hundreds of millions of women, and 150 million children worldwide, who are cruelly exploited under this system, there is the fact that, over the 80 years since the end of World War 2 (with all its destruction and slaughter of tens of millions), more than 500 million children in the world, particularly in the poorer countries of the world, dominated by imperialism, have died as a result of starvation and preventable disease.

Such is the nature of the system of capitalism-imperialism we are still forced to live under, with the U.S. having been the world’s number one imperialist predator over the decades since the end of World War 2, and the country most responsible for the terrible conditions in the world which I have only been able to touch on here.

The “Last Refuge” of Apologists for American Atrocity: “Yes, America has done bad things, but other empires and countries have been just as bad, or even worse—and, unlike them, we have our great system of democracy and the freedoms it brings.”

As I have pointed to before: The American Crime series at revcom.us, chronicles and analyzes in depth the war crimes and crimes against humanity continually committed by the U.S., throughout its history and throughout the world, as well as “at home.” A number of times I have also challenged people like Bill Maher, and other die-hard defenders of U.S. imperialism (and in Maher’s case, Zionism and Israeli atrocity) to look seriously into what is documented in this American Crime series and the ongoing coverage at revcom.us of these atrocities, including the full backing by the U.S. government of the genocide Israel has been flagrantly carrying out against the Palestinian people.

So far as I know, none of those to whom I have issued this challenge has actually taken it up. What we do get from at least many of these types is what I indicated in the sub-head above—arguments insisting: “Yes, America has done bad things, but other empires and countries have been even worse—and, unlike them, we have our great system of democracy and the freedoms it brings.” This involves crude distortion and a disgusting display of American supremacist mentality.

In defense of what is in fact genocide carried out by Israel, someone like Bill Maher is fond of pointing to what is the truly terrible character of forces like Hamas and the Islamic regime in Iran, with their religious fundamentalist-based, dark ages views and terrible oppression of women, LGBT people and others. But this is not unique to forces that, to one degree or another, pose some kind of opposition to U.S. imperialism. For example, there is Saudi Arabia: is its government any less an expression and instrument of religious fundamentalist, dark ages mentality and morality, and terrible oppression and exploitation in accordance with and rationalized by that religious fundamentalism? There are many other regimes throughout the world which promote outlooks and carry out actions which are no less monstrous, but which are not “enemies” of and obstacles to U.S. imperialism, and are often allied with this country. So, with typical willful blindness and/or disgusting hypocrisy, these apologists of U.S. imperialism would rather talk about forces like Iran and Hamas, who could not even realistically conceive of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity on anything like the massive scale of U.S. crimes.

But let’s turn to and directly answer the argument that, even while terrible things have been done in this country and by this county, this is also the case with many other countries and empires throughout the world, and throughout history—and there is still something “special” about this country, with its “great system of democracy and the freedom it brings.” First of all, besides all the many and terrible ways that freedom is denied to and violently suppressed with regard to significant sections of the population in this country itself, there is this fundamental reality: to the degree that even restricted political freedoms are allowed for people in this country who are not part of the ruling class, this is directly related to and essentially dependent on the terrible atrocities—the ruthless exploitation and murderous oppression and massive destruction—perpetrated against people and countries throughout the world by the ruling capitalist-imperialists of this country. This is, in effect, the “political parallel” to the economic benefits that are distributed—although extremely unequally—to people in this country as a result of the parasitic plunder of people throughout the world by U.S. capitalism-imperialism. 

In short, there is this basic truth, which I included in U.S. Constitution: An Exploiters’ Vision of Freedom: “The platform of democracy in the imperialist countries (worm-eaten as it is) rests on fascist terror in the oppressed nations” of the world. (This article of mine is available at revcom.us. The statement cited here is a quote from Lenny Wolff, The Science of Revolution: An Introduction.)

It is not that there is “democracy and freedom,” over here (in the USA) and there is brutal oppression “over there,” in other countries, especially (though not only) in the Third World—with no connection between the two. No, the reality is that the one—”freedom and democracy” here, limited as it is—is dependent on the other: openly brutal oppression of masses of people in the countries dominated and plundered by U.S. capitalism-imperialism, with the cruel exploitation of masses of people in those countries, often at starvation or near-starvation wages, including large numbers of children.⁹

The fact that, throughout history, and up to the present time, there is also terrible oppression and massive suffering for which other countries and previous empires have been responsible, cannot be legitimately raised as an excuse for the terrible atrocities continually committed by this country and its ruling class. To cite one awful dimension of this, even with all the terrible atrocities committed by other empires and major powers in the world before and during World War 2 (including Nazi Germany), none of them possessed nuclear weapons, as is the case with the U.S. today, with thousands of such weapons, which are many times more destructive than the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on two Japanese cities at the end of World War 2. (Russia also has thousands of such weapons, and while at this point China has significantly fewer, it is rapidly expanding its arsenal of these weapons.)

Finally, and most importantly: The crucial question is not comparison with past oppressive and murderous countries and empires, or with other oppressive regimes in the world now (although U.S. capitalism-imperialism far surpasses its rivals now in terms of war crimes and crimes against humanity). The decisive question is: what is now possible for humanity, in terms of actual and fundamental emancipation—in opposition to the way that this system of capitalism-imperialism stands as the direct barrier to the achievement of unprecedented emancipation, and the fact that this system is, in an all too real and terrible sense, force marching humanity toward the abyss.

To return to the title of this final part of this series: NO to a Celebration of Slavery, Capitalist Exploitation and Worldwide Plunder—This Is a Time for a New, Urgently Needed, Truly Emancipating Revolution. 

A revolution whose ultimate goal is to free humanity from the terrible situation that cruelly mocks the masses of humanity: a situation where there exists in the world today the means (the technology and knowledge) for everyone on the planet to have a decent life, overcoming want, and on the other hand the often desperate—and all too often unsuccessful—struggle for mere survival of so many. 

A revolution aimed at overcoming all relations in which one small part of humanity rules over, exploits and oppresses the masses of humanity, and where the basic dynamics and “laws of motion” of the system dominating the world, the system of capitalism-imperialism, are rapidly dragging humanity toward unprecedented destruction, and possibly even the extinction of human civilization, through accelerating environmental devastation and the growing threat of nuclear war.

This revolution is the communist revolution, for which the development of human society up until now has actually prepared the material foundation (even as all this has taken place, for thousands of years, under the domination of systems of terrible atrocity and mass suffering). This is the revolution which holds the potential to resolve the howling contradiction between the oppressive conditions and unnecessary suffering of the masses of humanity, and the terrible future (or no future at all) toward which the dominant forces in the world are dragging humanity, and on the other hand the possibility, and the urgent need, for a real leap forward toward an emancipation beyond what has been possible in all of previous human history. (The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have authored, provides a sweeping vision and a concrete blueprint for a radically emancipating society aiming for the ultimate goal of communism, throughout the world. And the document from the revcoms WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM, includes important summaries of basic principles and provisions in this Constitution.)

There is nothing pre-determined in human history, and no inevitable resolution to the profound and acute contradictions with which humanity is now confronted—but there is the possibility of a truly, historically emancipating leap forward with the communist revolution, and the profoundly liberating struggle to make this a reality.

_______________

FOOTNOTES:

1. This statement, about why there is no legitimate basis for celebrating the history and present reality of this country, is found in my article ON STATUES, MONUMENTS, AND CELEBRATING—OR ENDING—OPPRESSION, in BA’s Collected Works, “Bob Avakian: Writings in 2020–A Momentous Year,” at revcom.us.  [back]

2. HUMANITY ON THE BRINK: A Forced March Into the Abyss, or Forging a Way Forward Out of the Madness? is available at revcom.us, and online at Google Books and the Internet Archive. [back]

3. This statement (“it became clear that the basic interests of the northern states required the abolition of slavery”) is part of this larger analysis in Part 2 of this series:

Obviously, a profound change was brought about through the abolition of slavery as a result of the Civil War in the 1860s. But what is the fundamental reason this Civil War came about, and why did it finally lead to the abolition of slavery? It is not that Abraham Lincoln just decided to wage the Civil War, on behalf of the Union, and then just decided to “free the slaves.” In basic terms, the Civil War arose because, over the course of nearly 100 years since the founding of the “United States” of America, changes within the country (and in the larger world) resulted in the fact that the two different economic systems (modes of production) that had existed within this country from the beginning, went from mainly reinforcing and benefitting each other to becoming fundamentally antagonistic (the basic interests of the one required the defeat of the other). In this particular case, the basic interests of the southern states, whose economies were based on slavery, required that they separate from the northern states, form an independent country and deal with the rest of the world on that basis; while the basic interests of the northern states, whose economy was based on a developing capitalism, required restricting the spread of slavery and maintaining the country as a whole, including the southern states, under one government—and, through the course of the Civil War, it became clear that the basic interests of the northern states required the abolition of slavery. [back]

4. As I explained in Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summary, the reversal of Reconstruction came about fundamentally because this was the only way that the capitalist class centered in the North could maintain the USA as one unified country:

They had to put the country back together as a whole country, and the only way they could do that, given the prevailing production relations and social relations, was to make all kinds of “principled compromises,” once again, with the Southern aristocracy, the large landowners, who were, to a very large degree, former slave owners. So this is why Reconstruction was reversed, before very long after the Civil War, and the masses of Black people were betrayed again.

Breakthroughs is also available at revcom.us. [back]

5. Birds Cannot Give Birth to Crocodiles, But Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon, is available in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us. [back]

6. A fuller discussion, in HUMANITY ON THE BRINK, of what is in fact the dictatorship of the capitalist class—including in its “democratic” form—includes the following:

As one significant example of the way in which this dictatorship, and its “rule of law,” “ultimately embodies and reflects the basic relations in society and serves the fundamental interests of the ruling class,” there is the fact that it is perfectly legal, under this system, for capitalists to “lay off” masses of people, if they can no longer be profitably exploited, even if this means that those who are “laid off” might become homeless, or even starve; but it is definitely illegal for people in this desperate situation to just take the basic necessities they lack, without paying for them, even if the reason they cannot pay for them is because they have been denied employment. All this corresponds to the basic “property relations” of the capitalist system. The “rule of law” in any system will essentially be an expression of those basic property relations—most fundamentally the production relations of the underlying mode of production....

In the more overtly political dimension, as spoken to in my social media message number #17, beneath the outer shell of “democracy” in this country there 

is living proof that this so-called “great American democracy” is in reality a dictatorship, where the power of the ruling institutions is used to viciously persecute, punish, and even eliminate people who pose a threat to the interests of the ruling class. Along with the murder by police and mass incarceration of thousands and millions of people in this country...there is the vicious repression being brought down against people protesting the genocide in Palestine carried out by Israel, with the full backing of the U.S. government and both ruling class political parties (Democrat and Republican).

Why is this happening? Because fundamental interests of U.S. capitalism-imperialism are at stake.

There are many other examples that sharply illustrate this basic truth about the actual dictatorship under the “normal democratic” rule of this system—such as the outlawing of opposition to the U.S. role in World War 1, and the imprisoning of Japanese people in concentration camps during World War 2 (which was done during the administration of the great “hero” of “progressive” bourgeois democrats, Franklin Delano Roosevelt).  [back]

7. The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander was published in the U.S. by The New Press and distributed by Perseus Distribution in 2010. Elizabeth Hinton’s book From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, The Making of Mass Incarceration in America was published by Harvard University Press in 2016. Both of these books contain very important analyses which powerfully document the continuing terrible reality—and the existence of new forms—in which racial oppression continues to be a essential part of “American democracy”—refuting the ridiculous notion that this country somehow became “colorblind,” with the election of Obama supposedly “proof” of this.

In Imperialist Parasitism and Class-Social Recomposition in the U.S. From the 1970s to Today: An Exploration of Trends and Changes, Raymond Lotta analyzes how precisely changes in the economy within the U.S. itself—in the context of the heightening parasitism of the U.S. economy, in which a great deal of production has been shifted to poorer countries where people are more vulnerable to extreme exploitation by capital—has, among other significant developments, led to a situation where large numbers of youth in the inner cities in the U.S. have been effectively locked out of the formal economy. This has resulted in the reality that (as “conservative” author Edward Luttwak put it bluntly in his book Turbo Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy): for large numbers of youth in the inner cities, crime has become a rational choice. Whatever Luttwak’s intention, this is objectively yet another profound indictment of the bankruptcy (and completely outmoded nature) of this system of capitalism-imperialism!

Along with mass incarceration and murder by police, and repressive measures like Stop and Frisk, over recent decades laws have been passed and policies adopted by police which amount to the pre-emptive criminalization of youth in the inner cities—for example, preventing youth from gathering in public places in more than very small numbers, on the basis they “might be” part of a gang and might commit a crime! There have also been the “three strikes” laws which mandate extremely severe punishment for the third conviction of a felony, even in situations where that third felony (or one or more of the previous felonies) might actually be a relatively lesser crime. And, as Hinton demonstrates in her book, increasingly after the mid-1960s, measures that even claimed to be addressing the desperate conditions that provide an impulse, and often a very real necessity, for criminal activity, have been replaced by an increase in repression and punishment for crime. 

One of the most extreme, and perverse, expressions of this was the policy of “one strike,” enforced during the administration of Bill Clinton in the 1990s: This dictated that people would be expelled from public housing if they were related to, or visited by, someone who had been accused—not convicted but accused—of a crime. And it should not be forgotten that the concentration of masses of Black people in housing projects, after World War 2 especially, was a matter of official government policy which granted loans to buy homes for white veterans of that war but denied them to Black people, forcing them instead into housing projects—a phenomenon with lasting effects and consequences all during this supposed “multi-racial” democracy. [back]

8. The essay by Raymond Lotta, The “Industrialization” of Sexual Exploitation, Imperialist Globalization, and the Descent Into Hell, is available at revcom.us. [back]

9. What is true of U.S. imperialism today was also true of the British empire during a whole period encompassing much of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, up to the period involving World War 2. The book by Caroline Elkins, Legacy of Violence, A History of the British Empire (Alfred A. Knopf publishers, 2022) documents how that empire too rested on and was enforced by the most horrific violent atrocity, visited upon the colonial victims of that empire. More, this book illustrates another striking similarity with U.S. imperialism’s dominant role in the world after World War 2: the direct connection between barbaric violence directed against the conquered subjects of this empire and “liberal democracy,” with a certain sharing of wealth and privilege, limited as it is, in the imperialist country itself.

In this connection, with regard to my assertion (for example in Shameless American Chauvinism: “Anti-Authoritarianism” as a “Cover” for Supporting U.S. Imperialism) that “the U.S. is the country which has, by far, carried out the most invasions and other acts of violent interference in other countries,” I do have to say that if there has been a rival to the U.S. for this dubious distinction, it was the British empire during the period when it occupied the top-dog position. [back]