The outrageous and criminal invasion of Venezuela on January 3, 2026—along with the threadbare imperialist justifications for it, the murders that led to it, and Trump’s bragging threat that “we’re going to run it”—drives home the imperialist character of the system that has basically ruled this country since the late 1800s. But what is that system? Could humanity ever rise beyond it? What could replace it—and how would it work?

On the basis of this country's founding in genocide and slavery, it has committed endless war crimes and crimes against humanity in maintaining its rule. Watch this from the revolutionary leader, Bob Avakian, from 2017, where he outlines a whole series of similar crimes committed by those who rule and represent this system—very similar to what Trump & Co. are doing now to Venezuela. Or look at the highly condensed summary of just a portion of the crimes we dig into in the American Crimes section of this site.

Many politicians have promised “peace” (even Trump, a war-mongering fascist, tries to make the outrageous claim he's the "President of Peace"). But we live under the system of capitalism-imperialism. And that has meaning for whoever runs it.

Capitalism-imperialism compels a handful of “developed” capitalist countries to dominate, distort and parasitically suck the blood from the vast majority of the world’s people. Capitalism-imperialism—in its compulsive, competition-driven requirement for ever more profit—means that millions of children in Asia, Africa and Latin America die each year from preventable disease, hunger, or both. Capitalism-imperialism compels wars to dominate the oppressed nations of the world, and wars between imperialist powers to sit atop that domination. Today even the “liberal-imperialist” New York Times demands that the U.S. military catch up with, match and be able to overpower its rival China—including in the ability to wield and use nuclear weapons. This system is built on cut-throat competition and rivalry… on expand-or-die… and that finds concentrated expression on the international level.

The human cost is staggering. Just since the end of World War II, the U.S. military has killed roughly 10 million people. Count the dead from Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia… count the dead from Guatemala, Chile, and El Salvador… from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Gaza… from Congo and Mozambique… and you will find death either carried out by, sponsored, or funded by America. And whoever ascends to the top of that system—whether Democrat or MAGA fascist—will move to deepen that exploitation and carry out the aggression necessary to sustain and defend it.

Trump—as a fascist—does this in a way with no regard for international or even U.S. law and in a particularly murderous (and dangerous) way. But he does this as a servant of the same capitalist-imperialist system that Biden and Obama also served.

Constitution Serving the Emancipation of ALL Humanity

But this isn’t the only way the world can be. This horror can and must end. Not just the particularly gangsteresque rule of Trump, but the whole imperialist system in this country and everything that flows from it. The technology and knowledge exist to organize society on a radically different foundation: getting to a world without exploitation and oppression. This is the goal of communism.¹ The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, written by Bob Avakian, contains the sweeping vision, firm foundation and concrete blueprint for a socialist society that is in transition to this communist world: emancipating humanity from all forms and relations of exploitation and oppression, and from the ignorance and selfishness required and perpetuated by systems based on exploitation.

The new state power based on this Constitution can only be brought into being through a revolution involving millions in which the old machinery of exploitation, domination and oppression is not just reformed but abolished. 

This series of articles will focus on how the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America lays out the framework for how this new power would transform the relations between the U.S. and that vast majority of the world that it has up to now plundered, oppressed, repressed and waged war upon. The new socialist state power will do that on the basis of a radically different economic and political system, and a struggle to forge whole new relations among people.

Internationalism: Fundamental to the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America

The Preamble of the new Constitution sets out the most fundamental guiding principles of the new power. So it is worth noting that the second paragraph immediately takes up the relation of the New Socialist Republic in North America to the whole world:

In contrast to the way in which the capitalist-imperialist state serves and enforces the interests of a small ruling group of exploiters, the New Socialist Republic in North America, with the continuing leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Party, bases itself on, and proceeds from, the fundamental interests of those most bitterly exploited and oppressed under the old system, and the masses of people broadly, and provides the means for them to play an increasingly widening role in the exercise of political power and the functioning of society in accordance with those interests–in order to carry forward the struggle to transform society, with the goal of uprooting and finally eliminating all oppressive and exploitative relations among human beings and the destructive antagonistic conflicts to which these relations give rise. 

This is a process and goal which, fundamentally and in the final analysis, can only be achieved on a global scale, with the advance to communism throughout the world. The orientation and principles of this state, as embodied in this Constitution, are internationalist: While giving due emphasis to meeting the material, intellectual and cultural needs of the people within this state, on a continually expanding basis, and to promoting the further transformation of this society to continue uprooting social inequalities and remaining aspects of exploitation and oppression, the socialist state must give fundamental priority to the advance of the revolutionary struggle, and the final goal of communism, throughout the world, and must adopt and carry out policies and actions which are in accordance with and give concrete effect to this internationalist orientation. 

This is a political vision and a morality unlike anything else in this society. If you read through the new Constitution with this in mind, you’ll see it take concrete form in many different principles and policies of the new socialist republic.

In regard to where we began this article, what does this new Constitution say about foreign relations? Could such a thing even remotely close to what’s going on in Venezuela happen in a society based on the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America? The answer is no! The U.S. today has roughly 800 military installations in other countries. These bases serve as ways to control the countries that they’re in and to suppress movements of opposition, including revolutionary movements, against regimes that are allied with the U.S. Remember again—10 million, around the world, slaughtered by the U.S. military and related institutions since the end of World War II.

Yet in a hostile, imperialist-dominated world, there remains a need for defense. Here’s how the New Socialist Republic would approach it:

1. The basic components and structures of the armed forces and militia and other organs of public defense and security of the New Socialist Republic in North America will have been brought into being through the course of the revolutionary struggle for power, once the conditions for that struggle had emerged: the development of an acute revolutionary crisis and the emergence of a revolutionary people, in the millions and millions, who have the leadership of a revolutionary communist vanguard and are conscious of the need for revolutionary change and determined to fight for it. With the establishment of this Republic, these institutions of public defense and security will be further developed in accordance with their essential purpose and role: to defend and safeguard the New Socialist Republic in North America and the security and rights of its people, in furtherance of the aims of this Republic and in support of the masses of people in carrying forward the revolutionary transformation of society, and contributing as much as possible to this transformation throughout the world. 

2. In keeping with this purpose and role, and in accordance with its internationalist orientation, the New Socialist Republic in North America will dismantle all remaining bases of the former imperialist USA in other countries and will renounce all treaties and agreements, military and otherwise, which were imposed by that imperialist state on other countries and peoples or which in any case served to impose and enforce the domination of the imperialist USA. The New Socialist Republic in North America renounces all wars of aggression and domination, and all occupation of other countries in pursuit of such domination and aggression, and will not station its forces, nor establish bases, in another country, except in circumstances where this is clearly in accord with the wishes of the masses of people in that country and where such action would actually be a manifestation of the internationalist orientation and other fundamental principles and objectives set forth in this Constitution and would contribute to the advance of revolutionary struggle in the world in accordance with these principles and objectives.

A Final, Important Point

The imperialist invasion of Venezuela and the illegal arrest of Nicolás Maduro, along with the press conference announcing this, calls to mind this passage written by Bob Avakian (BA) more than four years ago. Many in the ruling class are already raising that Trump’s move poses the danger of serving to legitimize similar moves by Russia against Ukraine and other eastern European countries and—even more ominous for the rulers—China vis-à-vis Taiwan. Over four years ago, writing of the splits within the ruling class over how to rule—splits which have since sharpened immeasurably—BA wrote the following:

It is extremely important to deeply understand this:

As this situation develops, and the ruling class is more and more unable to rule in the old way, society and daily life for masses of people, from different parts of society, can become increasingly unsettled and chaotic, with frequent “disruptions” of the “normal” way things have been.

And as “the normal way” society has been ruled is failing to hold things together—and society is increasingly being ripped apart—this can shake people’s belief that “the way things have always been” is the only way things can be. It can make people more open to questioning—in a real sense it can force people to question—the way things have been, and whether they have to stay that way. And this is all the more likely to happen if the revolutionary forces are out among the people shining a light on the deeper reality of what is happening, and why, and bringing out that there IS an alternative to living this way.

At such a time, the real and powerful alternative embodied in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, by Bob Avakian, needs to get into the bloodstream of society. This does provide, as we said at the start, the sweeping vision, the concrete blueprint and the firm foundation for a whole new way to live… and a fundamentally different system. With society being ripped apart, and revolution more possible—even in the face of fascism, genocide, climate catastrophe and nuclear war—it is urgent that people raise their sights to the radically different world that's possible and take responsibility as part of the larger mission which this Constitution serves—bringing forward real emancipators of humanity.