United States of America

The United States of America is a capitalist and imperialist country that is the foremost superpower of the world, though a waning empire. It came into being with the ratification of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, during the American Revolution where the Thirteen Colonies sought to break away from British rule. Presently it has the world's largest economy, with 15% of the world's GDP (PPP). It has created and exerts tremendous influence in many imperialist organizations, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organization of American States, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, and Human Rights Watch. The US has developed an immense and thorough apparatus for maintaining its power and dominance through economic, political, proxy, and direct warfare which has caused tremendous atrocities which the state covers up and denies.

The country is deeply corrupt, although masks this with terms like "lobbying". Because of the entrenchment and hegemony of bourgeois wealth in politics, it is not actually broadly representative of its people like the term "republic" suggests, with its measures of freedom mostly being economic ones for the property-owning classes, with actual personal and civil liberties on a general downward trend. This attitude is further reflected by the United States' pattern of voting in UN resolutions: it voted against the right to food in 2005, abstained from recognizing the right to clean water and sanitation in 2010, and further opposed the right to paid maternity leave, the rights of children, rights of indigenous people, rights of the disabled, and the right to affordable, sustainable energy for all, on top of opposing a resolution calling for the elimination of racial discrimination and glorification of Nazism; despite almost every other country voting in favor every time. The pervasiveness of anti-communist ideology, close relationship between government officials and corporate leadership, pro-war tendencies, increasing state surveillance and decrease in civil liberties, and the presence of chauvinism, patriarchy, and systemic racism makes the US a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with traits of fascism.

Many Americans are convinced into the support and cognitive dismissal of its inhumanity by concessions and ideology — of which American exceptionalism is the most prominent, which conceals the contradictions of capitalism such that the working peoples do not dismantle the imperialist status quo. Americans often believe that the American press is a free one, but even though American news networks like CNN and Fox News are not state-owned, they still massively support the bourgeoisie and the state regardless.

Despite its overall wealth, very many in the US remain economically immiserated, especially in states like Mississippi which has many poorly-developed areas and one-fifth of its total population living in actual poverty, compared to the national rate of 12%. As it happens, Mississippi also has the highest percentage of African-American residents, bringing up the fact that the US still suffers from immense racial inequality and unabating racial tensions; and actually they are worsening even into the 2020s. The US also ranks relatively low in education despite its level of wealth; around the average of OECD countries and below many poorer countries. To top this off, higher education is very expensive and takes an average of around 20 years to pay off. Americans also spend much more on healthcare than people in other developed countries: 17% of GDP is spend on this sector compared to an average 8.6% in other OECD states, with annual per capita healthcare spending reaching over $11,000 compared to other OECD countries that average half this sum. Moreover, because of costs, about 25% of Americans put off treatment for serious conditions, with this figure rising to 33% for treatment of any kind. 56% of Americans furthermore don't have enough savings to cover a $1,000 emergency expense, thus being put into debt from an unexpected car repair or urgent health issue. The United States also greatly suffers from pollution due to lack of regulation on sectors like animal agriculture, lack of relevant funding, while also failing to have nationwide quality standards — as a 2022 report found, half of all US water is too polluted for swimming, fishing, or drinking.

History

Slavery in the US existed in the land since the 16th century and was very profitable after the 1790s thanks to the cotton gin and Britain's need for cotton amid its Industrial Revolution. To quote Edward E. Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told:

… despite something of a northern consensus that slavery was backward and inefficient, and despite the hard times of the previous decade, plenty of southern readers and talkers answered the question of whether or not the South could continue to use slavery as its recipe for modern economic development with a resounding yes.

…

By 1860, the eight wealthiest states in the United States, ranked by wealth per white person, were South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Connecticut, Alabama, Florida, and Texas⁠—seven states created by cotton's march west and south, plus one that, as the most industrialized state in the Union, profited disproportionately from the gearing of northern factory equipment to the southwestern whipping-machine.

Of course, in the long-run capitalist farming was superior. In fact, among the reasons why slaveowners wanted the "freedom" to extend slavery into new territories and states was to offset soil erosion and to prevent "too many" slaves from accumulating in one area, since there was always the risk of a slave revolt.

Marx and Engels themselves wrote about the Civil War, and Marxist historian Herbert Aptheker wrote a summary of the origins and course of the war as well. Basically, the war resulted from the emerging industrial bourgeoisie seeing the spread of slavery in the American West as hostile to its own economic interests, hence why it backed the Republican Party which explicitly aimed to prohibit slavery in any new territories or states. This would also have the benefit of slowly undermining the political power of slaveowners in the Senate and Supreme Court as more free (non-slave) states were added to the Union. The industrial bourgeoisie had no interest in waging war against slavery otherwise. It was forced to do so after the slaveowners, in response to the election of Lincoln, seceded and started the civil war rather than accept the gradual and peaceful demise of their political and economic power. Even then, the Union kept insisting until well into the war that it wasn't fighting to abolish slavery, merely to bring the secessionist states back into the Union and accept the election results.

Sections of the American bourgeoisie did support slavery (see for instance Philip S. Foner's Business and Slavery: The New York Merchants & the Irrepressible Conflict), as they profited off of it. Likewise the British bourgeoisie sympathized with the Confederacy due to a combination of wanting a weak United States and the "cotton famine" that occurred as a result of the Union's efforts to blockade Confederate ports. British workers however sympathized with the anti-slavery cause as they were hurt by having to compete with slaves for wages, while at the same time receiving almost none of the gains of their cheap labor.

Imperialism

While the US undoubtedly has the greatest track record of imperialism, paradoxically it also supported plenty of independence movements — but of course just so it could get in those countries itself, by replacing their previous master. This was the case with India, Africa, Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh himself was partnered with early on), and China, where the US pushed for the Open Door policy that would prevent European powers from carving up China and instead establish a policy of free trade concerning it. The US also opposed the 1956 invasion of Egypt by Israel, the United Kingdom, and France in the Suez Crisis, where the Egyptian leadership nationalized the Suez Canal that made its European owners fear it could be closed for oil shipments from the Persian Gulf to Europe, with Israel also particularly upset at Egypt for blocking the Straits of Tiran. The US took the side opposite of its allies and even threatened to refuse a massive loan the British needed for several reasons, for one being that it would destabilize the region and strengthen Soviet-backed liberation movements. There were also protests in oil-rich and strategically-important Islamic countries that were feared to come under Soviet influence, with the US also wanting to prop up the anti-Soviet Middle Eastern Defense Organization. The Soviets also threatened to nuke the United Kingdom, France, and Israel if they didn't withdraw. Although the three invading powers could have reasonably had a victory in Egypt, pressure from the United States ended up causing their withdrawal and major propaganda defeats, with many considering this point to be where the United Kingdom and France lost their empire status (convenient for the US as it could move in to exert greater pressure on their former colonies on top of the former masters themselves).

The US has around 80% of the world's foreign military bases, with roughly 750 of them in over 80 countries which receiving an aggregate of over $80 billion per year.

SWIFT

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) provides services for transferring payments between banks worldwide. Despite being based in Belgium, its data is intercepted and retained by the NSA and the US government has the authority to seize funds transferred even between two other countries. Furthermore the US pressures SWIFT into cutting off several countries at odds with US foreign policy, including Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

Modern politics

The United States is ostensibly a democratic republic, although the interest of the people is not represented in spite of this. Wealthy capitalists fund lobbying efforts to get representatives to act as they want, rather than what people need. Other times, consent for predetermined causes is manufactured by manipulating public opinion in favor of it. Thus a more realistic term that describes the Statesian political system is "oligarchy".

Bourgeois domination in election campaigns

The Citizens United Supreme Court case in 2010 allowed for the rise of "super PACs", which unlike regular political action committees can raise unlimited funds for political campaigns as long as they don't coordinate with them. This allowed wealthy individuals to translate much more of their wealth into political power — billionaire contributions rose 40-fold from the decision in 2010 to the 2020 Presidential election. From 2009 to 2020, just 12 people accounted for 7.5% of all federal campaign donations.

Two-party system

United States elections generally use the first-past-the-post method, where the candidate with the most votes is the winner, rather than for example allocating each party an amount of seats in the legislature proportionate to its votes. This compels smaller parties to append themselves to either of the two major parties that they most agree with. This leads many to feel they aren't really represented in government. As George Washington was finishing his second term in 1796, he warned in his Farewell Address about the negative impact that opposing political parties would have on the country — and right with his successor John Adams the two-party system was established.

Wherever they differ, Republicans and Democrats constantly undo or sabotage each other's work, such as by legislating a repeal of previous programs, refusing to fund them, forcing a watered-down compromise, filibustering, or even refusing to enforce and uphold such programs. As the United States is strongly federated, with each of its states having considerable power to decide things on its own, many programs enacted nationally fail to be implemented in parts of the country whose governors and legislature are of the other party. This is as seen with the No Child Left Behind Act, the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), and response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yes, we have one party here. But so does America. Except, with typical extravagance, they have two of them!

— Julius Nyerere, anti-colonial leader of Tanzania and its predecessor Tanganyika from 1961–1985

In practice and especially on the most meaningful topics the two parties are very similar to each other. While Democrats have a more progressive veneer of the two, they like Republicans are a party oriented towards things like privatization, deregulation, imperialist war and funding the military-industrial complex, as well as neglecting to substantially address racial inequality or the war on drugs. Examples of the two parties having essentially the same attitudes are plentiful and pervade through history:

• In 2021 the Senate proposed a bilateral infrastructure plan that would be funded by privatizing existing infrastructure. Democrats strongly condemned this idea four years prior when Donald Trump proposed it, but then backed it as part of Joe Biden's infrastructure agenda; despite having earlier pointed out the damage the profit motive wreaks on this sector in particular.
• Deregulating the banking industry
• Backed wars in places like Vietnam and Syria
• Calling for the replenishing of Israel's Iron Dome system
• Backing a prolonged conflict in Afghanistan
• Stoking fear and aggression over China while also using this issue to increase military spending
• Creating the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which was a unanimous act of Congress

Electoral college

While state governors are elected by popular vote, Section 2, Article 1 of the Constitution and the 12th Amendment have the president be elected by electoral votes, a system which essentially gerrymanders the country along state lines. If there are millions of votes in a state and one party gets just one more than the others, then it wins the entire state and the votes for the other parties have no impact on the result. This pretty much happened in the 2000 presidential election in Florida, where nearly 6 million people voted and yet just 537 votes (0.009% of the total) resulted in all of the state's electoral votes being given to George Bush, with Florida decisively pushing Bush's electoral count number to 271 (just over the 270 are needed to win), despite Al Gore having over half a million more actual votes than him nationwide. Similarly, in the 2016 presidential election Donald Trump won 34% more electoral votes than Hillary Clinton, winning the election despite having 4.6% less actual votes (nearly 2.9 million) — interestingly, Donald Trump tweeted in 2012 that "the electoral college is a disaster to democracy". Furthermore, because electoral votes are partially allocated by senator count (which every state has 2 of regardless of population), this leads to a situation where voting power is determined by where one lives. In Wyoming there is one elector for around 200,000 people, whereas in California there is one for every 700,000, roughly; thus the voting power of a Wyomingite is around three-and-a-half times greater than that of a Californian. This does not however compel politicians to care more about less-populated states, as they are almost all safely Democrat or Republican (as Wyoming is), and thus a small group of swing states end up receiving the bulk of attention. Because of the electoral college, there is predictably lower voter turnout in states that lean considerably to a particular party as people with a minority opinion understand their vote essentially won't count.

This system has its origins in the slave-owning class of the South which realized it would lose in direct elections, and so established a compromise where each of their slaves would count for three-fifths of an electoral vote on top of the free population, resulting in a situation where Virginia had 20% more electoral votes than Pennsylvania despite having 10% less free voters, and where slaveholding Virginians held the presidency for 32 of 36 years after the Constitution was ratified.

Neo-fascism

While no consensus exists on whether or not the US qualifies as neo-fascist, the bourgeois state has repeatedly demonstrated a propensity for neo-fascism, such as in ignoring neo-fascists breaking the law, permitting Eastern European neo-fascists to visit the country and train other white supremacists, ignoring or obscuring neo-fascism in Europe, permitting neo-fascists to run for senate, deploying neo-fascists in other territories, awarding governmental positions to some neo-fascists, and supporting neo-fascist politicians in countries like Bolivia and Ukraine.

Society

Inequality

The US has high levels of income and wealth inequality — a few people are multi-billionaires, whereas most are vulnerable to if not currently in destitution. The top 1% has 27% of the country's total wealth, which in 2021 became greater than the sum wealth of the entire middle class, often defined as the middle 60% by income, the position of which is becoming increasingly precarious. Because of bourgeois lobbying, the US tax code contains many loopholes for those of means to exploit in order to legally avoid taxation. This helps lead to a situation where the country's 25 wealthiest people have an effective tax rate of 3.4% despite the average worker paying 24-28% (depending on family status), with one large reason for this being that investments like stocks, which account for more of capitalists' income than that of typical workers', are taxed less than that of workers' paychecks. Paychecks get automatically deducted for social security and Medicare which are then subject to national, state, and municipal taxes — stocks meanwhile are subject to a 20% capital gains tax if held for over a year. Executives of private equity companies have a loophole that allows them to report fees from managing clients' money as investment income, which is taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income. The wealthy also establish charities that they or their associates control and then donate to them, with that money largely ending up back in their hands. This is typically done by the very wealthiest; the top 25 who are the ones with the 3.4% average tax rate versus the 22% of the top 400.

Wages aren't even adjusted for inflation in the US, with 64% of Americans currently living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Religion

Religion is a deeply important part of American culture, albeit waning in it's relevance — in 2016, 7 in 10 Americans believe religion is losing influence in American society. Very nearly 8 out of 10 Americans identify with a religion (dominantly Christianity, 74% of the population being Christian).

See also

• List of atrocities committed by the United States
• A large collection of Marxist works on US history