Introduction to the Second Edition¶
Core Argument¶
This introduction to the second edition of Marxism and the USA situates the book’s original publication during the George W. Bush presidency as a polemical intervention against a widespread leftist misconception: that the United States constitutes a single, reactionary bloc devoid of class struggle or revolutionary potential. Alan Woods’s volume aimed to refute this by recovering the “marvelous traditions of struggle” embedded in American history, demonstrating that socialism is not a foreign import but has deep indigenous roots. The chapter distinguishes Woods’s work from that of popular left historians such as Howard Zinn, Leo Huberman, John Dos Passos, and the Foners, who, while valuable, do not present a consistently revolutionary Marxist perspective. Woods’s contribution, by contrast, weaves a broad sweep of American history through the lens of historical materialism, the Marxist method of understanding history as a process driven by class struggle over control of surplus wealth, as Marx outlined in The Communist Manifesto and the preface to A Critique of Political Economy.
The chapter argues that American history, compressed into a few intense centuries, was built on the exploitation of African slaves, European indentured servants, Native Americans, and successive waves of immigrants. It draws on a litany of episodes—from Native American communistic traditions and the revolutionary-democratic beliefs of the Pilgrims, through the Declaration of Independence and the defeat of the British Empire, to Nat Turner’s revolt, John Brown’s struggle, the Flint sit-down strike, and the early labour movement—to illustrate this tradition. The author, John Peterson, also recounts the modest organisational growth of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) in the US since the book’s first edition, linking it to the founding statement of the US section (2002), which explicitly invokes figures such as William Sylvis, Albert Parsons, Mother Jones, Joe Hill, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs, and John Reed. The introduction explicitly repudiates Stalinism as a “historical aberration” and a “criminal totalitarian caricature of genuine socialism,” affirming that without democracy there can be no socialism.
The chapter concludes by surveying the changed political landscape since 2008: the Obama years, the election of Donald Trump, and the resurgence of socialist ideas in mainstream discourse. It cites Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the wave of teachers’ strikes as evidence that Woods’s premise—that the US is torn by tremendous class contradictions—has been vindicated. The author invokes Leon Trotsky’s remark that the United States is “the foundry in which the fate of man is to be forged,” asserting that the US working class is destined to play a decisive role in the world socialist revolution. The introduction also notes that this edition includes appendices on the 1934 Teamsters strike in Minneapolis, the early years of the Socialist Party of America, and Shays’s Rebellion, each intended to draw out lessons for contemporary struggle.