10. The Soul of America and the Future of Humanity¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 10: The Soul of America and the Future of Humanity
This chapter argues that the United States has fundamentally betrayed its own democratic and egalitarian ideals, becoming a plutocracy where a tiny caste of super-rich executives, backed by the world’s most powerful military, rules in the interests of capital. Drawing on evidence from Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men and a Business Week survey, the chapter demonstrates that the richest 20 percent of Americans own half the country’s wealth, while the bottom 20 percent own barely 4 percent. Since 1979, the richest 1 percent have seen wage increases of 157 percent, while the bottom fifth earn less; the world’s 200 richest companies have seen profits grow 362.4 percent since 1983; and many large corporations, including General Motors, pay no taxes. This concentration of capital, predicted by Marx and Engels, has reached unprecedented levels, with 200 giant companies dominating world trade, most based in the USA. The modern US state is a bureaucratic military-industrial complex; elections offer no genuine choice, as both parties serve big business, and the Constitution grants the president immense reserve powers that could institute a dictatorship in crisis.
Marxists, the chapter contends, are the true defenders of American ideals of democracy and individual rights. They advocate overthrowing the dictatorship of big business, nationalising the commanding heights of the economy under workers’ democratic control, and unleashing the initiative of engineers, managers, and shop-floor workers. Private monopolies are inefficient and corrupt, as Adam Smith warned; anti-trust laws are ineffective, and monopolies must be brought under democratic control. Bureaucracy is not inherent to nationalisation but to economic and cultural backwardness—the USSR’s bureaucratic degeneration stemmed from isolation, not socialism, and its collapse was a capitalist counter-revolution, not a failure of planning. American socialism would be built on advanced technology, not backwardness.
The chapter also explores the ideological terrain. The Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln were openly irreligious, rejecting Christianity as part of the Enlightenment rationalism that underpinned the American and French revolutions. Religious belief persists because people feel their lives are controlled by unseen forces—the wild swings of market forces and stock markets. Capitalism in its ascent was based on rationalism, but in its terminal decline, its ideology becomes decrepit. Marxism, unlike religion, directs people to understand and change the present life. Advances in science, like mapping the human genome, have demolished genetic determinism and creationism. Marxism stands for complete freedom of belief and strict separation of church and state; socialism will not prohibit religion but believes it will naturally decline when people control their own lives.
After 9/11, many Americans began questioning the world, but propaganda prevents them from recognising capitalism’s fundamental flaws. Wars stem from capitalism’s contradictions: the greed of super-rich nations, corporations, and banks for profit, markets, and resources. The widening gap between rich and poor drives war, ethnic strife, and terrorism. The source of the illness is a bankrupt socio-economic system that must be abolished and replaced with a democratically-run planned economy, uniting global productive forces in a socialist commonwealth. US productive forces could eradicate global poverty, but capitalism’s private ownership and the nation-state now act as barriers to development. Abolishing both would unleash explosive scientific and technological growth, transforming millions of lives and opening vast new horizons for humanity.