How US capitalism came to dominate the world

Below is an excerpt from Understanding History by George Novack, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for October. One of the installments in this selection of Marxist essays is “Uneven and Combined Development inWorld History.” Here Novack applies one of the fundamental laws of human history to explain the development of the modern United States from its founding to today. Copyright © 1972 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

BY GEORGE NOVACK

As a result of its victory [in winning independence from British colonial rule], America not only caught up with the Old World but, politically, surpassed it. This was the first victorious colonial revolution of modern times, and it established what was then the most progressive democracy in the world.

However, the American revolution of the eighteenth century, like the Russian revolution of the twentieth century, could not draw upon unlimited resources. The political progressiveness of the Yankee republic became combined with economic backwardness. For example, the War of Independence did not, and could not, uproot slavery or curb the power of the slaveowners. The backwardness of the USA in this decisive sphere took its revenge upon the Americans of the nineteenth century.

The American people had for some time to endure the rule of the Southern slaveowners, who later became so reactionary and insolent that they not only prevented further progress but even endangered the democracy and unity achieved by the first revolution. Fortunately a new combination of social forces had been created in the meantime, and this new combined formation proved strong enough to meet and overthrow the slaveholders’ counterrevolution.

Historically considered, the second American Revolution (the Civil War) represented, on one hand, the price paid by the American nation for the economic backwardness inherited from its colonial youth. On the other hand, the impetus provided by the Yankee victory in the Civil War jet-propelled the USA once again into becoming the leading nation of the world. After all the precapitalist forces and formations, from the Red Indian tribes to the slavery of the Southern states, had been disposed of, American capitalism was able to leap forward with mighty strides, so making the USA today the most advanced capitalist nation and the paramount world power.

This dominant position was not achieved all at once but in two revolutionary leaps separated by an interval of gradual progress and political reaction.

What are the penalties of progressiveness and the privileges of backwardness in the USA today? American technical know-how is the most advanced and American industry and agriculture, the most productive in the world. This not only enriches the capitalist monopolists but showers many benefits upon the American people — ranging from an abundance and variety of foodstuffs to a plethora of television sets, refrigerators, automobiles and other “luxuries.” This is one side of the picture. On the other side, the American monopolists are the most efficient of all the capitalists in the world in exploiting both their own working people and the rest of the toilers of the world. While the American worker enjoys the highest standard of living of any worker in the world, he is also the most heavily exploited. This tremendously productive working class gets back for its own consumption a smaller part of its output and hands over in the form of profit to the capitalist owners of the instruments of production a greater part of its output than does either the English or the French working class.

The greatest unevenness of America’s social development is that its economy is so advanced that it is fully ripe for collective ownership and planned production (that is, it is ripe for socialism) and yet this economy remains in a straitjacket of capitalist and nationalist restrictions. This contradiction is the main source of the social insecurity of our age and of the main social evil of our time, not only in the USA but throughout the world. …

The ideology of the American ruling class is one of the most highly developed in capitalist history. This ruling class not only has a militant, positive philosophy to justify its privileges, a philosophy that it assiduously disseminates inside the USA and internationally, but it is also simultaneously engaged in an unceasing offensive against the ideas of communism and socialism, even though Marxist ideas have spread amongst the people of America to the most limited degree. This anticommunist, antisocialist crusading zeal, together with its acute class sensitivity and consciousness of the class struggle, expresses the American ruling class’s forebodings about its own future. In contrast to the class consciousness of the capitalists, the American working class has not yet reached the level of generalizing its own particular class interests, even in the form of the most elementary social-reformist notions.

This indifference to socialist ideology is one of the most pronounced peculiarities of the American worker. This is not to say that the American worker is devoid of class feeling and initiative. On the contrary, the American working class has asserted itself time and time again as an independent fighting force, especially in the industrial field — often with brilliant results. But these experiences have not led to the establishment of a conscious and permanent challenge to the capitalist order — to a mass socialist movement.

The hyperdevelopment of bourgeois ideology in America and the corresponding underdevelopment of working class consciousness are the inseparable products of the same historical conditions. They are interdependent aspects of the present stage of social and political development in the USA.

Today, the political complexion of the whole world reflects the unevennesses of American society — one in the domain of production, another in political organization and a third in social consciousness.

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