Why is the US Left so Chickensh*t?

January 3, 2026, should be the date to end all discussion:  Trump’s raid on Venezuela should have clarified reality even to the most obtuse:  the US is not an “ordinary” country, as is claimed by observers all around, but is the center of the US Empire.  Its “leaders” seek to dominate the world.  Those of us on the radical left have been correct:  the United States is an imperialistcountry, and currently, the most powerful one on the planet.

After observing the war in Vietnam, as a US Marine who spent his four years in the United States (1969-73), and taking some time to try to reconsider my thinking after getting out of the military, I began serious writing in 1984, trying to understand what was going on in the world.  Obviously, what I had been told while growing up by my family, schools, and government had been a series of lies.

Vietnam had not been invaded by an external force; the war there was a civil war, and the United States had, in its arrogance, stuck its nose into.  (Years later, I learned that in Geneva during1954, the US had agreed with the French, the Chinese, the Soviets, and “North” Vietnamese to allow the people of “South” Vietnam to have a free and fair election so as to decide whether they wanted to live as an “independent” country under a French puppet regime or if they wanted to join with those in the north of Vietnam, under Ho Chi Minh, to be part of Vietnam.  The election was to take place in 1956.  That year, the “independent” regime cancelled the agreed-upon elections, which were never held.  The reason, according to then-President Dwight Eisenhower in his memoirs, was that ‘Every poll showed that Ho Chi Minh would have won 80 percent of a free, fair election,’ and that’s why 3.8 million Vietnamese were killed and another 5.7 million wounded, and over 58,000 Americans and other allies were killed, and hundreds of thousands were wounded and often traumatized for life.  See Turse, 2013.)

  But that information, which I picked up along the way, was not what I was ultimately seeking; I was trying to figure out how changes in the global economy were affecting US workers (Scipes, 1984).

I was, at the time, taking a graduate course in international relations at San Francisco State University while working as a union printer and labor activist in the Bay Area.  To try to grasp the economic developments beginning during the late 1970s, I felt it necessary to go back to the end of World War II, in 1945.

Trying to begin with the big picture, I recognized that there were two empires in the world, one led by the United States and one by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union) and, while recognizing the existence of each, I concentrated on the US Empire.

This was unusual; at that time; no scholar that I found had used this term.  [Years later, I learned that William Appleman Williams in his 1959/1962 book had used this term, and then in Black Against Empire by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr. (2013), that the Black Panthers had used it during the late 1960s-early ‘70s in presenting their understanding of the world.  In 1989, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, a Dutch-born scholar, used the term in his title, Empire and Emancipation.  There probably have been others.]  And later, the late William Blum (1986, 2000, 2013)—whose work has been so influential upon many US activists—thought he was responsible for revival of the term; when I stayed with him in his apartment in Washington, DC the last time we saw each other—probably somewhere around 2016-18—we discussed this and I showed him I had revived the term before him; obviously, his important books popularized the term far beyond my simple paper.  In any case, I think it’s safe to say that I was among the earliest of those who used it after the end of the American war in Vietnam.

Yet today, as far as I can tell, I am among only a few who have used the term consistently over the years (for a few examples, see Scipes, 1989, 2010a, 2010b, 2016, 2023), although Alfred W. McCoy finally adopted it in 2017, and he reported in his brilliant Shadows of the American Century (2017) that it had been adopted by a range of scholarly writers; he continues in his 2026 subtitle.

Now, I can understand why my limited range of published articles had such a minor impact, but I cannot understand the same for a major distinguished scholar such as McCoy.  (In fact, I reviewed his 2017 book in an on-line, peer-reviewed scholarly journal, “Class, Race, and Corporate Power,” in an effort to expand his impact, and as of today, there have been over 4,500 downloads of my review around the world. See Scipes, 2018).

What I find shocking, however, is the almost total absence of the term “empire” in the writings of our best political activists today, wherever they are located.  And while I’d like to get whatever credit due me for my work, my concern is much larger; to me, the use of empire signifies taking a global approach to the world.  And that its absence in our writings suggests strongly that most North American political writers are confining our analysis to the United States of America and, possibly, Canada.  (And obviously, we must exempt those living and writing overseas who utilize a global perspective.)

To me, if one is writing about the United States in the world, then—almost by definition—this cannot be confined to domestic politics.  Period.

The folks I see who are doing this seem to have some sort of “social democratic” perspective and politics, whether they claim it or not.  These are reformist politics, not radical ones.  In other words, rather than to struggle for a new world, they want to “reform” the current one around the edges, so that the jagged parts can be dislodged and then the remainder smoothed off.  (I’m trying to be descriptive here, not pejorative.)  In general, they do not want to address the reality that the US is an imperialist nation.

The problem, from my perspective, is that the United States is acting globally, and has been a global project since Europeans first “found” it.  (Rough dating because its existed continuously since then is 1607 in Virginia; there were earlier Spanish and English settlements previously, but they didn’t survive.)  In any case, the US has continuously been effecting and effected by global forces since that time.

We are not taught this in the overwhelming majority of our schools, including, from what I can tell, most universities.  If we were, there would have to be major changes in the “American” story.

Let me give on example to clarify.  We are taught about the Louisiana Purchase where, in 1803, US President Thomas Jefferson bought most of the US “west” from France (lands other than those claimed at the time by Spain).  By why were the French even willing to sell?  That is rarely addressed….

In general, the world at the time saw major European powers—especially England, France, and Spain—competing to dominate the world.  They each had colonies in the Caribbean; the English in Jamaica, the French in Haiti, and the Spanish in the Dominican Republic and Cuba.  These colonies each produced massive amounts of profits from the slave-produced sugar and other natural resources for its imperial master, plus they each had ports for their respective military, both to provide internal control over the slaves and to protect the supply lines to the respective countries from the imperial homeland.  This way, they were able to protect respective trading routes from competitors, as well as from independent pirates who preyed on shipping.

However, in 1791, the slaves of Haiti under Toussaint L’Ouverture rebelled and overthrew the French colonists.  Napoleon then sent the French Army to recapture the colony, but the self-liberated slaves defeated them.  The British decided to take advantage of the situation, sent their Army to Haiti and, in turn, were also defeated by the former enslaved.  (To put this in contemporary terms, these were like the #1 and #2 competitors for the World Heavyweight Boxing Crown!)  Haiti has made to suffer ever since for its impertinence (see Geggus. 2014; James, 1938; Nederveen Pieterse, 1989, Chapter 14).

Why haven’t we in the US been taught about the Haitian Revolution of 1791?  Simply, it didn’t fit well with the myth of white supremacy to have Black former slaves defeat white armies.  This myth had been projected around the world, especially by the white imperialists, to justify their degradation, enslavement, and killing of people of color as the imperialists stole their lands, raw materials, natural resources, and in many cases, their peoples for the well-being of the rich in the imperial countries.  The imperialists—including those in the United States, which included most of the white elites—certainly didn’t want to undermine this established myth!

Second, the newly liberated Haitians provided political and economic support for forces in northern South America that were fighting under Simon Bolivar for their liberation from Spain, as well as inspiration for Black slave revolts, such as Gabriel Prosser’s and Denmark Vesey’s in the US South.  We cannot talk about global solidarity, can we?

And third, and immediately pertinent to this article, is that without Haiti, the French could no longer protect their supply lines from the English, Spanish and various pirates, supply lines that had formerly run from France, through Haiti, and on to New Orleans, the headquarters of the French colony in the “American” west.  The Revolution in Haiti had deprived the French of their protective bases and maintenance of New Orleans was simply unsustainable without them.  Thus, the French cut their losses and sold to the United States and avoided another possible war as US colonists were heading west.

I share this story to make my point:  we cannot understand the development of nor the actions of the United States in the world today without taking a global perspective.  Truthfully, it never has been possible, but this has not been told to us.

So, when we fail to place our political understandings, strategies, and tactics in anything other than a global perspective, we are limiting and lying to ourselves and others!  It is that clear.

And yet, most of the US left fails to take a global perspective; we try to understand the world by limiting our vision to the US and maybe, in a few cases, Canada and Mexico.

But wait:  what about US support for struggles in Vietnam, Central America, the Philippines, South Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, Venezuela, etc.?  Support for each has been strong, albeit some support stronger than others.  This support hasbeen impressive, but it has often been detached from our politics as home in the US.  In other words, I argue that political struggles in the US have been detached from those overseas.

But this is stupid!  Yes.  Why the disjunction?

I believe a major factor here is in the nature of the US left.  Most of us, and especially leaders, have gone to college and have at least a bachelor’s degree.

[Truth in advertising:  not only do I have a Bachelor’s, I have a Master’s and a Ph.D.  I taught at a university in Northwest Indiana for 18 ½ years, however, it was after years of serving in the US military, and working for years as an industrial printer, office worker, and high school teacher.  Please focus on my argument if possible.]

What most people do not recognize is the impact of a college degree.  What students learn going through these programs is how to systematically generalize and analyze their subjects, and these are skills that few non-college attendees attain unless they get specific, specialized training as through some union training programs, some military occupational specialties, and/or advanced technical training.

At the same time, as my friend, Kayla Vasilko reminds me, “above all college students are taught to compete for the American dream. They are graded against each other to compete for the best jobs, of which there are few. They are taught not to trust others; they are not taught how to work together and organize. They are taught to obey authority.”

The importance of recognizing both of these outcomes is that many college grads feel uncomfortable around more working class people, and we fail to interact with them.  (I definitely am not suggesting that all working class people are wonderful, much less perfect, or any such thing:  they are as good as the best of us and as bad as the worst of us.)  Worse, we often denigrate them. (I’d argue that working class people of all colors deserve all the respect each of expect for ourselves, at least until they prove themselves undeserving.)

The larger point here being that we have knowledge to share, as well as they have knowledge and experiences to share with us, and we need to directly and forthrightly confront this gap.

Without doing this, we lose our major source of power as a political project:  people power.  We don’t have the guns, we don’t have legal “rights” to stop the mistreatment of us all:  the only real potential power we have—as has been shown recently in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Oregon in their resistance to the fascists in the Trump Administration and particularly in ICE—is the power of the people.

Yet, how to we build these connections?  We have to be able to communicate across our differences in ways that make sense to each other.  That means, we must try to understand the world in all of its complexities and be able to convey those understandings in ways that can be understood.

The fact is that the elites’ escalating assault on all of us around the world is connected to its assault on Venezuela, tolerance of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and its assault on the environment of our planet:  their greed and search for total domination of all people is a literal death threat to each of us, as Renee Good unfortunately found out.  We have to not only be able to explain this, but we have to have the patience to respond to questions and/or opposition to these ideas.

For those of us on the left, this means confronting our fears of being unable to do so; we’ve got to get out and find ways to successfully interact and communicate with those unlike us.  This means we must see the interconnectivity of it all, and from a global perspective. We’ve got to reject limiting our focus to only subjects at hand, but we need to help people understand the whole world and show them how everything is connected:   without that, we’re doomed to failure.

The US left needs to quit being so chickenshit.  As we used to say in the 1960s and ‘70s:  dare to struggle, dare to win!

References

Bloom, Joshua and Waldo E. Martin, Jr. 2013. Black Against Empire:  The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party.  Berkeley and Los Angeles:  University of California Press.

Blum, William.

—        1986. The CIA:  A Forgotten History, Zed.

—        2000.  Rogue State:  A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, Common Courage.

—        2013.  America’s Deadliest Export:  Democracy—The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else, Zed.

Geggus, David. 2014. The Haitian Revolution:  A Documentary History.  Edited and translated, with an Introduction, by Geggus.  Indianapolis/Cambridge:  Hacket Publishing Co.

James, C.L.R. 1938. The Black Jacobians. London:  Secker and Warburg.

McCoy, Alfred W.

—`2017. Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

—  2026. Cold War on Five Continents:  A Global History of Empire and Espionage. Chicago:  Haymarket Books.

Nederveen Pieterse, Jan P. 1989. Empire and Emancipation:  Power and Liberation on a World Scale.  New York:  Praeger.

Scipes, Kim.

—  1984. “Industrial Policy:  Can It Lead the U.S. Out of Its Economic Malaise?” New Labor Review [Labor Studies Program, San Francisco State University], No. 6, Spring: 27-53.  Updated and republished in pamphlet form (December).  Pamphlet on-line at https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/35435605/industrial-policy-can-it-lead-the-us-out-of-its-economic-malaise.

—  1989. “Trade Union Imperialism in the U.S. Yesterday:  Business Unionism, Samuel Gompers and AFL Foreign Policy.”  Newsletter of International Labour Studies [Institute of Labor Education, Research and Information, The Hague, The Netherlands], Nos. 40-41, January-April: 4-20.

—  2010a.  AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers:  Solidarity or Sabotage? New York: Bloomsbury Books. (2011-paperback.)

—  2010b.  “Why Labor Imperialism?  AFL-CIO’s Foreign Policy Leaders and the Developing World.”  Working USA, Vol. 13, No. 4, December: 465-479.  On-line at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263615708_Why_labor_imperialism_AFL-CIO’s_foreign_policy_leaders_and_the_developing_world.

—  2016.  “Labor Imperialism” in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, edited by Immanuel Ness and Zak Cope.  London:  Palgrave Macmillan: 1294-1304.  On-line at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339129986_Labour_Imperialism.

—  2018. “In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017):  A Review Essay.”  Class, Race and Corporate Power, Vol. 6, Issue 1, Article 7.  On-line at http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower/vol6/iss1/7/.

—  2023. “We STILL Don’t Get It:  It’s an Empire, Folks.”  Countercurrents.org, April 20.  On-line at https://countercurrents.org/2023/04/we-still-dont-get-it-it-is-an-empire-folks/?swcfpc=1.

Turse, Nick. 2013. Kill Everything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. New York: Henry Holt.

Williams, William Appleman. 1959/1962.  The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 2^nd ed.  New York: Dell.

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