By Ahjamu Umi – Sep 11, 2025
I live in the U.S., but evidence of the increasing failures of the capitalist system applies to the entire world, particularly the capitalist countries. And, the U.S. is a very reliable measuring stick for this analysis since it has been the leading capitalist and imperialist country in the world since 1945.
Before that time, Europe, particularly Britain, France, and Germany, parallelled the U.S. in world political and economic power, but World War II knocked all of Europe down several notches. After that dust settled, the U.S. stood as the dominant capitalist and imperialist country meaning it became the chief raider of world resources and terrorist oppression to ensure that dominance continues.
In the 1950s and 60s, that system worked pretty well for the U.S. It was able to present itself as an alternative to European colonialism all over the world while the economic prosperity following World War II provided stable economic growth for the U.S. economy and the primarily European (white) working class elements that prop it up.
The problem, as Karl Marx told us 150 years ago, is capitalism is an exploitative system so that means its existence is dependent upon saturating the markets to maximize profitability. Unfortunately for it, doing so, will inevitably create imbalances because it needs that imbalance to retain its profitable margins. In other words, this is how the capitalist cycle completes itself. The U.S. corporations create products, service and assembly line wise, but as workers and social movements around the world battle back against the inherent exploitation of capitalism, the ruling classes for this backward system have to search for more profitable arenas. Cheap resources and labor are the keys to these more profitable arenas, but the challenge they face with that is people in these areas of the world are the ones who are doing the most effective fighting back against this oppression. Examples are the organized labor struggles in countries like Argentina and Colombia against International Monetary Fund exploitation as well as the unified efforts within the Sahel region of Africa to come out from under the toxic control of the French CFA Franc currency.
Even within the U.S. recent victories and potential victories by labor unions like the Teamsters, Amazon and Starbucks workers, food workers, etc., symbolize a new era of labor organizing that exists outside of the dominant dependence of the liberal bourgeoisie electoral process which has defined organized labor for several decades. And, nothing makes this point more than the level of consciousness today around the need for justice for the Palestinian people, something that only existed within the most radical sectors of activist work just a few short decades ago.
The results of all of this are Malcolm X’s classic words in 1963 when he was asked to comment on the recent assassination of John F. Kennedy. Paraphrasing, Malcolm said that the violence the U.S. was perpetuating around the world, using the Congo in Central Africa for example and the U.S. role in assassinating the democratically elected Prime Minister Patrice Emory Lumumba, was a case of the “chickens coming home to roost!” Meaning, when you perpetuate violence and oppression against innocent people, that violence has a way of coming back around to you.
In the 50s and 60s, the U.S. and the entire capitalist world was seen as the citadel of peace, justice, freedom and democracy. Fast forward to today and the streets of Paris, London, the Scandinavian countries, and New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal, etc., look like scenes from Senegal, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. Why? Because the instability that these capitalist countries have systemically unleashed against all of those countries has resulted in the people from those countries being forced to seek stability wherever they could get it. The capitalist countries destroyed the possibility of finding education and jobs in African cities, so those Africans found their way to Europe, the U.S., and Canada to find those resources.
This phenomenon has created a reality where the capitalist countries can no longer claim the allegiance of its internal populations as they could in the 50s and 60s. This is why they get so upset in Europe, Canada, and the U.S. when people in those countries proudly wave Palestinian, Congolese, Sudanese, and Pakistani flags. The message is clear, “we are here because you stole our birthright. Now, we will make you implode from the inside!”
This reality explains the outrage about so-called illegal immigration in these capitalist countries. Its simply the continued denial by those within those countries who ride or die with the oppressive empires they identify with that they are on the wrong side of history and its clearly catching up to them.
The rich within the capitalist countries are at the end of their road in being able to exploit, exploit, exploit, with no push back from the masses. There are countless surveys circulating within the U.S. today that demonstrate that upwards of 50% of persons 30 years and under have a favorable view of what they conceive to be socialist construction and policies. And, all that does is place the U.S. in line with the populations in the rest of the capitalist world. Obviously, there is a long way to go before any victories for socialist consciousness can be claimed, but it would have been absolutely impossible in the 50s and 60s to have even 3 to 5% of the any population segment express any level of positivity towards socialism in any way possible.
So, instead of being shocked by the outward racist, patriarchal, and homophobic rhetoric, see it for what it actually is. Instead of feeling depressed because racists are confronting people in McDonalds, see it for what it is. Rural European communities are waging protests against the U.S. government for its anti-human policies in healthcare and social services. The rich are having to eat the poor in order to maintain their profitability and the working poor are not accepting this lying down. Capitalism is in its last legs and even if some of us don’t know it, the capitalists know it. Their desperation attempts in recruiting Indigenous people in the West and Africans to denounce their communities with long discredited racist talking points, like all these other last ditch efforts, is nothing more than the actions of a cornered cat fighting for its very survival.
Every significant economist with a social lense predicted the decline of capitalism from Luxemburg to Marx to Rodney to Nkrumah to Ture, to Castro, etc., etc. In fact, Fidel Castro has a book entitled “Capitalism in Crisis” that was released in the late 80s/early 90s. That book is so prophetic for today’s reality that its like Castro hasn’t been deceased for almost 10 years and instead is sitting in Havana today writing notes about what’s happening.
All every peace and justice loving person needs to do now is ensure that you are getting your mind, body and spirit prepared. Maintain that constant political education so that you can see the end of capitalism as simply the beginning of a better socialist reality. Continue reinforcing your work so that you continue throwing oil on the fire. View every conversation as an opportunity to fight back. You never know. The person you are talking to can become the next Malcolm X, Teodora Gomes, or Ella Baker.
Contrary to the lies being vomited over and over, the world never started with capitalism. Human progress never stands still. Capitalism is the dialectical outgrowth of colonialism and slavery. It replaced feudalism as the dominant economic system in the world today, but even right now, feudalism, like its predecessors communalism and slavery, still exists in pockets around the world. One day soon, capitalism will join communalism, slavery, and feudalism, as former systems of dominance in the world. And the people’s of the planet will have their time to shape scientific socialism in the ways needed. For African people that will manifest itself in the creation of one unified socialist Africa. For others, it may look different, but all of this work will serve the purpose of advancing socialist construction for the following stage of human development i.e. world communism, and so on and so on. Kwame Ture could not have provided a more accurate example of this when asked about why he moved from Black power to Pan-Africanism. He said that in the 60s, the struggle was dominantly defined as a struggle against racism so the African masses within the U.S. identified a forward thrust from that as declaring our Blackness as a shield against racism.
Then Ture went on to assert that as time evolved, they began to recognize that the struggle was much more than a fight against racism. It’s a fight for power and power means land and resources and the only land we have rights to is Africa, thus Pan-Africanism. Human progress never stands still. The only people who want us to believe that it does are the people who benefit the most from it standing still right now in this moment in history. Soon, they will be eternally proven wrong.
Ahjamu Umi is revolutionary organizer with the All African People’s Revolutionary Party, adviser, and liberation literature author.
