Class is integral to capitalism, the former its defining structure, the latter the directed purpose of a societal-historical process of wealth concentration whose intended purpose is systemic inequality. To legitimize this historical formation over time, given its inherent and myriad features of domination, requires persistent, sustaining, effective doses of false consciousness transmitted downward through the social order in the form of patriotism, diversions and distractions, and the invitation to identify with war (hegemony) and expansion (imperialism). This formula of Exceptionalism, the ideological cover for America’s special brand of capitalism, has worked in domestic and international politics through formal and informal social control at home and a pattern of aggressive, largely unilateral, combat, intervention, and confrontation in foreign affairs: the full blossoming of capitalist development as a counterrevolutionary force arresting trends toward and possibilities of global democratization, anathema to capitalism and America both.
I say “anathema” because what I am describing did not occur overnight, or even following the Second World War, at which point dramatic policy choices were coming into convergence, as in the squaring off of world ideological systems obstructing the universalization of capitalism led by America. Reaching the heights of power and influence in that war’s aftermath then defined a still higher stage, from coalition leadership (“the free world”) to exclusive hegemon calling the tune to actions to the US’s advantage and on its behalf. There is nothing solely deterministic in history, nor, for that matter, foreordained by a kindly, superseding deity; yet, consecutiveness both in policy and action, rooted in systemic requirements (from the maximization of profits and the creation of surplus capital as a means to further investment, to class dynamics which ensure the security of ruling groups and their potency in decision-making at all levels of government and also ensure, the twin to surplus capital, surplus labor, by means of under-consumption via low-wages doctrine and inequitable sharing of wealth distribution) and exploitation itself.