Under the banner of liberty, the thirteen colonies overthrew British rule, ushering in the rule of the American bourgeoisie.

However, enshrined in the US Constitution was an insoluble contradiction: slavery. To abolish this vile institution, a Second American Revolution was required — the Civil War. What began as a war to preserve the Union was transformed into a revolutionary war to end slavery.

The convulsive period of revolution and counterrevolution known as Reconstruction followed. Despite their heroic efforts at self-organization and defense, the aspirations of millions of freedpeople were betrayed by the Northern capitalists.

All of these struggles shaped the American nation-state and laid the basis for US imperialism. In these pages, there are countless lessons to be learned about the dynamics of revolution and counterrevolution as a new generation of revolutionaries prepares for the momentous class battles yet to come.

“We see that imperialism, which seemed such an insuperable colossus, has proved before the whole world to be a colossus with feet of clay.” – W. I. Lenin

Imperialism defines the world we live in today. The aim of this three-part book is to arm a new generation of American communists with a deeper understanding of imperialism, which is the first step toward overthrowing it.

As imperialism plunged Europe into the horrors of World War I, Lenin produced a comprehensive explanation of the highest stage of capitalism. However, many decades have passed since then and new contradictions have emerged. In the first section of this volume, John Peterson explains the basic features of imperialism, based on Lenin’s analysis, with up-to-date facts and figures from the development of American imperialism in particular.

Then, he traces the rise and relative decline of US imperialism from its beginnings as a backwater colony through its transformation into the largest, most dominant capitalist power on the planet after the two World Wars. Although it suffered a major defeat in the Vietnam War, it remained a superpower. With the fall of the Soviet Union, US imperialism became the only superpower on the world stage. However, this complete dominance did not last forever. Now US imperialism is in relative decline, and it is being challenged by rising imperialist powers such as Russia and China.

This volume also includes a Marxist Primer on Imperialist War, drawing on Lenin and Trotsky’s principled analysis of this specific aspect of the question. Finally, When US Imperialism Invaded Soviet Russia tells the story of the US invasion of Soviet Russia in 1918 under Woodrow Wilson, which ended with the mutiny of the US troops.