Venezuela is a developing country, that is developing despite the US Empire’s best efforts. It is regularly improving, which is why the working classes support Maduro.
Russia isn’t imperialist, it has no colonies nor neocolonies, and a tiny amount of global financial capital. China isn’t imperialist either, it’s a socialist country wituout any financial domination of the state or economy. There’s no mechanisms pushing for imperialism within China, and this manifests in regular south-south trade leading to development of global south countries when trading with China, unlike the unequal exchange of trade with the west where the west charges monopoly prices for tech and places compradors in power to prevent industrial development.
Multiple things are true, correct. This isn’t the grand own you think it is, though. You’re passively parroting imperialist narratives.
Venezuelan communes and participatory democracy is flourishing. In addition, massive social programs have been implemented, focusing on housing, food security, and poverty eradication
I think this really needs to be stressed. Venezuela is a country building Socialism. Maduro and the PSUV is in power because of a genuinely incredible mass movement of communes, neighborhood committees, and other organs of grassroots democracy. This is qualitatively different from say, any of the Gulf oil monarchies
Absolutely. Venezuela is genuinely what self-described demsocs want, the Empire just doesn’t care and will kill you regardless of how procedural and by international law your socialism is.
Most of us have been at that stage, especially if we grew up in the west. I certainly was, no doubt about that. I try to do my best to correct that former behavior now that I know better. Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” remains critical reading.
And we thought we were so enlightened. This is the last layer of the imperial core propaganda onion: that the “other side” is no better, which leads to apathy and disengagement.
Russia isn’t imperialist, it has no colonies nor neocolonies
Yeah, tell that to Crimea, the Donbas, or even Siberia or the puppet states like Belarus, Georgia and Moldova. Russian neo-colonialism is all over Africa.
China isn’t imperialist either, it’s a socialist country wituout any financial domination of the state or economy.
China is a kinder imperialist, but they are using largely the same playbook that the west used in Africa, including debt-trap diplomacy, undermining local sovereignty and regulation, and undermining labor movements.
They also have a mix of socialism and capitalism, sometimes getting the best of both, and sometimes the worst. They definitely dominate the state economy through control of banking and the use of capital controls to direct funding to national priorities. The current real estate crisis and “ghost cities” are a pretty obvious example.
Crimea and the people of the Donbass region both voted to join Russia. In fact, the Donetsk and Luhanks People’s Republics, the ones being ethnically cleansed by the far-right Banderites in Kiev that have been in power since the 2014 western-backed Euromaidan coup, specifically requested assistance from Russia in 2022. Belarus and Georgia having close economic ties is not the same as imperialism. You also have no evidence of neocolonialism, trade with Russia is closer to south-south trade as it doesn’t have a monopoly on the goods it exports like gas and nuclear power plants, and as such African countries are developing more via trade with Russia and China while being underdeveloped by the west.
China is a socialist country. They have markets, but that doesn’t mean they have a “mix” of capitalism and socialism. Public ownership is the principle aspect of their economy, and the state is under the control of the working classes. There is no “real estate crisis,” housing prices were kept low and no longer able to be used as an investment vehicle. The “ghost cities” are smart urban development, and most are habited after being developed. This kind of thinking ahead is possible because of socialism.
You also have no evidence of “debt-trap diplomacy, undermining local sovereignty,” or “undermining labor movements.” China regularly forgives loans, doesn’t requore privatization of publicly owned industry or force austerity like the IMF does, and has been doing huge work in developing and building up the global south with more south-south trade.
What’s going on here is it’s absolutely unacceptable for you to admit that the west is the worst, by far, out of that trio. China is genuinely a progressive state with mass popular support internally and internationally, governed by a communist party. Russia is seeing rising support for socialism internally, and is higher up on the list of candidates for new socialist countried because of it. The west is the indisuputed world empire, helmed by the US, and this empire is projecting hard onto other countries as it exports genocide and plunders the world on its way out.
including debt-trap diplomacy, undermining local sovereignty and regulation, and undermining labor movements.
Notice how you have these facts in your brain that you’re sure are true but can’t actually identify why you think they’re true? That’s what being propagandized feels like.
Consortium News, 2015: The Mess That Nuland MadeAssistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s regime change without weighing the likely consequences.
Consortium News, 2023: The West’s Sabotage of Peace in UkraineFormer Israeli Prime Minister Bennett’s recent comments about getting his mediation efforts squashed in the early days of the war adds more to the growing pile of evidence that Western powers are intent on regime change in Russia.
China is a kinder imperialist, but they are using largely the same playbook that the west used in Africa, including debt-trap diplomacy, undermining local sovereignty and regulation, and undermining labor movements.
What is China doing to undermine local sovereignty or labor movements in Africa?
The current real estate crisis
What “current” real estate crisis? The Chinese state intentionally popped the real estate bubble over a year ago, making the capitalists eat their losses.
“We will scale up the building and supply of government-subsidized housing and improve the basic systems for commodity housing to meet people’s essential need for a home to live in and their different demands for better housing,” an English-language version of the report said.
Compare that to Obama, who bailed out the private banks at the expense of people with home mortgages, banks that knowingly wrote those bad mortgages. Michael Hudson, 2023: Why the Bank Crisis isn’t Over
The financial sector is the core of Democratic Party support, and the party leadership is loyal to its supporters. As President Obama told the bankers who worried that he might follow through on his campaign promises to write down mortgage debts to realistic market valuations in order to enable exploited junk-mortgage clients to remain in their homes, “I’m the only one between you [the bankers visiting the White House] and the mob with the pitchforks,” that is, his characterization of voters who believed his “hope and change” patter talk.
I see you have your cut and paste propaganda all ready to go there.
The people in Crimea and the Donbas wanted to join Russia, to protect them from Ukraine,
Sounds an awful lot like claiming Iraqis wanted the US to overthrow Sadam and would welcome it with open arms. It worked out about the same too, except for the Russian military embarrassing themselves. Even taken at face value, all you are doing is justifying the imperialism, not showing it doesn’t exist.
China is the biggest debt holder nation in the world. Zambia just had to default on loans for infrastructure that largely served Chinese needs, and Kenya and Ethiopia are not far behind. Meanwhile, the DRC is falling into debt paying for infrastructure to ship Copper and Cobalt to Chinese. China has not been as abusive as the west was, but they aren’t that much better either. It’s still the same tactics.
I see you have your cut and paste propaganda all ready to go there.
Oh yeah, famous Chinese propaganda outlet: The Atlantic.
Fuck off; you’re just using the word “propaganda” to mean "anything I disagree with. There is nothing that anyone could say to you to disagree that you wouldn’t immediately say “that’s propaganda and therefore wrong!” to.
It worked out about the same too
Are you stupid? Iraq immediately erupted into long term insurgency, a thing that categorically did not happen in Crimea or Donbas.
There is still a significant pro Ukrainian resistance operating in both Crimea and Donbas. Russian has had to resort to brutal tactics to suppress them, but has still not been entirely successful. Many of the resisters retreated to fight with the rest of Ukraine, and they are certainly giving Russia a fight. In any case, it’s still imperialism.
Evidence for that? Ukraine government - the same who sold the Ghost of Kiev, Russia collecting Ukrainian children like Pokemon, the Martyrs of Snake Island, the secessionists shelling themselves, Russia shelling itself, russian troops shelling themselves, russian timetravel technology deployed in Bucha and much more.
Is getting your intelligence insulted your kink or something?
The general Marxist take is that when Yanukovych was offered an IMF loan that required austerity policies and privatization of safety nets, and a Russian loan that did not come with the same restrictions, he went with the Russian loan and was couped for it, including a western-supported Banderite false-flag shooting. Following the western-supported coup, the areas in the Donbass region seceded, as they supported Yanukovych, are culturally and ethnically Russian, and were unhappy with the Banderites taking over the government under the cover of “democracy.” Said Banderites were also legally suppressing the Russian language in the Donbass region.
What ensued was a decade of fighting, 2 failed Minsk agreements that Kiev broke and admitted to never wanting to follow, and massive risk of NATO on Russia’s doorstep. The Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics requested Russian assistance, and Russia complied, sparking the next stage of the war.
Russia purely wants the Donbass region and NATO neutrality. They want the Donbass region not out of the kindness of their hearts, nor for plunder or further expansion, but because it’s a land bridge straight to Russia, the same route the Nazis took in World War II. NATO was building up because the West uses their millitary to threaten countries into opening up their economies to foreign plunder (like what’s happening right now in Venezuela), a tradition employed since NATO was founded, destroyed Yugoslavia and Libya, etc.
This is the common Marxist take, shared largely by PSL’s statement and FRSO’s statement. Essentially, the war is tragic, should end as quickly as possible, and was provoked by the west.
Nato is not a risk to russia, and never has been. Nato is a defensive alliance. The only way they’re a risk is if russia plans to attack them first. Anyone suggesting that nato provoked it is on something
NATO is the millitary alliance of the world’s imperialist powers. This group of countries uses this alliance to prevent the global south from going against it and liberating themselved from foreign plunder via overwhelming financial domination. The way imperialism tends to work in the modern day is countries like the US, France, Germany, UK, etc expropriate vast wealth from countries in the global south, similar to how capitalists steal value created by the working class.
NATO is as “defensive” as the Iron Dome in Israel. These countries export genocide and terrorism on the third world, expropriate huge sums of wealth, and then “defend” against anyone that pushes back against that.
George Washington Univ., 2017: NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev HeardDeclassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner
The Marxist definition of imperialism is more specific than just “big country invade small country”.
In, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin lays out five aspects of what makes Imperialism:
the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;
the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy;
the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance;
the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and
the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.
The question of “Is Russia Imperialist” isn’t a moral one, it’s a technical one. So if Russia were do to something that we all agree is morally reprehensible, that’s a separate concern from whether Russia is imperialist.
The technicality revolves around whether Russia has developed an oligarchy of Financial Capital, such that its invasion of Ukraine or other flexes of its influence, perpetuates the export of Russian finance capital around the world.
As it stands now, I don’t think that’s currently the case, but with Marxism being a dialectal philosophy, I do wonder if this war will accelerate that merging of Bank and industrial capital that Lenin discusses. It’s a Bourgeois states, and there’s financial capital in there somewhere that absolutely has an interest in forming a Russian imperialism.
So when people say “Russia isn’t Imperialist”, this is what’s being referred to. You can take it or leave it, but it’s worth getting into the weeds a bit, so we aren’t all talking passed each other
Marxist does not get to exclusively define what imperialism is. A more standard definition is far more reasonable to use. However, your comment is very informative to me, I’m glad you took the time to write this out
Marxist does not get to exclusively define what imperialism is
Marxism isn’t the only analytical lens out there, no. But the people you’re arguing with are working with that definition, which is why I took the time to clarify. Thank you for appreciating my effort post though lol
“A more standard definition” than the one that’s been in use for over a hundred years and accurately describes the dynamic in question? The definition liberals use is both new and entirely vibes-based. It is useless for anything but bringing geopolitical conversations to a screeching halt with murky equivocations. The Marxist definition exists to clarify, while the liberal definition exists to obscure. It’s the “socialism is when the government does stuff” of international relations.
The Marxist definition is strictly different, not a clarification. The Marxist one posits only capitalism can be imperialist, something I would say is strictly incorrect
The problem with the liberal definition is that it’s meant to erase capitalism from its natural, systemic compulsion towards imperialism, making it more of a policy choice. The Marxist understanding of imperialism is deeper and more accurate. You can think of the liberal definition as overly simplistic, broad, vague, and with no analysis of why countries become empires, while the Marxist understanding is deeper, more complex, more observable, and explains why some countries become empires (and thus gain massive amounts of wealth from their neocolonies), and their neocolonies remain underdeveloped.
Imperialism is quite literally the highest stage of capitalism. The way liberals use it is just as a synonym for “aggressive”. What definition do you propose that doesn’t make like, the D-Day landings imperialist? Downvote isn’t mine, btw
You’re talking about simple conquest. By that definition any offensive side in a war is imperialist, which is nonsensical as that means nearly every war in human history involved at least one “imperialist” power.
Imperialism is system of establishing and maintaining hegemony over large areas for the benefit of an elite (capital in modern times, patricians in ancient times, etc) within a metropole (probably too simple of a definition but it works). The Romans were an empire not just because they had an emperor and not because they conquered lands, but because they controlled lands from Spain to Syria and wealth flowed from those lands into Rome.
It was an inter-imperialist war except on the eastern front, where it was a war to destroy communism. The capitalist Allies and the USSR were an alliance of convenience, which is why the West made the USSR its enemy the moment the war ended.
Under Maduro, Venezuelan communes and participatory democracy is flourishing. In addition, massive social programs have been implemented, focusing on housing, food security, and poverty eradication. I’m not sure on what basis you distrust him so much, Venezuela is building socialism under Maduro from the bottom-up, and Maduro is doing his part from the top.
Venezuela is a developing country, that is developing despite the US Empire’s best efforts. It is regularly improving, which is why the working classes support Maduro.
Russia isn’t imperialist, it has no colonies nor neocolonies, and a tiny amount of global financial capital. China isn’t imperialist either, it’s a socialist country wituout any financial domination of the state or economy. There’s no mechanisms pushing for imperialism within China, and this manifests in regular south-south trade leading to development of global south countries when trading with China, unlike the unequal exchange of trade with the west where the west charges monopoly prices for tech and places compradors in power to prevent industrial development.
Multiple things are true, correct. This isn’t the grand own you think it is, though. You’re passively parroting imperialist narratives.
I think this really needs to be stressed. Venezuela is a country building Socialism. Maduro and the PSUV is in power because of a genuinely incredible mass movement of communes, neighborhood committees, and other organs of grassroots democracy. This is qualitatively different from say, any of the Gulf oil monarchies
I highly recommend the books Building The Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela, and Commune or Nothing: Venezuela’s Communal Movement and Its Socialist Project, for a look at these aspects of Venezuelan politics, because it’s often papered over in discussions about the country.
Absolutely. Venezuela is genuinely what self-described demsocs want, the Empire just doesn’t care and will kill you regardless of how procedural and by international law your socialism is.
Man i remember when I was a “damn, the US and it’s enemies are both evil” guy. I thought i was done thinking about the world
Most of us have been at that stage, especially if we grew up in the west. I certainly was, no doubt about that. I try to do my best to correct that former behavior now that I know better. Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” remains critical reading.
And we thought we were so enlightened. This is the last layer of the imperial core propaganda onion: that the “other side” is no better, which leads to apathy and disengagement.
Yeah, tell that to Crimea, the Donbas, or even Siberia or the puppet states like Belarus, Georgia and Moldova. Russian neo-colonialism is all over Africa.
China is a kinder imperialist, but they are using largely the same playbook that the west used in Africa, including debt-trap diplomacy, undermining local sovereignty and regulation, and undermining labor movements.
They also have a mix of socialism and capitalism, sometimes getting the best of both, and sometimes the worst. They definitely dominate the state economy through control of banking and the use of capital controls to direct funding to national priorities. The current real estate crisis and “ghost cities” are a pretty obvious example.
Crimea and the people of the Donbass region both voted to join Russia. In fact, the Donetsk and Luhanks People’s Republics, the ones being ethnically cleansed by the far-right Banderites in Kiev that have been in power since the 2014 western-backed Euromaidan coup, specifically requested assistance from Russia in 2022. Belarus and Georgia having close economic ties is not the same as imperialism. You also have no evidence of neocolonialism, trade with Russia is closer to south-south trade as it doesn’t have a monopoly on the goods it exports like gas and nuclear power plants, and as such African countries are developing more via trade with Russia and China while being underdeveloped by the west.
China is a socialist country. They have markets, but that doesn’t mean they have a “mix” of capitalism and socialism. Public ownership is the principle aspect of their economy, and the state is under the control of the working classes. There is no “real estate crisis,” housing prices were kept low and no longer able to be used as an investment vehicle. The “ghost cities” are smart urban development, and most are habited after being developed. This kind of thinking ahead is possible because of socialism.
You also have no evidence of “debt-trap diplomacy, undermining local sovereignty,” or “undermining labor movements.” China regularly forgives loans, doesn’t requore privatization of publicly owned industry or force austerity like the IMF does, and has been doing huge work in developing and building up the global south with more south-south trade.
What’s going on here is it’s absolutely unacceptable for you to admit that the west is the worst, by far, out of that trio. China is genuinely a progressive state with mass popular support internally and internationally, governed by a communist party. Russia is seeing rising support for socialism internally, and is higher up on the list of candidates for new socialist countried because of it. The west is the indisuputed world empire, helmed by the US, and this empire is projecting hard onto other countries as it exports genocide and plunders the world on its way out.
Their evidence is that the TV told them this many times over years, enough times that it’s true.
Of course, they have people dedicated to finding evidence and distorting it to present pro-imperial narratives, and fund them well.
Notice how you have these facts in your brain that you’re sure are true but can’t actually identify why you think they’re true? That’s what being propagandized feels like.
Are you kidding me? The people in Crimea and the Donbas wanted to join Russia, to protect them from Ukraine, which had been killing them since 2014.
The Atlantic, 2021: The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth
What is China doing to undermine local sovereignty or labor movements in Africa?
What “current” real estate crisis? The Chinese state intentionally popped the real estate bubble over a year ago, making the capitalists eat their losses.
Compare that to Obama, who bailed out the private banks at the expense of people with home mortgages, banks that knowingly wrote those bad mortgages. Michael Hudson, 2023: Why the Bank Crisis isn’t Over
Reuters, 2015: The myth of China’s ghost cities
Wherever you’re getting your information from, it’s dogshit.
I see you have your cut and paste propaganda all ready to go there.
Sounds an awful lot like claiming Iraqis wanted the US to overthrow Sadam and would welcome it with open arms. It worked out about the same too, except for the Russian military embarrassing themselves. Even taken at face value, all you are doing is justifying the imperialism, not showing it doesn’t exist.
China is the biggest debt holder nation in the world. Zambia just had to default on loans for infrastructure that largely served Chinese needs, and Kenya and Ethiopia are not far behind. Meanwhile, the DRC is falling into debt paying for infrastructure to ship Copper and Cobalt to Chinese. China has not been as abusive as the west was, but they aren’t that much better either. It’s still the same tactics.
New Labor Forum: Chinese Investments in Africa: Twenty-First Century Colonialism?
“Cut and paste propaganda” lol you mean sources? You’re just upset that they came prepared because you’ve got jack shit
Oh yeah, famous Chinese propaganda outlet: The Atlantic.
Fuck off; you’re just using the word “propaganda” to mean "anything I disagree with. There is nothing that anyone could say to you to disagree that you wouldn’t immediately say “that’s propaganda and therefore wrong!” to.
Are you stupid? Iraq immediately erupted into long term insurgency, a thing that categorically did not happen in Crimea or Donbas.
There is still a significant pro Ukrainian resistance operating in both Crimea and Donbas. Russian has had to resort to brutal tactics to suppress them, but has still not been entirely successful. Many of the resisters retreated to fight with the rest of Ukraine, and they are certainly giving Russia a fight. In any case, it’s still imperialism.
Yeah? Where did you hear this?
Evidence for that? Ukraine government - the same who sold the Ghost of Kiev, Russia collecting Ukrainian children like Pokemon, the Martyrs of Snake Island, the secessionists shelling themselves, Russia shelling itself, russian troops shelling themselves, russian timetravel technology deployed in Bucha and much more.
Is getting your intelligence insulted your kink or something?
If you don’t like cut and paste responses, stop having cut and paste thoughts.
Why do you think they’re invading Ukraine. Sparkles and rainbows?
The general Marxist take is that when Yanukovych was offered an IMF loan that required austerity policies and privatization of safety nets, and a Russian loan that did not come with the same restrictions, he went with the Russian loan and was couped for it, including a western-supported Banderite false-flag shooting. Following the western-supported coup, the areas in the Donbass region seceded, as they supported Yanukovych, are culturally and ethnically Russian, and were unhappy with the Banderites taking over the government under the cover of “democracy.” Said Banderites were also legally suppressing the Russian language in the Donbass region.
What ensued was a decade of fighting, 2 failed Minsk agreements that Kiev broke and admitted to never wanting to follow, and massive risk of NATO on Russia’s doorstep. The Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics requested Russian assistance, and Russia complied, sparking the next stage of the war.
Russia purely wants the Donbass region and NATO neutrality. They want the Donbass region not out of the kindness of their hearts, nor for plunder or further expansion, but because it’s a land bridge straight to Russia, the same route the Nazis took in World War II. NATO was building up because the West uses their millitary to threaten countries into opening up their economies to foreign plunder (like what’s happening right now in Venezuela), a tradition employed since NATO was founded, destroyed Yugoslavia and Libya, etc.
This is the common Marxist take, shared largely by PSL’s statement and FRSO’s statement. Essentially, the war is tragic, should end as quickly as possible, and was provoked by the west.
Nato is not a risk to russia, and never has been. Nato is a defensive alliance. The only way they’re a risk is if russia plans to attack them first. Anyone suggesting that nato provoked it is on something
Anything’s possible when you make shit up kiddo
NATO is the millitary alliance of the world’s imperialist powers. This group of countries uses this alliance to prevent the global south from going against it and liberating themselved from foreign plunder via overwhelming financial domination. The way imperialism tends to work in the modern day is countries like the US, France, Germany, UK, etc expropriate vast wealth from countries in the global south, similar to how capitalists steal value created by the working class.
NATO is as “defensive” as the Iron Dome in Israel. These countries export genocide and terrorism on the third world, expropriate huge sums of wealth, and then “defend” against anyone that pushes back against that.
Yeah man ask Libya and Yugoslavia how defended they feel
Nato is a defensive alliance just like cops are there to help you
NATO expansion:
NATO in general:
Invading / starting a war is not the same thing as imperialism.
Invading for territory gain is absolutely synonymous with imperialistic tendencies
The Marxist definition of imperialism is more specific than just “big country invade small country”.
In, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin lays out five aspects of what makes Imperialism:
The question of “Is Russia Imperialist” isn’t a moral one, it’s a technical one. So if Russia were do to something that we all agree is morally reprehensible, that’s a separate concern from whether Russia is imperialist.
The technicality revolves around whether Russia has developed an oligarchy of Financial Capital, such that its invasion of Ukraine or other flexes of its influence, perpetuates the export of Russian finance capital around the world.
As it stands now, I don’t think that’s currently the case, but with Marxism being a dialectal philosophy, I do wonder if this war will accelerate that merging of Bank and industrial capital that Lenin discusses. It’s a Bourgeois states, and there’s financial capital in there somewhere that absolutely has an interest in forming a Russian imperialism.
So when people say “Russia isn’t Imperialist”, this is what’s being referred to. You can take it or leave it, but it’s worth getting into the weeds a bit, so we aren’t all talking passed each other
Marxist does not get to exclusively define what imperialism is. A more standard definition is far more reasonable to use. However, your comment is very informative to me, I’m glad you took the time to write this out
Marxism isn’t the only analytical lens out there, no. But the people you’re arguing with are working with that definition, which is why I took the time to clarify. Thank you for appreciating my effort post though lol
“A more standard definition” than the one that’s been in use for over a hundred years and accurately describes the dynamic in question? The definition liberals use is both new and entirely vibes-based. It is useless for anything but bringing geopolitical conversations to a screeching halt with murky equivocations. The Marxist definition exists to clarify, while the liberal definition exists to obscure. It’s the “socialism is when the government does stuff” of international relations.
The Marxist definition is strictly different, not a clarification. The Marxist one posits only capitalism can be imperialist, something I would say is strictly incorrect
The problem with the liberal definition is that it’s meant to erase capitalism from its natural, systemic compulsion towards imperialism, making it more of a policy choice. The Marxist understanding of imperialism is deeper and more accurate. You can think of the liberal definition as overly simplistic, broad, vague, and with no analysis of why countries become empires, while the Marxist understanding is deeper, more complex, more observable, and explains why some countries become empires (and thus gain massive amounts of wealth from their neocolonies), and their neocolonies remain underdeveloped.
Imperialism is quite literally the highest stage of capitalism. The way liberals use it is just as a synonym for “aggressive”. What definition do you propose that doesn’t make like, the D-Day landings imperialist? Downvote isn’t mine, btw
A square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not necessarily a square.
Ok but the person above just denied that a square was a rectangle
Look at those goalposts fly
No goalposts have moved dude
It literally is? They are expanding power over a foreign nation via military means. That’s basically the definition of imperialism.
You’re talking about simple conquest. By that definition any offensive side in a war is imperialist, which is nonsensical as that means nearly every war in human history involved at least one “imperialist” power.
Imperialism is system of establishing and maintaining hegemony over large areas for the benefit of an elite (capital in modern times, patricians in ancient times, etc) within a metropole (probably too simple of a definition but it works). The Romans were an empire not just because they had an emperor and not because they conquered lands, but because they controlled lands from Spain to Syria and wealth flowed from those lands into Rome.
The Soviet Union expanded their power over Germany via military means. WW2 was simply an inter-imperialist war.
You jest but this is genuinely what libs believe
It was an inter-imperialist war except on the eastern front, where it was a war to destroy communism. The capitalist Allies and the USSR were an alliance of convenience, which is why the West made the USSR its enemy the moment the war ended.
Edie is being sarcastic, btw.
The imperialist D-Day landings