It isn’t “fuck the [imperialist/authoritarian nation] government and its enforcers” for most people?
Russia isn’t imperialist. Imperialism isn’t when invasion or when big country is bad
Authoritarian is a useless pejorative as every nation that has been or currently is is “authoritarian”.
That’s a laugh. Putin and his political machine have expressed a desire to return to the days of the Russian Empire and has engaged in acts of conquest to that effect.
Russia is a mirror image of the US. While Anglo-Saxons were pushing west across North America, conquering indigenous peoples, Russians were pushing east out of Europe into Asia conquering indigenous peoples. They’re both dysfunctional countries with dysfunctional world views.
I never claimed that modern Russia is progressive, socialist, or something to be defended. I am a communist; Russia today is a capitalist oligarchy. Russia being imperialist and if I support them are separate questions.
Imperialism is not “when a country invades” or “when a big country has bad politics.” Imperialism refers to a specific stage of capitalism characterized by monopoly capital, finance capital dominance, export of capital, and systemic exploitation of dependent nations. By that definition, Russia today does not function as an imperialist power in the same way the US or the rest of the imperial core does. This is a simple statement of facts, not an endorsement.
Pointing to the Russian Empire’s historical expansion is irrelevant to whether the Russian Federation in the 21st century is imperialist. History alone does not determine a country’s position in the current global capitalist system. By that logic, nearly every existing state would be “imperialist” forever and the term would be rendered useless for meaningful analysis.
Likewise, saying Russia “mirrors” the US ignores material reality. The US sits at the core of global finance, enforces dollar hegemony, maintains hundreds of overseas bases, and systematically dominates entire regions. Russia does not occupy that structural position (even if they may wish to). You can criticize Russian nationalism or militarism without flattening all distinctions or redefining imperialism into a catch all for when big countries do bad things or when invasions.
Imperialism refers to a specific stage of capitalism
Then you’ve redefined the term Imperialism.
The term imperialism was coined by
LeninHobson, and it’s definition has remained constant for over a century. It’s actually liberals who have tried to flatten and bastardize it’s definition to hide the inevitable systemic nature of their crimes against humanity. The fact that you were introduced to the wrong definition first doesn’t make it the right one.The word imperialism is derived from the Latin word imperium,[8] which means ‘to command’, ‘to be sovereign’, or ‘to rule’.[9] It was coined in the 19th century to describe Napoleon III’s attempts to gain political support by invasion.[10][11] The term was applied to the British Empire during the 1870s; by the 1880s it had acquired a positive connotation in the West.[12] By the end of the 19th century, the term was used to describe the behavior of empires at all times and places.[13] Hannah Arendt and Joseph Schumpeter defined imperialism as expansion for the sake of expansion.[14]
Hobson, and in 1917, Lenin, attempted to redefine imperialism as the “highest stage of capitalism”, as firms exported capital to dominate economically rather than territorially.[15]
No. You just don’t know what the word means.
How do you define imperialism if invading other countries with the same explicit intent to annex them isn’t it?
Cowbee means economic imperialism - using the resources / wealth of another country for yourself. So invading another country would not, by itself, be imperialism.
I think this definition is a bit reductionist, but it’s a good starting point to ask ‘is this war for profit or some other reason?’.
but it’s a good starting point to ask ‘is this war for profit or some other reason?’.
Always an important question to ask but if Cowbee does mean that, then they should use the modifier to signify that they are talking about economic imperialism and not about Imperialism Imperialism.
I am talking about what most leftists understand to be imperialism, which is why I called it as such, and explained it so there’s no room for doubt. The vauge concept of influence along international lines popular among apologists for imperialism as I describe it isn’t inherently a bad thing, while imperialism as I describe it is, and is the biggest obstacle to socialism globally.
If you want to rename imperialism to something else, and call imperialism “economic imperialism” then we can do that, I’d rather talk about the actual process itself than argue about nomenclature.
I’m a liberal, and I support both statements.
“Liberalism is a word that means different things to different people, especially from country to country.”
Liberal values are the basis of Marx’s work. He, rightly in my opinion, thinks the liberal state cannot bring about those values for all people.
Liberalism is all about individual “rights” and “freedoms”. Such as the right of the factory owner to exploit his workers or the freedom of the newspaper owner control the narrative. This is completely at odds with communism.
Marxism is also in favor the individual and their liberty, but not the liberty to dispossess another of those liberties. He doesn’t see the individual as a natural object, but a creation of social and historical conditions. By destroying the class system, it liberates the individual to pursue their aims when they wish.
[I]n communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
For Marx, the ‘Individual’ is not a finished product to be protected from society, but a potential to be realized through an equitable society.
PS… Dig your username
Liberalism and “liberal values” are not the basis of Marx’s work at all, they are one of his main targets of critique. Marx doesn’t start from liberal individual rights and then argue they’re imperfectly realized. He argues those rights are themselves products of bourgeois society and function to mask class domination. Saying Marx supports “individual liberty” doesn’t make him a supporter of “liberal values”, because liberal liberty is abstract and formal, while Marx’s freedom is material and social. This second response just restates Marx’s view of the individual as socially produced, which is correct, but it is reinforcing Marx rejection of liberalism. Marx was never refining liberal values, he was explaining why they arise under capitalism and why they cannot deliver real human freedom.
When I say liberal values are the ‘basis’ of Marx’s work, I am not suggesting he was a ‘liberal reformer.’ I am arguing that Marx’s work is a dialectical sublation of liberalism. He takes the some of the liberal achievements (rationalism, the end of feudal bondage, and the Labor Theory of Value) and shows that they can only be fully realized by moving beyond the capitalist mode of production. He doesn’t reject the ‘Individual’ out of hand; he rejects the liberal version of the individual (the abstract citizen) to make way for the real individual (the species-being).
Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation, only when man has recognized and organized his “own powers” as social powers, and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.
– On The Jewish Question
I wrote a full reply but realized none of it really matters until we get clarity on terms. What do you actually mean by liberal values, and which of those do you think are foundational to Marxism?
When I say liberal values, I mean things like: the primacy of private property; formal equality before the law regardless of material conditions; individual rights abstracted from real social relations; freedom of contract between unequal classes; the liberal state as a supposedly neutral arbiter standing above society; and “freedoms” of speech, press, and association that in practice follow ownership and class power, up to and including a legal system that treats rich and poor “equally” such as criminalizing both for sleeping under bridges. These are not accidental features of liberalism or it’s values but flow directly from its idealist foundations.
Liberalism begins from abstract ideas (rights, the individual, the citizen) and treats them as primary, as if they exist independently of history and material conditions. Marxism begins from the opposite direction: dialectical and historical materialism, which treats those liberal categories as historically specific social products tied to a particular mode of production. That is a fundamental theoretical clash.
Because of this, Marxism does not aim to complete or realize liberal values, but to explain why they arise under capitalism and why they cannot deliver real human emancipation. So before talking about “sublation” or continuity, we need to be clear whether liberalism is being treated as an ideal to be fulfilled, or as an ideological form to be scientifically analyzed and superseded.
Upper right is similar to lower left - inconsistent values and inconsistent ideology. Pure hypocrisy. Dogs of US vs Dogs of Russia.
Do you actually believe it’s inconsistent? Because it’s really quite straightforward: The US-centered capitalist empire must be stopped, and it’s genocidal proxies need to be eliminated, for the survival of the human race.
Imperialist capitalist oligarchic country must be stopped so I should support another imperialist capitalist oligarchic country. Brilliant logic.
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only one of these countries is imperialist.
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only one of these countries is a waning world hegemon with it’s boot on the neck of the planet and 900 military bases worldwide.
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the other has been forced into a position of fighting and weakening the hegemon, and therefore warrants critical support. This is why Africa, China and and most of the middle east support Russia in this war: every NATO tank and drone destroyed in Ukraine is one less to menace people elsewhere, one less to enforce murderous sanctions and austerity. The logic is very simple if you understand cause, effect and scale.
- Of course, because Belarus, Wagner group in Africa, Caucasus, are all humanitarian efforts
- True, but Spain was still imperialistic despite England being more successful. Success doesn’t excuse actions and ideology.
- Now who doesn’t really understand world politics?
You guys sound like liberals defending the invasion of Iraq.
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What are Wagner doing in Africa? Guarding mines and shit. What was Azov doing in Eastern Uktaine before Russia stopped them? Slaughtering 8,000 people with the blessing of the nazi coup government.
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Spain being imperialist (imperialistic is not a word) doesn’t make, for example, Morocco imperialist. You seem to think I’m saying Russia is a lesser imperial power. You are wrong: Russia is not an imperial power at all.
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You, emphatically
You guys sound like liberals defending the invasion of Iraq.
Oh, the US/NATO military venture designed to sieze control of a country’s resources by manufacturing a conflict with a government headed by a guy we put there in the first place?
Yeah, imagine defending something like that. If this was 2002 your gullible ass would be calling me a Saddam Lover. But of course, now that we’ve already fucked up Iraq, that war can join the list of US crimes that liberals were definitely, totally for realsies always against from the beginning. You people are as craven as you are predictable. Always opposing every war after it’s too late and supporting every war when it actually matters.
In 5 years or so when we get 9/11 2: This Time it’s Ukranian, you’ll say"Everyone knew that starting the Ukraine War was a bad and criminal idea, but this time it’s different! This time we need to support (a puppet government in the Philippines doing ethnic cleansing against Chinese people or something) against big, evil, fascist Gyna, who attacked for no reason! Democracy itself is on the line!" Over and over every few years, never learning, until we’re all dead.
My gullible ass is old enough to actually have been out in the street protesting against US/NATO and the invasion of Iraq back in 2002. You’re defending Putin’s war as if it’s justifiable by Azov or by Euromaidan. And arresting and making Tymoshenko a political prisoner or breaking the Budapest Memorandum is of course all reasonable, right?
Btw, imperialistic: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imperialistic
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I don’t think you know what imperialism means. Russia can and is bad without being imperialist. They may have imperial ambitions but that’s irrelevant to the now where they do not have the capacity to be imperialist. I wish people would stop trying to dilute the meaning of imperialism to just mean country doing war or big country doing thing I don’t like.
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The inconsistent part is giving a free pass to Russia when they do everything the US does just not as extensively.
Russia is not stealing the surplus value and resources of the global south on an immense scale, which is the primary reason why its resistance to the US Empire and its European vassals plays a progressive role because of this.
Russia steals the surplus value for within it’s borders, the US steals surplus value from beyond it’s borders. Like I said, Russia does everything the US does just not as extensively.
Russia is indeed capitalist, correct, not imperialist. Glad we can come to an understanding on why the US Empire is the biggest global obstacle to socialism, and that the Russian Federation’s lack of imperialism makes it worthy of critical support in undermining the US Empire.
Supporting the liberation of Donetsk and Luhansk from the Banderite government they have been trying to secede from for a decade is a good thing, and that’s why the CPRF supports the Russian nationalists in the war. Had the west not supported a far-right coup back in 2014, it’s likely the war never would have happened.
That’s like an onion, just layers of naive. Russia has had imperial ambitions on Ukraine for a while and thinking that they care at all about the “liberation” of Donetsk and Luhansk is crazy talk.
“Material concerns? Physical reality? Oh ho ho, how charmingly naive, my dear boy. The true core of the matter is actually very simple, you see. Pushes glasses up anime-style Russia…is Just Evil.”
