I have complained about it before but I heard on of the guests from guerrilla history on the deprogram make this argument and it made me want to gouge my eyes out. This kind of trans historical argumentation is both stupid and unmarxist, just stop! Sorry I felt the need to vent.
These states were not imperialist and they weren't settler colonies. This framing doesn't make any fucking sense when transfered to a medieval context. Like the best you could say is that the Italian city states represented an early firm of merchant capital, but even then that is an incredibly complex phenomenon that has only a tenuous connection to modern capitalism. Calling these city states early capitalism is just a fancy way of saying "lol u hate capitalism yet you exchange good or service! Curious!"
Seriously just stop. I don't know why this set me off but it was like a week ago and I am still mad about it.
I love our boys, but they do this with quite a few subjects. They have a really anti-dialectical view of the American Civil War and Lincoln. Like absurdly bad and just replacing Marx's actual analysis for pretty much a meme understanding of the history. Next person who boils it down to "Lincoln never cared about the slaves" gets a book thrown at them, not because Lincoln deserves defending, he has enough people doing that, but because the reductionism is counter-productive.