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.
Yeah for some reason it bugs me more when an amateur like Mike goes out of their way to say they don’t subscribe to Marx versus an actual pro like Sheila Fitzpatrick (the later, though she is explicitly not a Marxist historian has done a lot of good Soviet history and was a pioneer in explicitly saying it’s ridiculous to compare Nazi Germany and the USSR, like how so many of her contemporaries wanted to do).