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 completely stopped watching the most left wing satire show in German TV, Die Anstalt, because they brought up “forced expropriations” under Stalin when covering the Ukraine War. My brothers in Christ, have you ever seen a “voluntary expropriation”*? You arseholes argued for the expropriation of Deutsche Wohnen etc. before, do you think they’ll just hand over 100,000 apartments because you asked nicely? It’s good expropriation when we do it but “forced expropriations” when they do it. There was other fuck ups in terms of bad historiography (like categorising the “holodomor” as a genocide even if the source they listed literally contradicts that classification) but not understanding your own ideology to such a degree is just irredeemable to me.
*Fidel doesn’t count, he’s different.