My bias is pro-colonized of the world and anti-imperialist, you got me. I should be more neutral and consider the empire the same as it’s colonies, you are right! Why didn’t I think of that?
Next time I’ll make sure I don’t prioritize the interests of the workers over that of the bourgeois either
It's interesting how you didn't respond to the second half of my first comment in this chain.
Allow me to pose a different question: How can you distinguish between anti-imperialism and countries trying to make plays for being an empire? For example, after the end of Japanese isolationism in the 19th century, by way of US Gunboat Diplomacy, a common position among those with political power in Japan became that the country needed to become an empire in order to avoid becoming a colony.
If we can't make the distinction between the two then we're just going to fall into conflating being against a specific empire with anti-imperialism more broadly. Iirc one of the lines of thinking of German Social Democrats in supporting the war effort during World War I was that a German victory was preferable to the triumph of the at-the-time dominant British Empire, which was the center of global finance capital. I think we want to avoid a mistake like that being repeated.
The world is unipolar and the empire is hegemonic. We are not in a multipolar, multi-empire world of competing imperialists. We are in the late stage of monopoly imperialism. Capital has globalized and become a single imperialist bloc, the anglo-American empire is the only empire in existence.
Therefore your example about imperialist Japan is irrelevant and no longer applicable to our world.
I can understand being skeptical of the anti-imperialist bonafides of capitalist Russia at first but they have proven themselves in Syria, Belarus and Kazakhstan. They have aligned themselves with the anti-imperialist bloc and forged alliances with AES.
A world being uni-polar doesn't mean it remains that way. Uni-polarity and hegemony can be broken by forming smaller imperial poles. That's the issue of conflating anti-imperialism with opposition to a specific empire, and why I think the example of Japan is relevant.
It can be, but it hasn’t been. I don’t exist in a hypothetical world I exist in the real one. We face the current contradiction of global monopoly imperialism. Face reality
You haven't shown how the world transitioning from uni-polar imperialism to multi-polar imperialism is impossible. You're just repeating your assertion without substantiating it.
I never said it was impossible. I said it’s not currently the case. The current case is monopoly imperialism. Deal with reality not your ideas of what “might” be
What conditions rule out Russia becoming an imperial pole as a strong possibility?
They're a highly developed capitalist economy being isolated from the main imperial pole. What other routes do they have without a revolution? How do they sustain their economy as the rate of profit continues to fall and the west seeks their destruction?
Russia has also undermined their "anti-imperialist bonafides" with how they've let Wagner Group mercenaries operate in Mali, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.
Using a historical materialist lens to understand the motivations at play, checking dubious claims for further sources, following up on claims later once the fog has cleared to see a pattern of reliable sources & applying the claims that check out towards constructing a coherent idea of what is happening.
Ukrainian sources always lie and then change their story to the Russian one quietly weeks or months later. Russian sources don’t tend to lie, and don’t quietly alter their claims. Russians don’t make incoherent claims about the enemy being too strong and too weak, only the Ukrainians do that.
I asked a legitimate question. It seems you're just biased and don't really have the answer.
My bias is pro-colonized of the world and anti-imperialist, you got me. I should be more neutral and consider the empire the same as it’s colonies, you are right! Why didn’t I think of that?
Next time I’ll make sure I don’t prioritize the interests of the workers over that of the bourgeois either
It's interesting how you didn't respond to the second half of my first comment in this chain.
Allow me to pose a different question: How can you distinguish between anti-imperialism and countries trying to make plays for being an empire? For example, after the end of Japanese isolationism in the 19th century, by way of US Gunboat Diplomacy, a common position among those with political power in Japan became that the country needed to become an empire in order to avoid becoming a colony.
If we can't make the distinction between the two then we're just going to fall into conflating being against a specific empire with anti-imperialism more broadly. Iirc one of the lines of thinking of German Social Democrats in supporting the war effort during World War I was that a German victory was preferable to the triumph of the at-the-time dominant British Empire, which was the center of global finance capital. I think we want to avoid a mistake like that being repeated.
The world is unipolar and the empire is hegemonic. We are not in a multipolar, multi-empire world of competing imperialists. We are in the late stage of monopoly imperialism. Capital has globalized and become a single imperialist bloc, the anglo-American empire is the only empire in existence.
Therefore your example about imperialist Japan is irrelevant and no longer applicable to our world.
I can understand being skeptical of the anti-imperialist bonafides of capitalist Russia at first but they have proven themselves in Syria, Belarus and Kazakhstan. They have aligned themselves with the anti-imperialist bloc and forged alliances with AES.
A world being uni-polar doesn't mean it remains that way. Uni-polarity and hegemony can be broken by forming smaller imperial poles. That's the issue of conflating anti-imperialism with opposition to a specific empire, and why I think the example of Japan is relevant.
It can be, but it hasn’t been. I don’t exist in a hypothetical world I exist in the real one. We face the current contradiction of global monopoly imperialism. Face reality
You haven't shown how the world transitioning from uni-polar imperialism to multi-polar imperialism is impossible. You're just repeating your assertion without substantiating it.
I never said it was impossible. I said it’s not currently the case. The current case is monopoly imperialism. Deal with reality not your ideas of what “might” be
What conditions rule out Russia becoming an imperial pole as a strong possibility?
They're a highly developed capitalist economy being isolated from the main imperial pole. What other routes do they have without a revolution? How do they sustain their economy as the rate of profit continues to fall and the west seeks their destruction?
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Russia has also undermined their "anti-imperialist bonafides" with how they've let Wagner Group mercenaries operate in Mali, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.
You mean the ones invited by the African nations to assist them in ridding themselves of European colonizer paramilitaries?
Was it also imperialism when Syria invited Russia in to assist them in destroying NATO backed jihadists? How is this any different?
I literally just asked how do you personally distinguish fact from propaganda and you immediately started acting like a little bitch about it.
Using a historical materialist lens to understand the motivations at play, checking dubious claims for further sources, following up on claims later once the fog has cleared to see a pattern of reliable sources & applying the claims that check out towards constructing a coherent idea of what is happening.
Ukrainian sources always lie and then change their story to the Russian one quietly weeks or months later. Russian sources don’t tend to lie, and don’t quietly alter their claims. Russians don’t make incoherent claims about the enemy being too strong and too weak, only the Ukrainians do that.
It's hard to take this comment seriously when you sidestepped the criticism I made in the second half of my initial comment.