• Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    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    Therefore your example about imperialist Japan is irrelevant and no longer applicable to our world.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.

    • Hmm [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      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.

      • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        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

        • Hmm [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          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.

          • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
            ·
            3 years ago

            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

            • Hmm [none/use name]
              ·
              3 years ago

              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?

              • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
                ·
                edit-2
                3 years ago

                Russia has the economic make-up of a developing 3rd world nation.

                Imperialism is the export of massive amounts of capital and the extraction of resources and labor value via ownership.

                A nation must have a surplus of capital that it can no longer profitably invest at home to become imperialist. Russia, since the collapse of the USSR, has been notoriously low capital. They have to borrow everything from western banks and the IMF. Even to this day Russia has one of the lowest amounts of capital in its banks of any major nation.

                The economy of imperialist nations tends to be financial, service sector & technological. The economy of colonized nations tend to be resource extraction, tourism or manufacturing with low fixed capital tech and high labor.

                Russia’s economy resembles that of a colonized nation. They do not have sufficient capital to export it, they still have plenty of areas to invest domestically and are in a much earlier and less developed stage of capitalism.

                This, and their alliance with China and other AES, will prevent Russia from becoming an imperialist in the same manner as the anglo-American empire has - at least in the short term.

                You could very well ask “what’s stopping Palestine from becoming an imperialist if war is fought on their behalf”? It’s just useless imperialist handwringing

    • Hmm [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      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.

      • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        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?