Be very of these false narratives which seek to bend the framework of reality towards a position in accord with the US Empire.
This is not “a conflict between two bourgeois countries”. This is an abstract, undialectical analysis.
It is adapting the framework of Western Imperialists.
This is a complex conflict decades in the making, at it’s core, it is a war between Russia and the Blood Empire.
The Ukrainian people are being used as a weapon by their bloodthirsty American masters.
I hope people here see how deceptive and devious this “both sides bad capitalists” narrative is.
It is poisonous to us communist communities, and it shows that western propaganda is very much able to spread on GenZedong.
Do not allow them to infiltrate our minds.
Godspeed comrades. o7
Ah, so I see the issue now.
You believe that imperialism = expanding your sphere of influence.
You are again ignoring that Ukraine lost it’s sovereignty long ago at the hands of the Fourth Reich. It was already a controlled state under the American Empire even not being part of NATO officially.
Your perspective is a product of the perceived ideological intention of the Russian state, which is heavily biased and not connected to material reality.
Imperialism is not conflict or expansion of influence, comrade. The fact that you stated Russia is fighting off the Fourth Reich and then called that Imperialism shows you are not engaging with the dialectics, but rather viewing the conflict through perceived ideological intention.
Is Russia planning to restore its sovereignty without any compensation? Only then is your argument valid, otherwise the Russian national bourgeois saw they had to strike now to prevent NATO from being close by. This is why they let Ukraine do whatever it wanted while it went full nazi post euromaiden. They didn’t suddenly just start caring about Ukrainian sovereignty 8 years after the fact, they just saw recent NATO moves and realized that they couldn’t put off the issue anymore.
So Russia’s fight against the mass murdering US Empire is only valid if Russia pays reparation? I’m not sure they won’t, it’s impossible to know, however this is a ridiculous qualifier to hold a victim of the US Empire to.
I don’t think Russia abstractly cares about Ukraine sovereignty, nor should they. This is not a game. This is civilizational battle against the American Empire, the Fourth Reich.
None of this is Imperialist, comrade. You need to understand the power dynamics and the material reality of this conflict and the state of the world before it.
Wars do not need to be fought “out of the good of one’s heart” to be valid. This conflict is about pushing back the Fourth Reich, period.
This is NOT Imperialism.
Do you see that now?
Well if Russia doesn’t care about Ukrainian sovereignty then congratulations they are being imperialist. A progressive imperialist if you like? Sure, but imperialist nonetheless.
Also cute how you say I’m immaterial when you can only substitute a metanarritive of some magical battle of “civilizations”. You are the one refusing to look at the class character of the conflict preferring to look along narrow nationalist idealist lines.
This is absolutely false. Imperialism is now when you don’t “care” about a nation’s sovereignty that has already been absorbed by the Fourth Reich?
Ukraine is already NOT a sovereign nation. And it is NOT Russia’s responsibility to restore that sovereignty.
“Progressive Imperialism” ahahahahhaha what a fucking joke. What a goddamn mother fucking joke.
As for progressive imperialism.
“But this Kievsky argument is wrong. Imperialism is as much our “mortal” enemy as is capitalism. That is so. No Marxist will forget, however, that capitalism is progressive compared with feudalism, and that imperialism is progressive compared with pre-monopoly capitalism. Hence, it is not every struggle against imperialism that we should support. We will not support a struggle of the reactionary classes against imperialism; we will not support an uprising of the reactionary classes against imperialism and capitalism.”
-VI Lenin
Here Lenin is stating that imperialism can take on a progressive character when compared to premonopoly capitalism and when used to crush a more reactionary class, such as Ukrainian nazi comprador bourgeois. However, this is still a form of imperialism and needs to be understood as such. It still is imperialism, even if there is a progressive character.
Yes, but Lenin had a very particular definition of imperialism which you are not using in this thread. It seems like most people aren’t using the Leninist definition of imperialism here, actually. 😬
Lenin’s definition captured imperialism in a fully developed form however there is a transition from premonopoly capitalist relations to imperialist monopoly capitalism. You do not just one day have fully developed finance capitalism the day after you build a factory. These things co develop and though it is undeveloped in Russia you can clearly see that such institutions are developing. They are hindered by the west already controlling most things meaning they have less to expand themselves.
Let’s look at the Russia economy. Is Russian industry highly cartelized? Yes. A few extremely wealthy capitalists hold basically everything and control much of the economic life of the country.
Has bank and industrial capital fully merged? No. Are they continually growing closer? Yes. The Russian banking system has a lot of state control so ofcourse it won’t look identical to the western way of such institutions fully merging however the state itself is only a tool of the Russian national bourgeois so they are still merging as a financial oligarchy, it is simply going to look somewhat different from a superstructure level due to higher state involvement.
Is the export of finance capital of special importance above that of exporting commodities? No. This is because again, most financial markets that could be invested in are already oversaturated with western money with very little else left. They do export capital, just on a much smaller scale then the great powers of today.
Have they formed international monopolistic relations? Ofcourse not. They are unable to. Again, not enough of the world left for them to develop that to a high degree.
Is the territorial division of the world happening between them and other powers? Well yes. That is the Ukrainian situation. Even if Russia will rule in a softer way than the west it is still trying to divide the world between itself and the west. This is quite small scale because again Russia is not a fully developed imperialist power, it is a small imperialist.
Does Russia fully conform to Lenin’s imperialist definition? No, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to show that it is developing towards that goal which was what my entire statement on the topic was about.
I disagree with your point that it’s moving towards imperialism. Of course, Russia is capitalist in the bourgeois kind of way and of course imperialism is the final stage of all such economies, I’m not arguing against that. What I’m saying is that Russia is nowhere near this stage yet and framing the discussion in this way distracts from the capitalists who undeniably are at this stage already and who have a big stake in this war (NATO).
The territorial division of the world has already happened and Russia did not get a slice of the pie. Russia was, in fact, part of the pie that was sliced. It’s because of their opposition to western imperialists that they have been acting as an anti-imperialist force in recent years despite being capitalist themselves (like with the interventions in Syria and Kazakhstan).
Russia would likely not have invaded Ukraine if they remained a neutral country and stopped their ethnic cleansing of Russian Ukrainians. This war began because of NATO’s constant encroachment towards Russia, not because of Russian desires for Ukrainian capital. Because if their goal was to colonize Ukraine, then why are they killing Nazis and supporting the establishment of 2 socialist countries?
Thank god somebody in this god-forsaken thread has actually read Lenin.
This is literally not an accurate reading. Jesus fucking Christ. As the above poster said:
Yes, but Lenin had a very particular definition of imperialism which you are not using in this thread. It seems like most people aren’t using the Leninist definition of imperialism here, actually. 😬
Lenin was referencin imperialism here in conjunction with the US, Western Empire.
The fact that you think this is an abstract declaration is hilarious. 😭😭😭😅😅😅😅😅
You are literally justifying imperialism to yourself in the same breath. You are the one who doesn’t care about Ukraine’s right to self determination.
Ukraine’s right to self determination doesn’t exist because it is not a sovereign nation. There is no world in which they have abstract “self determination” while the American Empire exists. You are simply infiltrating this sub with western propaganda.