Isnāt Putinās invasion of Ukraine and the Russo-Georgian war imperialism? I still donāt get them, except being blinded by their hate of USAās war crimes, which I can understand, but it still seems like an irrational conclusion to become a tankie. They end up supporting or refusing to criticize regimes that generate similar war crimes.
the Russo-Georgian war imperialism
Wait, are you saying Saakashvili has done an imperialism? Because even western/EU reports have confirmed that Georgia started that war, not Russia.
They end up supporting or refusing to criticize regimes that generate similar war crimes.
āFrom 24 February 2022, which marked the start of the large-scale armed attack by the Russian Federation, to 30 July 2023, OHCHR recorded 26,015 civilian casualties in the country: 9,369 killed and 16,646 injuredā
Almost 10 thousand civilians killed is horrible. But compare this to Iraq: itās less than the first month of the war in Iraq, and no US politicians was tried for war crimes. Maybe you should ponder this factoid.
If you live in a NATO country maybe you should demand Blair and Bush to be tried for their war crimes. If you live in the west you should spend more energy of criticizing the ruling class above you.
āsupporting or refusing to criticizeā This is a made up leftist. Per definition there is no leftist that uncritically supports a right wing capitalist country.
Marxists, following Lenin, define imperialism as the monopoly of finance capital. Not as a synonym for āconquestā, āannexationā, āempireā (not that Iām saying all three necessarily apply to Russia in Ukraineāa conclusion on that isnāt relevant, here).
When US (Anglo-European) finance capital dominates the world through the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and petrodollar, supported by a network of however many hundreds of military bases, all paid for by itās vassals and enemies due to said dominance, thereās little to no room for anyone else to even consider being imperialist.
We can discuss that if you like. Iāll likely need others to chip in. Iām not proposing that I have all the answers. Itās not something with a clear answer. But we canāt have the debate at all unless we agree on common definitions and frames of reference. Otherwise it feels as though liberals simply do not understand whatās being said. Itās just talking past one another, where one side has a coherent definition and framework and the other sideā¦ doesnāt.
Iāll let you decide whether you can honestly say you have a theoretically sound concept of imperialism depending on how much dedicated literature on imperialism youāve read.
Yeah itās important that we, as Marxists, therefore proceeding scientific,ally, make very clear from the onset as to what we mean when we use the term āimperialistā with this more specific, narrow, Leninist definition which only really applies to modern capitalism, or more precisely the modern capitalist world-system. Conceptual clarification is essential for any scientific endeavor, including Marxism.
Even on this definition however, we can note that it is perfectly possible (and concretely, empirically, historically confirm this possibility by looking at the international situation pre-WW1) that there be several powers or polarized groups of powers each of which behaves imperialistically in the Leninist sense. The difference today is that we currently still have a more or less unipolar as opposed to multipolar imperialist (Leninist sense) world-system.
If someone calls Russia āimperialistā in a different sense, then they might not be wrong, and saying that they are because our definition doesnāt apply isnāt relevant beyond the fact that thereās confusion over the concepts being used because people are equivocating between them, simply because we are using the same term/sound/word/signifier. If we do the latter we are engaging in a semantic debate disguised as, because confused with, a substantive debate.
Good points. I also wouldnāt be opposed to accepting that capitalists in Russia would/will try to become imperialistic in the monopoly of finance capital sense. In the one hand, the logic of capital might force their hand. On the other hand, capitalists are gonna capitalist, in part because they fetishise the hoarding of wealth like everyone else living under capitalism.
Whether Russian imperialism becomes a realistic possibility, thoughā¦ Iād be interested in seeing some stats on that, interpreted in light of the idea that the next type of multipolarity will be quite different to the one at the turn of the twentieth century. Ig if anyoneās done that leg work itād be Michael Hudson but Iāve not come across it if he has.
Thereās a concept called ācritical supportā, which most ātankiesā are practicing. You have criticism of a side but its the lesser evil so you support it despite your criticism. You wonāt hear much of that criticism publicly though because thatās counterproductive.
Like if I want the US to recognize the DPRK as a sovereign state so we can at least begin discussing Korean reunification, why would I bother mentioning my criticism of Juche?
I would avoid saying ālesser evilā for critical support cases, because revolutionary defeatism exists for lesser evil situations where nothing is progressing against the primary contradiction. Itās more a recognition that a shitty thing can be progressive/forward moving relative to its opposition. Russia winning/getting a peace deal with Donbas and Crimea out of Ukraine gets us much closer to ending global imperialism than Ukraine getting itās land back or worse.
We want the larger capitalist empire to loose to the smaller capitalist empire because that leads to better outcomes. Saying otherwise is telling half truths at best.
The general ātankieā position is that the people of Donbas, who mostly do not want to remain part of Ukraine, will not stop suffering attacks without Russia fighting Ukraine off. Russia does not seem interested in siphoning resources from or subjugating the people of Donbas, as they did not the people of Crimea, who merely became Russian citizens. This is very different from US carpetbombing for oil.
US bombing is bad, but Russian bombing is ok? Why do you not apply the same critical spirit to both the USA war crimes and the Russian war crimes?
Yeah itās just like theyāre Sudeten-Russians, happy to become real Russians once again
I donāt think that the Germans had the popular support of Sudetenland in their annexation.
