Going by this logic, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq and many many other Global South countries all deserve to be victims of imperialism because they are all capitalist countries and not nearly as progressive as the Western countries who have had several decades of prosperity and allowed to develop in peace without being threatened by foreign powers.
Or is it that only countries that cannot fight back against the empire “deserve” critical support because they are no threat to the imperial core itself?
If you really want to know how fucked Russia was by imperialism, look no further than the Shock Therapy in the 1990s. The economic and societal devastation isn’t something that you can recover in a short few decades. You cannot name a single country that has ever recovered from neoliberal shock doctrine over the past 50 years. Millions of excess death in Russia ever since the 1990s, leading to a steady pace of population decline that it has no hope of recovering. No wonder Russia is extremely concerned about being surrounded by a NATO-backed Ukraine and NATO itself that is infested by descendants of the Nazis after the war.
The Ukraine war really is a litmus test for Western leftists. The stark contrast between how socialists and communists in Western countries perceive the Russia-Ukraine war versus the rest of the Global South really paints a striking picture of how many Western left either has no understanding of Lenin’s imperialism, or choose to interpret in their own ways that conveniently suits the neo-colonial agenda of Western imperialism extracting surplus values from the Global South.
Thank you for your good-faith comment, and for your insight.
I don’t share your analysis of Russia’s reaction to NATO as a consequence of neoliberal shock therapy, because modern Russia isn’t a regime born from opposition to the shock therapy, but from the elements that became rich as a consequence. The modern Russian elites that direct Russia’s policy are those who profited directly from the neoliberal shock therapy. If they now oppose NATO, I’d argue it’s because, somehow, during the hurried process of privatization of the economy, the west allowed local, non-NATO elites to rise in the country from the preexisting black markets and capitalist subversive elements in the late USSR. Russian capital mostly being in Russia and in Russian oligarch hands, basically implies that their interests are in competition with those of NATO.
Your last point about the contrast between socialists in western countries vs socialists in the global south perceiving the Russia-Ukraine war differently makes me think, so I thank you for that, and if you can point me towards any article on the topic, I’d be glad to read it. Thanks again for your comment
This is not the correct assessment, unfortunately. As Lenin laid out clearly in Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, imperialist wars are qualitatively different from wars of the previous eras in that they are fundamentally rooted in the expansion of finance capital.
We no longer live in Lenin’s time, when finance capital was still largely subservient to industrial capital before the rentier class launched their own counter-revolution after WWI against industrial capital. The post-Bretton Woods world turned the US empire into a fully financialized empire that leverages its now fiat currency to extract surplus values from the rest of the Global South. Michael Hudson described this new form of imperialism as “Super imperialism” in his book of the same name in 1972.
Russia cannot be imperialist simply because their financial capital is far too weak to even be a player in the game. Russian oligarchs all stored their wealth in dollars and euros, lived lavishly and owned assets overseas in Western countries - the result of the Ukraine war was the sanctions against Russian oligarchs and confiscation of all their assets overnight.
Why would the Russian oligarchs launch a war against NATO and have their assets confiscated almost immediately? The anti-West “nationalist” capitalist in Russia is simply far too weak to play a major role. This is why the Russian state had to practically take over the economy themselves since 2022 and utilized the power of its fiscal policy to stimulate domestic economy under heavy sanctions.
Who are the imperialists then? It is between US and the EU - the two major financial blocs that are competing for domination through their respective currencies: the dollar and the euro. The war in Ukraine is an inter-imperialist war between the US and the EU and, as it has now become clear, the defeat and the end of the EU economic prosperity and the eurozone financial bloc. Russia and Ukraine are the sacrificial pawns in this game.
In terms of Russia, it is more helpful to think of what is happening in Russia today as a confrontation between industrial capital and finance capital, with the Cabinets of Minister (the state representing industrial capital) opposing the far-reaching influence of the central bank (representing finance capital). This is a thesis that Hudson had proposed and it paints the US-China conflict as exactly in this relation: with the US representing finance capital that sought to defeat China representing industrial capital. Only the latter can create the conditions that will lead to socialism. This is an ideological clash where the contradictions have been intensified in recent years, and it has to be resolved somehow… most likely through war.
As Lenin had observed a hundred years prior in Imperialism:
Thanks to her colonies, Great Britain has increased the length of “her” railways by 100,000 kilometres, four times as much as Germany. And yet, it is well known that the development of productive forces in Germany, and especially the development of the coal and iron industries, has been incomparably more rapid during this period than in Britain—not to speak of France and Russia. In 1892, Germany produced 4,900,000 tons of pig-iron and Great Britain produced 6,800,000 tons; in 1912, Germany produced 17,600,000 tons and Great Britain, 9,000,000 tons. Germany, therefore, had an overwhelming superiority over Britain in this respect. The question is: what means other than war could there be under capitalism to overcome the disparity between the development of productive forces and the accumulation of capital on the one side, and the division of colonies and spheres of influence for finance capital on the other?
Going by this logic, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq and many many other Global South countries all deserve to be victims of imperialism because they are all capitalist countries and not nearly as progressive as the Western countries who have had several decades of prosperity and allowed to develop in peace without being threatened by foreign powers.
Or is it that only countries that cannot fight back against the empire “deserve” critical support because they are no threat to the imperial core itself?
If you really want to know how fucked Russia was by imperialism, look no further than the Shock Therapy in the 1990s. The economic and societal devastation isn’t something that you can recover in a short few decades. You cannot name a single country that has ever recovered from neoliberal shock doctrine over the past 50 years. Millions of excess death in Russia ever since the 1990s, leading to a steady pace of population decline that it has no hope of recovering. No wonder Russia is extremely concerned about being surrounded by a NATO-backed Ukraine and NATO itself that is infested by descendants of the Nazis after the war.
The Ukraine war really is a litmus test for Western leftists. The stark contrast between how socialists and communists in Western countries perceive the Russia-Ukraine war versus the rest of the Global South really paints a striking picture of how many Western left either has no understanding of Lenin’s imperialism, or choose to interpret in their own ways that conveniently suits the neo-colonial agenda of Western imperialism extracting surplus values from the Global South.
Heartwarming: once /c/news badposter now fully understands the core of international geopolitics
Hexbear has many good teachers I guess
Thank you for your good-faith comment, and for your insight.
I don’t share your analysis of Russia’s reaction to NATO as a consequence of neoliberal shock therapy, because modern Russia isn’t a regime born from opposition to the shock therapy, but from the elements that became rich as a consequence. The modern Russian elites that direct Russia’s policy are those who profited directly from the neoliberal shock therapy. If they now oppose NATO, I’d argue it’s because, somehow, during the hurried process of privatization of the economy, the west allowed local, non-NATO elites to rise in the country from the preexisting black markets and capitalist subversive elements in the late USSR. Russian capital mostly being in Russia and in Russian oligarch hands, basically implies that their interests are in competition with those of NATO.
Your last point about the contrast between socialists in western countries vs socialists in the global south perceiving the Russia-Ukraine war differently makes me think, so I thank you for that, and if you can point me towards any article on the topic, I’d be glad to read it. Thanks again for your comment
This is not the correct assessment, unfortunately. As Lenin laid out clearly in Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, imperialist wars are qualitatively different from wars of the previous eras in that they are fundamentally rooted in the expansion of finance capital.
We no longer live in Lenin’s time, when finance capital was still largely subservient to industrial capital before the rentier class launched their own counter-revolution after WWI against industrial capital. The post-Bretton Woods world turned the US empire into a fully financialized empire that leverages its now fiat currency to extract surplus values from the rest of the Global South. Michael Hudson described this new form of imperialism as “Super imperialism” in his book of the same name in 1972.
Russia cannot be imperialist simply because their financial capital is far too weak to even be a player in the game. Russian oligarchs all stored their wealth in dollars and euros, lived lavishly and owned assets overseas in Western countries - the result of the Ukraine war was the sanctions against Russian oligarchs and confiscation of all their assets overnight.
Why would the Russian oligarchs launch a war against NATO and have their assets confiscated almost immediately? The anti-West “nationalist” capitalist in Russia is simply far too weak to play a major role. This is why the Russian state had to practically take over the economy themselves since 2022 and utilized the power of its fiscal policy to stimulate domestic economy under heavy sanctions.
Who are the imperialists then? It is between US and the EU - the two major financial blocs that are competing for domination through their respective currencies: the dollar and the euro. The war in Ukraine is an inter-imperialist war between the US and the EU and, as it has now become clear, the defeat and the end of the EU economic prosperity and the eurozone financial bloc. Russia and Ukraine are the sacrificial pawns in this game.
In terms of Russia, it is more helpful to think of what is happening in Russia today as a confrontation between industrial capital and finance capital, with the Cabinets of Minister (the state representing industrial capital) opposing the far-reaching influence of the central bank (representing finance capital). This is a thesis that Hudson had proposed and it paints the US-China conflict as exactly in this relation: with the US representing finance capital that sought to defeat China representing industrial capital. Only the latter can create the conditions that will lead to socialism. This is an ideological clash where the contradictions have been intensified in recent years, and it has to be resolved somehow… most likely through war.
As Lenin had observed a hundred years prior in Imperialism: