Well-said! Right now the decay in hard power is making itself more obvious, as is the inability of the empire to compete with China going forward. Given 5, 10, 15, 20 years this gap will only widen and accelerate unless the US has a socialist revolution.

O7

Iran is fighting for a green new world

Yep, agreed! The electrification of global infrastructure is going to be massive going forward.

Unsurprising, and with no sign of stopping. It isn’t simply a matter of the US falling, but China is also rising in approval, and this gap is widening as the old imperialist world order is dying away and multilateralism is rising.

How so?

That’s not really what they mean by imperialism. When Marxists speak of “imperialism,” we mean the existing system of international extraction helmed by the US and its vassal states. Imperialism in the Marxist sense is economically compelled by late-stage capitalism, and is its necessary evolution, into a highly financialized system of plunder from the global south.

Russia and Iran are both sovereign countries working against this system, because both stand to gain from a multi-polar world. Ukraine and Israel are so close together because they share a similar geopolitical position, as attack dogs for the US Empire against their adversaries.

Without an understanding of how capitalism turns to imperialism, under what conditions, and how this can itself be negated, then it’s understandable that it would be difficult to understand the world. I really recommend reading Lenin’s Imperialism, the Current Highest Stage of Capitalism. Imperialism has evolved since his time, namely from competing imperialist powers into a single imperial hegemon and vassalized imperialist powers, but the basis is still correct and necessary for understanding the modern era.

Media agencies both seek to make money and keep their owners in power. Do you think that when the New York Times capes for Israel and understates their genocide, that this is for engagement alone?

Correct, capitalists seek profit above all-else. Part of this includes propogating media with messaging and bias that supports them. This is an example of how cultural hegemony works. By controlling the media, capitalists direct society towards their own interests and ways of thinking, entrenching bourgeois ideology and bourgeois framing. You saw this with Iraq and the supposed WMD.

CNN is owned by capitalists, and thus puts out what these capitalists want to be put out. CNN is absolutely biased in these capitalist’s favor.

CNN puts out propaganda aligning with US capitalist interests, they don’t report literally everything.

You can call millitant expansion imperialism, but Marxists don’t have a problem with the word, but the actual, material process of what we call imperialism. Millitant expansion can be done for progressive reasons, like when the Statesian north liberated the slaves in the Statesian south. The actual economic form of international extraction as a special, necessary part of late-stage capitalism is what Marxists are trying to dismantle, due to it being the biggest obstacle to global socialism.

As for Ukrainians supporting their government, you’re half-right. Western Ukrainians tend to support their government, while those in the Donbass seceded from it after the Euromaidan coup, and voted to join the Russian Federation.

Overall, we aren’t arguing about words, but processes. If you insist on calling millitant expansion “imperialism,” then we have to agree to what we call the Marxist understanding of late-stage capitalist imperialism as a special term as well, so that we don’t get mixed up on terms.

Again, when you use queerness in a negative manner, as though it’s something to be shameful of, it throws actual queer people under the bus and as the butt of the joke.

I don’t think we should use SA to demean people. I’m happy Cuba is getting oil, but we don’t need to describe it in a matter that seems homophobic and relies on SA imagery.

Ukraine and Israel are used in similar ways by the US Empire, to attack their geopolitical opponents. Russia seeking to annex the Donbass region, a region that had already seceded from Kiev in 2014 after the right-wing coup overthrew the president they supported, isn’t imperialism in the sense that Marxists are talking about.

When Marxists speak of imperialism, we mean a specific stage of capitalism by which finance capital becomes dominant and international extraction becomes economically necessary for continued existence. Russia is fighting against that system internationally, because the US Empire is keeping them boxed in and wishes to re-imperialize Russia like it was in the 90s, before the nationalists overthrew the liberals.

Marxists do not have an issue with anything anyone can call imperialism, but with imperialism as it exists as a necessary and scientifically observed phenomena of late-stage capitalism, because this phenomena is the biggest obstacle to global socialism. Russia is helping Iran, Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela, and more in resisting the US Empire, because Russia benefits from the end of a US-dominated world. Western Europe is vassalized by the US Empire, which is why they side with the US Empire. They benefit from this system of plundering the global south, Russia does not.

Churchill was guilty of many of those in India.

This is why Marxists always and without fail return to imperialism as the primary contradiction in the world at the present moment, between the old and falling unipolar world and the rising multipolar world and the end of imperialism. Capitalism, when it reaches a certain level of development, has a compulsion towards outside expansion, which creates its own antagonism from countries that wish to remain sovereign.

Right now, the US Empire is the dying hegemonic power. There are no competing empires, just an international imperialist alliance that formed after World War II, when the US Empire vassalized the other imperialist powers. Iran and Russia are sovereign countries, and as such have been butting heads with the west, which wishes to imperialize them. Ukraine and Israel are so close together because they share a similar geopolitical position, as attack dogs for the US Empire against their adversaries.

Without an understanding of how capitalism turns to imperialism, under what conditions, and how this can itself be negated, then it’s understandable that it would be difficult to understand the world. I really recommend reading Lenin’s Imperialism, the Current Highest Stage of Capitalism. Imperialism has evolved since his time, namely from competing imperialist powers into a single imperial hegemon and vassalized imperialist powers, but the basis is still correct and necessary for understanding the modern era.

Ukraine holds a position similar to Israel, as a forward outpost for the US Empire’s millitary without getting directly involved. Check Ukraine’s track record on UN voting in the last decade, since 2014.

The consequences of the slave trade still carry over today, and factor into neocolonialism and imperialism committed by the collective west right now. It isn’t just “something bad their ancestors did,” it’s a generational crime with generational consequences that shape much of how the world works to this very day. Reparations are necessary.

One way to think about it that helps is that reparations now will pay off in the future. Much of the problems of today are due to imperialism, an ongoing process, and the systemic underdevelopment of the global south. Even within countries, like the US, slavery and a lack of reparations has resulted in generational poverty that harms society at large. Decolonization and correcting the record allow us to all move forward into a better world.