I should probably establish up front that I don’t personally assign Lenin much importance as the final authority on what does or doesn’t count as imperialism. His most regular role in my life is that I occasionally call one of my dogs “little Lenin” because of his bulbous forehead. This is the proper scale of Lenin’s authority in my home: historically relevant to a degree, politically unavoidable, and also useful for insulting a beloved pet with a dramatic skull
But if the authoritarian left wants to point at Lenin like he is the one true authority on the definition of anti-imperialism, then fine. We can do that, even though I find it incredibly silly. If Lenin’s framework is going to be invoked every time someone wants to argue that Russia somehow doesn’t qualify as imperialist, then it’s worth asking what Lenin actually meant, instead of treating his name like a little red rubber stamp that says “America bad, everyone else innocent.
Found this while reading some things online, thought it would be great.
Bonus fact: The Soviet Union successfully argued at the United Nations that it only counts as colonialism when there is an ocean between the colonizer and their victims. Otherwise it’s just sparkling nation building.
The United States agreed, for similar reasons to the Soviets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_water_thesis
Zionists logged in
“Opposing imperialism is so Imperialist.”
WTF? There is only one empire on this planet, and Russia is helping liberate the developing world from it.
This 👇 is all you need to know about the West’s adversarial relationship with Russia.
This dude just cannot post without including like three boomer-coded Facebook memes
There is only one empire on this planet,
Give it a rest, tankie.
America is arming over 80% of all dictatorships currently, and that didn’t start with Trump. 750 foreign military bases! Using the word empire for anything else is just intellectually dishonest.
Be real.
Oh… so according to your ridiculous abstractions Nazi Germany and Showa Japan wasn’t imperialist, eh?
Putin is an imperialsit… and so are you.
Again… give it a rest, tankie.
Are you a Facebook Boomer for money or are you just brainrotted like one for free?
argued at the United Nations that it only counts as colonialism
Might just as well have the casino bosses decide what counts as gambling addiction, then.
Ain’t reading all that but yes, any marxist who had read Bukharin, Lenin and other marxists who had done analysis on imperialism knows that. Unfortunately, marxism has been suffering from its fair share of modernizers and falsifiers, most notably stalinists (ML’s) and it’s ideological offshoots (maoists, national socialists, communizers, eurocommunists, etc) who more often than not take up campist stances and distort material reality or texts and end up supporting “”“anti-imperialist imperialism”“” because it goes against the west. There’s no use bringing up Lenin since they operate within an entirely different worldview.
Anarchism has pretty much the exact same problem though, there’s a lot of ‘anarchists’ here who go through the exact same mental hoops to support Ukraine for exactly the same reasons for instance.
“Arming Nazis and killing Nazis is the same thing.” -Anarchists
So are you a shill for free or do you get paid for it on Russian oil?
I don’t really see the point of reading a wall-of-text if the headline spells out the obvious well enough - but yes, Lenin probably would classify Putin’s Russia as imperialist.
I, meanwhile, would happily classify Lenin as an imperialist - and I’d do the same for the Soviet Union he helped to create.
