I probably should have written this article three months ago, but I honestly didn’t expect the left discourse on the Russo-Ukrainian war to be infected with so much confusion. A socialist understanding of imperialism leads us to some very definite conclusions about where our solidarity lies — and spoiler, it’s not with the international bourgeoisie.

Three imperialisms

Debates over the Russo-Ukrainian war seem to be using “imperialist” in all kinds of different ways, to the point that a lot of the arguments over what the anti-imperialist position is are really proxy debates over what anti-imperialism is. Here, I would like to distinguish between three traditions: liberal, Marxist Leninist (ML), and Third Worldist (TWist). Most of the disagreements I’ve seen seem rooted in the conflict between these three basic perspectives.

First, imperialism¹ — imperialism as conceived by liberalism. Though it’s occasionally presented as if it emerges from some kind of radical critique, imperialism¹ doesn’t really mean much more than “national aggression.” For whatever reason, some nation has taken military action against another, or is engaged in aggressive diplomatic, economic, or cultural warfare. Occasionally imperialism¹ may recognize some distinction in the relative power of both states, but this rarely seems dispositive; the crucial consideration is just whether or not a nation is behaving, in an utterly subjective sense, “aggressively.”

Next, imperialism² — imperialism as conceived in the ML tradition. Lenin:

If it were necessary to give the briefest definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.

For MLs, imperialism² is not merely aggression between nations. It is a specific form of aggression that emerges from capitalism driving monopolies to expand. Capitalism guarantees that capital will concentrate into fewer and fewer hands, who will inevitably try to acquire more land and resources, and who will inevitably wield the apparatus of the state to make it happen. Insisting that this is guaranteed — that capitalism ensures imperialism just as inevitably as it ensures economic inequality, the exploitation of workers, and so on — is for the ML crucial to the critique of capitalism.

Third, imperialism³ — imperialism as conceived in the TWist tradition. This notion of imperialism is often used interchangeably with imperialism² since both position themselves as expressions of Marxist theory, but this is an error. TWists insist that “the world has changed enormously since Marx and Lenin” and that today we live under a categorically different economic regime than the one they described. In this regime, “the appropriation of other people’s labour does not only take place in the relationship between capitalists and labourers”; instead, “imperialism…is first and foremost an economic phenomenon characterized by the transfer of value from exploited countries to exploiter countries.”

This theory of imperialism often arrives at a similar assessment of global affairs as imperialism² but the differences are very important. For the ML, since the law of capitalist accumulation results from the relationship between capitalist and labourer, it compels the violence of imperialism wherever capital concentrates into a national monopoly. For the TWist, however, the law of capitalist accumulation is something that holds “first and foremost” for countries, which means that only “rich countries” are capable of imperial violence.

What this means in practice is that imperialism³ becomes a politics organized around opposition to the richest and most exploitative country and its allies, while imperialism² is a politics organized around opposition to the richest and most exploitative class. Today, critics of imperialism³ correctly identify the US as the former, and from there map out the constellation of US allies and interests that are our exclusive target of opposition. For this reason, critics of imperialism³ may even find themselves at odds with poor nations that ally themselves with the US, and allied with rich nations that are at odds with the US.

Since the US played an outsized role in global affairs throughout the 20th century, and continues to play a major (albeit receding) role in the 21st, imperialism³ has often proven a good enough simplification that mostly overlaps with imperialism². But as Lenin writes,

An essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between several great powers in the striving for hegemony…

In Imperialism, the Highest State of Capitalism, Lenin goes out of his way to attack the notion that imperialism is expressed in the violence of a single empire. He approvingly quotes John Hobson, who insists that their theory of

imperialism differs from the older, first, in substituting for the ambition of a single growing empire the theory and the practice of competing empires, each motivated by similar lusts of political aggrandisement and commercial gain…

Lenin attributes the deviationist view of a single imperialism to Karl Kautsky, who,

while claiming that he continues to advocate Marxism, as a matter of fact takes a step backward compared with the social-liberal Hobson, who more correctly takes into account…the competition between several imperialisms…

It’s hard to miss the connection between these three intellectuals and the three theories of imperialism I’ve identified: Lenin is arguing that the liberal imperialism¹ is actually more accurate than imperialism³ insofar as it acknowledges the possibility of multiple imperial forces pit against each other. Lenin continues (this must be quoted at length):

Kautsky’s definition is not only wrong and un-Marxist. It serves as a basis for a whole system of views which signify a rupture with Marxist theory and Marxist practice all along the line…The essence of the matter is that Kautsky detaches the politics of imperialism from its economics… It follows, then, that monopolies in the economy [of “non-imperial” nations] are compatible with non-monopolistic, non-violent, non-annexationist methods in politics… The result is a slurring-over and a blunting of the most profound contradictions of the latest stage of capitalism, instead of an exposure of their depth; the result is bourgeois reformism instead of Marxism.

To put it simply: if you imagine there is only one imperial force in this world, and you build your entire analysis around “critical support” of any nation that opposes it, you will eventually encounter two imperialist factions fighting and you will be forced to pretend that one of them isn’t being driven by capitalism. And you will end up playing the reformist game of trying to ally with “good” factions of the bourgeoisie against the “bad” ones.

Kautsky’s theory should not be conflated with TWism, which departs even further from Marxist thought than he does; but Lenin is correct in observing that this notion of a single imperialism can be found in “a whole system of views.” And the general theory of imperialism³ is plainly one of them.

The war in Ukraine

Once we understand the three views of imperialism expressed by Hobson, Lenin, and Kautsky, I don’t think it difficult to see how they relate to imperialism¹, imperialism², and imperialism³ — or how they relate to today’s controversies over the war in Ukraine.

There should be no serious controversy over whether Russia qualifies as an imperial power as defined by imperialism². Michael Pröbsting lays out a concise but thorough analysis here: taking the standard ML position that “The starting point of the Marxist analysis of imperialism is the domination by monopolies,” he lays out the case that “Russia’s economy is primarily dominated by Russian monopoly capital.” Neither foreign capital nor state-owned industry eclipse the central role of the private sector, which is populated by giant firms like Lukoil, Severgroup, En+, TMK, Eurochem, Sistema, and NLMK.

Here, then, I would make a similar point to the one Lenin made to Kautsky: are we to believe that these monopolies will not engage in violence to expand their profits? Are the ruthless laws of capital accumulation laid out by Marx — the same laws that serve as the basis for Lenin’s critique of imperialism — making some kind of sentimental exception for the once-Soviet Russian Federation? Should we (for example) imagine that Russia’s bourgeoisie had no business stake in the specific controversy that ended in the overthrow of Yanukovych, the Ukrainian civil war, and Russia’s intervention: whether Ukraine would enter into a trade agreement with the European Union or Russia’s proposed Customs Union?

That conflict, I wrote in 2014, would have an entirely predictable outcome:

Ukraine is irretrievably caught between the European Union and an ascendant Russian Customs Union. Both covet the country’s pipelines and native workforce…Their gravity will simply tear the country apart. Ukraine may try to play the unions off against each other, but the unions will try to turn the country against itself.

If you are an anti-imperialist³, then of course none of these questions actually matter. In this case, your enemy is not the bourgeoisie and your allies are not the working class; your enemy is some vague and shifting coalition of forces known as “the West,” and you may in fact (as TWists explicitly do) come to regard even the West’s powerless working class as a ruling class. Meanwhile, you will (as Lenin predicted) find yourself pretending that the bourgeoisie outside of the West is “non-violent [and] non-annexationist”.

But if you oppose imperialism², what the war in Ukraine presents us with are multiple factions of the bourgeoisie waging war against each other, with millions of workers caught in the middle. Marx and Lenin do not give us an easy answer to this war, because it cannot be laid at the feet of a single faction: it expresses the violence of capitalism itself. As Lenin put it,

Domination, and violence associated with it, such are the relationships that are typical of the “latest phase of capitalist development”; this is what inevitably had to result, and has resulted, from the formation of all-powerful economic monopolies.

Here, I will only add that socialism’s greatest triumph did not emerge from workers picking sides among the ruling factions in World War I; it came precisely from their decision to withdraw from that fight, and to recognize the common cause of workers all over the world. One last quote from Lenin, because why not:

The slogans of social democracy at this time must be:

First, all-embracing propaganda extending to the army and to the theatre of war, propagating the socialist revolution, and the necessity of using weapons not against one’s own brothers, the hired slaves of other countries, but against the reactionary and bourgeois governments and parties of all nations;

The absolute necessity of organising illegal cells and groups in the armies of all nations for carrying on this propaganda in all languages;

A ruthless struggle against the chauvinism and “patriotism” of the petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie of all countries without exception;

An appeal to the revolutionary consciousness of the toiling masses, who bear the full burden of the war and who in most cases are hostile to opportunism and chauvinism, against the leaders of the present International, who have betrayed socialism. - 1914