Michael Pröbsting criticizes distortion of the Marxist theory of imperialism today, which is used to justify support for imperialist states such as China and Russia.
Garbage Western Marxist. Multipolarity is not an ideology. It is a description of a world system. There is no path from the unipolar world to a socialist world without first going through a multipolar transition.
The reason Great Power Rivalry does not factor in to contemporary Marxist analysis of geopolitical is because Russia and China are not yet great powers. The context of Great Power Rivalry during the period when the Marxist analysis of imperialism first emerged was a context in which multiple European war machines had already sailed clear around the globe and committed various genocides to claim entire populations as their subjugated peoples and were actively extracting their wealth to maintain their empires and war machines. It was not merely an analysis resting on big militaries but rather big imperialist states fighting with each other.
Russia and China do not meet the standard of Great Power in this sense. If you take England, Spain, and France and scale them up to 21st century standards, Russia and China do not measure up.
If Russia and China had, say even 100 foreign military bases each, while they wouldn’t be as strong as the USA’s 700, they would rightly be seen as imperialist Great Powers and thus engaged in inter-imperilaist conflict. But they do not have such an empire. They are almost entirely confined to their own long-standing geographical space. In short, “big military” is not equivalent to Great Power and to argue that they are simply because they have a big military and a capitalist arrangement of production is a complete misunderstanding of materialism and an adherence to idealist conceptions of imperialism. Which is what Western Marxists are consistently criticized for doing and which this author fails to avoid.
Garbage Western Marxist. Multipolarity is not an ideology. It is a description of a world system. There is no path from the unipolar world to a socialist world without first going through a multipolar transition.
The reason Great Power Rivalry does not factor in to contemporary Marxist analysis of geopolitical is because Russia and China are not yet great powers. The context of Great Power Rivalry during the period when the Marxist analysis of imperialism first emerged was a context in which multiple European war machines had already sailed clear around the globe and committed various genocides to claim entire populations as their subjugated peoples and were actively extracting their wealth to maintain their empires and war machines. It was not merely an analysis resting on big militaries but rather big imperialist states fighting with each other.
Russia and China do not meet the standard of Great Power in this sense. If you take England, Spain, and France and scale them up to 21st century standards, Russia and China do not measure up.
If Russia and China had, say even 100 foreign military bases each, while they wouldn’t be as strong as the USA’s 700, they would rightly be seen as imperialist Great Powers and thus engaged in inter-imperilaist conflict. But they do not have such an empire. They are almost entirely confined to their own long-standing geographical space. In short, “big military” is not equivalent to Great Power and to argue that they are simply because they have a big military and a capitalist arrangement of production is a complete misunderstanding of materialism and an adherence to idealist conceptions of imperialism. Which is what Western Marxists are consistently criticized for doing and which this author fails to avoid.