Fundamentals of Marxism: What is Imperialism?
from Socialism and Liberation, www.socialismandliberation.org/mag/index.php?aid=136 With the U.S. war against Iraq raging, more and more people are talking about imperialism. Scenes of U.S. troops patrolling the streets of an Arab country, U.S. diplomats handpicking “leaders,” and U.S. corporations earning billions of dollars from Iraqi resources bring to mind the most blatant examples of colonialism from the past 100 years. The slogan “No war for empire” is common at anti-war protests throughout the United States. Marxists use the term imperialism in a particular way. It is not just a description of a particular policy of a particular government. Imperialism refers to a specific stage of economic development of capitalist relations. Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin described the outlines of this analysis in 1916, in the bloodiest days of World War I, in a pamphlet called “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.” He wrote this not just to describe the forces that were driving
