The imperialist escalation in Eastern Europe and more recently in the Middle East shows once again the serious ideological and political limitations suffered by the Western communist movement, especially when it comes, as in this case, to take firm, rigorous and well-founded positions in the face of the maneuvers of the imperialist bloc to which the Spanish and European state oligarchies themselves belong.
Broad sectors of the communist movement continue to resort to the scarecrow of “inter-imperialism” to hide their ignorance of the concrete nature of present-day imperialism; to legitimize their equidistance in the face of the umpteenth diplomatic, political and even military offensive of Western imperialism; to tiptoe around the imperialist character of the European Union, while, on the contrary, they trumpet the perversity of alleged Russian imperialism to the four winds.
In recent years, Ukraine has been the focus of pressure to continue harassing the Russian Federation, taking away its historical spheres of influence and trying to win for the interests of imperialism the whole of Eastern Europe. The media campaign deployed by the Western oligarchy has found, for the umpteenth time, more echo than it should among some communist voices.
The great accusing finger of these so-called Marxists points to Russia as an imperialist power, but offers no theoretical support to justify such a daring thesis. This silence is understandable. After all, if anyone took the trouble to rigorously study the economic reality and the international role of the Russian Federation, they would not find the monstrous imperialism that occupies the fantasies of the Western left, but, on the contrary, a country of a secondary and evidently subordinate nature within the economic networks of contemporary capitalism. To describe Russia as imperialist is to take a real leap of faith, ignoring the very palpable evidence that we are dealing with a country occupying an intermediate position in the world value chains, with no major capitals dominating the international scene and with a per capita wealth lower even than that of other clearly non-imperialist countries in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. (here is where I have cut out other economic evidence).
This ignorance of the true economic character of the Russian Federation stems, in part, from the absence of a scientific theory of imperialism among the ranks of Western communism. There are those who depart directly from the contributions of Leninism and fall into idealistic conceptions of “global capitalism”, of “deterritorialized capitalism”, thus ignoring the persistent division of the world into oppressor and oppressed nations. From this point of view, all international conflict is reduced to a game of geopolitical interests between actors of equivalent strength.
Others, on the other hand, accept in words the Leninist theses on imperialism, but fail to apply their fundamental slogan: the concrete analysis of the concrete situation. Thus, they limit themselves to offering decontextualized fragments of works more than a century old, but ignore the profound changes that have taken place since then.
There is also an absolute confusion between the natural tendencies of capitalism and the real affirmation of a country as an imperialist power. Many communists assume that countries like China or the Russian Federation are imperialist simply because they maintain relations of domination over other weaker nations around them, or because they possess expansionist ambitions—politically, economically or even militarily—towards the exterior. But such ambitions and relations of domination do not constitute a specific feature of imperialism, but, on the contrary, a tendency proper to any bourgeois state, which will always try to expand as far as possible its spheres of influence. According to this absurd logic, which confuses capitalism “in general” with the concrete reality of imperialism, we should also count among the imperialist powers such countries clearly exploited by the Western oligarchy as Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, India or Turkey. In this sense, does Russia benefit from its unequal relationship with the countries of the ex-Soviet environment? Undoubtedly. But does this mean that Russia has set itself up as an imperialist power? Not necessarily. And this will have to be decided by an analysis that takes into account not only the relationship between the Russian Federation and its historical orbit of influence in Eastern Europe, Central Asia or the Caucasus, but its global role within the international networks of contemporary capitalism. Where, we insist, anyone will be able to discover a country of an intermediate nature, very far from being able to occupy in the short and medium term a dominant position in the framework of the world capitalist economy.
These sectors of the communist movement continue to identify imperialism with military might, and not with economic domination at the international level.
The political positions observed in recent years show that there is a fairly large sector in the Western communist movement which immediately adapts itself to the discursive matrix of the US, NATO, the EU and the oligarchy of the country itself. Their usual silence on the rapacious and predatory character of Western imperialism contrasts, unfortunately, with their outright condemnation of Russian “imperialism”. A condemnation that coincides, very revealingly, with the moment when the Western powers are intensifying their economic, military and diplomatic siege on the Russian Federation. Therefore, in a conflict where the imperialism of the European states takes an active part and intervenes as the aggressor side, a communist who chooses to stand in profile and emphasize the sins of the Russian government only does good to his own imperialist bourgeoisie, becoming an objective accomplice of the campaigns of his own imperialism.
The analyses on imperialism prevailing in the European communist movement are, as a rule, rather weak, biased, incoherent, outdated. They take refuge in some of Lenin’s texts, but misrepresent the core of his theory of imperialism. All this translates a historical truism: the superprofits captured by imperialist capital have contributed to the rightistization of the entire political landscape in Western countries; including, of course, the communist movement itself.
In the same way, we see how this tendency is reproduced, fortunately in a more timid way, but even more absurd with respect to the escalation that has been taking place since the last weeks in the Middle East around the Palestinian conflict. Where certain communist sectors replace Russia in their speeches by Iran or Hamas, highlighting their reactionary characteristics, in order to justify equidistant positions.
We must, therefore, make the greatest efforts to combat any conciliatory tendency within the communist movement, and, in general, of the working class. We must abandon formulas and empty slogans, and put forward a rigorously Marxist study of contemporary imperialism, overcoming the outdated dogmas and distortions to which many have wanted to subject the Leninist theory of imperialism.
We need to overcome all those deviations whose supposed equidistance—“neither NATO nor Russia”—does nothing more than promote the demonization of the enemies of our own imperialism. We need, in short, to return the communist movement to its proper terrain: that of a frontal, complete and uncompromising opposition to the oligarchy of our own State and its bloc of imperialist parasites.