• nooch@lemmy.vg
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    2 hours ago

    Depends on the definition. In Lenin’s Imperialism, the highest form of capitalism, he defines five criteria:

    And so, without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its complete development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features:

    1. the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;

    2. the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital,” of a financial oligarchy;

    3. the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance;

    4. the formation of international monopolist capitalist combines which share the world among themselves, and

    5. the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.

    1 and 2 apply with some caveats, 3 and 4 are a yes (WTO, UN, BRICS, etc), and 5 should be seen through a soft-power neo colonialist lens with China’s influence in Africa for example.

    This is not meant to be anti-China or whatever, anything China has done pales in comparison with US imperialism, just that I don’t think it’s a completely baseless accusation.