Capitalism and imperialism
has been sold off. However, we must still take a stance against Britain’s imperialism in the modern day, which usually collaborates w ith America’s imperialism, and criticize it in the past, remembering that it is not only wrong, but that it does not benefit the British working class, and never could.
What we can do
Living in the west, in the imperial core, our duty is primarily to fight the imperial power we live in. After all, how can the workers of our nations meaningfully affect domestic oppression or decisions in China, Russia, or any other imperial power? How can we have more impact on what Xi Jinping does than on what Boris Johnson does? Some would advocate we should support our government in going to war or in expanding its own spheres of influence against these powers. Such a thing can only lead to workers dying to create profits for the capitalist class, while strengthening the geopolitical power of our nation state which protects that capitalist class. Should we ally with our domestic imperialists to fight foreign ones? No! Rather, as Karl Liebknecht argued in ‘The Main Enemy is at Home’, we must acknowledge and denounce the evil of foreign imperialist powers and lend our support to our comrades in other nations, such as the Russians protesting Putin’s war now and facing brutal punishment for it, while recognizing that our organization, our efforts, can and must be used, first, to dismantle our own capitalist class and expose the wrongdoings of our own leaders. This becomes ever more important when we note how our governments use the narrative of foreign imperialism for their own aims. They brush their own misdeeds under the carpet, bring the country in line behind their own imperialism under the guise of fighting a foreign one. Boris Johnson has had some success, for example, in escaping the nation’s wrath over Partygate or the looming threat of a vote of no-confidence by focusing on Ukraine. Far too many leftist movements fall into the trap of aiding, abetting, and losing sight of domestic imperialism when focussing on the foreign imperialist. Our task is, instead, to keep a firm eye on all the manifestations of imperialism. We must say ‘no’ to Chinese, Russian, and other forms of imperialism, while never allying with the British or American imperialists, the domestic imperialists, the domestic bourgeois and enemies of the working class. Instead, let’s tear down our own imperial ists and lend support to the workers and the civilians, and not the bourgeois classes, as a united proletarian class. This means not joining forces, whether ideological or military, with domestic imperialists to fight foreign imperialists, and it means making all people aware of the current state of imperialism, as it exists in the west. How do we do this? Liebknecht put it best when he said ‘learn everything and don’t forget anything’. As a nation, we need to make ourselves fully aware of the scheming of our bourgeois class, of the million ways that they use imperialism to grow rich at the expense of the rest of humanity. Only by informing ourselves and others, and by not allowing their farces and crimes to fade into forgetfulness, can we be conscious of our role in relation to the bourgeois class. When all of Britain, all of the west, is aware of the workings of imperialism and the mechanisms of the ruling class, the battle for an end to oppression will be half won. We need to understand imperialism in Syria, Sudan, Columbia, Brazil, Somalia, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Vietnam, and everywhere else because this keeps happening, and we will keep seeing more Afghanistans, more Ukraines. Because – make no mistake – these sorts of events (or crises) are inherent to capitalism, a system which keeps
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