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Russian Forces Tighten the Noose Around Pokrovsk in Relentless Advance
(southfront.press)
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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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Yes, socialist countries cannot be imperialist as Lenin laid imperialism out. Socialist countries can, of course, benefit from trade or interaction with countries of lower development, but without the M-C...P...C'-M' circuit there's no real drive for the same dominance of financial capital nor exporting capital. It makese sense that moving beyond the profit motive means you are no longer beholden to the drives of the profit motive, and lack the financial incentive to practice imperialism.
The way you define imperialism is similar to the way people would define murder, as an action, but one where the definition says nothing about its origins or how to tackle it systemically. As for Russia, it isn't socialist, it just trades with socialist countries heavily and is a nationalist bourgeois country. My point isn't that Russia is in Sudan for any reason other than profit, my point is that Russia does not have the means to financially dominate Sudan and plunder it.
The Roman empire did a lot of imperialism and they predated capitalism quite a bit.
I'm not familiar with the MC P C M circuit but Russia is getting a lot of money out of Sudan which is not going to the Sudanese people And Russia does dominate Sudan. So much so in fact, that America made their own South Sudan. With blackjack and hookers. And a big concentration camp for ICE.
Would it be so that America would colonize all of Sudan if Russia wasn't backing the current Sudanese government? Yes. But Russia isn't exactly delivering much value to the Sudanese people either. And they're getting a lot of gold out of it. This is not altruism.
Yes, Rome was imperialist, I didn't say they weren't. The reasons I say socialist countries aren't imperialist don't apply to Rome.
As for the M-C...P...C'-M' circuit, that does apply to Russia. Russia is capitalist. The circuit described is Money to buy the commodities "means of production" and "labor power," which then go to production, which results in new commodities of higher value sold for a greater sum of money than initially fronted. Capitalism is dominated by this circuit, socialism is not.
As for Russia engaging in "altruism," I never stated they were. I think you're misreading a lot of what I'm saying. I'm not saying that in a mean way, I just think you should do a reread. I don't distill all geopolitical interaction to just "imperialism vs altruism," there can be beneficial trade that isn't imperialist. The way Russia engages with Africa is qualitatively different from the US and Europe, and more similar to the PRC, because Russia lacks the financial capital to do so. It isn't altruism.
The problem with Communist literature is that it keeps referencing unfamiliar terms in every single article and it seems to wholly reject using common language it would be possible to do so. Meaning it's impossible for anyone who hasn't read all other literature to understand what's being said. Previously I tried reading Communist pieces, which I believe you linked, and ended up at descriptions of what elite circles were after 30 minutes of heavy literature. Which is why I urge Communists to stop using French terms like "proletariat" and "bourgeousie" (and especially "petit bourgeousie" that's just the stupidest term).
That tangent aside, I don't think Russia and China are comparable in Africa. China arguably benefits the local population by building infrastructure, whereas Russia doesn't do much more than extract resources.
The relative difficulty of getting into Marxist-Leninist theory is a totally valid point. Part of the issue stems from the fact that Marxism-Leninism is over a century old, and Marxism is older than that. However, using a bunch of synonyms can make it more confusing to look back on theory and understand it, it boxes us into contemporary terms that the capitalist superstructure has molded its favor. "Business owner" sounds much less nefarious than "bourgeoisie," because the former has connotations grounded in our daily capitalist experience.
This is more of a philosophical argument, though, your base frustration is absolutely valid. It's an investment to read theory, I'm not going to pretend that it's all obvious. I've been reading theory for years, and I still don't have a firm grasp on everything, just the fundamentals. I just disagree with cedeing control of language to the bourgeoisie.
As for Russia and China, Russia is closer to China than it is to the west when it comes to Africa. Russia does not have the financial capital to dominate Africa. The terms of its trade have to be more beneficial to African countries than the west, because they can't rely on financial domination to fix terms. China isn't developing Africa out of simple altruism either, it needs minerals and customers as well, but the qualitative difference between Russia/China vs the West is that the West takes everything that would normally be invested in development as profits for themselves, while Russia cannot do the same, and China has different material incentives as it needs to build up international trade and its own self-reliance to survive capitalist encirclement.
If older Marxist theory is too impenetrable, a good work I'm reading now is How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney. It helps explain that trade isn't bad itself, it's the nature of capitalist imperialism that underdevelops African countries. Russia doesn't have the same tools nor resources to do so.