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Gotta hold onto that power somehow
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Imperialism is a result of capitalism...
When the resources of your home country are insufficient to feed the need for constant growth of profits, the resources of other people begin to look attractive. It's just a matter of convincing your people that it's worth it to go take those other people's resources. Its easier to convince your people to exploit other people if you have dehumanized the other people, so you revert to racism and other tactics of making the others look like barbarians. Then you go make colonies and suppress the native population while exploiting them for labor and resources.
Fascism is imperialism turned inward...
Either the flow of resources from your colonies are insufficient to feed your need for the continual growth of profits or you don't have the means to colonize far away lands, so the resources of countries closer to home begin looking very attractive. Its easier to suppress people at home first, so you turn that imperialist oppression on for a portion of your population at home, exploiting them more than other parts of your population. This doesn't satisfy your needs for more resources for long, so you continue to exploit your own people more and expand the definition of who gets to suffer the imperialist oppression.
When your population can no longer satisfy your needs for continued growth of profits, you turn that imperialism on countries nearby. This process is why people say fascism is imperialism turned inward.
More food for thought...
Some argue this process is why Hitler and the Third Reich are looked on as the ultimate evil. The Nazis took imperialist oppression, a tool that every European country had historically only used on people in far away lands where the culture and the way the people looked was strange to the people at home and they turned that imperialist oppression on the white populations of Europe. Europeans finally began to experience the horrors they had been inflicting on the rest of the world for centuries.
Okay... and what about Alexander, Ceasar, Ali, Genghis, Napoleon, and all the rest? The claim that empires are only motivated by profits is absurd.
I'd say that, generally, imperialist motivation is a matter of gaining power. In a capitalist system, capital is power, so they are seeking capital.
The way I explained it was meant to break it down into a modern context to help answer the question, not to address imperialism in the context of feudalism or other systems. End of the day, someone is exploiting someone else for their own gain. It was just a matter of the context of the question and I erred on the side of keeping the scope within capitalism.
None of them were fascist. Fascism is specific phase of development of capitalist system, as MeowZedong explained, it is not just when someone do conquests and/or kills many people.
Although the mechanism isn't entirely dissimilar, all those you listed belonged to pre-capitalist levels of development (Napoleonic France was in progress of change but quite early) and are the effect of their societies reaching the boiling point of internal development saturation when it was ready for expansion, and also all of them followed earlier successes.
For comparison you might also add one of the most characteristical examples of Spain launching its global scale colonisation and conquests immediately after finishing centuries long reconquista.
Also note that neither of those cannibalised itself like fascism did, because they weren't capitalist. They just ran out of the force driving them and either collapsed or stabilised on some level.
What has me perpelexed is the fact that the USSR also did this, just to a slightly less genocidal degree - all the other SSRs largely served to supply the RSFSR, but some people do not consider it to be imperialist.
The greed for power and resources can stem from capitalism, but it really isn't the only possible cause.
I agree with your conclusion, my explanation was just a matter of addressing the context of the question, not covering how imperialism can operate under all systems, just the system in question.
Less genocidal? O.o