/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Marxism is not about vibes, justice, or who feels bad. It is about material development. Any attempt to condemn American imperialism on moral grounds is liberal humanism and thus idealism. Despite the moral indignation that are likely to follow this post, let me explain…

As you all know, of all the things Karl Marx was, idealist he was not. Nor was he a moralist for he never gave moral judgements when discussing topics as fraught as juvenile prostitution, and would be incredulous as seeing the self-declared "marxists" of our times using the language of liberal moralisms when it comes to the Epstein saga. Sure, as a man of his time, he wasn't immune to contemporary prejudices as was his case with gay people that I don't need to mention.

Needless to say, unlike whig historians, for Marx history was neither moral nor immoral, but amoral.
Indeed, he described the democide of the Native Americans in the New World and the subsequent settling by European colonists and their African slaves, as well as British colonialism in India, and even slavery in Ancient Greece as progressive in that it advanced societies relative to their predecessors (in ancient Greece's case, from tribal society to city-states). For him, European colonialism was a double mission: Destructive but necessary in order to destroy material obstacles to historical development.

It is with this in mind that I can confidently say that Marx would deem modern American imperialism as a force of progress. If historical progress is defined by the destruction of pre-capitalist social relations and the creation of modern productive forces — then American imperialism is not only progressive, but the most progressive force in human history. After all, for Marx the capitalism of his time was a destructive force of progress that was necessary for communism arises through capitalism, not instead of it. Before objections begin, I'll bluntly state that I'm simply engaging in historical materialism to its conclusions and refuse to apply moral exceptions to the infantilised leftism that dominates the current milieu of the western left.

We may object to it on moral grounds, but if we are to be materialist, then we'd have to acknowledge the following facts with regards to American imperialism in this day and age:

First, American imperialism has functioned as an unparalleled mechanism for the destruction of pre-capitalist, semi-feudal, clerical, and patrimonial social relations, be it in Asia or Africa. Wherever it intervenes—whether through direct military occupation, regime change, or economic integration—it systematically undermines traditional forms of authority that obstruct the free movement of capital: tribal structures, religious legal orders, dynastic rule, and rent-based oligarchies. From a Marxist standpoint, these formations are not neutral cultural expressions but the very things that impede said societies from being integrated to the modern world and thus delays the process of proletarianisation.

Second, American imperialism universalizes bourgeois social relations at a scale previously unmatched. Wage labor, commodity production, contractual legality, and market dependence are not merely imposed; they are normalized. This process forcibly inserts entire regions into the global circuit of capital, dissolving local autarkies and subsistence economies that historically insulated ruling classes from proletarianization. As such, American imperialism is an accellerationist force for the very conditions Marx identified as prerequisites for class consciousness: urbanization, labor discipline, and the separation of producers from the means of production.

Third, the much-lamented cultural homogenization associated with American dominance is, in material terms, a rationalization of social life. The spread of secular compulsory education, mass media, standardized legal codes, and bureaucratic governance weakens the grip of what Marx would have recognized as ideological superstructures tied to archaic modes of production. Key example would be the efforts of the US-supported Pahlavi regime at undermining the power of the Islamic landowners who made up the core base of the Islamic revolution of 1979, a reactionary force that campists today support solely out of relative anti-western sentiment in spite of the Islamic Republic's archaic mode of production and imperialist tendencies in the Fertile Crescent and the levant. That these processes are experienced as alien or violent does not negate their historical function; Marx never required that progress be experienced as pleasant.

Fourth, it is precisely under American-led capitalist integration that previously marginalized groups are drawn into social production as juridical subjects. Women’s participation in wage labor, the commodification of domestic labor, the legal abstraction of the individual citizen, and the formal extension of rights to racial and sexual minorities are not moral achievements floating above the material base. They are functional requirements of advanced capitalism, which cannot tolerate rigid exclusion without sacrificing efficiency. Acknowledging it =/= celebrating it, but recognises that capitalism dissolves traditional hierarchies even as it reproduces exploitation in new forms.

Fifth, critiques that frame American imperialism as uniquely regressive often rely on an implicit romanticism toward “non-Western” or “anti-imperialist” formations. Yet many of these alternatives preserve pre-capitalist relations under the guise of cultural authenticity or national sovereignty (e.g., Iran, Palestine), or worst reproduce the same capitalist contradictions (e.g., Russia, China). Marx was explicit that such formations, however resistant to foreign domination, could still represent historical stagnation.

Opposition to imperialism, when detached from an analysis of productive forces, risks becoming reactionary in content even when radical in appearance. Indeed, those contemporaries that opposed slavery during antiquity, settler colonialism in the western hemisphere in the early modern period, and British colonialism in India would essentially be reactionary. And that's a fact, not a moral judgement.

None of this implies that American imperialism should be supported, only that it must be understood correctly. To denounce it as an absolute evil is to abandon historical materialism in favor of moral spectacle. The task of Marxist analysis is not to assign blame, but to trace motion: how forces collide, how contradictions sharpen, and how new social relations are born out of violence and upheaval.

If communism is to emerge from capitalism rather than leap over it, then it follows—however uncomfortable—that the most aggressive agents of capitalist expansion are also the most efficient destroyers of the old world. History, as Marx understood it, has never waited for permission.