“Imperialism in the 21st century” was a very eye opening read for me and I was surprised to see this from Smith in an interview, comrades please help me understand:
“Marxist-Leninist” refers to the ideology espoused by the bureaucratic rulers of the former Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China and all those around the world who look to them for leadership, but in my opinion, there is no Marxism or Leninism in so-called “Marxism-Leninism”. We cannot get anywhere until we call things by their true names, so I insist on describing both the Moscow or Beijing varieties of these ideologies as Stalinist. This might upset some people or be misinterpreted as factional name-calling, but the alternative is to perpetuate an extremely harmful falsehood—one which is energetically promoted by bourgeois politicians and opinion-formers of all types, from the liberal left to the far right, all of whom are aware of how much damage they can do to the revolutionary workers’ movement by identifying socialism, communism and the liberatory ideas of Marx and Lenin with the disgusting brutality and corruption of the bureaucratic castes which once ruled the Soviet Union and which continue to rule over China (indeed, the capitalist ruling class presently in power in Russia is almost entirely composed of former “Marxist-Leninists”).
“Marxism-Leninism” served the rulers of the USSR and PRC not as a guide to action, but as a cloak of deception, a means of legitimizing their rule. They claimed allegiance to the same theories and philosophies as do I, but their doctrine of “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism stands in the clearest possible contradiction with everything that Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin stood for.
https://mronline.org/2019/03/19/john-smith-on-imperialism-part-1/
[Edit] Following from this I looked to my other eye-opening author, Zak Cope (Divided World, Divided Class) and found this where he disavows his entire work and all anticapitalism, just read the abstract and note 1:
https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-031-25399-7_82-2
What the fuck is happening?
Cope and Smith were accessible to me, I picked up Amin and I’m sorry but I don’t have the required educational background to grasp it… Can you recommend authors who break things down for regular people like me?
I have read Cope as well but it was only much later I actually started questioning the dialectics of it; how is the framework useful for transformative change? Which parts do we take? Which ones do we leave etc etc
Still learning here but authors from top of my head include:
Some of these aren’t marxist (like wallerstein) and some of these have critiques on dependancy theory (like Chibber) to help get a more well rounded overview. The latter two (and number 4) I have not read at all (yet).
Rather than spend a lot of money on books, i would consider library (or elsewhere) ebooks, read the intro chapters, and then look at the contents to see which chapters interest you, and go from there.
Also redsails.org
Addendum - sometimes a framework of purposeful underdevelopment by capital can give better insight than using an unequal exchange lens.
Thank you!
No worries. I also forgot a glaring omission: Frantz Fanon.