Part of This Series of Posts:

Globalism is imperialism without borders.

We as Marxist-Leninists use Lenin’s definition of imperialism as opposed to the vague general use of the word. (As we do with nation and dictatorship as we have a different ideological framework to liberalism) It is from this that we know that imperialism primarily constitutes an economic form as opposed to a military form, the military is in place to enforce the economic over the exploited third world. Colloquially this is referred to as globalism as it depends on the delivery of materials from all over the third world to the first world by corporations to meet the demands of consumerist society. In Lenin’s time imperialism was primarily undertaken by imperialist powers through invasion to acquire resources, but it is for this reason that Lenin’s analysis was so acute even for Marxists today is that he correctly identified that the economic was factors were the key element and were at the root of military might. Such to the point that the imperialists when push came to shove ended up laying (mostly due to the threat of their violent overthrow) down their borders. (This was what Kwame Nkrumah referred to as neo-colonialism. Michael Hudson would also later coin the term super imperialism for the economic system of the unipolar world order. Both of these works are necessary updates to read on from Lenin’s analysis of imperialism as while his works are still very relevant he could never have imagined the unipolar world order).

After the British Empire left the vast majority of it’s occupied territories following WW2, it was the United States and it’s Bretton-Woods system which became the sucessors of the British. Instead of hard borders they put in place loyal comprador bourgeois governments and if they then revolted, the U.S. rigged elections, if that did not work they couped them, and if push came to shove they invaded. This was the relation of the so called peaceful world order where there were no imperial borders of old but instead the U.S. invaded with basically full legal order as for the most part they themselves made the international laws and controlled the so called independent international institutions. In a sense Americanism is anarchism at its peak set forth upon the world. Only a few ‘rogues’ dared to compete, and anytime a peer competitor emerged, they were crushed even in the case of Japan which was a subservient state in the 80s and was only an ecomonic competitor. Real competitors that were not within the scope of the U.S. empire and the liberal order such as the U.S.S.R., fought a cold war, with many proxies, and when the U.S.S.R. fell, the U.S. reigned supreme. It looked like the unipolar world order would be firmly in place for eternity and that it was “the end of history” to quote Fukiyama.

However today the U.S. and NATO have a real competitor both economic and ideological, in China which threatens not just the unipolar world to the extreme, but also the western powers themselves at home who could buckle under the threat of internal contradictions and fall to a workers revolution. The Belt and Road Initiative gives the third world the ability to fight globalism, neo-colonialism and western debt traps collectively. It is creating win-win conditions and solidarity amongst nations all over the world in a direct response to the imperialism of France, the U.S. and NATO. It is the unleashing of development from the BRI which will lead to the end of the 21st Century being the African century and it is this that the imperialists fear most as it would mean the end of globalism once and for all and would allow the African people to stand on their own two feet and say no to the domination of other peoples upon their land.

Imperial borders might have ended on the African continent once and for all decades ago, but today, imperialism still exists, it exists from the western corporations who outsource to exploit cheaper labour in sweatshops, and the bourgeois comprador governments who uphold them, but it is in the interests of those governments more often than not to oppose this (which historically led to coups of disloyal governments) but it is the BRI which will lead to the final defeat of imperialism and the liberation of the African continent. With the rise of China we are finally moving towards a multipolar world, the end of the unipolar ‘rules based world order’ is nigh.