New imperialist powers, capitalist unipolarity and proletarian internationalism: An interview with Rasti Delizo (Part II)

Rasti Delizo is a global affairs analyst, veteran socialist activist and former vice-president of the Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP, Solidarity of Filipino Workers). In the second part of this extensive interview with Federico Fuentes for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Delizo accounts for the rise of new imperialist powers, outlines the faulty logic behind the idea and promotion of multipolarity, and argues for a 21st century anti-imperialism rooted in working-class solidarity.

In Part I of this interview, Delizo discusses the ongoing relevancy of Vladimir Lenin’s theory of imperialism while outlining subsequent developments that need to be factored in, particularly with regards to mechanisms of core-periphery exploitation.

We have discussed some developments since Lenin wrote his book on imperialism. One issue we have not broached is whether the original imperialist powers Lenin wrote about are still the only imperialist powers, or if other nation-states have subsequently transitioned from non-imperialist to imperialist? If so, how were the economic foundations of these new imperialist forces laid, and what specific characteristics enabled them to join the camp of imperialist powers?

The 20th century’s foremost imperialist states remain among the world’s top imperialist powers. As the pre-eminent imperialist great power, the United States still leads the so-called Western imperialist bloc, which includes Britain, France, Germany and Japan. However, the imperialist core now contains a duo of imperialist states that strategically compete against the Western imperialist bloc. This rival anti-Western imperialist bloc is composed of a regionally hegemonic pair located in the Eastern Hemisphere: China and Russia.

This Eurasian duo of imperialist great powers does not compete to overthrow the global capitalist system; rather, it seeks to secure maximal superprofits by remaining in the topmost ranks of the imperialist world system’s hierarchised order. These imperialist blocs do not represent the dyadically opposed historic camps of capitalism/imperialism versus socialism/communism. Instead, their bourgeois ruling classes and oligarchic elites seek to attain a permanent accumulation of the greatest amounts of surplus value at the expense of the world’s proletarian masses.

Within this current world situation, the communist-led international working-class movement must resolutely wage its independent revolutionary class fight to change the capitalist system into a socialist socioeconomic order. This is the global correlation of class forces today. In view of this, I shall explain some of the specific characteristics that enabled China and Russia to become imperialist powers.

First, the present-day material development of China and Russia’s socio-economic formations, while varied in their particular configurations, show a substantively high degree of exploitatively oppressive capitalist growth. Lenin’s five basic features of imperialism are manifested by the domestic and foreign economic dynamics and behaviours of these two countries.

As well as what he penned in his 1916 pamphlet, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin wrote about a major related aspect later that year. In his October 1916 article, “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism,” Lenin elucidated on his theory of imperialism in a non-economistic way, polemicising against the opportunist Kautskyite social-imperialists. Applying the dialectical method, and avoiding a non-mechanistic approach, he professed the following points, characterising imperialism as a “specific historical stage of capitalism” (italics from the original text):

... On the contrary, not only have the capitalists something to fight about now, but they cannot help fighting if they want to preserve capitalism, for without a forcible redivision of colonies the new imperialist countries cannot obtain the privileges enjoyed by the older (and weaker) imperialist powers…

…The last third of the nineteenth century saw the transition to the new, imperialist era. Finance capital not of one, but of several, though very few, Great Powers enjoys a monopoly. (In Japan and Russia the monopoly of military power, vast territories, or special facilities for robbing minority nationalities, China, etc., partly supplements, partly takes the place of, the monopoly of modern, up-to-date finance capital.)...

… The monopoly of modern finance capital is being frantically challenged; the era of imperialist wars has begun…

Lenin added these assertions in synthesis to his prior-stated basic features of imperialism. This methodology clearly shows a revolutionary Marxist theory of imperialism that is not static. Neither is it limited to a purely economic question in general, nor to the issue of capital exports in particular. Lenin’s approach is a logic in motion that keenly captures the essential nature of globalised capital’s continuous materialist development over time. So, by extension, the real class character of any potentially developing imperialist state must be totally summed up by its overall economic, social, political, technological and military features.

Furthermore, the unavoidable geostrategic confrontation between imperialist powers, which inevitably defines their antagonistic relationships, always carries two interrelated elements underpinning their strategic contentions. These organic aspects are necessarily characterised by a parallel set of twin economic and security struggles employed by the imperialist powers in competition. With the rise of these circumstances, especially in periods of crisis, a global conflict is once more recreated and escalated within and through the imperialist world system.

What features does the Russian state exhibit that make it an imperialist state?

In the current international setting, the Russian Federation is an imperialist power. This materialist premise is predicated upon Lenin’s conceptual basis of imperialism. The Russian state reverted to its existing capitalist mode of production immediately following the dissolution of the former Soviet Union in December 1991. Since then, its distinct path of economic development has pursued the rationale of capital accumulation via a mixed economic setup.

Presently the world’s 11th largest economy in nominal GDP rates (US$2.20 trillion), Russia’s variant of state capitalism displays public sector monopolies dominantly controlled by its bourgeois state apparatus, operating side-by-side with monopolies dominated by private shares. Its national economy is largely governed by domestic monopolies (state-owned enterprises, private corporations, banks, etc) and is not dependent on foreign ones.

While the amount of capital exports from Russian monopolies may not reflect the same level as those of US and Chinese outward foreign direct investments (OFDI), they remain greatly significant. Russia’s outward capital investments primarily flow toward semi-colonial states within Moscow’s “near abroad” sphere of influence. Some of these countries formally belong to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) — the ex-Soviet Union’s former constituent republics that now autonomously operate within Russia’s “post-Soviet space”. With Russia’s OFDI reaching $11.691 billion in 2024, Moscow maintains exploitative levels of unequal trade exchange with CIS states in Central Asia while providing a monopolised strategic security umbrella since the demise of the Soviet Union.

Immediately following the start of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, US imperialism’s expanded range of unilateral economic sanctions imposed on Moscow forced Russian capital to adjust the directional flow of its capital exports. Beginning in 2023, Russia primarily shifted large amounts of its OFDI from OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries in North America and Europe to non-OECD economies, particularly in West Asia, Central Asia and East Asia. China, CIS states, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) now hold the relative bulk of Russia’s superprofits abroad. As a core imperialist state in mid-2025, the aggregate volume of Russia’s capital exports — with its huge surplus value transfers — clearly exceeds its reception of inward-bound FDI.

In a dialectical way, the imperialist Russian state also upholds a non-economic monopoly in the area of military affairs. As the world’s largest country in territorial terms, Russia retains its international status as the second most powerful military force. A military superpower, Moscow oversees the world’s biggest nuclear weapon stockpile. According to a January 2025 Arms Control Association report, “nearly 90%” of the world’s “over 12,400 nuclear warheads” belong to Russia and the US, as the top two “nuclear-armed states”. Moscow retains control of 5580 nuclear warheads, while Washington maintains 5225.

As a predatory militarist aggressor-state, Russia — currently ranked third in the global arms trade behind the US and France — has seen a fresh surge in its national economic growth, due largely to rising shares from its military-industrial monopolies (in combination with its oil and gas monopolies). As a predominant Eurasian state, Russia is also steadily building its great power projection beyond its own national frontiers. Moscow now has command and control of approximately fifteen military bases and facilities abroad; this includes newly established ones in Africa’s Sahel states (Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger).

To fully account for Russia’s character as an imperialist state, we must not forget its acts of unilateral militarist aggression, especially within its historical sphere of influence. Russia’s ongoing imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine is merely Moscow’s latest belligerent act. Ever since the birth of the Russian Federation in 1991, Russian imperialism has been actively involved in at least nine other interventionist conflicts. Aside from its almost decade-long military intervention in Syria (from September 2015 to December 2024), Moscow has also been militarily engaged in Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea and the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, among others.

What about China?

China is the Eastern Hemisphere’s other imperialist great power. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is critically viewed by some revolutionary Marxists as a social-imperialist state — a powerful state that is “socialist in words, imperialist in deeds,” to borrow Lenin’s phrase. 

From a materialist standpoint, the PRC’s class character has developed into a highly advanced party-directed state capitalist formation, which is continually pushing to reshape its regional sphere(s) of influence beyond its contested frontier zones. Largely powered by monopolies under the political control of its party-state nexus, Chinese imperialism aims to militarily monopolise its adjacent terra firma borders and maritime realms (for example, the Southeast Asian Sea) at the risk of sparking future conflicts.

Its overall transformative process, which began just two years after Mao Zedong’s death with a defined batch of national economic reforms in late 1978, including terminating centralised collective agriculture, initiating private enterprises on a limited scale, permitting investment flows from foreign capital, establishing a network of special economic zones, introducing a system of dual pricing, etc, only deepened after 1992. 

For the next two decades, Beijing effectively pursued a wide-ranging privatisation of its economic foundations in synergy with a reduced imprint of its state-owned sector. By the start of the 2010s, China’s economic recasting allowed it to become the new centre of gravity for most of the world’s leading transnational monopolies, specifically for the latter’s offshore production activities.

China’s transitional shift in its mode of production from a centrally planned economy geared toward production for social use into one for profit-driven exchange within a market-oriented economic framework — a genuine capitalist restoration — profoundly changed the nature of its state and society. Therefore, as the objective conditions of China’s capitalist growth and expansion further develop, the upshots from these dynamics will imperatively impact the future collective consciousness and outlook of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) direction going forward.

After almost half a century of pursuing pivotal bourgeois changes to its socio-economic system, China today manifests imperialism’s five basic features, as outlined by Lenin. The convergence of the top echelons of the CPC and the PRC’s state apparatus have ultimately (created and) enabled the country’s party-state financial oligarchs to not just amass and concentrate immense wealth and political influence. The unique social status of the Chinese oligarchic layer significantly allows it to decide how best, and where, to invest China’s vastly accumulated surplus value — without much substantive policy input from its mammoth working-class masses.

This specific political condition is starkly highlighted by the fact that, in a country of about 1.4 billion people with a working-age population (15-59) estimated at 857.98 million in 2023, the standing proletarian composition (industrial workers, blue-collar labour, etc) of the CPC Central Committee — the central leading organ of China’s “vanguard party of the working class” — is less than 50%. This stark socio-political condition affecting the CPC’s central leadership merely reflects the expanding bourgeoisification of Chinese society.

This pressing and pivotal national situation comes as Chinese capitalism’s firm nationalist orientation strongly harnesses the elements of its so-called Comprehensive National Power to craft and execute Beijing’s swiftly intensifying geostrategic thrusts. Since at least 2013, Beijing’s non-proletarian internationalist foreign policy primarily aims to thwart US imperialist manoeuvers throughout the Eurasia-Indo-Pacific area, as the former’s main strategic competitor.

China’s externally directed strategy, which also factors in its key geopolitical considerations, strives to redivide the Eastern Hemisphere’s widely arranged division of labour to Beijing’s long-term strategic advantage. The pursuit of this external policy track is being maximised through the export of China’s robust monopoly-finance capital to adjoining and neighbouring countries. Through Beijing’s comprehensively integrated Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese imperialism aspires to rework the scope of its regionally-linked spheres of influence. 

In carrying this out, China’s OFDI flows are vitally supported by the Bank of China (BOC) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), among other leading Chinese monopolies. With this exploitative external relations approach, especially through mechanisms of unequal exchange, China is able to guarantee its net appropriation of surplus value from dominated non-monopoly countries in the global periphery.

And as an imperialist great power comprising the world’s third most powerful military force, China equally endeavours to build its necessary strategic depth. In deepening its buffer zone, Beijing is militarily securing its western frontier zone (bordering Central Asia) and southern border region (adjoining South Asia and into the Indian Ocean), while projecting far eastward past Taiwan, into the middle of the Pacific Ocean (beyond the First and Second Island chains). 

China’s potently extending forward force projection seeks to impede and/or deny US imperialism’s bolstering armed might radiating from the Western Hemisphere. US military force, comprising naval and air components for mainly expeditionary warfare, chiefly emanates from a maritime sector located westward of Hawaii and the US’s Western Seaboard, around the Pacific Ocean’s Third Island Chain. It is in the area between the Second and Third Island chains that Chinese imperialism seeks to thwart US imperialism’s intensely aggressive power projection capabilities. This maritime space is where the strategic interests of both contending imperialist powers are already overlapping within the Pacific Ocean.

Russian and Chinese monopoly capital will play a major role in the further evolution of the global capitalist market. As their present and future monopolies continue to develop novel technological advancements, their own imperialist states will be expected to assist them in the exploitation of new market openings for exporting freshly manufactured commodities and excess finance capital. As the topmost monopolies continually carve up the international market to secure more dominant positions within the global capitalist system, while striving to control strategic rare-earth minerals for their cutting-edge technologies, a consequent state-based military contention will inevitably accompany such economic competition.

This scenario can only bring about heightened inter-imperialist geostrategic struggles for ever more indispensable resources via their respective spheres of influence and dominance. In this regard, Lenin affirmed in Imperialism: “But the division of the world between two powerful trusts does not preclude redivision if the relation of forces changes as a result of uneven development, war, bankruptcy, etc.” As of the middle of 2025, the world’s starkly changing “relation of forces” is once again generating an acutely ruptured international order.

Do you see any validity in the concept of sub-imperialism, which is often applied to countries with middle-sized economies and states whose political-military influence tends to extend beyond its borders?

There is a distinct layer of countries occupying an intermediate zone resting between the core and the periphery. This semi-peripheral zone comprises economies whose states equally exploit and oppress the dependent semi-colonial states of the periphery, yet are simultaneously exploited by, and subordinated to, the imperialist core. These non-static semi-peripheral economies belong to states that generally play a sub-imperialist role via mechanisms of unequal exchange, while frequently aligning themselves with the external policy thrusts of the main imperialist blocs.

They are essentially regional centres of power that strongly operate throughout their identified geographic areas (Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkiye, etc.) while wielding a certain level of strategic influence over neighbouring countries. Furthermore, as geopolitical power centres in their own regions, these semi-peripheral states continually maximise their positions within the global capitalist system by growing their monopolies and attaining ever higher degrees of trade competitiveness for themselves. This course of development is additionally enriched through their additional exports of finance capital, including the designing and manufacturing of advanced technological innovations to lock in their distinct international role in the world economy.

What is your position on the concept of multipolarity, which is advocated by some on the left?

Before answering your questions, I would like to leave my particular global standpoint very clear, as it has a principled bearing in view of the rapidly shifting international situation. I principally stand for — and with — a left foreign policy line that upholds and advances the Leninist principles of anti-imperialist proletarian internationalism. I firmly believe that revolutionary communists everywhere must take a consistent stance against all of the world’s imperialist powers — regardless of the degree of antagonisms between the latter states — while exploiting and exacerbating their contradictions, however and whenever possible.

Moreover, a solid bias for, and a ready solidarity with, global working-class forces and their general mass struggles must be the hallmark of the revolutionary proletarian movement. In the arena of global affairs, the primary agenda and interests of the working classes must always be advocated and endorsed above and beyond the reactionary agenda of the capitalist states and their bourgeois ruling classes, especially those of the imperialist great powers.

Therefore, I do not agree with the concept of multipolarity as advocated by some tendencies on the left. In my view, it is not an apt concept to apply in analysing the present-day world situation from a consistently left standpoint. Neither is it helpful in guiding the global proletarian movement’s anti-imperialist struggles. Multipolarity, as a term and an idea, should be avoided — if not discarded altogether.

This is chiefly because the various imperialist great powers, together with autocratic, authoritarian and fascist regimes, are deliberately utilising and even popularising the question of multipolarity. They ramp up their foreign policy narratives around multipolarity to assert their respectively hypocritical, deceptive and right-wing agendas. They do so by selectively deploying this specific conceptual word, wrongly using and even substituting multipolarity as an expression for an “anti-imperialist” policy. 

Imperialist powers often hide behind multipolarity to openly accuse their top rival(s) of being “imperialist” (such labels are never applied to themselves, of course). All the while, these same imperialist states are actively upholding the imperialist world system, with its structural mechanisms of class exploitation and oppression.

Guided by Lenin’s concept of imperialism, and viewing the imperialist world system from the class lens of anti-imperialist proletarian internationalism, we can see the true form and setup of the current imperialist-ruled international order. This bourgeois-dominated world order, which largely reflects the interstate arrangements and political realities of the post-Cold War period, is predominantly structured upon a comprehensive capitalist socio-economic formation that is potently dictated by the logic and powers of monopoly-finance capital. With a solid and far-reaching spread all through the international economy, the prevailing architecture of the globalised and neoliberal capitalist system remains framed on the core-periphery axial division of labour.

In practical terms, this means that the world’s imperialist powers comprise the tiny number of highly-advanced bourgeois (monopoly capitalist) states operating within the global core, which economically exploit and politically subjugate the majority of the world’s dependent and semi-colonial (non-monopoly capitalist) countries of the global periphery. Accordingly, the core is basically characterised by two competing imperialist blocs: the US-led G7 bloc and the dual alliance of China and Russia.

Neither of the core rival blocs seek to smash and destroy international capital, replace global capitalism, dismantle the imperialist world system, or much less establish world socialism as a post-capitalist alternative. Since this system’s current array of imperialist states are certainly not advancing any genuine socialist revolution, it is safe to conclude that their common goal is simply to seek even greater portions of superprofits via ongoing economic-security competition.

This imperialist great power engagement is, therefore, not like the 20th century’s Cold War “bipolar” conflict. It is clearly not a global struggle between opposing ideological poles in support of strategic visions of contending socio-economic systems. The Cold War was a clash of starkly counterposed systems: the capitalist pole (led by the camp of US imperialism) versus the Communist pole (led by the former Soviet Union). This is definitely not the case today.

The modern day inter-imperialist conflict is being waged through a singular capitalist unipolar order. All competing imperialist powers belong to the same — and single — international pole of capitalism. Jointly, they principally direct the global core’s anti-worker agenda of monopoly-finance capitalism, albeit in an adversarial manner toward each other. As such, neither of them challenges the fundamentals of the capitalist system of production and circulation.

Neither of them opposes globalised monopoly-finance capitalism’s exploitative norms of extracting surplus value through mechanisms of unequal exchange; they only seek to guarantee capital accumulation in permanence for the global core. Nor do they attempt, in any serious way, to demolish imperialism’s circuits of global capital, which oppressively control the periphery. Above all, US, Chinese and Russian imperialisms openly support the capitalist logic of securing the net flow of value (wealth) from dominated countries in favour of the centres that dominate world capital.

Given the dynamics of this international arrangement and context, the triad of world imperialism — the US, China and Russia — are merely fighting each other for ever larger shares of finance capital, much wider spheres of influence and dominance, and greater control over raw earth minerals and other strategic resources. They all strive to seize a monopoly of hegemonic control over the capitalist world system’s economic base, particularly through military force. 

The imperialist great powers’ mutual rationale only proves that their imperatives are simply to preserve and enhance the capitalist unipolar order, especially the economic-political agenda of the core, at the expense of the working-class masses.

Is it possible today to advance a position of neutrality or non-alignment with poles or imperialist blocs without abandoning solidarity with struggles elsewhere?

As for advancing the position of international non-alignment while deepening solidarity with the struggles of the world’s oppressed nations and peoples, this principled unified stance must be embraced and upheld by the global left movement. Revolutionary socialist/communist forces should consistently take on a resolutely anti-imperialist posture against all imperialist powers, while actively manifesting open support for every national liberation movement and their respective struggles for self-determination.

At the present time, this fundamentally means advocating an international line that expresses a form of direct political resistance to the US, while equally opposing Washington’s prime imperialist competitors, China and Russia. Although the US is economically weakened for now, it prevails as the world’s supreme imperialist great power. While it attempts to regain its balance, US imperialism endures as the most powerful military force globally, in conjunction with its lingering sets of political alliances operating within key regions of the world.

One practical example of upholding an “oppose all imperialists” line can be applied to the recent (and still festering) joint-US imperialist/Israeli Zionist war of aggression on the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). Even as the Iranian masses suffered from the combined imperialist-Zionist attacks for twelve days in June 2025, the IRI — together with the understandably unconditional nationalist-patriotic support of the brave Iranian people — forcefully fought off and resisted their twin external attackers.

Still, the IRI’s counter-revolutionary theocratic regime sought out Russian and Chinese imperialisms’ diplomatic and military assistance to fully stave off the US imperialist-Zionist onslaught. As a consequence of this regional security situation, one bloc of imperialists contests another rival imperialist bloc within the context of “multipolarity”. This principally negative global configuration, with its anti-worker correlation of class forces, outmaneuvers the interests of the international working-class movement, including Iran’s proletarian masses. 

To counteract this effect, the working classes of the US, the occupied Palestinian territories and Iran must instead raise and project a unified class position against the fatal projects of imperialism, Zionism and Islamism by combating (to overthrow) their own reactionary regimes.

In contrast, support for multipolarity fundamentally enables and strengthens the contending imperialist great powers. This position endorses their escalating geostrategic thrusts toward reshaping their spheres of influence and domination in West Asia (for example, for greater access to Iran’s vast reserves of oil and gas, gaining full political-military control over the Persian Gulf, extending a firmer grip on the region’s connecting transnational land corridors, heightening strategic leverage from across Central-South-West Asia and into the Mediterranean and Eastern European zones, etc).

The left foreign policy line of anti-imperialist proletarian internationalism substantiates the urgency to fuse the dual aspects of a principled worldwide non-alignment (vis-à-vis the imperialist blocs) with that of the global struggles for national liberation and democratic freedoms, and especially those for social revolution. This independent left trajectory can only better advance the international proletariat’s revolutionary class line of march towards socialism, both on the world stage and within the arena of class struggle.

Do you see any chances of building bridges between anti-imperialist struggles, bearing in mind that different struggles will confront different powers and may therefore seek support from rival imperialist blocs?

Yes, there are always existing possibilities and evolving moments that allow for the building of bridges between various anti-imperialist struggles across the globe. In truth, this is a cardinal proletarian internationalist task that the international communist movement must always endeavor to attain. While all imperialist powers maintain hegemony within and around their immediate regions of the world, they are also constantly getting entangled in varied types of antagonisms toward each other. This universally objective condition subsequently creates sets of contradictions that can, and must, be taken advantage of by the international left.

In specific terms, the left must relentlessly wage principled anti-imperialist resistance struggles everywhere to further expose, oppose and erode imperialism’s malign menace in world affairs. In general, different left currents advance a wide range of tactics to oppose great powers hostile to their working-class interests and agendas. 

But there are still a number of left forces that will at times carry out “anti-imperialist struggles” against certain imperialist powers, yet somehow (or expediently) align with the latter’s rival imperialist bloc — a sort of “leaning to one imperialist side versus another”. This end result, which reflects a distorted form of a social-chauvinist tactic, actually consolidates the ideological-political content of bourgeois-democratic opportunism in the long run. Such “anti-imperialist” tactics are not consistently principled nor do they align with a steadfast “oppose all imperialists” proletarian internationalist line.

Catalysing a vigorous anti-imperialist proletarian internationalist line is a vital factor for the future success of the global left movement and the working-class masses. Revolutionary socialist/communist forces have to ultimately destroy and defeat global capitalism and its imperialist world system — hopefully sooner rather than later.

So, what could an anti-imperialist proletarian internationalism for the 21st century look like?

To attempt to answer such a highly profound question — but one of pivotal magnitude for the global left — I shall merely offer a few broad brushstrokes. I do not pretend to have an “absolutely correct at all times” formula. I will instead focus on the premise that the generalised system of class exploitation and oppression through capitalist accumulation and competition still remains systemically predominant on a universal scale.

For a start, the international workers’ movement is consciously aware that as the world moves past the first quarter of the 21st century, global humanity remains imperiled by the continuing blowbacks from the epoch of imperialism. As an unprecedented phase of monopoly-finance capitalism’s globalised project dawns upon us, an urgently coherent response from the world proletariat is highly imperative.

Because the world’s social majority lives, works and socially regenerates within the state-centred parameters of the imperialist world system’s bourgeois socio-economic formation, revolutionary class struggle is the primary way forward for the exploited and oppressed working classes to break free and eventually construct a socialist world system. Therefore, the global revolutionary socialist/communist movement needs to unleash, in an internationally coordinated fashion, a colossal amount of ideological-political-organisational firepower concentrated upon imperialism’s vulnerable points.

Any strategic framework for an anti-imperialist proletarian internationalism in the 21st century has to possess at least some key elements aimed at damaging (if not, impairing) the imperialist world system, to essentially negate its overall capabilities and effectiveness. In that regard, the following efforts should be, as much as possible, applied and implemented by the revolutionary forces of the global left in a collectively unified basis:

a) As links and networks of internationalist solidarity are established horizontally across the countries and regions of the world among left/working-class forces and oppressed nations and peoples, their revolutionary mass movements and organisations must continue to be built vertically from below and forged in the existing arenas of class struggle within their respective nation-states.

b) The central aim of the revolutionary mass struggles of left parties and proletarian movements inside bourgeois-ruled states must be to oust their oligarchy-backed reactionary regimes and set up worker-led socialist states. This is a direct material basis for denying the imperialist powers, and their fascist allies, any toehold in newly created proletarian democratic republics and firmly weakening the chain links of world imperialism at the nation-state level.

c) Initiate and launch sustained socialist-oriented mass campaigns — nationally, regionally and globally — against all imperialist policies, programs, agendas and activities in all domains (economic, political, cultural, diplomatic, military, etc) to further undermine and degrade the international endeavours of the imperialist states.

d) Actively advocate and persistently propose precise socialist policy alternatives, directions, platforms and measures to win mass layers of the working classes away from all factions of capital. Such a sharply assertive and confident left posture can inspire other segments and sections of the international working-class movement to do the same in their own countries, so as to critically expand their forces’ political influence and organisational reach.

e) Whenever possible, the global socialist working-class movement should execute appropriate and coordinated direct political actions in solidarity with national liberation struggles for self-determination and/or with countries under attack from imperialist aggression through various forms of mass struggle (general strikes, work slowdowns, production stoppages, targeted sabotage of specific sectors of the capitalist economy, dock/port worker strikes that help cripple imperialist wars of aggression abroad, blockading of imperialist embassies to expose and isolate reactionary regimes, etc).

f) Assemble and set up additional and more expansive international formations (alliances, coalitions, federations, fronts, movements, global left/socialist/communist political centres, etc) focused on advancing the class interests and political agenda of the global revolutionary proletarian movement, especially its historic mission to win world socialism.

g) Actively maximise and sustain all endeavours at raising the ideological-political consciousness of the world’s working classes and popular masses toward achieving international socialism via diverse countrywide, regionwide and worldwide approaches and pathways. And

h) Even if the revolutionary socialist-led mass struggles at the country level have not yet been able to replace the bourgeois state with a proletarian one, the former must still pursue all-out and combined forms of local and national-level political mass campaign struggles directed at compelling reactionary regimes and their capitalist ruling class elites to necessarily and immediately withdraw their states from any current bilateral agreement(s) and/or multilateral treaty(ies) with imperialist powers (expelling imperialist troops from semi-peripheral and peripheral countries, shutting down foreign imperialists’ military bases and intelligence facilities, repudiating any extant military agreement/treaty with imperialist powers, withdrawing from international bodies fomenting neoliberal globalisation such as the World Trade Organization, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the European Union, etc).

In successfully carrying out any combination of these (or, better yet, all these) principal tasks of anti-imperialist proletarian internationalism, the international left and working-class movement can effectively and strategically contribute to the long-term degradation and final defeat of the imperialist world system.

The modern-day epoch of the degenerating and dying system of globalised monopoly capitalism causes two of the sharpest forms of class contradictions to endure: wars of aggression and social revolutions. In the first half of 2025 alone, the world witnessed a series of brutal and bloody wars across the globe, both lingering and fresh ones. From January to June, we saw:

• the continuation of the US-led NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) war against Russia’s invasion forces inside Ukraine;
• Israel’s genocidal-holocaust war within the boundaries of occupied Palestine (in Gaza and the West Bank) and its subsequent military assaults on Lebanon and Syria;
• the joint-US imperialist-Zionist attacks against Iran;
• US imperialism’s hostilities with the military forces of Yemen (led by the Ansar Allah movement);
• the latest round of battles between India and Pakistan;
• renewed border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand;
• and several ongoing conflicts in Africa (for example in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan and the Sahel Region), among many other wars around the world.

In terms of social revolts and mass protests, the June 2025 survey report by the Global Protest Tracker program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) noted that “over 150 significant anti-government protests have erupted worldwide” during the 12-month period prior to the report’s publication. Evidently, there has also been an acute rise of nationwide mass protest actions by a huge number of US citizens against the many regressive policies of President Donald Trump since the start of his second term in January 2025. This socioeconomic phenomenon only further reveals US imperialism’s tremendously decaying capitalist society.

Taken as a whole, these paradoxical outcomes, induced by the logic of the imperialist world system, once more manifest that international monopoly capitalism has already re-entered a mortally disintegrating stage of world history. All of this validates the urgency for the international working-class movement and its revolutionary socialist/communist parties to resolutely advance and lead the collective global class struggle to achieve proletarian socialism.

This can only be accomplished by actively embracing and fostering a truly left foreign policy line of anti-imperialist proletarian internationalism. This international line of revolutionary struggle must absolutely and genuinely entail its active engagement in political combat with all of the world’s imperialist great powers and their nation-state-based authoritarian/fascist allies. Only a global united front of revolutionary left forces and workers’ movements, pursuing a unified line of anti-imperialist struggles on a worldwide scale, can radically change the strategic equation of the international correlation of class forces to ultimately favour the world socialist revolution.