Imperialism

Simon Pirani — Although the disruption to oil and gas markets is real enough, this “energy crisis” is also in some respects a mirage that serves corporate power.

Michael Pröbsting — Resistance Books, an Australian based non-profit, progressive book publisher, has published a new book dealing with the Ukraine War: the single most important event in the current conjuncture of world politics.

Ashley Smith interviews Michael Roberts about the system’s seemingly intractable crisis, the looming threat of war between great powers, and the desperate need for international working-class solidarity against militarism.

Phil Hearse argues for self-determination for Taiwan, but says that the Left must oppose the American military build up in the Indo-Pacific region and preparations for a disastrous war against China.

Carl Mirra — A careful evaluation of recent history illustrates that the claim that US and NATO expansion threatens Moscow’s existence is an exaggeration. That Russia would inflate fears of NATO to pursue its global aspirations is understandable. What is less comprehensible is the degree to which influential Western thinkers, particularly on the anti-imperial US left, have promoted this narrative.

Dave Holmes — We live in a world where capitalism is near universal. However, it’s not just capitalism but capitalism in its imperialist stage. If we don’t understand what this is (and what it is not), we can’t understand anything about the politics of Australia and the world today.

William I Robinson delves into the complex ways in which global capitalism has transformed the lives of working people in developing countries, exploring the social and economic impacts of globalisation, the rise of transnational corporations, and the emergence of new forms of resistance and social movements in response to these changes.

Klaus Dräger — The invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s army heralds a global ‘turning point’, so western pundits and politicians claim. How is the European Union (EU) dealing with this? And what about the EU’s aspirations to become a leading independent world power?

Pierre Rousset — The world that allowed the Chinese economy to take off and expand internationally is no more. Sino-American tensions are sharpening against the backdrop of the crisis of commercial (de)globalization.

Michael Pröbsting — Relations between Great Powers cannot be understood in isolation but rather have to be viewed in the context of fundamental class contradictions within a given historical stage of a mode of production.

A wide-ranging interview with British activist and researcher John Smith about imperialism, super-exploitation, and struggle

International Socialist Tendency — The overdetermining factor in the Ukraine war is the expansion of the imperial sphere of power of the West (NATO and the European Union) under the leadership of the US on the one hand and the reclamation of Ukraine into the imperial sphere of power of Russia on the other.