The easiest way to conceptualise imperialism is like this: ---- Capitalism is driven by profit. Businesses invest money to make more money. Their money acts as capital. As production expands, wealth concentrates in fewer hands: those of the ruling class. That concentrated capital must constantly find new avenues for investment, or the system stalls. ---- But profitable opportunities within a single state aren't unlimited; markets become saturated, which means competition intensifies and returns fall. When this happens, capital looks outward. It seeks new markets, cheaper labour, access to raw materials, and control over transport routes, energy systems, and strategic infrastructure.
This predatory outward expansion is imperialism.
The global organisation of capitalism itself
Imperialism is not carried out by isolated corporations acting alone, but organised and managed through governments, i.e., states. The state is not a neutral body standing above society. It coordinates and protects the interests of those who own and control capital. It negotiates trade agreements, enforces debt repayments, secures supply chains, stabilises currencies, disciplines labour, and, when necessary, deploys military force to protect or extend the position of 'their' capital within the world market. This is not a policy choice that can be voted out or reformed. Imperialism is structural and inevitableprisons or cops or armies, it is how capitalism works.
Most imperialism does not take the form of open war, either. It operates through finance, trade rules, investment flows, and political pressure. Nationalist propaganda is also deployed, largely rooted in racism and aimed at dividing workers 'here' from workers 'over there'. The International Monetary Fund restructures economies in ways that open them to foreign capital and lock them into debt, as seen with USA's chokehold on South America. Large infrastructure projects like China's Belt and Road Initiative tie countries into supply chains and strategic alignments shaped by major world powers. These are forms of imperial competition.
War becomes more likely when rivalry between capitalists sharpensmaybe profitability declines, markets contract, or access to strategic resources is threatened. Military conflict can destroy surplus capital, redraw trade routes, and create new openings for investment and reconstruction. War is presented to workers as a struggle for freedom, security, or national survival. Beneath the language of patriotism are material interests for the ruling class: control over trade routes, energy supplies, logistics networks, markets, and strategic territoryalways at immense human cost, whether in Sudan or Ukraine.
This does not make ideology irrelevant. Nationalism, democracy, religion, and security narratives are essential for mobilising consent, from Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians to the US bombing of Venezuela and Iran. Sections of the working class are not just conditioned by racism to view other sections in a dehumanised light, but are materially tied into imperial structures through defence industries, resource extraction, and superficial advantages enabled by global inequality.
Imperialism, then, is not just foreign policy or territorial conquest. It is the global organisation of capitalism itself: a system of uneven development, enforced dependency, and competition managed by state power. Its violence includes bombs and invasions, but also debt, dispossession, ecological destruction, racism, and border regimes that divide workers in the Global South from workers in the Global North. In the end, capitalism exploits both.
Outside and against the state
Some argue that because the United States remains the dominant imperialist power, we should support its rivals. Others argue that certain authoritarian states, such as Russia or China, pose such a danger that workers should back Western liberal democracies.
But the United States, China, Russia, the European Union aren't civilisational camps locked in some eternal battle between freedom and tyranny. They're managing capital accumulation under different historical conditions, competing for advantage within the same global capitalist system.
Yes, states occupy different positions within the global hierarchy. Some exercise financial dominance; others rely on resource extraction or regional military leverage. These differences shape conflict. But none of these states stand outside capitalist social relations, and none offer a path beyond exploitation, no matter what banner or slogan they hoist.
Imperialism cannot be ended by the defeat of the 'evil' empire by a 'better' state, or the election of a different government. The state exists to enforce class and manage accumulation. Even states that emerge from decolonial or revolutionary struggles confront the pressures of the world market: they must secure foreign currency, maintain competitiveness, attract investment, police borders, and manage labour. They must preserve capitalism.
We don't say this is an argument against decolonisation. National liberation is necessary, but replacing one state with another does not dismantle capitalism at home, and therefore won't dismantle the global system that drives imperialism. Gains for workers are not won through shifts in geopolitical balance, or loyalty to 'our' ruling class. A world organised around competing states managing capital can only continue to guarantee conflict. Breaking from imperialism requires breaking from nationalism, which in turn needs internationalist organisation, collective power, and worker solidarity through shared struggle across borders and against all ruling classes.
A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends
Imperialism is structural. To oppose it, we must oppose the system that generates it: capitalism.
The economic rift between the Global North and the Global South isn't preordained. War doesn't fall from the sky. It all depends on supply chains, ports, arms factories, financial systems, logistics networks, energy grids, and state-perpetuated narratives. Workers sit at key points throughout these systems. That's where our power lies. Imperialism is reproduced every day through labour, which means it can also be broken.
Time and time again, history has shown the working class successfully getting in the way of imperialism: disrupting military logistics, refusing to load weapons, halting production. Those actions didn't come from nowhere; they grew out of organised movements with political clarity and collective confidence.
Rebuilding that capacity won't be easy. Revolution isn't around the corner and imperialism is, in fact, not easy to conceptualise. Our class is deeply divided by race, nationality, and uneven development. Nationalism runs deep, so does fearall by capitalist design. Outrage alone hasn't been enough to propel movements towards real change, either.
If we want a fighting chance at stopping weapons production or challenging the integration of our workplaces into the war machine, we need durable organisation rooted in workplaces and communities. We need unions that can act, not limit themselves to bargaining and press statements. That means tying anti-war politics directly to struggles over wages, conditions, job security, and class power. That means dispelling nationalistic and racist narratives that fragment workers. And it cannot stop at national borders. Workers facing the same supply chains must coordinate across them.
International solidarity isn't a moral slogan, it has to become a practical commitment that extends to workers everywhere, including those living under governments presented as our enemies. China, Iran, Congo, Papua New Guinea. Their struggle, like ours, is against the ruling class. Our task is to organise against imperialism where we are, expose the material interests driving it, and disrupt the infrastructures that make it all possible across the world.
Imperialism is global, and so must be the revolution.
https://ancomfed.org/2026/04/imperialism-is-not-history/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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