Sunday, October 12, 2025

 Trump’s Imperialism—Working for American Dominance, but Failing


Sunday 12 October 2025, by Dan La Botz




President Donald Trump is trying to reassert U.S. global dominance, leading to a greater threat of wars that could endanger what little stability remains in international relations.

The United States was from its founding always making war and expanding its territory. It warred against the native American peoples, against Mexico (taking half its territory), then against Spain, taking Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The United States had become a great power by the outbreak of World War I and the dominant world power at the end of World War II. In the post-war period, it carried out coups in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile and waged war in Vietnam.

But in the twenty-first century, the United States was challenged economically by China everywhere and militarily by Russia in Europe. Trump is now trying to restore the United States to its former power, to Make American Imperialism Great Again. But so far, he is failing

In the big picture, at the level of global inter-imperialist conflicts, Trump is engaged in trying to stifle the Chinese economy and to maneuver Russia into some sort of partnership. Trump hit China with an astronomical 50 percent tariff and restricted technology transfers while China responded with restrictions on rare earths. But Trump has not forced China to submit.

The United States and NATO took no action when Russia took Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and failed at first to respond the Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The United States has reaffirmed its commitment to NATO whose member nations are rearming. Meanwhile Trump failed to end the Russian war on Ukraine and repeatedly tried to flatter, entice, and bluff President Vladimir Putin of Russia, with no success—and now Russian drones are flying not only over Ukraine and Moldova, but also over Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, Norway, Romania, Poland, Germany and France. The war goes on in Ukraine with the ever-present threat of a European nuclear war breaking out.

Hoping to reestablish U.S. dominance in the Middle East, Trump brokered the Abraham Accords, initially signed by Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco in 2020. But Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel—killing1,139 people and kidnapping about 200—detonated Israel’s two-year germicidal war on Gaza with 67,000 Palestinians known to be dead, 20,000 of them children, and thousands more under the rubble. Trump, after the U.S. provided at least $21.7 billion to Israel for the war, is now being lauded for ending the conflict. But the war, which may not actually end, sabotaged Trump’s plan for the reorganization of the region.

In Latin America, where China is a big competitor and Russia a small one, Trump has made some of his strongest moves to take control. He recently ordered the destruction of four boats in the Caribbean, saying it was an “armed conflict” with “narco-terrorist organizations” but without proof that they carried drugs, murdering 11 people in violation of international law. This seems to be preparation for overthrowing the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, on whose head he has put a $50 million bounty. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Corina Machado, a far-right politician who has encouraged Trump to invade, may make a U.S.-backed coup easier. Mexico, which Trump has threatened to bomb to destroy drug cartels, watches warily. Trump, intervening in Brazil’s internal politics, has placed a 40 percent tariff on the country because its courts convicted far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro of organizing an armed coup to overthrow the government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. And in Argentina, to support another far-right president, Javier Milei, who is up for reelection, Trump is arranging a $20 billion bailout for his government.

Trump is attempting to once again make the United States the top dog, but so far, he is failing.

12 October 2025


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Dan La Botz was a founding member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). He is the author of Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union (1991). He is also a co-editor of New Politics and editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis.


International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.

Latin America: The target of Trump’s neocolonial offensive


By Ana Cristina Carvalhaes & Luís Bonilla-Molina

Published 
Email
Montage by Global Voices, featuring U.S. President-elect Trump (image from Flickr, under CC BY-SA 2.0) and the map of Latin America

During its first nine months, the Trump administration has deployed warships and military infrastructure to the Caribbean, blown up small boats accused of drug trafficking, imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian products — in opposition to the outcome of the democratic trial against former President Jair Bolsonaro and other coup plotters — and exerted extreme pressure on the Mexican government to force it to reduce the flow of Latin American migrants across the border and combat local drug cartels.

These are just a few elements of the brewing storm, whose explanation cannot be reduced to the strident and unstable personality of the neo-fascist president in the United States. The heinous televised murder of those on the small boats in Caribbean waters violates every international convention, statute and protocol on the tracking down, capture and prosecution of criminals. (No one has proven that those killed by US missiles were not simple fisherpeople, as they were never given the right to a defence.) The attacks are the greatest evidence yet that under Donald Trump, US imperialism is radically shifting its treatment of the macro-region, which it continues to consider its domain.1

Amid the substantive changes occurring in post-World War II global power relations, the authoritarian US president is attempting to impose the rule that “the United States runs the planet.” Given this, Latin America was always going to be affected. But why are Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela the most immediate targets? While important, the argument that all three governments are, in the eyes of Trump’s neo-fascist hawks, “leftist” is insufficient. In Trumpist terms, this just means any government it views as opposed to it on the political-ideological spectrum, or not a direct and subservient defender of US capital’s interests, regardless of significant differences among them.

Mexico: So far from God, so close to Trump

The pressure exerted on the Mexican government is almost self-explanatory, considering the long border it shares with the US, its level of economic dependence (more than 80% of Mexican exports go north), and the power and violence of Mexico’s drug cartels. The aggressive and extortionist rhetoric against Mexico began during Trump’s first days in the White House. He demanded Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum hold back the multitudes of Latin Americans that have historically tried to enter the US by crossing the Rio Grande, or face 25% tariffs if she did not comply with her supposed obligation.

Sheinbaum responded by sending 10,000 troops to the border.2 Pressure to take tougher measures against the powerful domestic drug cartels — now designated as “terrorists” by the US — was exerted through Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s constant threats of direct US military intervention in Mexico. During her term, Sheinbaum has already deported 26 people to the US accused of belonging to high-ranking drug trafficking groups and arrested more than 30,000 people suspected of being part of criminal organisations (compared to just over 12,000 jailed during the six years of her predecessor). In September, she signed an agreement with the US to suppress arms trafficking from the US into Mexico.

Still unsatisfied, the Trump administration has threatened higher tariffs if Mexico does not stop importing from China, which it does primarily to supplement its production of automobiles that are largely exported to the US. The Trump administration has not yet ruled out its campaign plans to heavily tax remittances sent by Mexican citizens back home — currently worth about $60 billion or almost 4% of Mexico’s GDP — and carry out drone strikes against drug labs in Mexico. These are just some of the cards Trump has used as key tools for blackmail and threats.

So far, Sheinbaum has managed to prevent direct intervention in her country, albeit at a high political cost. According to the New York Times, the people around the president, apparently exasperated by the situation, complain that no matter how many concessions they make they can never rest, as the US seems to have no limits on its demands. Sheinbaum and her Morena colleagues, for their part, seem to have forgotten (or never realised) that this is how imperialism operates — even more so the aggressive neocolonialist imperialism of their “partner”, Trump.

Brazil: An attack that backfired

Trump’s attacks against Brazil have involved direct interference in the South American country’s internal politics and judicial system. The 50% tariffs on Brazilian exports (only matched by those imposed on India) have no economic justification, even under the crazed protectionist logic of the MAGA hawks: Brazil has a trade deficit with the US and the US market is in dire need of basic “Made in Brazil” goods, such as coffee, oranges and semi-finished steel.

Trump and Rubio’s explanation for the tariffs was explicit: discontent with the trial (and now sentencing) of their friend Bolsonaro and many of his former aides for an attempted coup in 2022–23, which the Yankees dub a “Witch Hunt.”3 Given their political nature (the tariffs were followed by individual sanctions against Supreme Court judges and their families, whose visas to the US were cancelled), the supposed trade dispute quickly became a major source of confrontation inside Brazil between, on the one hand, the government and democratic sectors, and, on the other, the far right.

The Bolsonaro family and their supporters seized on the imperialist attack to claim responsibility, took to the streets to demand amnesty for the coup plotters, and kept one of the former president’s sons in the US to lobby for further attacks. To achieve their goal, they leveraged a parliamentary alliance with the traditional oligarchic and pro-corporate right, to urgently pass an amnesty bill while voting for a proposed constitutional amendment (PEC) that would prevent trials and investigations of any kind against parliamentarians and party leaders.

They miscalculated, underestimating the opinion of the majority: their dual maneuver only fuelled mobilisations. On September 21, hundreds of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets to protest against the “PEC of Impunity” (or PEC of Banditry, as it became popularly referred to) and against any amnesty.4

The PEC was buried, and with it, the amnesty bill. In fact, the campaign against the tariffs, and its openness to negotiation while affirming democracy as non-negotiable, has led to a surge in support for President Lula da Silva and his government. While it is an exaggeration to claim that genuine anti-imperialism has become the majority sentiment, it is true that opposition to Yankee interference and a sense of sovereignty was fundamental to this victory achieved through mobilisation.

Venezuela: The central target

While no nation in the region is exempt from potential threats to its territorial sovereignty, the Latin American and Caribbean country most under military threat right now is Venezuela. Venezuela and its Bolivarian revolution — buried by the authoritarianism and anti-worker/anti-people policies of the Maduro regime — have always been a huge thorn in US imperialism’s side. Today, Trump’s expansionist hawks seek to overthrow Maduro, taking advantage of his government’s enormous internal weakness, and replace him with a far-right alternative subservient to Washington.5

But what explains the shift in the US’ position, if until now the Maduro government has been negotiating with it since 2018, and just recently once again guaranteed Venezuela would be a reliable oil supplier? The explanation lies in the global realignment taking place, with its new distribution of spheres of influence and power relations under construction. The Trump administration wants a figure of the new international fascist far right — in this case, María Corina Machado — to lead the Venezuelan government. It does not want instability during this reorganisation process, but instead absolute submission under the new framework. Whether it can achieve this is another matter.6

The issue is that regime change in Venezuela seems impossible without some kind of direct intervention, which would generate a backlash in US public opinion, something that has to be factored into the equation. This makes the situation more complex. That is why they have resorted to talking up the need to militarily combat international drug trafficking: through this they seek to win domestic support for their interventionist policy.7 In any case, the manner in which the US military deployment off Venezuela’s coast has been handled seems to suggest it is not a sustained counterintelligence activity, but rather a large-scale data-collecting operation, seeking to measure the impact of the deployment and future scenarios on the Venezuelan and regional population. This would represent a new phase in the use of advanced technology for war purposes.

The right-wing Venezuelan opposition, led by Machado — who for the first time addressed online the recent meeting of European libertarian patriots chaired by Italian President Giorgia Meloni — has called for sanctions against Venezuela in the recent past, without considering their effects on the poor. Today, she believes that US soldiers will remove Maduro and place her in power. To this end, she has offered up the nation’s territory and its riches on a silver platter. Of course, Maduro is far from the best example of nationalism or patriotism, allowing US transnational corporations to extract oil under neocolonial conditions unprecedented in the country’s history. But none of this justifies the call to desecrate Venezuelan soil.

For now, the US administration seems to want to weaken the Maduro government, and is banking on the emergence of internal fissures and Maduro’s removal by local military officials. This would fracture the internal unity of the Maduro regime and open up the possibility of a Grenada scenario, revamped by current technological advances. The question is: what will they do if an internal rupture does not occur?

A potential post-US military intervention scenario with a government headed by Machado and former presidential candidate Edmundo González, with their openly anti-worker policies, and confronted by the remnants of the Chavista opposition, would be largely ungovernable. Consequently, the US’ real objective appears to be the imposition of a military dictatorship in Venezuela with its direct assistance, including the establishment of military bases in the country. This would consolidate its regional objectives within the unfolding global reorganisation process.

The Maduro government is terribly mistaken when it appeals to supposed differences between Rubio and Trump and seeks to assume the role of friendly advisor to the occupant of the White House. What is happening in the Caribbean and with Venezuela is an imperial policy, and cannot be simply put down to a bad moment in US politics.

On the other hand, the social decomposition in Venezuela is so profound that the possibility of a foreign attack has not sparked the expected reaction from the population. The Maduro government has activated the militias and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) political apparatus, but the extent of this mobilisation has been much smaller than claimed. The only way to awaken a broad national front in opposition to US intervention would be to reverse the package of measures that the government has implemented, especially since 2018. This would entail: significantly restructuring wages; restoring the electoral registration of left-wing parties to their legitimate leaders and activists; a general amnesty for political prisoners and those from the trade union and social movements; and the redirection of national wealth toward restoring social security and people’s material well-being. Only by taking these five steps can the Maduro government bring about a change in the current catastrophic situation, but that would entail breaking with the program of the new capitalist class that emerged under the oil rentier regime of the past twenty years.

The Venezuelan people have been the worst affected by the Maduro government’s past 15 years of retreat and acquiescence to the interests of capital. Millions of Venezuelans have had to flee their country to survive, while those that remained have faced the tragedy of losing social security and wages while fearing to speak out under threat of being arrested. The people have already suffered too much to have to face the consequences of a large-scale military operation. The bombs, for the most part, will fall on the poor. Any measure that averts this crisis should be welcomed.

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Ignore Marxism if you prefer barbarism


By Raju J Das
Published 

Marx

Marxism offers a scientific framework for analyzing social and environmental problems under capitalism, grounding its approach in reason and evidence while rejecting empiricism, atomism and idealism — an approach increasingly urgent amid attacks on science.1 Its political economy reveals how social structures — especially, structures of relations of property, production, and exchange — produce effects unevenly across time and space, generating suffering rooted in capitalism, imperialism and the state, and reinforced by the oppression of women and marginalized groups. 

At the same time, Marxism emphasizes human agency: people can identify and use openings within social structures to challenge the constraints they impose. Going beyond narrow disciplinary boundaries, it treats the core pillars of society — economy, politics, culture, nature and the body — as interconnected and operating across local, national and global scales, while promoting internationalism and anti-imperialism. Capitalism is understood as a contradictory totality, generating crises — economic, democratic, environmental, and health-related — through exploitation, dispossession, financialization, and class differentiation. The state protects capitalism through consent and coercion, and it is also a terrain of struggle where demands are pressed.

Marxism advocates a de-colonization of the mind in the class sense — de-bourgeoisfication of consciousness. It advocates for a specific type of demands to be made on the system — these are transitional such as housing, employment and automatically inflation adjusted living wages for all. Radical and critical, Marxism links analysis to action, connecting struggles for democratic, social and ecological rights to the broader fight for a truly democratic, peaceful and environmentally sustainable society beyond capitalism, imperialism, racism and exploitation. Powerful but evolving, Marxism, grounded in dialectical materialism and its rigorous theories of value, surplus, accumulation, crisis and the class character of the state and consciousness, develops further through self-critique and critical engagement with non-Marxist ideas, without compromising its fundamental principles.

***

Marxism represents the ripest product of humanity’s finest intellectual traditions. Marxism is scientific and comprehensive because of its materialist and dialectical commitment. It is critical. It is radical. It is a tool for radical change.

Marxism provides an explanation of the world’s problems under capitalism based on reason and evidence, with the aim of preparing ordinary people for radical social transformation. Precisely for this reason, Marxism has often been met with skepticism and hostility, constantly having to defend its legitimacy and relevance. Non-Marxist thinkers often ignore, distort or vilify it.

The comprehensive scope of Marxism includes four main components: philosophy, social theory, political economy, and political and cultural theory. In particular, Marxism is armed with: a dialectical and materialist philosophy; a social theory — called historical materialism — focussed on the primacy of class relations; the centrality of the political economy of (crisis-ridden) production and exchange; political theory including class character of the state and of ideas, and advocacy of popular struggle for self-emancipation.

Marxism’s philosophy of materialist-dialectics is one that rejects irrationalism, superstition and idealism.2 This is important given the right-wing attacks on the scientific world outlook today. The relational worldview of Marxist philosophy encourages its adherents to see things (or objects) in the world in terms of their contradictory and necessary relations/processes, which are manifested as things. It also rejects empiricism, eclecticism, atomism and methodological individualism.

Marxism’s materialist conception of history examines the relation between objective forces and class-subjectivity, including individual thought and action.3 Contrary to the charge of structural determinism, Marxism explains humanity’s problems in terms of structures of relations/processes (capitalism, imperialism, the state, etc.) without neglecting human agency. In Marxism, to possess agency is to make use of opportunities that structure the present to go beyond the constraints that structures impose. Even enslaved men and women fight for their liberty.4

Marxism analyzes an object in terms of its content and (varying social-spatial) forms. The content versus form distinction is fully mobilized by Marxists when they comprehensively examine society at multiple historical levels: class relation, capitalism (or feudalism, slavery, etc) as a form of class relation, specific forms of capitalism (and specific forms of other class societies such as slavery and feudalism), and capitalism (or other forms of class society) as it operates in a specific time and place.

Marxist political economy provides a multi-layer understanding of society and its relationship with nature: it examines social relations (of production and exchange) that set up certain mechanisms, which in turn produce certain effects — problems — that are experienced by people unevenly in time and space. These mechanisms are those of: commodification (of all use values and labour); competition (among commodity producers); monopolization (development of monopolies); class differentiation; proletarianization; exploitation; alienation; crisis-formation; national oppression (imperialism); globalization (or, universalization of capitalist relations); uneven (and combined) development; and so on. 

These mechanisms in turn produce major problems confronting humanity, including absolute and relative material deprivation or immiserization; diseases of poverty; economic slow-down and precarity, subjugation of women and minorities, endless wars, resource depletion and catastrophic climate change, as well as a turn to right-wing authoritarian politics and culture. Marxism says that capitalism not only produces these problems; its contradictions also prompt ordinary men and women to imagine an alternative future and to fight for it.

Marxism moves beyond the common tendency to analyze the world through the narrow lenses of individual academic disciplines. Instead, it offers a uniquely interdisciplinary — particularly political-economic — framework that provides a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental pillars of society: economy, politics, culture, nature and the body, as well as their interrelations and of the ways in which these pillars are subjected to what Leon Trotsky called the universal law of uneven development, both in time and in space. Marxism’s comprehensive character lies in its multi-scalar approach: it examines society and its relationship with nature at local, sub-national, national and global scales. The international scale has ultimate primacy.

Marxism recognizes capitalism’s ability to develop productive forces and yet Marxism is not blind to global capitalism’s unevenness. Many non-Marxists accuse Marxism of Eurocentrism, one that is relevant mainly to Europe and its geographical outposts around the world. The fact of the matter is that Marxism is useful to the world at large, to the North and to the South.

Marxism’s comprehensive nature is also indicated by the fact that, armed with its materialist-dialectical philosophy, Marxist political economy firmly places the emphasis on the capitalist economic system as a totality as being behind humanity’s problems. This totality is constituted by: commodity production, which is exploitative and operates in relation to, and alongside, exchange and financialization, class differentiation and preliminary accumulation (in its modern forms). Vladimir Lenin said: “Marx’s economic theory alone has explained the true position of the proletariat in the general system of capitalism” (italics added).5

Marxism’s dialectical approach treats capitalist society not as harmonious but as full of objective and systemic contradictions, which drive change and cannot be resolved as long as capitalism exists. There are at least six of them. There are contradictions between: a) socialized production of use-values and their appropriation by private owners, b) the national-scale framework of the capitalist state and global-scale character of the capitalist economy, and above all, c) the development of productive forces and capitalist social relations of production and exchange.

From these three contradictions arise several additional ones. First is the contradiction between human beings’ social-emotional need for harmonious interaction with others to flourish, and the competitive, antagonistic relations — including hatred or anti-love — towards fellow human beings that capitalism promotes. These competitive relations appear not only in the workplace and labor market, as Marxist theory of alienation has suggested, but also in social hostility toward minorities, who are wrongly blamed for broader societal problems.

Second is the contradiction between capitalism’s need for a healthy, educated labor force and the exhaustion of that same force under the system: workers are burdened with reproductive work and insufficient wages to meet all their needs.

Third is the contradiction between capitalist production and exchange, which requires the physical environment as a means of production and as a space for waste, and the environmental degradation that capitalism inevitably causes. With respect to the last, not only Karl Marx, as widely recognized, but also Lenin have advanced the theory of metabolic rift.

All the contradictions mentioned above have huge implications for understanding economic development, wars and health and environmental crises. These contradictions fundamentally make it impossible for humanity to meet their social-ecological and emotional needs and to live in peace. So, these objective contradictions propel class struggle between common people and the large-scale owners of land and capital, a struggle which is uneven across time and space in its intensity, but which is inevitable, even if its actual outcome is not.

Contrary to much of the non-Marxist thinking, according to which the state is class-neutral, Marxist political theory insists that the capitalist economic system is fundamentally protected by the state, which uses a spatially and temporarily varying combination of three strategies: meagre concessions, consent (capitalist ideology), and coercion. By unpacking the true nature of the state, Marxism aims to remove the unreasoning trust that most people currently have in the ability of the state, run by their favorable political parties or bureaucrats and assisted by actors in civil society (for example many NGOs) to solve their problems.

To Marxism, the state is a class state and there is a limit to what it can do for the masses in a significant and durable manner and without politically weakening the masses through its so-called concessions. The state is a problem. It is not a solution. But it is also a terrain for, and of, people’s struggle — for people to make demands. These demands must include transitional demands that reflect the needs of the people (for example, employment for all with an automatically inflation-adjusted living wage for all) even if the ruling class says it cannot meet these demands.6

Marxism is a critical social science. It has served as a tool of critical explanation, and explanatory critique, of the world and of the ideas about it. It is ruthlessly critical of everything existing, including itself. It treats important ideas about how a society fundamentally operates (its basic tendencies) as ultimately reflecting class interests. Ideas, more or less, socialist or bourgeois.

Marxism is critical of the existing world for its various inadequacies including the fact that it fails to meet the interests (needs) of the masses. Marxist critique is from the standpoint of society of the future and the future of society (the socialist transformation that the contradictions in the present-day society point to). And it is critical of existing ideas about the world on both philosophical and scientific grounds, and on the ground that the ideas of the ruling class and its organic intellectuals ultimately reflect the interests of the ruling classes and of their state (or of top layers who manage the affairs of the state).

To a large extent, the ideas of the ruling class are ruling ideas which have colonized the minds of many. Marxism advocates a de-colonization of the mind in the class sense — de-bourgeoisfication of consciousness. It is not enough to dispossess the capitalist class and its state. A revolution of culture and consciousness is also necessary.

Marxism is not only critical but also radical. “Theory … becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as … it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter”; that is, it explains people’s problems in terms of their roots in class relations, production and exchange, character of the state, and so on (Marx).

Marxism not only describes and explains the social-economic world but also points to what is to be done about the various injustices and problems. Marxist politics is much more comprehensive than any alternative political program in that it advocates struggles for general democratic rights and those of women and minorities, and struggles for economic and ecological concessions, as part of the fight for proletarian state power — to expropriate capitalists and large landowners — and establish a truly democratic society beyond the rule of capital, a society without imperialism and racism and genocide, a society based on love, care and solidarity.

The outcome of class struggle can lead either to a society that is qualitatively better than the one we live in, or to social and ecological barbarism. Only a Marxist political vision can guide the exploited and oppressed toward choosing socialism over such barbarism.

Marxism matters because of its insistence on the unity between ideas and practice.7 While practice informs ideas, ideas also inform practice. Marxism not only intellectually engages with the world as it is. It also presents a vision of a future post-capitalist society that is prosperous, egalitarian, popular-democratic, solidaristic, sustainable and peaceful.

Marxism is a powerful body of ideas, but it is not infallible. It must constantly evolve through self-critique and critical engagement with non-Marxist work. Marxism cannot dismiss the possibility of learning from other perspectives, especially since general social processes operate in concrete contexts and produce concrete effects about which Marxists may not always be fully aware. At the same time, in engaging with non-Marxist thought, Marxism must remain grounded in its core philosophical and political-economic principles — and in its revolutionary purpose.

Intellectual work is not necessarily the same as academic work. And, Marxism excludes academicism, that is “the belief in the self-contained importance of theory” (Trotsky).

“It is impossible to genuinely master Marxism if you do not have the will for revolutionary action. Only of Marxist theory is combined with that will and directed toward overcoming the existing conditions can it be a tool to drill and bore. And if this active revolutionary will is absent, then the Marxism is pseudo-Marxism, a wooden knife which neither stabs nor cuts”.8

Raju J Das is Professor at York University, Canada. His recent books include: Marxist class theory for a skeptical world; Marx’s Capital, Capitalism, and Limits to the State; Contradictions of capitalist society and culture; The challenges of the new social democracy; and Theories for Radical Change. His edited book, The Power of Marxist Thought (with Robert Latham and David Fasenfest) was released in July 2025. Das serves on the editorial board and on the manuscript review committee of Science & Society: A Journal of Marxist Thought and Analysis. More information about his work is available at rajudas.info.yorku.ca

  • 1

    This article draws on Das, R. 2025. Marxism and non-Marxism in the world of ideas: A dialectical view, Critique, 53:2. A much shorter version of the text of this Links article was delivered by the author at the inaugural session of the Power of Marxist Thought Conference at York University, Toronto on September 26 2025. 

  • 2

    ‘The philosophy of Marxism is materialism…[which] has proved to be the only philosophy that is consistent, true to all the teachings of natural science and hostile to superstition’ and indeed to all forms of idealism as such’ (Lenin, V. 1913. The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism) https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm).

  • 3

    ‘Only the materialist conception of history can … open up the possibility for a broad, coherent, and intelligent view of a specific system of social economy’. (Lenin, V. 1998. Book Review: A. Bogdanov. A Short Course of Economic Science. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1898/feb/bogdanov.htm)

  • 4

    On this, see an excellent recent book by McNally (McNally, D. 2025. Slavery and capitalism: A new Marxist history. Oakland: University of California Press.)

  • 5

    Lenin, 1913. op. cit.

  • 6

    The transitional demands stem ‘from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat’ (Trotsky, 1938). These demands link the immediate demands to the task of seizing power. (Trotsky, L. 1938. The transitional program https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm)

  • 7

    ‘Marx’s philosophical materialism alone has shown the proletariat the way out of the spiritual slavery in which all oppressed classes have hitherto languished’ (Lenin, 1913, op. cit.).

  • 8

    Trotsky, L. 1973. Problems of everyday life. New York: Monad press, pp. 114-115.




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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: Defensive response or imperialist aggression?


By Chris Slee

Published 

NATO Putin

In his article, “What’s really at stake in Ukraine”, Dave Holmes portrays Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a defensive response to NATO expansion. Explaining Putin’s motivation, Holmes writes:

The simple answer is that Russia invaded because it was seriously worried about NATO’s intentions; it had warned for years and years that NATO activity in Ukraine was an existential red line for Moscow.

Even if it were true that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “worried about NATO’s intentions”, that still would not justify the invasion. Pre-emptive war was not the only option. Moreover, it was counterproductive as it stoked fear of Russian aggression in other European countries, leading to Finland and Sweden joining NATO, as well as rising military expenditure in other countries. The invasion was a gift to NATO.

Holmes quotes Martin Luther King who said the US government is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”, and says this remains true today. I agree the US is the main purveyor of violence — but it is not the only one. Putin’s Russia is also a major source of violence.

Russia’s economic and military power

Holmes writes:

According to World Beyond War, the US has 877 foreign military bases, absolutely dwarfing all other countries put together. The bases are there to defend Washington’s world empire.

Russia has fewer bases outside its own borders than the US, but Russia’s military intervention in other countries is significant.

In addition to Ukraine, Russia has intervened in other neighbouring countries, such as Georgia. It has also sent military forces to countries much further away. For example, Russian aircrafts bombed rebel-held areas in Syria, causing widespread death and destruction in a failed attempt to prop up the Bashar al-Assad regime.

With the approval of the Russian government, Russian mercenaries employed by the Wagner Private Military Company have been involved in wars in a number of African countries. In Sudan they worked with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group allied to the military dictatorship. The RSF repressed ethnic minorities and democracy activists while Wagner profited from gold mining in Sudan and elsewhere.1 [1]

The RSF later came into conflict with the Sudanese regular army, resulting in a civil war that continues today. Putin disbanded the Wagner private army in 2023 after its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin launched a rebellion against the Russian government, but some Wagner troops were then incorporated into the Russian army. Today Russia still has military personnel in several African countries.

Holmes writes:

We can trace US hostility to Russia back to the 1917 Bolshevik-led revolution… Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the hostility continued.

This is a one-sided analysis. The US supported the Boris Yeltsin regime in Russia in the 1990s. At the time, the US trusted Russia more than Ukraine. Hence the US insisted that nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil be transferred to Russia. This was completed by 1996, with assistance from the US-funded Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.2

However, the US did not want Russia to become strong enough to be an imperialist rival. Putin, on the other hand, wants Russia to once again become a great power. This has led to a rise in conflict between the US and Russia.

Holmes writes:

In one sense Russia is a big capitalist country: It is the world’s largest country by area and measured by PPP [purchasing power parity] its GDP is fourth in the world. But its per capita GDP is way down on the list making it definitely part of the Global South, and in no way a part of the imperialist club.

In reality, Russia holds an intermediate position in terms of GDP. It is not at the top of the list, but nor is it near the bottom. Russia was 47th out of 191 countries in GDP (PPP) per capita in 2023.3 This means its GDP (PPP) per capita was higher than more than 70% of countries.

Economically, Russia is intermediate between the richest imperialist countries, such as the US, and the poorest semi-colonial countries, such as Sudan. In 2023, Russia’s GDP (PPP) per capita was 16 times higher than Sudan’s, which was 170th on the list. 

Furthermore, Russia’s military strength means it more closely resembles the US than Sudan.

In 1916, Vladimir Lenin viewed Russia and Japan as imperialist powers, despite the limited development of finance capital in those countries. He said:

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.)4

Tsarist Russia was a relatively poor and backward state, but Lenin still considered it imperialist because of its military power, its robbery of national minorities, and other factors. Today, Russia’s military strength is evidence of its status as an imperialist power.

Relations among imperialist powers are often hostile. Lenin believed that conflict among great powers is an inevitable feature of imperialism. As such, there is no “imperialist club”.

Maidan and Donbas

Holmes writes:

The February 2014 Maidan upheaval in Ukraine was a watershed moment in the country’s history. Its meaning is completely clear. An elected government (actually not at all opposed to the West) was overthrown and a more nakedly pro-US regime was installed, based on the far right.

This is a one-sided account. It neglects the role that popular discontent and anger at a corrupt regime played in causing the Maidan rebellion.

In today’s world, it often happens that oppression gives rise to protest, but that the weakness of the left means right-wing forces dominate the movement. The Maidan rebellion is an example of this.

Holmes quotes Andriy Manchuk, who said:

The right-wing ideology is a kind of synthesis of neoliberal illusions about the nature of “decent European capitalism” and clerical bigotry of Ukrainian nationalism. It dominated in the Euromaidan protests from the very beginning and almost everything there was under control of right-wing politicians. They managed to exploit the anger of many impoverished and marginalised Ukrainians dissatisfied with the corrupt bourgeois regime of Yanukovich — the regime that we also have been fighting against for many years.

After 20 years of mass anti-communist propaganda, the left in Ukraine was pushed into the margins of politics while the right wing used social populism combined with pro-capitalist and nationalist slogans to make political gains.

That is true. But the “anti-Maidan” revolt in Donbas in 2014 suffered a similar fate. A popular revolt occurred, yet reactionary forces gained control of that movement. There was also intervention by Russian ethnonationalists, and then by the Russian army.

Holmes quotes Renfrey Clarke, who writes:

In reality, and as this article will demonstrate, the Donbass revolt was a local initiative that had very robust popular origins, particularly in the region’s coal-mining communities. A key immediate source was a spontaneous, defensive response to the threat of armed attacks by ultra-right Ukrainian nationalist bands allied with the new Kyiv government of Prime Minister Arsenyi Yatseniuk. At a more elemental level, the uprising rested on working-class resistance to a program of neoliberal austerity being readied for implementation by the new Kyiv authorities.

This popular upsurge was one aspect of the Donbas revolt. But Russian ethnonationalists played a key role in the armed conflict, just as Ukrainian ethnonationalists did on the other side. For example, Igor Girkin (aka Strelkov), a former officer in the Russian FSB (Federal Security Service), led an armed group that took over the city of Sloviansk. The Russian Imperial Movement was also active in eastern Ukraine.

Clarke writes:

With its pronounced component of working-class struggle, the Donbass revolt was at odds in fundamental respects with the Russian administration — conservative, despite its populism — of President Vladimir Putin. The formidable sympathy for the rebellion among the population in Russia nevertheless constrained Putin from joining with the new Ukrainian authorities to suppress an essentially unwelcome development. Obliged to support the revolt to the point needed to allow its survival, the Russian government exerted strong pressure on the rebels to limit their radicalism.

I would add that Russian authorities violently suppressed the progressive aspects of the Donbas rebellion. Russian socialist Boris Kagarlitsky, who supported the rebellion in its early period, says it was quickly undermined and repressed.5

According to Kagarlitsky, there were “three sides” in the conflict: the Ukrainian government, the Russian government and the local people. The 2014 Donbas rebellion was a response by local people to the overthrow of the Yanukovych government, which most people in eastern Ukraine had voted for. For them the new government in Kyiv had “no legitimacy”. They saw it as the product of a coup.

Kagarlitsky says the Donbas uprising was a “popular rebellion”. But Russia’s intervention changed the situation. The Russian government “did everything to undermine the popular democratic movement”. Many of the uprising’s leaders were murdered by pro-Russian forces. Today, the Donbas “people's republics” are run by “totally corrupt puppets installed by Moscow.” 

Holmes writes:

Under the post-Maidan regimes Ukraine has become completely subordinated to the West. Western advisers are everywhere, not only in the military and security services but also in other state institutions.

That is true, but it is also true that eastern Ukraine is totally subordinated to Russia. Thus, the war in Donbas became a conflict between a Ukrainian government subservient to Western imperialism and reactionary puppet regimes in eastern Ukraine subservient to Russia. The conflict increasingly resembled an inter-imperialist proxy war. 

But Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 changed the situation, converting it into a war of aggression by an imperialist power (Russia) against a semi-colonial country (Ukraine).

Chauvinism in Ukraine and Russia

Holmes writes:

There may well be Nazi-minded groups in Russia but they are small, isolated and reviled and don’t remotely control or set government policy. The Putin regime’s ideological stance is not Nazi but stresses conservative and Russian nationalist themes (restrictions on LGBTIQ rights, lauding the Russian Orthodox church, and so on).

But in Ukraine today, Ukrainian Nazis (harking back to wartime Nazi-collaborator Stepan Bandera) have grown markedly stronger during the war and are now a significant force.

Yet Putin has promoted an ideology of Great Russian chauvinism. This is reflected in his denial that Ukraine is a nation. It is also reflected in his glorification of some of the tsars, especially Peter the Great, who greatly expanded the Russian empire.6

Ceasefire and concessions

Holmes writes:

Peace is the key need for ordinary Ukrainians: A stop to the war and the killing, reconstruction and a return to some sort of normality.

An August 7 Gallup poll found that 69% of Ukrainians want peace as soon as possible even if it means territorial concessions; only 24% want to keep on fighting. This is a sharp reversal of the sentiment several years earlier.

Facing a militarily stronger enemy, Ukraine may have to make territorial concessions. There are precedents for this.

Under the Brest-Litovsk treaty, signed in 1918, the Bolsheviks allowed German imperialism to keep territory it had seized during World War I. Less than a year later, a rebellion by German workers, soldiers and sailors ended the war and ended German occupation of this territory.

The Irish War of Independence (1919-21) ended in a peace treaty that allowed Britain to keep six counties in the north of the island. Some independence fighters opposed the treaty as a sell-out, leading to a civil war among republicans. Pro-treaty forces won the war, but the outcome was a divided Ireland, with reactionary political regimes in control of both parts.

So, a peace agreement involving territorial concessions can create new problems. Nevertheless, Ukraine may have to accept it. If so, they will have to hope that, as in Germany in 1918, rebellion in Russia leads to the end of the occupation.

Spheres of influence

Holmes quotes Ray McGovern, who says:

14 years ago, then U.S. Ambassador to Russia (current CIA Director) William Burns was warned by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Russia might have to intervene in Ukraine, if it were made a member of NATO. The subject line of Burns’s Feb. 1, 2008 Embassy Moscow cable (#182) to Washington makes it clear that Amb. Burns did not mince Lavrov’s words; the subject line stated: “Nyet means nyet: Russia’s NATO enlargement redlines.” Thus, Washington policymakers were given forewarning, in very specific terms, of Russia’s redline regarding membership for Ukraine in NATO.

Lavrov’s claim that Russia has the right to intervene in Ukraine if it joins NATO is reminiscent of the Monroe Doctrine, whereby the US claimed the right to intervene in Latin American countries to stop rival powers from doing so.

The implication of Lavrov’s comment is that Russia claims a sphere of influence covering neighbouring countries, such as Ukraine. We should not accept this.

If Mexico were to form a military alliance with China and Russia, this would no doubt be a “red line” for the US government, which might feel entitled to invade Mexico to prevent it. We would oppose such an invasion. Similarly, we should oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The military situation

Holmes writes:

Has the Russian military intervention been a failure? Has it simply been “counterproductive”? I don’t think so.

Firstly, there is the military balance sheet. After three and half years of fighting, Moscow is clearly inflicting a serious defeat on the US-NATO-Ukraine forces. There is a way to go but it is hard to see Russia’s battlefield dominance being reversed. There is a real danger of World War III, given Ukraine’s repeated deep strikes into Russia (all of which necessitate Western approval, planning and technical involvement).

It does appear that Russian troops are advancing in eastern Ukraine. This is not surprising. Russia is militarily stronger than Ukraine. It has a much larger population, so it has more potential soldiers. It has a larger military industry. It has nuclear weapons. Hence Russia may well win a military victory.

This does not mean we should therefore support Russia’s actions.

Our policy

Instead, socialists should continue to condemn Russia’s invasion. But we should recognise that there is little prospect of a Ukrainian military victory and call for a ceasefire.

If Russia does not agree to a ceasefire, then we should call for Ukraine to receive the military aid it needs to prevent Russia conquering even more Ukrainian territory.

If a ceasefire is implemented, we should call for a United Nations-supervised referendum in the Donbas.

We should also continue to campaign in solidarity with anti-war forces in Russia, and for the freedom of political prisoners such as Boris Kagarlitsky.

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