The three biggest countries in the world are all imperialist trash.

Pure vibes based politics.

None of these places care about people. China is doing the best at feigning it in this particular moment with the green energy push.

Erg, someone get the Parenti quote

So, in essense, it's a vibe in your views, right? Since all nations with sizable power use it to develop at minimum soft-power and in other cases hard-power, by nature a large country is definitionally imperialist? I can't say I agree with that.

For starters, it isn't something actionable to combat, unless you're in favor of balkanizing every major country, and this would work against the continuing process of globalization and decreasing friction in production and circulation. If anything, centralization is a natural force, and thus it makes most sense to take an internationalist, socialist stance.

Secondly, it isn't really measurable in your definition. It's a process defined by its lack of definition, just large countries having influence, and in turn erases whether this process be for good, like assistance with national liberation or multilateral development, or for bad, such as predatory systems of extraction.

The reason Marxists hold to our outline of imperialism is because we can measure it, track it, combat it, and move beyond it:

1. The presence of monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.
2. The merging of bank capital with industrial capital into finance capital controlled by a financial oligarchy.
3. The export of capital as distinguished from the simple export of commodities.
4. The formation of international monopolist capitalist associations (cartels).
5. The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers.

If we compare, say, the US with the PRC, then the nature of just how different these economies are with how they interact with the world is immediately apparent. The PRC absolutely does not fit this definition, while the US fits it to a T. This is helpful, because it explains why the global south is ditching the US and siding with China.

Further still, the implication that valuing "ideals" is what is counterposed to "idolizing nations" is a false dichotomy. What matters is materialist analysis. Why do systems exist? Where did they come from, where are they going? Morals are nice and all, but they don't explain the world, or help us change it.

Does that make sense?

Imperialism - ProleWiki

Imperialism is the highest stage of the capitalist mode of production, in which monopolies and cartels become the prevalent economic force of society. Lenin synthesized...

^ProleWiki

Thanks, I appreciate it!

One thing I want to stress, is that this does not exonerate imperialism. It's easy to label a country imperialist if it has significant influence, but identifying if that influence is positive or negative is important, and doing so is best looked at from the underlying materialist perspective, ie analyzing the mode of production. That's why Marxists identify imperialism the way we do, and further, why Marxists can say we are definitively anti-imperialist. We have a strong understanding and clear identification of what we oppose, why, and how.

Returning to the PRC, they are focused on multilateralism. As a socialist country, they lack the dictatorial control of a financial oligarchy, and they focus on export of commodities. The more customers for their commodities, and the easier access to raw materials, the better. It's in their interest to not be predatory for the global south.

Returning to the Russian Federation, it's a capitalist country, absolutely, but unlike the US, it straight up doesn't have the financial capital to imperialize. They are too poor as a country, they mostly export oil. They have strong-ish industrial production, but are kept out of the circle of imperialists through western millitary lines. Russia has the materialist desire to imperialize, but lacks the ability to do so.

The US, on the other hand, has both the means to do so, and the financial interest in doing so. The US isn't very industrialized, it in fact relies on imperialism to keep its economy running. Whereas with the PRC they lacked the reasons to imperialize, and with Russia they lacked the means, the US is lacking in neither.

That's generally the Marxist understanding of imperialism. The RF isn't selfless, neither is the PRC, but because their underlying material basis is distinct and qualitatively different from that of the US (and other imperialist countries), they are more materially interested in engaging with the global economy in different means.