The roots of imperialism are in the monopoly stage of capitalism. It isn't because a few bad individuals exist, it's a material process.

I appreciate the clarification, but the framing still conflates two distinct phases of struggle. My original point wasn't that anti-imperialism exists outside class analysis, but that in neo-colonial conditions, the form class struggle takes must be strategically sequenced. The slogan "eat the rich" implies an immediate, undifferentiated domestic class war, which in practice fractures the broad coalition needed to first break imperialist domination. When foreign capital, military bases, and debt traps dictate a nation's political economy, the principal contradiction lies between the oppressed nation and international imperialism, not yet between the domestic proletariat and the national bourgeoisie who may also be constrained by that same imperialist structure.

"In any complex process there are many contradictions, and of necessity one of them is the principal contradiction which plays the leading and decisive role, while the rest occupy a secondary and subordinate position."

This is why popular fronts with patriotic sections of the national bourgeoisie are a, but a materialist application of class politics. As Chairman Mao argued in On the Policy of the Chinese Communist Party in the Anti-Japanese United Front,

"We must unite with all the classes, strata, political parties, groups and individuals that can possibly be united in the anti-imperialist struggle."

This is a tactical necessity to isolate the primary enemy. To elevate the domestic "rich" as the immediate target while imperialist powers actively undermine sovereignty is to misidentify the principal contradiction and risk strengthening the external oppressor.

The enemy of our enemy is our friend, the national bourgeoisie, when objectively opposed to imperialist control, can be a conditional ally in the first stage of revolution.

Only after national liberation is secured (when the external fetters are broken and the people control their own state apparatus) can the internal class struggle proceed to its decisive phase. At that point, the proletariat, having built its strength and consciousness through the anti-imperialist struggle, can confront domestic exploiting classes without the distortion of foreign interference. As Chairman Mao put it in On New Democracy,

"The Chinese revolution must be divided into two steps: the first is to change the colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal society into an independent, democratic society; the second is to carry the revolution forward to establish a socialist society."