People who claim that they did the fucking reading: Imperialism didn't exist until capitalism. Lenin said so.

Lenin in that book that everyone claimed to have fucking read:

Colonial policy and imperialism existed before the latest stage of capitalism, and even before capitalism. Rome, founded on slavery, pursued a colonial policy and practised imperialism. But “general” disquisitions on imperialism, which ignore, or put into the background, the fundamental difference between socio-economic formations, inevitably turn into the most vapid banality or bragging, like the comparison: “Greater Rome and Greater Britain.” 5 Even the capitalist colonial policy of previous stages of capitalism is essentially different from the colonial policy of finance capital.

Ie imperialism existed before capitalism but obviously looks different under modes of production different from capitalism just like every other facet of society. Way to expose yourself for not actually reading the text lmao

Just the fact that the interview in question has a professor of medieval middle eastern studies say “you could argue…., but we will save that debate for another day” And that some poster is like “YOU CAN NEVER ARGUE THAT YOU IDIOT” reminds me that even the left is full of people that have no respect for experience or even conversation.

you motherfuckers argue about the dumbest shit this website rules

just more proof words are reactionary

Ontology was a mistake - more and more people are saying it!

Umm, excuse me did you just call Rome an "Empire?" As if it was doing an "imperialism?" Acktually, it doesn't fit this specific definition of "imperialism" I'm using, therefore QED ergo it wasn't

I prefer Lenin's definition of imperialism

are we just posting obvious facts itt?

All this shit is on a continuum. The Europeans just "won" in the current epoch because they happened to be the ones that first figured out that you could burn coal and use it to run water pumps in deep mines to be able to get more coal, the first instance of industrial capital which would come to replace the primitive accumulation that you see in the Crusades and other wars of conquest.

But weren't the places being invaded roughly as powerful as the crusading countries at the time? Doesn't Imperialism have to be a higher power attacking a lower one?

How far back does it go? Arabs, Romans, Greeks, Persians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Akkadians?

wasn't the crusades just some exercise in idealism where they sent a bunch of literal children into the Levant and they got BTFO