by Robert Montgomery, June 3rd 2025

Few terms in the vocabulary of politics today are so confused as “imperialism.” Does it refer essentially to colonial rule? Or is it primarily an economic phenomenon, connected to the export of capital? What is its relation to nationalism? Which societies, in the past or present, can be properly described as imperialist?

The question of whether Russia qualifies as an imperialist power is more than a matter of academic classification. It touches on how we understand capitalism as a global system, how we read Lenin in our time, and how the left positions itself in the face of geopolitical conflict, particularly the war in Ukraine and Russia’s broader international conduct.

Some Marxists argue that Russia under Putin is an imperialist state in the full Leninist sense. This view points to its military interventions in Ukraine and Syria, its projection of power across its former Soviet periphery, and its efforts to reassert regional dominance. From this angle, Russia is treated as an expansionist capitalist power acting in the tradition of the great powers that Lenin analyzed in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). But viewing Russia as an imperialist power because it behaves aggressively is to misapply Lenin’s framework. It reduces imperialism to a moral category or a military posture, rather than a phase of capitalist development embedded in global structures of accumulation. This is a mistake Lenin himself warned against — mistaking appearance for essence, and symptoms for systems.

This interpretation risks collapsing Lenin’s theory into a general descriptor for any state that engages in military aggression or asserts international influence. Lenin’s analysis was not simply a typology of foreign policy behavior. It was a structural critique of how capitalism had evolved into a stage marked by the dominance of finance capital, monopolies, and the export of capital by a small number of highly developed capitalist states. These features were rooted in the global asymmetries of value extraction, and not reducible to whether a state acted militarily beyond its borders.

In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) Lenin defined imperialism as a stage of capitalism characterized by:

1. The concentration of production and capital leading to monopolies

2. The fusion of bank and industrial capital into finance capital

3. The export of capital (not just commodities)

4. The formation of international associations of capitalist states 

5. The territorial division of the world among imperialist powers.

For Lenin the key to imperialism lies in the fusion of banking and industrial capital into a single monopoly finance capitalism. 

Before looking at the question of Russia under Putin today in the context of Ukraine it’s necessary to look at perspectives on modern imperialism 

Imperialism as Structure, Not Behaviour

The core imperialist powers of the contemporary world — the United States, the European Union and a handful of others— remain those that dominate the global circuits of capital, shape international legal and financial institutions, and organize labor and resource extraction across borders. 

Accumulation by Dispossesion

David Harvey argues that imperialism must be understood as a “dialectical unity” of territorial logic and capitalist logic — expansion not just for security or strategy, but for surplus accumulation (The New Imperialism, 2003). Harvey terms imperialism “accumulation by dispossession”— a process by which surplus value is continuously relocated through debt, privatization, labor arbitrage, and dispossession of the commons. Accumulation at one pole goes hand in hand with dispossession at the other. 

Modern capitalism: Going Global

In the era of globalization the countries of the dominant center accumulate capital at the expense of the semi-colonial periphery primarily by economic means.  Imperialist finance capital monopolizes the high skill and technology sectors of the world labor process which allows it to capture a larger share of the total value created. The countries of the dominated periphery or Global South are consigned to eke out profits working with cheap labor and low technology inputs.

Uneven Development and Unequal Exchange

In Late Capitalism (1972) Ernest Mandel built on Lenin’s work by shifting the focus from predatory nation states competing for territories to a structural and global one. For Mandel:

• Imperialism operates not merely through direct political control, but through systemic value transfers embedded in global production and exchange

• Surplus profits are not simply “loot” taken by force, but arise from structural disparities—specifically uneven productivity and unequal development between regions

• The core mechanisms behind this value siphoning are the organic composition of capital and the productivity gap, which together explain how wealth flows from the global periphery to the advanced capitalist core

Mandel focused on how surplus-profit results from the uneven character of capitalist development. A margin of profit, above the average rate of profit, results from the transfer of value flowing from the periphery to the core of the capitalist world system. The countries of the Global South produce commodities that are chronically undervalued in the capitalist world market. In this system free trade is based on unequal exchange. So surplus-profits aren’t just the loot of pillage, but are the systemic results of uneven productivity and unequal development.

Mandel emphasizes that capitalism never develops evenly. Some countries or sectors have more advanced technologies, greater productivity of labor, and a higher organic composition of capital (more machinery and constant capital, less labor). Because value is created by labor, firms in the advanced sectors produce more use-values, but not necessarily more value. So they can realize more profit than less advanced producers due to the lower per unit value of their commodities which exchange at the socially average value. And the difference is captured as surplus-profit. 

If Lenin saw imperialism as political domination over the colonial world by the developed capitalist countries to exploit cheap labor and control raw materials, Mandel saw modern imperialism as the systemic economic domination of capital-intensive over labor-intensive regions. This is what makes Mandel so valuable: he helps us see how imperialism doesn’t require colonial rule to function—it runs through the normal workings of capitalist competition. The result is a structural appropriation of surplus value by firms in the imperial core—a form of super profit that sustains the accumulation process in late capitalism. 

Imperialism today is not just brute colonial exploitation and political rule. The accumulation of surplus profit works through the structural unevenness of capitalist development keeps the world divided into dominant and subordinate spheres. Surplus profits don’t result from monopoly overpricing. Rather, the surplus profit is built into the terms of trade. Late capitalism is defined by increasing monopolization, state intervention, and internationalization. This triad works to concentrate surplus profit in fewer hands while restructuring global capitalism to the benefit of the few rich economies.

Labor Arbitrage

In Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis (2016) Smith focuses on how wealth is extracted from the Global South. Smith sees modern imperialism operating through economic mechanisms rather than traditional colonialism, particularly via outsourcing production and labor arbitrage. Super profit margins are achieved by suppressing labor costs in the Global South and adding value downstream. Mainstream economic data obscure this reality by attributing value addition primarily to the consuming countries rather than to  exploitation at the point of production.

Smith uses the iPhone to illustrate how labor arbitrage works. The long value chain begins in the Foxconn factory in Szenzhen and ends when a consumer buys the phone in an Apple Store.  Despite similar workforce sizes Apple’s wage bill was $19 million in China compared to $719 million in the U.S.  An iPhone costing $178.96 to produce in China was sold for $500 in the U.S., yielding a 64% gross profit. 

Monopoly Capital Reigns

In Imperialism and the Development Myth: How Rich Countries Dominate in the Twenty-first Century (2022) Sam King shows how monopoly capital uses control over the high skill and technology sectors of the world economy to dominate the Global South majority.  The firms of the imperialist center use their monopoly of knowledge-based technology to produce high value goods to capture a larger share of the total value created. On the other hand, the countries of the dominated periphery, or Global South, are consigned to eke out profits working with cheap labor and low technology inputs. No relatively backward country today can break the chains of imperialist monopoly finance capitalism and escape the dependency trap. King argues that Lenin’s classic analysis of imperialism remains as true today as it was in 1916.

Geopolitical Economy

Desai argues that imperialism must be viewed as a system of global power relations, not just the military or political behavior of individual states. In her view, the world system is organized around a central core of imperialist powers, but also features semi-peripheral states which are subordinate to the core but can still exert influence through strategic military or political actions. In her Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony (2013), Desai challenges the notion of a unipolar world dominated by the United States, showing instead how the global economy has been transformed into a multipolar system. In such a system, semi-peripheral  states like Russia may assert power, but their role is largely reactive rather than proactive in terms of global capital accumulation. Desai sees in the rise of the BRICS countries— Brazil, China, Russia, India and South Africa— a global multipolar movement emerging to challenge the dominant unipolar system.

Rentier finance capitalism

American capitalism having cannibalized its own productive industrial base and now uses its debt to finance capital accumulation from the labor of rest of the world, subsidize its military machine, and fuel Wall Street speculation. 

Michael Hudson, an economist well-versed in the dynamics of finance and imperialism, reinforces this view through his analysis of capitalism and debt. Hudson has long emphasized that imperialism is not just about territorial conquest, but about financial domination, particularly in the form of debt and the control of global financial institutions. In his book Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1972), Hudson explains how the U.S. uses its control of the global financial system — particularly through the dollar and institutions like the IMF — to dominate the world economy. 

Hudson reckons that the transition from a gold-backed system to one where the dollar became the world’s reserve currency is key. Dollar hegemony allows the U.S. to finance its deficits by issuing debt that other countries are compelled to purchase, effectively making them fund U.S. spending.  Currency hegemony gives the US the power to impose economic sanctions on countries for geopolitical reasons.  The US now has sanctions on at least 19 countries. These sanctions include asset freezes, travel bans, and restrictions on specific economic activities.

For both Desai and Hudson, the key to understanding imperialism today lies in recognizing that it is primarily an economic system, where military actions and geopolitical rivalries often reflect the underlying economic imperatives of accumulation, debt, and exploitation. 

Russian imperialism – Has Russia today reached the highest stage of capitalism?

Monopoly

The large industrial monopolies are left overs from the planned and centralized economy of the old USSR. Dominated by state-aligned energy and raw material firms, such as (Gazprom, Rosneft, Lukoil, Norilsk Nickel, and Rusalsitting) they sit atop a scattered mass of very small firms. Russia’s monopolies are not controlled by finance capital. The monopolies contribute a large share of the GDP but they are not large by US standards. The only thing they have in common with western monopolies is high GDP share. They have no global presence. Russian monopolies are vastly inferior to western monopolies in total capital, global market integration, and technological reach.

Finance capital reigns

Russia has only two of the top 100 banks in the world whose total worth is less than half that of the three Brazilian banks on the list. Banks are a small part of the economy (4% of GDP) and play little role in directing it. Russian capitalism is not under the domination of finance capital.

Export of capital

Russian total foreign investment is 21% of GDP — more than Brazil and less than Chile. But much of the FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) is not invested in foreign countries, but is capital parked in offshore tax havens as suggested by the fact that inflows and outflows of capital balance every year. Rather than having a large surplus of capital seeking outlets for more profitable investments, Russia has a capital shortage and is a net importer of capital. Russia exports raw materials, agricultural products and energy; and, it imports manufactured goods. Russia exports commodities not capital.

Membership in an association of capitalist powers which share the world

Russia:

• is excluded from the OECD the club of leading capitalist countries 
• was accepted into the WTO only in 2012, a decade after China
• was kicked out of the Group of Eight leading global powers
• is encircled up to its borders by NATO, the imperialist military alliance.
• has been evicted from the SWIFT interbank payments system since 2022

Russia and Ukraine

Was Russia extracting surplus value from Ukraine?

a. Energy Subsidies and Preferential Trade Terms

• Russia provided Ukraine with heavily discounted gas — sometimes as much as 30-50% below market rates— until the pro-Western coup in 2014.

• This subsidy amounted to a net transfer of value to Ukraine. Even when Ukraine delayed payments or fell into arrears, Russia often tolerated it — especially under pro-Russian governments in Kyiv.

• Trade ties in the early 2000s also favored Ukraine in some sectors (like metallurgy and agriculture), where Ukrainian exports had preferential access to Russian markets.

b. Labour Remittances

• Millions of Ukrainian workers went to Russia for employment. The remittances they sent back to Ukraine were a major source of hard currency — another flow of value from Russia to Ukraine.

c. FDI and Corporate Profits

• Russian capital did invest in Ukraine (especially in energy, banking, and heavy industry), but there’s little evidence that Russian firms were systematically extracting more surplus than they were putting in.

• Ukrainian oligarchs, not Russian capitalists, were dominant in many sectors. If anything, Russia’s investments were often politically motivated and not especially profitable.

Russia was a net contributor, not extractor of value

Russia was a net contributor of value to Ukraine when energy subsidies, terms of trade terms, financial remittances are taken together. This invalidates the idea that Russia’s role was imperialist in an economic Marxist sense. The actual relationship was one of clientelism between a richer patron and a dependent neighbor. In return for economic sponsorship Russia expected Ukraine’s political loyalty in East Europe.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 are often cited as proof of Russian imperialism. Yet these actions do not meet Lenin’s criteria. There is no meaningful capital export from Russia to Ukraine; no penetration of Russian finance capital into Ukrainian institutions; no extraction of surplus value as part of a broader imperial division of labor.

Indeed, Russia’s “special military operation” has resulted not in expansion of capital but in capital flight and intensified reliance on internal markets and state support. Far from opening new spaces for accumulation, it has tightened Russia’s isolation from global financial networks and exposed the limits of its economic influence. This is not imperialism as Lenin described it but a nationalist reaction under the conditions of semi-peripheral capitalism, reactive rather than expansive. The SMO is defensive in nature .

Russia is not an imperialist power in the traditional Leninist sense— it does not dominate global financial institutions, shape the world economy through its capital exports, nor impose economic dependency on other states. Russia does not, and cannot, sanction anyone.

To see Russia as an imperialist power because it behaves aggressively is to misapply Lenin’s framework. It reduces imperialism to a moral category or a military posture, rather than a phase of capitalist development embedded in global structures of accumulation. This is a mistake Lenin himself warned against — mistaking appearance for essence, and symptoms for systems. Unlike Western powers, Russia lacks a global class of transnational capitalists able to extract and reinvest surplus across vast networks of dependent economies.

Leninism without dogma

More promising than nationally focused theories of imperialism are perspectives rooted in world-systems theory, dependency analysis, and anti-imperialist traditions in the Global South. These recognize that imperialism persists as a global hierarchy — one in which Russia may play a regional coercive role, but not a structurally dominant one.

Many countries engage in regional assertion but this does not make them imperialist in the classical sense. To conflate the two is to flatten the complexity of global capitalism into a geopolitics of equivalence.

Conclusion: rethinking our categories

Imperialism today is not simply about war or aggression. It is about who controls the flows of capital, who benefits from global labor exploitation, and who shapes the terms of global accumulation. Russia may act within this system — sometimes violently — but it does not define it.

A serious anti-imperialist politics must recognize these distinctions. Otherwise, we risk mistaking the actions of a semi-peripheral power for the architecture of the system itself — and in doing so, we obscure the true centers of imperialist domination in our world.

Select Bibliography

• Desai, Radhika. Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire. London: Pluto Press, 2013.

• Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

• Harvey, David. The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

• Hudson, Michael. Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire. 3rd ed. London: Pluto Press, 2021.

• King, Sam. Imperialism and the Development Myth: How Rich Countries Dominate in the Twenty-first Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021.

• Lenin, V. I. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. 1916. Reprint, various editions.

    • Montgomery and Heller. Setting the Record Straight: Ukraine, Russia and Imperialism. Class-Conscious.org, 2022. https://class-conscious.