Lenin on Imperialism (Part 2): The Era of Global Class War
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2021
⏱️ 47 minutes
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Summary
Today's episode is the second in a multi-part series on Lenin's theory of imperialism and how his ideas apply to the modern day struggle against war and empire. Brian Becker and Walter Smolarek discuss how nearly the entire globe was divided up by the imperialist powers by the end of the 19th century as part of the expand-or-die nature of the capitalist system. The imperialists then turned to catastrophic world war as the only available means to grow their empire. But by the middle of the 20th century, it became clear that this had led to the rise of a bloc of socialist states that threatened the existence of capitalism itself. Inter-imperialist competition took a backseat as a new era of global class war began. These concepts are covered in detail in the book "Imperialism in the 21st Century: Updating Lenin's Theory a Century Later" published by Liberation Media.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today we continue our discussion about Lenin's theory of imperialism. |
| 0:05.5 | Compelled by the expand or die nature of the capitalist system, nearly the entire globe |
| 0:11.2 | was divided up by the imperialist powers by the end of the 19th century. |
| 0:15.8 | They then turned to catastrophic World War as the only available means to grow their empire. |
| 0:21.1 | But by the middle of the 20th century, it became clear that this had led to the rise of a block of socialist states that threatened the existence of capitalism itself. |
| 0:30.6 | Interimperialist competition took a backseat as a new era of global class war began. |
| 0:38.3 | We need a new system. We need a new society. |
| 0:42.3 | We need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago, |
| 0:47.3 | but is not only realizable, but an imperative necessity. Welcome to the Real Story on The Socialist Program. |
| 1:16.4 | I'm Walter Smolerick and I'm joined by Brian Becker in what will be a multi-part series on a socialist view of contemporary imperialism. |
| 1:24.8 | In 2015, Brian initiated a project to produce the book, |
| 1:29.0 | Imperialism in the 21st century, updating Lenin's theory a century later. We'll discuss the |
| 1:35.1 | core ideas from this book and weigh in on how the situation has further evolved since its |
| 1:41.4 | publication. Well, Brian, why don't we just start off by having you explain |
| 1:45.8 | why we're doing this series, why we wrote and published the book Imperialism in the 21st century. |
| 1:52.2 | Thanks, Walter. Of course, this is our second episode in the series. The first was a few weeks |
| 1:58.9 | ago. We explained some of the core issues about why we published the book, but I think it's worthwhile to reiterate them. |
| 2:05.6 | We republished Lenin's works, Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, which was written in 1916 in the middle of the First World War, the war that you alluded to. we republished that book, but because it was a hundred years later, |
| 2:21.3 | and although we agreed with the core thesis of Lenin, obviously the thesis, if it's to be relevant today, had to be updated because a lot has changed in the last 100 years. And of course, when you look at the |
| 2:37.6 | last 100 years, the dynamic changes in global politics, the decolonization period that was |
| 2:45.4 | dominating world politics after World War II, finally the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist |
| 2:52.3 | block countries and the beginning of what the U.S. at least hoped would be a unipolar period |
... |
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