Are China and Russia Imperialist Powers? The RCIT and ICL Clash
I. Outlining the Positions
The question whether China and Russia are to be counted among the imperialist powers is a controversial one in the Marxist revolutionary movement today. One recent occasion where the debate was brought into focus amongst revolutionary organisations from around the world, was in the run-up to the Meeting of Internationalist Forces held in Paris in May 2026. Two of the participating international organisations brought the dispute to a head in a direct clash of ideas. We are here referring to the International Communist League (ICL), better known as the Spartacists, and the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT).
The ICL's contribution, bluntly titled 'The Fallacy of the Inter-Imperialist Analysis',[1] denies that China and Russia are imperialist powers at all. We will first deal with the Chinese controversy. The ICL's case is essentially built on the notion that imperialism is inseparable from the systematic use of armed force - 'imperialism needs military force like fire needs air'. On that basis the Spartacists argue that China simply fails to make the grade as an imperialist power. It has fought no war since 1979 and it failed to actively support its allies or investments in the face of open US aggression, be it in Venezuela, Syria, Iran, or the removal of Pakistan's Imran Khan. Nor did it send gunboats to collect on debts owed it by states in default. A power that behaves with such restraint, the ICL continues, is no empire. The People's Republic of China has no real vassals and no genuine sphere of influence beyond its own borders and a few rocks in the sea. What China possesses, the comrades aver, is not an imperialist bourgeoisie in expansion but a Stalinist bureaucracy seeking peaceful coexistence with imperialism in order to build 'socialism with Chinese characteristics'. In this day and age, after about fifty years of capitalist restoration, the ICL still regards China as a deformed workers' state, a characterisation which in fact decides the issue under discussion for them in advance. The ICL concludes that the world is shaped not by inter-imperialist rivalry but by the erratic violence of a declining United States struggling to hold its global empire together; to look elsewhere for the main agent of chaos is to capitulate to Western and Japanese propaganda.
On Russia the ICL is more guarded. It concedes that Moscow, unlike Beijing, has repeatedly sent its army beyond its borders - into Georgia, Syria and Ukraine - but maintains that Russia draws little of the world's surplus value and matters chiefly as a military counterweight to Washington's eastward expansion. So, we see that in the case of China the absence of military aggression is proof of the absence of imperialism but in the case of Russia the presence of military aggression is also proof of the same thing. This is like wanting to have your cake and eat it. Despite describing some pro-imperialist features of Russia, the ICL just cannot draw the correct conclusion, that Russia is an imperialist economy. It calls Russia "a strong capitalist military power", an "important political weight in the world [stemming] mainly from its military force and its resistance to U.S. expansionism", and as having "decisive weight in its immediate periphery". A non-imperialist country that cannot be prevented by the imperialist powers of the day from having significant global political clout or decisive weight across its borders, is a contradiction in terms. These quoted formulations together, read like a broad description of a lesser, backward imperialist power.
The war in Ukraine, on the ICL's account, was caused by NATO's drive to the Russian frontier; it is no war of national liberation, since Kyiv's armies are harnessed to Western interests, and a Russian defeat would merely transfer national oppression to the Russians of Crimea and the east. The United States and Russia, the ICL comrades argue, cannot be set on the same scale - the first has dominated world capitalism since 1945 and commands the levers of imperialist finance capital, the second is a strong military power with decisive weight only in its own periphery.
The RCIT's reply, drafted by Michael Pröbsting, acknowledges that both are emerging imperialist powers but focuses on China and gives only passing reference to the case of Russia. He accepts none of the ICL's arguments on China. His central charge is that the ICL has mistaken the foreign policy of imperialism for its foundations.[2] We concur, as it cannot be denied that Lenin proved in arguing against the opportunists in his day, that imperialism is not a policy but a necessity and he defined imperialism not as a degree of military aggression but as a specific stage of capitalism characterised by the domination of capitalist monopoly, finance capital, the export of capital, and the division of the world.[3] Note that though military aggression is not one of the characteristics, it is however, a symptom. Measured against these principal characteristics, which Pröbsting describes as "the production and control of capitalist surplus value" and as "a global system dominated by monopolies and Great Powers", China is not merely a candidate for imperialist status but a leading imperialist power. He puts Chinese manufacturing at 31.8 per cent of the world total, roughly double the American share, and ranks China first or second across the commanding heights of the world economy, from the largest corporations to the echelon of billionaires. The continued primacy of the dollar, the comrade adds, no longer proves what it appears to, as for instance, sterling remained the world's leading currency into the early 1950s, fully four decades after Britain had ceased to be the imperialist hegemon.
To the taunt that China became imperialist "without firing a single shot", Pröbsting answers that a rising power expands first by economic penetration and only later by arms - precisely as Britain, Germany and the United States once did - and that China's restraint is a phase, not its essence. Nor, the comrade argues, is China disarmed considering that its military budget has grown faster than the West's over the past decade, being the second largest on earth; its navy approaches the American in size; its nuclear arsenal ranks third in the world. You do not build so vast an army, the RCIT article remarks, unless you mean one day to use it. Its claim to the whole of the South China Sea - a key artery of global trade - and its standing threat against Taiwan are, in this view, the early outline of an empire still in formation. As for the United States, the RCIT interprets the Iran War of 2026 as a watershed moment that exposed the limitations of US military power and severely undermined US imperialism. Despite mobilising three naval carrier groups and a host of regional-based equipment and personnel in synchronisation with Israel's own military power, it had failed to subdue Iran, and when Trump called on his allies to help patrol the Strait of Hormuz every one of them refused.[4] From this last fact in particular, the RCIT concludes that American hegemony has actually collapsed, that a multipolar world of accelerating inter-imperialist rivalry has arrived, and that the duty of Marxists is revolutionary defeatism against every one of the Great Powers, 'East and West alike'.
II. More on China and Russia
China's Restraint
China's striking restraint as brought up by the ICL, is a real fact that any serious analysis must engage with; the RCIT explains it as the tactic of a rising power, which makes sense even at a commonsense level. China's economy has grown massively in its open alliance with US imperialism since the 70s – first slowly, then faster into the 1990s and then rapidly especially since the turn of the century – heralded by Nixon's visit to Beijing in 1972, which led to the joint issuing of the Shanghai Communiqué at the end of that visit, which initiated normalisation between the two countries. Hand-in-hand with US imperialism, this arrangement gave China room to burst out of its economic constraints and in return, it assisted the US imperialists to ratchet up their falling rate of profit, and over time it propped up the US government by buying as much of its treasuries as it could afford. As it managed to outgrow the rest of the world economically and started to do the same to its American teacher, thanks to the planned and largely social nature of the Chinese economy as a result of the legacy of the Chinese Revolution, it remained committed to peaceful coexistence with the US, as its leaders constantly remind the world thereof right up to modern times. China does not mind flourishing economically under the cover of its American shadow; hence it never takes offensive actions against the US, and many times turns a blind eye to its aggression, except in the realm of jaw-jaw at the United Nations and at press conferences.
Where the Chinese have shown that they can take in a hard line, is as a defence against perceived direct US threats such as pertaining to Taiwan, the South China Sea, sanctions and tariffs, though not always. Even when the leadership does take in a hard line, their purpose seems to be to gain leverage in order to try to pull the US back to peaceful cooperation. How else can we explain events such as Beijing hosting Trump, at the same time as China's ally and debtor, President Maduro of Venezuela, has been languishing in a New York prison for four-and-a-half months?[5] During the same summit, Chinese President, Xi Jinping, said he stood ready to work with Trump to 'steer the giant ship of China-U.S. relations' and make 2026 a 'historic, landmark year,' and that China was committed to steady, sound and sustainable development of the relationship. He framed the new 'constructive strategic stability' formula as positive stability with cooperation as the mainstay, competition within proper limits, manageable differences, and peace, and stressed that where disagreements exist, equal-footed consultation is the only right choice, and that China will only open its door wider. This kow-towing to US imperialism is the context of China's restraint, and it does not make it less imperialist, just a lesser imperialist power in relation to the US, but one that is biding its time and that is growing more confident.
On the Characterisation of Russian Imperialism
The Russian case is quite different to the Chinese one, and it is here that Lenin's concept of tsarist Russia's military and feudal imperialism is of interest, not to imply that Russia is feudal at all, but that the strength of its military can change facts on the ground that no existing imperialist power can stop, and that Russian imperialism contains backward elements - that is in the sense of its over-reliance on raw materials and its military. The Russian economy is dominated by monopolies to an extreme degree, concentrated in energy, finance, raw materials and arms production, and overlaid by an oligarchy of singular rapacity. On the criteria that form the heart of Lenin's economic definition, the rule of finance capital and the export of capital, Russia's main capital flows go to former USSR components such as Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, to name a few, and as loans and/or arms credits to a few additional countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Hungary, Bangladesh and India. Economic activities associated with capital exports are moderate meaning not in the same league as its competitors. In addition, as a reflection of its backward nature, Russia exports military services in the form of the Africa Corps (formerly Wagner) and receives payment in cash or mining concessions. Looking back at Lenin's definition of imperialism, Russia is definitely embroiled in the division of the world as can be seen by the way it is jealously guarding its near abroad from encroachments by the US and EU, by it playing a leading role in BRICS, and by marching deep footprints in Africa, including the Sahel region. Ukraine being the hottest expression of this jealousy. Starting before the beginning of the Ukraine war, western imperialism has made Russia the most sanctioned country in history. It is burdened under a total of over 27 000 different sanctions![6] Whereas the main story told about these sanctions is how Russia coped economically despite them, we think it should be the fact that many of these sanctions cut off Russia's outlets for capital exports to the western bloc. Russia has become an artificially constricted imperialist power. This is a direct and vicious attack on Russian imperialism, to which we can add the EU's constant meddling in former USSR nations; this gives a clear picture of a very intense inter-imperialist rivalry that has already broken out into a full-blown war. The reality that Russian imperialism can be cut off with such ease, reflects its secondary status but also exposes the life-and-death struggle between it and especially British and EU-imperialism (France and Germany), which are hell-bent on destroying Russia until the last Ukrainian, and even by means of a direct war, which the UK, Germany and France are trying to provoke and are clearly planning for.
In its fundamental economic character, Russia is a secondary imperialist power, mainly regional but not entirely so as its reach beyond its shows, and a military superpower that can hold its own against the best the west has to offer. The military component adds a lot of weight to Russian imperialism and must not be underestimated because it serves as a deterrent and when pushed into uncompromising antagonism with western imperialism (especially considering the EU's current behaviour), it will most likely use military victories on the ground to consolidate territorial expansion and as a defensive measure, strengthen capital exports into the newly defeated lands. We can only forget at our own peril, how the First World War was a direct result of the curtailment of German imperialism by Britain and France in the colonial sphere. In other words, the ongoing inter-imperialist rivalry is creating the conditions for Russia to become an even more powerful and more aggressive imperialist power. The Russia-Ukraine war is already an indication of this tendency. The Russian invasion was originally a demonstration of power to effect a quick solution. Within one week of the invasion, peace talks started that weeks later resulted in the initialling of a draft peace agreement between the belligerent parties, ready for signature. In this draft, Russia did not lay claim to any new Ukrainian territories. This changed drastically subsequently, as the west continued to use Ukraine to inflict ever more pain on Russia.
III. Our Critique
The picture that emerges from the exchange is that both sides fail on some points and that neither checks all the boxes. The ICL has clearly shown that the United States remains the dominant imperialist power though it is on the decline. The RCIT has shown adequately that China is an economically formidable and militarily rising imperialist country. We made the case that Russia is a secondary imperialist power, with a formidable militarily. The current period is precisely one in which the rivalry between these powers is sharpening, against the backdrop of the disentangling alliances of western imperialism. Western imperialism is on the attack against both Russia and China, but on separate battlefields.
To deny that China and Russia are imperialist is to risk dressing one set of exploiters in the borrowed clothes of anti-imperialism - the very door through which campism enters, despite the ICL's sincere wish to keep it shut. On the other hand, to treat all the imperialist powers as interchangeable as the RCIT does, is to lose sight of the plain fact that Washington still presides over the system as a whole and is using all the nefarious means at its disposal in an attempt to hang on for dear life. The task of socialists is not to choose a camp between them but to oppose each in its own arena by means of the classical Marxist principle of revolutionary defeatism, which is the only ground on which the workers of every country can be united against the lot of them.[7] But, in pursuing this principle, revolutionaries do not belittle the need to exploit the divisions within the broad imperialist camp – a point deserving attention in a discussion on inter-imperialist rivalry, but which has not so far been mentioned.
The Iran War of 2026 certainly exposed the limits of American power, but without abolishing its hegemony; one frustrated campaign is not the end of a world order, as the RCIT's own analogy with sterling ought to have reminded it, since British decline unfolded across half a century. By evaluating the bloody history of imperialism, it must be accepted that US imperialism will not cede the floor with a wave or a whimper. Like the wounded monster it is, it will lash out with all its might at whoever and whatever it perceives as a threat to its domination. This is exactly what it is doing as it declines; a spiral filled with many pitfalls and dangers for the entire world. Yet, it is one full of opportunities for the deepening and acceleration of the class struggle the world over. Not recognising this fact can only trap the RCIT in a structural inability to consistently arrive at accurate Marxist analyses of the world balance of class forces, which errors would contribute to confounding appropriate revolutionary tactics.
Revolutionary Defeatism and the War in Ukraine
The RCIT and the ICL have narrowed the gap between them by moving in the same direction on this issue, as clarified below.
Lenin coined the term, revolutionary defeatism, in the slaughterhouse of 1914, against the social-patriots who had rallied behind the backs of their own generals. It does not mean wishing for the military triumph of the enemy state, and still less a pacifist neutrality that holds itself above the battle. It means that in a war between imperialist powers the workers' first duty is to deal with their own ruling class; to work for its defeat, to deny it men, money and silence, and to turn the crisis the war itself produces into a reckoning with the exploiters at home. Karl Liebknecht compressed the whole doctrine into a slogan as a title of his 1915 pamphlet, smuggled out of wartime Germany - The Main Enemy is at Home![8]
Does this policy place western imperialism and Russia 'on the same scale'? It does no such thing. It is entirely possible - indeed it is necessary - to recognise the differences between the two powers and at the same time to withhold political support from both. The unevenness does not abolish defeatism; it tells each detachment of the working class where its heaviest blows must fall.
The war in Ukraine makes the principle concrete, but it is complex. It is not one war, but three wars fused into a single front. There is a double-sided national dimension - the elementary right of Ukrainian sovereignty, but also the right of ethnic Ukrainian Russians for protection against the Russophobic genocide and even for self-determination. Then there is the inter-imperialist context in which Washington and its European partners arm, finance and manage Kyiv as their proxy made in Russophobic heaven. The nationalist components do not cancel the imperialist character of the war; they are subordinate to it, imperialism always and everywhere being the chief enemy of the working class. The working class can lend military and political support to neither camp - not to Putin's invasion, whose success would mean the national oppression of Ukrainians and the annexation of swathes of their land, and not to the NATO-backed government in Kyiv, whose victory would be the victory of Western imperialism, their subjugation of Russia, and the oppression and genocide of the ethnic Russians in the east of Ukraine. As far as this conclusion is concerned, we arrive at the same position as the ICL. However, if Russia is not an imperialist power, and if the west is fighting it through the Ukrainian proxy, then the ICL should on principle support Russia in this war against the imperialist enemy. But they are not! They state, "We must oppose precisely the likes of Putin, Khamenei and Xi because the oppression of their own people and nationalist strategies undermine the fight against U.S. global tyranny" (their bold type and italics). Their reservations cannot take preponderance over the need to defend a non-imperialist nation against an alliance of imperialist attackers. The Spartacists do not state clearly what their position is other than this lame reference to Putin, but do we see in this that they are actually tilting towards revolutionary defeatism? In any case, if not, then they are close to that position.
For workers in the United States and Western Europe the main enemy is unmistakably at home, it is their own governments that prolong the bloodletting in order to weaken a rival. Their first responsibility is to strike at that war machine by opposing the arms production and convoys, the swelling military budgets, the drive to escalation, and finding support amongst the armed forces. The time for the next phase of the anti-war movement that previously made the world stand still in awe, is overdue. For Russian workers the main enemy is the Kremlin that sent them to kill and to die as their bourgeois solution for the pressure brought to bear by NATO. The workers and soldiers of Russia are the natural allies of the workers and soldiers of Ukraine, and they should solve this war together – the main enemy is at home! The Ukrainian workers' main enemy is a two-headed monster, the proxy Zelenski regime and the masters of NATO. They need to defend themselves against Russian aggression, yes, but not be supporting either. Their ally in this is the Russian working class. This is what it means to exploit inter-imperialist rivalries rather than to enlist in them; not to choose between robber barons, but to use the fissures the war opens in each ruling class as so many opportunities for the independent action of the workers and their allies. That, and not a choice of masters, is the content of revolutionary defeatism in the war over Ukraine. In this we are with Trotsky who warned in his Learn to Think of 1938, "… defeat of its own imperialist government, brought about, or hastened by the revolutionary movement of the masses is an incomparably lesser evil than victory gained at the price of national unity, that is, the political prostration of the proletariat".[9]
Brief Comments on Other Participants in the Debate
We were fortunate to be given access to the submissions of more participants in the Meeting of Internationalist Forces. We are thankful for that. A few additional comments will be in order. The German section of the ISL agrees that both Russia and China are imperialist powers, but contrary to the position we mapped out, they see Russia's invasion as unprovoked instead of the imperialist trap it was, and they support Ukraine's war effort against Russia as a just and defensive one.[10] On the face of it, without the nuances merited by the complexities of the situation, this is the same as the narrative spun by western Imperialism and very dangerous indeed as it in reality leads to campism on the side of the US and EU.
Whereas Hada Raina's submission does not deal with the key issues in this debate, their contribution gives a very useful outline of the decline of French imperialism in the upper part of Africa, and the aims and interventions of Russia, China the US and other countries in the same region.[11] The submission of the Revolutionary Communist Network – China, is extremely interesting and significant.[12] They state clearly that China is the second imperialist power on the planet and that capitalist restoration had been completed by the 1990s. It can also be reasonably inferred from their paper, that they regard Russia as an imperialist country. The comrades are correct to call out China's acceptance of the capitalist system in Taiwan. Their paper untangles the political developments in Taiwan and explores the relationships between China, Taiwan and the US in detail. They recognise the fudged nature of the national aspects of this 3-dimensional rivalry as well as its inter-imperialist framework. However, with respect to both Ukraine and Taiwan, the Chinese comrades are not taking cognisance of the principle that the defence of national liberation is subordinate to the struggle against the imperialist aims and schemes that use the national liberation struggle as a Trojan Horse.[13] To support the struggle for national defence as they do, means to run the risk of ending up in the arms of western imperialism.
In Conclusion
To sum up, how do the positions of the RCIT and ICL weigh up? As indicated, we see worth in both positions, in fact, an accurate Marxist position must bring together aspects of both arguments. The RCIT position withstands critical Marxist investigation in the following key instances. China and Russia are definitely imperialist powers, and revolutionary defeatism is the only correct policy to follow with respect to conflict between any of them. Inter-imperialist rivalry is definitely on the increase, even though Russia and China are exercising a lot of self-control in the face of blatant aggression. On the other hand, the RCIT runs ahead of events with respect to its position that US hegemony has already collapsed.
The ICL makes a few unassailable points. They are correct to emphasise that the United States remains the dominant imperialist power, and that it is in a process of decline. Furthermore, their position that the Russia-Ukraine war is not a war of national liberation but one in which a proxy Ukraine was deployed by western imperialism to provoke Russia, is unambiguously borne out by the facts. Though inconsistent with their line of reasoning, the ICL does not make the mistake of supporting the Russian camp in the war. It leaves the policy it supports in relation to the war a bit vague because it cannot mention revolutionary defeatism if it maintains that Russia is not imperialist - they are caught in a trap of their own making. One of the strangest views of the Spartacists is that they are still committed to an obsolete insistence that China remains a 'deformed workers' state' decades after the restoration of capitalism that started in the seventies.[14]
Imperialism is the most reactionary force on the planet and revolutionaries never take the side of any imperialist nation, but we do take advantage of and exploit the divisions within the imperialist camp to advance the class struggle in the workers' favour. The workers are not each other's enemies; the chief enemy is at home. Debate amongst revolutionary forces is a crucial instrument for the sharpening of Marxist theory and tactics. In this respect, the work of the Meetings of Internationalist Forces to bring together revolutionaries from around the world on a non-sectarian basis to clarify the issues confronting the revolutionary Marxist movement today, holds great promise if the sectarian disease of the movement can indeed be overcome.
Notes
International Communist League. (2026). The fallacy of the inter-imperialist analysis. In AmaBolsheviki Amnyama (No.3), https://iclfi.org/pubs/aba/3/rivalries-fallacy
Pröbsting, M. (2026). On the "U.S. Empire" and Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, A contribution to the debate at Internationalist Meeting in Paris (16/17.05.2026). RCIT.
V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Ch. VII, (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1963).
The RCIT cites Robert Kagan, 'Checkmate in Iran', The Atlantic, 10 May 2026, who judged the American setback in the Iran War graver than those in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.
The US kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on 3 January 2026. US President Donald Trump visited China on 13-15 May 2026. Xi Jinping's statements were reported by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement updated on 14 May 2026: https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/xw/zyxw/202605/t20260514_11910330.html
The Castellum.AI Russia Sanctions Dashboard puts the total at 26 655 by mid-August 2025 (it has grown since then). Castellum.AI. Russia sanctions dashboard, https://www.castellum.ai/russia-sanctions-dashboard
The policy of revolutionary defeatism in inter-imperialist conflict, derives essentially from Lenin's wartime writings of 1914–1916.
V. I. Lenin, 'The War and Russian Social-Democracy' (1914) and 'The Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist War' (1915), in Collected Works, Vol. 21 (Moscow: Progress Publishers).
The article can be accessed here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/05/think.htm
The Struggle for the Redivision of the World by Gruppe Arbeiter:Innenmacht.
The Maghreb in the Face of Imperialist Realignments by Hada Raina.
Chinese Imperialism, Taiwanese Self-Determination and the Tasks of Internationalist Anti-War Struggle.
This point was made by Lenin and Trotsky in various places, but they formulated it as the national struggle or self-determination being subordinate to the international socialist revolution. Our interpretation of this is that the defeat of imperialism, which is the highest point of capitalism, and which has an inherent international component, is the quickest road to the international revolution. Hence the struggle for this defeat cannot play second fiddle to any struggle for national liberation that is caught up in inter-imperialist rivalries. V.I. Lenin, 'The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination' (1916), section 1, Collected Works, Vol. 22 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964). V. I. Lenin, 'Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Questions', for the Second Congress of the Communist International (1920), Collected Works, Vol. 31 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966). V. I. Lenin, 'The Right of Nations to Self-Determination' (1914), Collected Works, Vol. 20 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964). L. D. Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution (1930).
Here we are in full agreement with the Revolutionary Communist Network - China.
Comments