I came across this subject while reading Revolutionary Strategy, and thought it might be a good topic for discussion. Macnair mentions it briefly in passing, but I think anti-imperialism is an important subject that deserves some attention.

I could be mistaken, but I don't think Lenin specifically laid down the doctrine of anti-imperialism anywhere in his writings. For the purposes of this discussion(and this is going to be a simplified and bastardized definition, as imperialism can include many more things than this), imperialism can be considered to be the active intervention of one country in the affairs of another country through political, economic, or military means. This is usually done for economic reasons on the part of the power intervening.

Although, as I have mentioned, Lenin does not seem to be the progenitor of this doctrine; adherents usually cite Lenin's defeatism on the party of Russia in the context of World War I as an example of anti-imperialism. For a variety of reasons, I believe the RSDLP's stance on the issue of World War I was correct, but I will only mention the most significant reason as to why.

The most important aspects of Marxist analysis are materialism and class. It is with this in mind, that the decision to call for Russia's withdrawal from World War I was the correct action; it benefited the working class and was to be a sign of international solidarity against bourgeois nationalism. All political decisions made by a Marxist should be reflective of the proletariat's class interests. However, my major problem with the doctrine of anti-imperialism, as it is commonly held by Trotskyists and Stalinists, is that it essentially bastardizes decisions regarding imperialism to a moral, as opposed to class, issue. In reality, it seems that this moral imperative of anti-imperialism does not always hold up to Marxist analysis. There may be some cases in which what could be construed as "imperialism" is actually in the class interest of the proletariat.

Such an example may be the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. On one hand, you have the Soviets, representing the class interests of the bourgeoisie(in my opinion, but some might argue that they represent the proletariat. In this example it is irrelevant); and the Afghanistan on the other, which arguably had no proletariat(or small to the point of being nonexistent in practical terms) and was comprised primarily of the reactionary Mujahideen. In this situation, it is quite arguable that Soviet intervention and hypothetical industrial development of Afghanistan would be in the class interest of the proletariat.

Such occurrences make me question the viability of the doctrine of "anti-imperialism" as an absolutist moral imperative in the context of revolutionary strategy.

In my opinion, of course, the Soviets represented the class interests of the coordinator class (not a "bourgeoisie" defined in "state-capitalist" theories), but I tend to be a "tankie" when discussing Soviet foreign policy throughout the Cold War period. There were only two instances whereby the Soviets acted like Lenin's definition of imperialists: the immediate post-war relocation of industrial materials from east Germany and the rest of Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union (geopolitical concentration of production), and the Aswan Dam project (export of capital).

What do you mean by coordinator class?

I agree that bureaucrats could not be considered to be bourgeois, as they never actually had control over the means of production in the same way as capitalists in a liberal bourgeois state. Collectively, they could determine what could be done with the surplus value of labor, but never in an individual sense. I think this is what separates the Stalinist bureaucrats from capitalists.

Coordinator class comes from the work of "participatory economists" Michael Albert and Robert Hahnel, but I'm sure they were inspired by earlier sources. For the most part, they're skilled managers.

^I agree with DNZ here. I would characterize the Soviet Union in a few ways. I would either agree with Hillel Ticktin that it was a "non-mode of production" (neither state capitalist, socialist, etc.) but I could see making the logical step of characterizing the Soviet Union as a Coordinator society. If it was state-capitalist, it was a deformed version of capitalism to be sure.

Anyway, I agree with you somewhat. The Soviet Union did not intervene to "help the Afghans" or anything like that. Afghanistan has always, as the World Bank has noted, a positive pre-war record of cost recovery for key industries and great investment opportunities in telecommunications and energy. I note this in my writing attacking the United States intervention into Afghanistan but it defiantly isn't a secret and the Soviets took note of this.

I agree, the doctrine of anti-imperialism that is upheld, not just by Stalinists and Trots but from everyone from anarchists to liberals, seems to dwell into "morality" instead of class analysis. While the Soviet Union may have developed the areas of telecommunications and energy, it is unlikely they would have developed the country entirely (this isn't to deny that development of energy and telecommunications can have a huge effect on the development of a country as a whole). The PDP, on the other hand, as a movement that formed on it's own in the country, did have a good potential to modernize and secularize Afghanistan, helping to develop a proletariat class.

I agree with you completely though, upholding a doctrine of "anti-imperialism" void of all class analysis and material conditions would be silly. It seems, though, that when a movement forms on it's own in a certain area it has more potential to develop, etc. than if another nation were to impose it's will on another. That should also be kept in mind.