This article is garbage because it abandons the very method that makes socialism scientific. Dialectical and historical materialism are not optional accessories to Marxist thought; they are its core foundations, and to break with them is to break with scientific socialism as a whole. The article’s definition of imperialism remains stuck at the level of quantitative description, ignoring how modern imperialism functions through the enforcement of unequal exchange and the systematic extraction of super profits from the periphery to the core. This qualitative dimension is essential because imperialism is not merely about military bases or corporate size; it is about the global circuit of capital that reproduces dependency and drains value from oppressed nations. When we apply this materialist framework to Russia, we must acknowledge that it is a capitalist state with possible imperialist ambitions, yet the devastating aftermath of shock therapy left it without the economic means to project power as a classic imperialist state. This structural weakness has pushed Russia toward backing anti-imperialist struggles throughout the periphery as its primary method of competing with the entrenched imperial core bloc, a position determined by concrete historical conditions rather than abstract moral equivalence. China presents a fundamentally different case because its mode of production retains a socialist character grounded in public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, the leading role of the Communist Party, and a development model subordinated to social need rather than monopoly profit maximization. This does not mean China is free of contradictions, but the dominant logic of its political economy is not driven by the imperative to extract super profits from the Global South. Instead, its foreign policy, however imperfect, aligns with breaking the chains of unequal exchange and creating space for sovereign development. To collapse these distinct material realities into a single “multi-imperialist” label is to abandon the concrete analysis of concrete conditions that Lenin identified as the living soul of Marxism.

This false equivalence between US hegemony and the multipolar framework extends from a refusal to analyze the actual architecture of global power. The contemporary imperialist system is not a collection of equal great powers but a hierarchical structure of Euro-Amerikan hegemony led by the United States and integrated through institutional mechanisms like NATO, Five Eyes, AUKUS, and the G7. Europe, Oceania, and numerous vassal states are not independent poles but subordinate components of this core bloc, bound by military integration, financial dependency, and ideological alignment. This is the actually existing unipolar order that multipolarity challenges. Within this context, both Russia and China support anti-imperialist struggles across the periphery, but they do so for fundamentally different reasons rooted in their distinct material conditions. Russia, as a capitalist state weakened by the catastrophic legacy of shock therapy, backs anti-hegemonic movements as a strategic necessity: lacking the economic mass to compete through direct imperial projection, it aligns with forces that weaken the US-led bloc, creating breathing room for its own sovereignty and regional influence. China, by contrast, operates from a socialist mode of production where the state retains command over the commanding heights of the economy and where development is subordinated to long-term social stability rather than monopoly profit extraction. Its support for multipolarity stems not from a drive to dominate the Global South but from a structural interest in dismantling the unequal exchange mechanisms that have historically drained value from oppressed nations, including its own experience of semi-colonial subjugation. To conflate these two distinct positions, or to equate either with the predatory logic of Euro-Amerikan imperialism, is to abandon the dialectical method that requires us to analyze the specific character of each social formation and its place within the global contradiction.

The slogan “oppose all equally” may sound revolutionary in its refusal to compromise, but detached from dialectical and historical materialism it collapses into abstract moralism that objectively serves the very hegemony it claims to reject. Dialectics teaches us that not all contradictions are identical, and that the principal contradiction must guide our strategic orientation. To declare neutrality between an empire that maintains eight hundred overseas bases, controls the global financial infrastructure, and routinely overthrows governments, and states that merely seek to weaken that empire’s stranglehold, is not principled internationalism. It is a refusal to analyze the concrete balance of forces, and in practice it aids the stronger power by dispersing opposition and denying tactical support to forces that, however imperfectly, challenge the core of imperialist domination. This abstract stance upholds capitalist hegemony by ensuring that resistance remains fragmented and that the most powerful aggressor faces no coordinated counter-pressure. Lenin criticized this kind of centrism as the highest form of opportunism because it cloaks passivity in revolutionary phraseology. Scientific socialism requires us to engage with actually existing struggles, to distinguish between the hand that wields the whip and the hand that seeks to break it, and to build proletarian independence within anti-hegemonic movements rather than abstaining from them in the name of purity. To do otherwise is not to stand above imperialism but to leave its structure intact.

The comparison of contemporary China to Weimar Germany seeking a “place under the sun” is not merely imprecise; it is fundamentally ahistorical because it transplants categories from one historical epoch onto a completely different material and geopolitical conjuncture. Weimar Germany operated within a world order defined by colonial scramble, pre-nuclear military technology, and the absence of any binding international legal framework constraining territorial conquest. Its mode of production was monopoly capitalism in crisis, with a bourgeois state increasingly fused with fascist political forms, driven by the imperative to seize colonies for raw materials and markets through direct coercion. The superstructure of that era reflected this: social Darwinist ideology, overt racial hierarchy, and a diplomatic culture that accepted war as a legitimate instrument of policy. Contemporary China exists in a post-1945 world shaped by the UN Charter’s nominal commitment to sovereignty, the constraining reality of nuclear deterrence, and a dense network of multilateral institutions that, however imperfect, raise the political cost of overt aggression. Its mode of production retains some of the contradictions as is expected in the socialist transitionary period, grounded in public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, the leading role of the Communist Party, and a development logic subordinated to long-term social stability rather than the short-term maximization of monopoly profit. The superstructure reflects this: an ideological framework centered on “community of shared future for mankind,” non-interference principles, and South-South cooperation rather than civilizational hierarchy. When China engages the Global South through infrastructure investment and trade partnerships, it does so within a historical context where former colonies possess sovereign statehood and can negotiate terms, however unevenly. This is not to deny contradictions. It is to insist that historical materialism demands we analyze the concrete social formation before us, not force it into an abstract analogy that ignores the vast differences in geopolitical structure, productive forces, class relations, and ideological superstructure that separate the interwar period from the twenty-first century. To do otherwise is to abandon the method that allows us to understand history as a process of material development rather than a cycle of repeating labels.

The concept of “social imperialism” as applied to China and Russia in this context is not just analytically weak; it is politically absurd because it detaches the label from any concrete examination of how value actually flows through the global economy. To claim that a state is imperialist simply because it engages in international trade, invests in infrastructure abroad, or seeks to protect its sovereign interests is to empty the term of all scientific content and reduce it to a sectarian slur. This misuse of theory reflects the deeper problem of Trotskyism as a reactionary and ultra-leftist tendency that substitutes dogmatic formulae for materialist analysis. Lenin warned against the “infantile disorder” of communism, and this article exemplifies it perfectly: a refusal to engage with the messy contradictions of actually existing struggle in favor of a pure, abstract schema that exists only in textbooks. This approach worships the letter of Marxist theory while abandoning its living soul, applying quotations like incantations rather than using dialectics to grasp the movement of real historical forces. By demanding that anti-imperialist movements be led by perfectly conscious proletarian forces before they deserve support, Trotskyism isolates revolutionaries from the masses they seek to lead and objectively strengthens the hand of the principal enemy. It is reactionary because it blocks the formation of united fronts against hegemony, dismisses the genuine anti-colonial content of multipolarity demands, and substitutes moral denunciation for the patient work of building working-class independence within actually existing movements. Scientific socialism requires us to start from material conditions, not from doctrinal purity, and to recognize that the path to revolution runs through the concrete contradictions of our time, not through the abstract categories of a frozen orthodoxy.

All the errors traced through this critique flow from a single, foundational break: the abandonment of dialectical and historical materialism as the method of scientific socialism. When analysis begins with abstract categories like “imperialist” or “social-imperialist” applied mechanically, rather than with a concrete examination of production relations, class forces, and historical specificity, the conclusions are predetermined by the schema, not discovered through investigation. This is why the article collapses distinct social formations into a false equivalence, why it substitutes moral denunciation for strategic assessment, and why its prescription of “oppose all equally” becomes a sterile formula that objectively upholds the hegemony it claims to fight. Scientific socialism does not proceed by labeling but by uncovering the movement of contradictions within actually existing conditions. Multipolarity is not an end-state to be celebrated or condemned in the abstract; it is a contradictory terrain shaped by the struggle between hegemonic capital and sovereign development, within which class struggle must be advanced. Our task is not to stand outside this terrain in doctrinal purity but to engage it, to build proletarian independence within anti-hegemonic movements, and to push the logic of multipolarity beyond bourgeois limits toward genuine internationalism. To do that, we must return to the method that makes our politics scientific: the concrete analysis of concrete conditions, rooted in the living dialectic of historical materialism. Anything else is not Marxism, but book worship dressed in revolutionary phraseology.