Calling Lenin and Stalin “two peas in a pod” is pure ignorance. Lenin was a theorist of imperialism and revolutionary strategy in a semi-feudal Russia. Stalin governed an already-existing socialist state under siege and focused on industrialization and survival. Their political contexts, priorities, and theoretical contributions were radically different. Collapsing them together just tells everyone you’ve never seriously engaged with either.

Now about “dictionary imperialism.”

Western dictionaries define imperialism as broadly as possible on purpose: “extending power,” “influence,” “big country doing stuff.” Why? Because that conveniently erases the material reality that Europe and the US built their wealth through capitalist imperialism, finance capital, colonial extraction, unequal exchange, and permanent underdevelopment of the Global South. If imperialism just means “strong states exert power,” then suddenly everyone is equally guilty and nobody has to confront who actually runs the system.

Imperialism only has value as an analytical concept when it means something specific.

Lenin’s definition does exactly that: monopoly capital + finance capital + export of capital + division of the world + super-profits from subordinate nations. That explains the modern world. Your dictionary definition doesn’t explain anything.

We already have words for generic force: war, conquest, invasion.

“Imperialism” exists to describe a capitalist global structure, not your vibes-based “power is bad” framework.

You’re hiding behind dictionary entries because you don’t want to deal with political economy.

This isn’t a semantic debate. You’re choosing a deliberately vague definition because it lets Western countries off the hook and lets you posture without understanding systems.

Honestly, grow up. Stop lecturing people while proudly demonstrating you haven’t studied the topic. Being arrogant doesn’t make you informed, it just makes you loud.

Answering primarily because I don't want people to see your comment and fall for misinformation, I'm largely repeating what I've said to you elsewhere.

The word imperialism relates to empires. It predates Lenin’s work and its definition continues to be used in that way by most people outside of your tiny political faction.

This is just Eurocentrism. The majority of the world understands imperialism more in line with Lenin's analysis, and describing Marxism-Leninism as "tiny" when it is the ideology governing the largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity is absurd. Imperialism does predate Lenin, Lenin built his work off of others that had begun to analyze the formation of the imperialist stage of capitalism.

If you want to refer to it as capitalist imperialism or something that’s fine but it’s absurd to claim that Lenin’s work invalidates the long-standing use of the term to describe the behavior of empires before capitalism before and through to the modern time. Especially when your new definition invalidates virtually all of its historical uses.

This is wrong. Lenin analyzed the imperialist stage of capitalism, he did not invalidate prior forms of imperialism. Lenin scientifically analyzed imperialism as it relates to late-stage capitalism using Marxist methodology. He did not claim Rome wasn't imperialist, just that it was a different mode of production with a different set of processes in place that makes it qualitatively distinct from the imperialist phase of capitalism.

I am using the word imperialism as the dictionary defines it, not your weird made up version which you unilaterally declare correct in contradiction to the vast majority of English speakers.

In other words, you're accepting purely what is seen as valid by the western bourgeoisie with respect to how they get their vast riches. This is a semantic game, when Marxists are arguing against real, observed phenomena that behave in specific, observable ways, not the mere word itself. If we only accepted bourgeois framing of everything, then we could make the same reductive statements about anarchism, critique of capitalism, etc that you're making of the imperialist stage of capitalism.

As I said elsewhere, I think it would be a good idea for you to read Imperialism, the Current Highest Stage of Capitalism for yourself. This isn't a "read theory" argument, I know you can't force people to read if they don't want to, but instead a suggestion for you to understand why Marxists analyze the behavior of late-stage capitalism this way. Even watching this summary video by Red Pen would do wonders, and it's only ~55 minutes long (as compared to the 3-5 hours of reading the original text itself).

You’re right, Lenin, not Stalin. The two are very ideologically similar so I hope you’ll forgive my misremembering. It doesn’t change the validity of my argument however. You can change Stalin for Lenin in my original comment and it remains true.

It changes your argument entirely. You claimed Stalin made it up to justify "soviet imperialism," ie that it was an unscientific definition created for the purpose of justifying actions after the fact. The truth, on the other hand, is that analysis of imperialism predated the USSR, and was used to help analyze tsarist Russia's place in the world and wage a successful revolution, because it was a scientific analysis of imperialism.

Any analysis that automatically rejects 90% of historical imperialism as suddenly not imperialism is unserious.

That's not what Lenin's analysis of imperialism does, though. You're doing the thing where you confidently make a statement easily debunked, which leads me to believe that you either have no concern for accuracy, or instead are deliberately making things up. Roman imperialism was different in form and function to what Marxists recognize as the imperialist stage of capitalism.

If you wish to call it capitalist imperialism that would be one thing but one obscure and frankly not all that serious theorist doesn’t just get to tell everyone else in the world they’re suddenly using a word wrong just because they decided to and because it’s convenient for their, yes, imperialist politics.

Again, no, Lenin developed the Marxist analysis of imperialism in the context of the coming inter-imperialist war (World War I), and the successful analysis of imperialism helped establish socialism. There was no USSR, so you couldn't even accuse Lenin of trying to justify "soviet imperialism," which doesn't exist anyways.

Are you being genuine, or have you made up your mind already and are making things up as you go to justify that? Honest question, because you're doubling and tripling down on this.

Are you like 15?