Social-imperialism

Social-imperialism is a term commonly used by Anti-revisionists as explanation that socialist states like the Soviet Union after Stalin and China after Mao Zedong had become imperialist.

History

The term originated in a one-off quote by Vladimir Lenin, where he describes the liberal social democractic SPD as "socialist in name, imperialist in deeds"; afterward, the term was not used again until it was reintroduced by Mao after the Sino-Soviet split, used to describe the post-Stalin USSR as a "Hitlerite imperialist state". It saw further use by Enver Hoxha, for example in his treatise "Imperialism and the Revolution"; notably, neither Mao nor Hoxha ever explained what the material basis of a "social-imperialist" state would be, and what the social formation of such a state looked like.