I have complained about it before but I heard on of the guests from guerrilla history on the deprogram make this argument and it made me want to gouge my eyes out. This kind of trans historical argumentation is both stupid and unmarxist, just stop! Sorry I felt the need to vent.
These states were not imperialist and they weren’t settler colonies. This framing doesn’t make any fucking sense when transfered to a medieval context. Like the best you could say is that the Italian city states represented an early firm of merchant capital, but even then that is an incredibly complex phenomenon that has only a tenuous connection to modern capitalism. Calling these city states early capitalism is just a fancy way of saying “lol u hate capitalism yet you exchange good or service! Curious!”
Seriously just stop. I don’t know why this set me off but it was like a week ago and I am still mad about it.
Imperialism didn’t exist in the medieval era?
Not as defined by Marxist in the tradition of Lenin. Imperialism in the colloquial sense did exist, but it is hard to argue that Outremer were an example of imperialism.
For sure, but the broader / general definition, as being the theft of land, labor, and natural resources of a weaker country / society by a stronger one, is as old as class society itself.
Even the theft of land, labour, and other resources by a stronger polity, in the service of enriching its more powerful members with part of the proceeds securing their position, of a weaker one. (what a sentence)
I think my thoughts on this question are the closest to yours. The feudal mode of production can do settler-colonialism (the northern crusades, the Vikings in Greenland / Vinland) just as the slave mode of production can (Rome sending colonists as far as Britain, Mesopotamia; Alexander settling Greeks or Macedonians in Afghanistan).
The means of production under both feudalism and slavery principally consists of land. Under slavery, it’s land + slaves; under feudalism, it’s land + serfs. Both of these modes of production are way, way more inefficient than capitalism, so they take a lot longer to develop their productive forces. Slavery begins with recorded history just over five thousand years ago, but the first empire (Egypt?) only really started flexing its imperial muscles thousands of years later. Feudalism moved more quickly than slavery, but still required centuries before it began to expand with the crusades. Capitalism managed to start doing imperialism and settler-colonialism in Ireland within a century of the start of the enclosures I believe. All of these claims are a little hazy though because the people at the time didn’t understand what was happening and didn’t accurately record these processes. Settler-colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, feudalism, slavery, and patriarchy are all just different forms of expropriation. They become easier to distinguish as the productive forces become more developed. The further back you go in history, the harder they are to tell apart. Patriarchy, for instance, is indistinguishable from slavery five thousand years ago; “the first slavery was the slavery of women.”
feudalism already existed everywhere the crusades ‘expanded’ to, it wasn’t a european innovation that they had to spread around.
If I remember correctly, this was very clearly pointed out and no one disagreed.