1927–2027: Why Do We Celebrate a Century of Struggle Against Imperialism?

In February 1927, 175 delegates from across the globe convened in Brussels for the founding Congress of the League Against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression (LAI). They aimed to create a global mass anti-imperialist movement, and for several years, the LAI inspired and supported anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles worldwide. It was an early part of a growing tapestry of internationalist formations that came to reshape the political terrain of the 20th century.

One hundred years later, the world has undergone major changes, but the mission of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist unity is no less urgent. Formal colonial rule — the direct territorial administration of one people by another — has largely receded. Imperialism has not. It remains the structuring relation of the world economy, where a core of capitalist countries controls the flow of capital, goods, and labor for its benefit. For the world’s oppressed — particularly the workers and peasants of the Global South — imperialism is a catastrophe. It arrives as job insecurity, deflated wages, austerity, and underdevelopment. Most people are given no say in the policies that most affect their lives. Indeed, imperialism often imposes its diktats at the barrel of a gun.

Since the end of World War II, imperialism consolidated its forces and established its core in the United States. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist Eastern Bloc, U.S.-led imperialism has largely been uncontested — a status quo that it has sought to preserve at all costs. In strategic documents adopted in the early 1990s, the U.S. set out its aims clearly: to deny states in the Global South the possibility of development through “mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role”.[1]

But, in many ways, the U.S. strategy has failed. The global order is undergoing a tectonic transformation, and new centers of power are emerging — a trend that accelerated notably after the 2008 financial crisis.

In the economic sphere, U.S. dominance is being contested by the rise of China. China's ascent has also enabled other former colonies to forge new partnerships outside the straitjacket of the imperialist system. This movement is shifting the world away from Western hegemony toward a fragmented, polycentric reality — an increasing dispersal of accumulation and political weight that creates room for maneuver for the countries of the South.

This process is not linear, nor does it automatically guarantee progressive outcomes. Imperialism is mobilizing against these transformations, often with extreme violence. And not every state leading these processes is socialist in its orientation. Nonetheless, the struggle for sovereignty advances. It will take the conscious and determined organization of the world’s workers and oppressed peoples to give progressive substance to the changes that are unfolding today.

Imperialism Today

Imperialism is not one injustice among many. It is the primary contradiction of our system — the relation that organizes the world economy and distorts the class struggle on every continent.

War, indebtedness, underdevelopment, and ecological collapse are all expressions of this contradiction. It follows that they cannot be resolved piecemeal, within the framework of the system that produces them, but only by severing the arteries of imperial accumulation. This task falls to the peoples of the periphery, through whom the system reproduces itself, and to the workers of the core, in whose name it claims to act. 

In fits and starts, that process is now underway. The global economic center of gravity is shifting toward Asia, particularly China. Nations and peoples are resisting imperialist diktats, and new systems of cooperation and exchange are emerging to circumvent systems dominated by the countries of the Global North. 

Imperialism is responding with increasing belligerence. Its attempts to secure and extend control over markets, finance, technology, strategic infrastructure, energy and critical resources are intensifying. In the process, it has launched a systemic war against the world’s workers and oppressed peoples. That war is fought with neoliberal restructuring, sanctions and debt — instruments that impose wage and resource price deflation and de-development on nations and peoples across the South, and which are backstopped by the threat or application of military force.

Vladimir Lenin described imperialism as “moribund capitalism” — the final stage of the system. On one hand, it represents capitalism developed to its highest form: production dominated by huge international monopolies, the control of industry by finance capital, the export of capital from imperial centers to the periphery, and the economic and territorial division of the world.

On the other hand, Lenin argued that it is the final stage because the system had reached its boundaries. This did not mean that the system faced imminent collapse. One hundred years after the founding of the League Against Imperialism, the world's economy remains structured by imperialism. But this is an imperialism that has outlived its day — a system that has hit its limits and is no longer capable of resolving its internal contradictions.

More than ever, the world economy is under the control of huge monopolies. Through the concentration and centralization of capital, almost every sector is dominated by just a few concerns. These entities use their market power to hold the economy hostage in order to extract super-profits. As soon as competitors show signs of weakness, they are ready to eliminate or absorb them, further consolidating their dominance and rendering references to a “free market” hollow. 

Within the imperialist countries, this process manifests itself as an assault on the hard-won gains of social democracy — a set of temporary concessions eked out from capitalism during a time of great turmoil. Within the global periphery, it manifests itself as an attack on the very architecture of the state, which is systematically dismantled to facilitate accumulation by international concerns. Across the world, states find themselves unable to recycle national income into development. Instead, their national wealth is systematically siphoned to Wall Street or the City of London.

Capital continues to flow globally to generate the highest possible profit for its owners, most of whom reside in the imperial core. The outcome is a deep North-South divide, where wealth accumulation by a Northern minority contrasts with the enduring poverty and underdevelopment sustained by neo-colonial arrangements and imperialist rule in the South. 

For workers, imperialism is experienced not only through the extraction of minerals and wealth but through the restructuring of work itself. Public sector wage restraint, privatization, outsourcing and public-private partnerships have become familiar prescriptions attached to debt restructuring and fiscal consolidation programs promoted by international financial institutions and supported by imperialist states.

The percentage of people engaged in precarious and informal work is rising precipitously. Displaced by land grabs, climate change, conflict, and other factors, masses of people are abandoning the countryside and moving into increasingly-congested cities. This process puts billions of people outside the reach of the feeble social protection mechanisms available to the employed. This is a recipe for a social catastrophe of genocidal proportions.

As these contradictions deepen, ruling elites continue to search for new avenues of accumulation and exploitation while shifting the social, economic and environmental costs onto workers and communities. One such avenue is the advent of artificial intelligence. AI and digital technologies are fueled by critical minerals in the Global South, thus motivating a renewed scramble for resource extraction and territorial control from Greenland to the DR Congo.

Imperialist Aggression and Resistance

Samir Amin observed that imperialism walks on two legs: an economic leg — globalized neoliberalism imposed as the only permissible economic policy — and a political and military leg — the wars, coups, and interventions visited upon those who refuse it.[2]

While the maintenance of a system that reproduces inequality has always required extreme violence, the decline of U.S.-led hegemony has produced an imperialism on overdrive across both its economic and military dimensions.

The U.S. siege of Cuba, which culminated in the recent near-total fuel blockade that deprived the island of all oil imports, represents the economic war at its most extreme. The 2026 abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from his palace represents the military leg at its most brazen. Indeed, Washington’s renewed belligerence in Latin America seeks to reactivate and reinvigorate the Monroe Doctrine, as outlined in the U.S. National Security Strategy of late 2025. This doctrine seeks to re-establish the Western Hemisphere as an exclusive U.S. “hunting ground,” targeting any nation that seeks to diversify its trade with China or Russia.  

But U.S. designs are not limited to the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. is now spending over $1.3 trillion a year on its military. With the Western-backed war on Gaza, genocide is once again on imperialism’s political agenda. And as U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the 2026 Munich Security Conference, the West is determined to reassert imperial rule on a global scale — a posture that threatens to engulf the world in war.

While the U.S. continues to exercise enormous military and financial power, European governments, financial institutions and multinational corporations remain committed to the imperialist project. They advance military alliances, trade agreements, investment regimes and the continued promotion of market reforms that favor private capital over public good or interest. And they do not hesitate to use military force themselves. Recognizing these ways in which these centers of imperialist power intersect is a pre-condition for establishing the kind of international working-class solidarity that is necessary to confront the imperialist order.

Although the military might of U.S. imperialism and NATO may seem overwhelming, there are also signs of weakness. The preservation of a unipolar world order is no longer possible. Faced with this reality, the U.S.-led imperialist system has responded through increasingly brazen acts of aggression that are no longer even justified by reference to the language of democracy, security, or humanitarian intervention. While imperialism never disappeared, its contemporary form has become more naked and unapologetic, exposing its true character and objectives for all to see. In doing so, it is helping to generate a growing consciousness of the need to confront, resist, and ultimately overcome this aggressive assertion of global dominance.

The endurance of the Cuban people, the steadfastness — sumud — of the Palestinian resistance, the persistence of Chavismo in Venezuela, the humiliating defeat of U.S.-Israeli forces in Iran, and the advances against colonial domination in the Sahel all demonstrate that resistance to this global order is not only possible, but already underway.

Likewise, the continuing struggles against austerity in Kenya, the mobilization of hundreds of millions of workers in India, and waves of strikes across Portugal and France reveal both the necessity and the potential of collective struggle. Together, these movements affirm a fundamental truth: even in the face of immense power, peoples and nations retain the capacity to resist, organize, and chart an alternative path.

Reclaiming the Mission of Internationalism

Against this backdrop, the current anti-imperialist sentiment arising from imperialism's brazen use of force can benefit from the lessons learned in the anti-imperialist movement that emerged after the League Against Imperialism's 1927 Brussels conference.

1927 was a world in transition. World War I had shattered the old order — exposing the imperial “civilization” as one of industrial slaughter and colonial domination. Socialist revolution swept Russia, and the ideas that it generated spread throughout the colonized world, inspiring movements from Cairo to Canton. Lenin's recognition that the struggles of the colonized were not a sideshow to the workers' movement but central to the defeat of imperialism gave theoretical shape to struggles that were stirring around the globe. When delegates gathered in Brussels, they were part of a rising, global current, carried by the conviction that the colonized peoples, far from being passive objects of history, were the motor force of our collective liberation.

Are we living through another historic turning point? The answer is not yet clear. What is clear, however, is that the contradictions of the present order are deepening. The growing instability of Western imperialism, its increasing reliance on military force, sanctions, political coercion, and open aggression, reflects not confidence but a system struggling to preserve a position of dominance that is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.

Yet history offers no guarantees. Periods of imperial decline have produced both liberation and catastrophe. The possibility of transformation exists, but it must be consciously organized. The same conditions that create opportunities for emancipation can also lead to wider wars, intensified exploitation, and environmental collapse. The stakes of the present moment could not be higher.

At the same time, humanity possesses unprecedented capacities. Never before have the productive forces of society been so advanced. Never before has human labor been so interconnected across borders. The global economy rests upon vast production chains that link workers from every continent, creating the material basis for a common struggle against a system that concentrates wealth, power, and resources in the hands of an increasingly small global elite.

Imperialism remains the central contradiction of our era. It is imperialism that fuels war, deepens inequality, obstructs development, and accelerates climate and ecological destruction. Its consequences are felt not only in the Global South but by working people everywhere. For this reason, confronting imperialism is not the task of any single nation or region; it is a shared responsibility that demands the broadest possible unity between the peoples of the South and the working classes of the North.

We are not the first generation to face this challenge. The Anti-Imperialist Conference of 1927 brought together revolutionary, nationalist, and workers' movements from across the world in recognition of a simple truth: the struggle against colonialism, exploitation, and war required international unity.

Decades later, the Bandung Conference in Indonesia marked these forces’ presence on the world stage. It brought together the anti-colonial movement — both nationalist and communist — to affirm principles of sovereignty, equality, peace, and self-determination. This was a decisive break from the imperialist and colonial system, which for centuries had resolved political questions through brute force and genocide. The ‘Bandung Spirit’ remains relevant not as an object of nostalgia, but as a reminder of the transformative role that struggles for socialism and national liberation can play when they unite against a shared enemy.

Today, the need to recover that ‘Bandung Spirit’ — and the struggles that were its material basis — is greater than ever. The danger of escalating global conflict, including the possibility of wider wars between major powers, is real. So too is the threat posed by climate change and environmental degradation, whose consequences fall most heavily on the world's working and oppressed peoples. Neither danger can be addressed within the framework of imperial accumulation and domination. A just transition requires a paradigm shift — away from imperialism and towards democratic public planning, social dialogue, strong public institutions, decent green jobs, protection for affected workers and communities, and fair access to climate finance and technology.

The call, therefore, is to develop clarity about the historical moment we are living through, to identify the forces responsible for humanity's crises, and to build the unity necessary to overcome them. The future remains unwritten. Whether this period becomes one of liberation or one of catastrophe will depend on the ability of peoples across the world to organize, unite, and act with the urgency that this moment demands.

For the world’s workers and oppressed, commemorating the centenary of the LAI27 must be more than an act of remembrance. It is an opportunity to rekindle the unfinished struggle against colonialism and imperialism — a precondition for the advancement of our aspirations towards decent work, democratic governance, economic sovereignty, living wages, universal social protection, quality public services, gender equality and a just transition. It should renew a practical program of international solidarity linking workers in the Global North with those struggling for sovereignty in the South. These struggles are rooted in different national realities, yet they confront common structures of exploitation. Their shared experience provides the strongest foundation for rebuilding an international anti-imperialist movement grounded in the daily lives and collective power of working people. It is a call we want to heed in 2027 to commemorate and celebrate one hundred years of struggle against imperialism.

[1]U.S. Department of Defense'sDefense Planning Guidance (DPG), February 18, 1992.

[2] Samir Amin, Contemporary Imperialism, Monthly Review, Vol. 67, No. 03 (July-August 2015), https://monthlyreview.org/articles/contemporary-imperialism/