What is Imperialism?

Imperialism is the global economic system that exists today. Through
imperialist military, economic and political control of Third World
nations, the worlds majority are exploited and super-exploited. In brief,
this means that the toiling masses of the world do not earn the value of
their labor and are not able to survive without income in addition to
primary jobs. The profits from this exploitation and other stolen
resources from the Third World make it possible for imperialist nations to
maintain wealth and inflated standards of living.

First World corporations have expanded to the point where they must invest
money overseas to continue to grow so they export their capital to the
Third World. These foreign investments in Third World economies,
safeguarded by military force, stifle the national economic growth.
Imperialist investment then ensures its own predominance  paying dirt
wages to workers who have no options, and enjoying the freedom to escape
local taxes and environmental restrictions.

It is a principle of anti-imperialism that every nation has the right to
national self-determination and the right to struggle for liberation.
Nations must be free to choose their own economic and political destinies
and not have these policies dictated by occupying forces. Where
imperialism extends itself into the Third World, it stifles all indigenous
economic and political activity. Anti-imperialists hold that all nations
should be free to choose their own course.

RAIL sees imperialism in the hundred-years of U.$. occupation of Puerto
Rico and the Philippines. We see imperialism in Amerikan state-terrorist
bombings of Arab and African countries that will not happily submit to
u.$. political and economic demands. Imperialist economic domination is
evident in the thousands of people who attempt to cross militarized
borders without legal papers year by year. These undocumented immigrants
and workers know they can find better jobs in the u.$.  grown wealthy at
the expense of their own countries  than they can at home. And we see
imperialism in the exploding Amerikan prisons, whose construction and
maintenance provide jobs for the white nation while their cells cage huge
segments of the Black and Latino nations. 

For all these reasons, RAIL addresses U.$. imperialism as a brutal abuser
of the oppressed nations. In the fight against imperialism, we welcome all
people who want to see these forms of injustice destroyed.