Social-imperialism

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Social-imperialism is imperialism with a socialist/communist face. Anti-revisionists apply the term to countries that they see as having betrayed socialism and turned themselves into imperialistic hegemons that exploit other countries. Because Marxist theory is anti-imperialist, the accusation of social-imperialism implies that the country so accused has ceased to be socialist and has returned to capitalism and imperialism in practice, even if it appears socialist on the surface and/or espouses socialist ideals and terminology.

The term is often summed up as meaning "socialist in words, imperialist in deeds".

Maoist China famously called the Soviet Union social-imperialist in the years leading up to the Sino–Soviet split, arguing that the Soviet Union had come to dominate and exploit the smaller countries in its sphere to the point of organising their economies around Soviet, not domestic, needs and making them into dependent banana republics whose governments toed the Soviet line. China thus saw the Soviet Union as having become analogous to the United States, a non-socialist empire, shortly after the death of Stalin, and of being the socialist world's equivalent of a colonialist and imperialist country in the First World.