That is quite a different kind of internationalism from that of the Communist Manifesto . It is not defensively but offensively conceived. Yet for the socialist state, attack on all capitalist states is a vital necessity. To maintain itself internally it must become aggressive externally. It cannot rest before it has socialized the whole world.
Socialist imperialism is also quite without a basis for economic policy.
It is hard to see why a socialist commonwealth could not also acquire in trade with foreign countries all those goods that it could not produce itself. The socialist who is convinced of the higher productivity of communist production could dispute that least of all. Socialist imperialism outdoes every earlier imperialism in scope and depth. The inner necessity that has caused it to arise, rooted in the essence of the socialist gospel of salvation, drives it to fundamental boundlessness in every direction. It cannot rest before it has subjugated the entire inhabited world and before it has annihilated everything reminiscent of other forms of human society.