The basic ideological distinction is pro-versus-anti, on imperialism.

Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

Imperialism is the right of one nation to control another nation’s foreign policies and so to nullify the other nation’s sovereignty and independence. It’s the right of one nation to enslave another.

To reject imperialism is to deny that right — to deny the right to enslave another nation.

Traditionally, the enslaved nation is referred-to as a “colony” or in modern times as merely an “ally,” but that is like calling a slave a “servant,” because, in reality, a colony is no democracy: it does not represent its residents inside it but instead its masters who are foreigners — the aristocracy that control the imperial country itself (such as Rome did, or England, or Spain, or, today, the United States’s aristocracy that controls the U.S. Government does), NOT the residents inside the colony (or ‘ally’).

Since a colony is controlled by that foreign aristocracy, it can’t be a democracy but is instead necessarily a dictatorship, a dictatorship by a foreign power, and this is even worse than a dictatorship by the colony’s own aristocracy. To be a colony is even worse than to be an independent dictatorship — it’s a foreign-controlled dictatorship.

The normal way that a colony is run is by its local aristocracy who serve that foreign aristocracy. This way, if the colony’s public rebel, they will be fighting against the local aristocrats, who will be serving as buffers protecting the interests of the foreign and imperial aristocrats. For providing that buffering-service to the foreign aristocracy, the local aristocrats get a cut of the profits from the exploitation of the land and of the people who live on it

Opposition to imperialism — repudiation of any nation’s right to enslave another — is called “progressivism,” which is the democratic form of leftist politics. The aristocratic or other dictatorial form of leftist politics is called “communism.” Marxist communism was opposed to imperialism but so weakly that Leon Trotsky considered himself a Marxist even though he wanted the communistic Soviet Union to expand out to the whole world and become thereby an all-consuming communistic empire. Stalin, who instead advocated “socialism in one country” (which meant only Marx’s dictatorial form of “socialism,” which — though dictatorial — condemned imperialism) had Trotsky killed for that advocacy of imperialism, killed for his advocacy of a type of ‘communism’ that Marx never advocated for.

Progressivism opposes all forms of supremacism or oppression, but especially between countries, since that is the most dangerous type of all, because both of the World Wars resulted from warring groups of empires. The most important thing in the atomic era is to prevent a WW III (global annihilation). Unlike progressivism in domestic or internal national matters, progressivism in international matters includes prevention of a world-annihilating WW III. It focuses the most on anti-imperialism: opposition to supremacism on an international instead of merely on an internal purely national level. This is the all-inclusive form of progressivism: anti-imperialism.

For example: right now, the only remaining empire, the U.S. empire, aims primarily to conquer both Russia and China — two countries that are on the opposite side of the world from America and that neither one has ever threatened. Those two conquests are now the only ones that still stand in the way of America’s aristocracy taking control over the entire world. As U.S. President Barack Obama put it, on 28 May 2014, when instructing America’s future generals that America is on god’s side (U.S. supremacism) and both Russia and China are against it:

The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.

America’s President JFK and Soviet leader Khrushchev established in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that a superpower is not behaving imperialistically if it prohibits a nearby nation from allying itself with a hostile superpower; and, to that extent, any superpower does have the right to prohibit a bordering or other nearby nation from militarily allying itself with another superpower. Any such ‘alliance’ would be an aggressive act and would therefore not only be imperialism but the form of colonizing it that the more nearby superpower has a defensive right to prohibit. Similarly, Russia does have the right to prohibit Ukraine from allying militarily with the United States. NATO is a crucial arm of U.S. imperialism. All progressives oppose it. Progressives oppose every form and institution of neoconservatism (a “Might makes right,” or fascist, ideology).

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.