Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro, ‘Capitalist Expansionism, Imperialism, and the European Union’, State of Nature (2006)

With so much attention by activists worldwide on current US imperialism, few have questioned the recent expansionism of the European Union (EU) and its continued neo-colonialist policies. What is worse, the EU has been treated as if it were a more humane alternative to the latest version of US capitalism, so that the present prevailing strategy among most mainstream “left” circles is to support the EU project as a counterbalance to US hegemony. This strategy fails to consider the capitalist underpinnings of the EU, its consequent imperialistic tendencies and practices, and its complicity with and active support for American military aggression worldwide. The eastward “enlargement” of the EU on 1st May 2004 (and the usurpation of Labour Day) is part of an expansionistic strategy of major segments of both the Western and Eastern European bourgeoisie for retaining, if not increasing their core status in the capitalist world-system.  The majority of Eastern Europe and its relatively low-waged, largely precarious workforce will, according to the Lisbon Strategy,  be largely sacrificed, eventually along with their Western European counterparts, to bring about a “competitive, dynamic, and knowledge-based economy”.

So what do you reckon: is Mauro in this article describing settler colonialism or simply the migration of wealth and privilege into existing political orders? Are the two mutually exclusive?