** As I said, it's hard to find any Marxist anywhere who doesn't think that imperialism is a deep structure of capitalism. (All I can think of are Hardt & Negri, but, even in their case, empire, though different from imperialism in their opinion, seems to me to be still a deep structure of capitalism, or just another name for it.) --
[WS:] You can add my name to this list too. Although I am not considering myself a "Marxist," I am very sympathetic to Marx's ideas, especially the idea that capitalism played an important historical and *progressive* role in world's development. I think that this idea was pretty much dropped by the Third World hack revolutionaries who were more interested in promoting nationalism and needed a scapegoat to divert popular attention form the backwardness of their own societies. Hence the spiel of "imperialism" which is basically a time-honored tactic of blaming outsiders for domestic problems.
I think that colonialism and Western influence in the Third World, although ethically questionable, had on the balance a positive effect on Third World development, which is also the idea espoused by Marx.
I am also sympathetic to Hard & Negri - however, I wish they could write well, as their prose is simply unreadable.
Wojtek