Fair enough on the framing, just meant that I ignored it for the first half, otherwise the reply was not engaging with you up to that point, but I wrote sloppily.
But you did not originally say “bigger and smaller IMPERIALIST” you said capitalist empire. It’s a totally different discussion which is where we started speaking past on another. I still don’t think that’s correct, because I don’t think a new analysis like Lenin made of imperialism would find Russia as materially equivalent in form or content of imperialism at all (maybe requiring a new word for the type of imperialism done by the US/NATO like super-imperialism or so. That’s why I still hold the point that it’s not just “bigger v smaller” that matters, but the Qualitative difference that then arose from the quantity of Imperialism performed/exported capital and coerced labour. They should be understood as 2 phenomenon at this point, not a big and small