the terms Imperial core and perifery countries are terms use in the World-systems theory which is an Internacional relations theory, based on the theory of imperialism of Lenin and other marxists works. It was develop by Immanuel Wallerstein

The Imperial Core in World-system theory, Its the nations that have higher levels of higher skill (like tecnology and education), Capital-intensive industries (like banking and services) compared to the Perifery that has mostly Labor-intensive industries (like the textile industry) and raw materials (like oil and lithium). The capital advantaje of the core lets it dominate the perifery, by having a Productivity dominace via developing high-value good at cheaper prices (like phones) and this leds to a Trade dominace thats gives the core a more favorable balance of trade with the perifery, and that leds to a financial dominace where more money enter the core than it leaves, aka accumulationof capital

the map of which is which looks like this mostly

It's closely related to "always the same map," but essentially the anglospehere and western europe primarily, fake korea and japan can be included depending on the context.

It's where all the money, resources and surplus value flows to. Since the start of industrial capitalism, essentially only one country has moved from imperialized to imperial core and its Japan. If you look at world trade, imperial core countries tend to trade with their neighbors and with a few other overseas countries. Imperialized countries tend to trade with just one or two far away Imperial core countries. Michael Roberts has a good series on his blog about it if you're curious.

For an actual list, it's basically what you think it is probably - USA and UK as the top and former top, the rest of western Europe including Scandinavia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan.

Imperialism (in the Marxist-Leninist sense) happens when the bourgeoisie of one country expand their influence and control into a country which hasn’t yet developed capitalist relations. They proletarianize that country, but do so without the country developing its own local bourgeois class. Lenin particularly emphasizes the role that monopolization plays in this process. I can describe it using less jargon if that would help.

The imperial core is the collection of countries which have historically engaged with and benefited from this practice. So, in a very broad sense, the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia. Plenty of nuance there, but that’s the gist of it. Colonialism really set up the footprint for imperialism to take hold.

lots of really good answers in this thread, many of them more academic and thorough than mine, but my relatively simplistic version is that the imperial core is the collection of nations with the means and will to project force on all of the rest of the world (i.e. those nations who have the means to execute imperialism) and therefore the nations who ultimately reap the rewards of holding power over subjugated nations. That can be raw materials like lithium and oil, crops, cheap or slave labor, asymmetric rights to land and passage, or any of a number of other explicit and implicit hierarchies that the imperial core is at the top of.

This is very similar in concept to the first/third world, the developed/developing world, and the global north/global south, although they all have slight but important differences in meaning and history.

Here's an answer that's simple once you grasp one concept: Trade mispricing.

One company (remember that Capital Has A Nationality) is based in a wealthy home country and operating in a resource-rich, money-poor country and also in a tax-haven country. They mine cobalt with their subsidiary in the money-poor country. They operate at a low cost in the money-poor country, and sell their product at a low price to their tax-haven subsidiary. In the home country, they buy the cobalt at a high price from the tax-haven subsidiary and refine it and produce electronics which they sell at high prices. The tax-haven subsidiary buys low and sells high. Normally this profit would be subject to enormous taxes, but in that country the corporate taxes are extremely low. So the proceeds, which would otherwise be made by the government of the host country and especially the government of the money-poor country, are instead kept by the company and distributed to shareholders. A pittance is paid out to the government of the tax-haven, but enough to justify the lenient policy.

Since the 1500s, governments have been making efforts to secure secondary and tertiary industries rather than simple resource extraction.

Another example of this kind of economic discrepancy is when name-brand shirts are produced cheaply in one country, sold wholesale to another country, where they are instantly marked up for retail. The majority of the price (and the taxes) goes to shareholders of the company and the government of the destination country. But the workers in the country of production, though they are the single indispensable factor in the shirt's existence, get a minuscule percentage of what the shirt sells for.

If a country has headquarters of multinational companies that are incorporated within its laws, it is an imperial country. When you see a number of such countries that are closely aligned economically, militarily, and politically, and they control the majority of the world's trade, that is the imperial core.

It's the large, spinning ball of knives and steel that whrrs horribly in the giant lake of blood at the geographical center of America.

But we've found a weakness.

Suit up, pilot. We're launching at 0420.

Follow up question for others: If your community is in third world conditions but your in an imperial core country, say you're in the Mississippi Delta, are you in the imperial core still?

I think we generally mean those countries that benefit from imperialism because of unequal exchange or financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank enforcing a state of destitution and exploitation of what we call the imperial periphery. You can find a lot more precise and well thought out political analysis in these terms if you read up on World Systems Theory. The important aspect is that there is a flow of wealth from the periphery into the core.

It's a very relevant concept because the countries in the imperial core have working classes that, despite being exploited themselves, have a great deal of resistance to international solidarity because they live lifestyles that are only possible due to the exploitation of the periphery. The implications are broad, and people here range from those who think that the working classes of the imperial core are still capable of surpassing that bias and carrying out a fair distribution of global wealth, to the Third Worldists who believe that the revolution can only meaningfully come from the imperial periphery, else it would capitulate to imperialist interests and fail to move past capitalism.

My personal take is that it doesn't matter too much what is or isn't possible in the imperial core, the task at hand is the same for us: agitate, educate, organize to demolish the capitalist imperialist system, our comrades in the periphery will have more space to carry out their revolutions that way.

The world is split into two groups, those that benefitted from colonialism and those that did not.

There is a fuck easy way to see this. The nato countries and their allies or vassals are the imperial core, everyone else is the periphery.

In short its

north america, western europe, and australia/new zealand

some times Japan and south Korea

"imperial core" is usually used interchangeably with "1st world" and "global north" but I prefer the term imperial core because it says outright, hey, these are the countries that are actively imperialist in the leninist sense, and historically benefited from colonialism.

Thank you everyone!

The Imperial Core is the space between Joseph Robinette Biden's balls.

If you are looking for a concise book on it, there is World-systems Analysis: An Introduction by Wallerstein. Part summary of the ideas and part reflection on his previous work on the subject. Worth the read. Its short enough. The multiple tomes of the World-Systems Theory books are long and dense as fuck though.

Monthly Review also publishes a lot by people who follow these ideas, one contemporary author is Li Minqi.

I prefer the term Imperial Triad, because let's be real, Australia and South Korea are basically US provinces at this point in terms of policy (AUKUS for example). The UK is sometimes even more hawkish than the US, in part due to their unwavering Atlanticism. But if you want a good summary on what the Imperial Triad is, I recommend reading the article I've linked below

https://mronline.org/2022/12/05/samir-amin-how-to-defeat-the-collective-imperialism-of-the-triad/

Competition is just rhetoric, there is no competition. There is an oligarchy which is controlling the whole economic system. Now, we are facing a united front of imperialist powers, which are forming a Collective imperialism of the Triad. The Triad is the United States, Western and Central Europe, and Japan. This group of countries has become a single imperialist power, the leader of which is the US. .