Imperialism, the Last Stage of Capitalism

Contents

1. Lenin’s Preface (1917) 3 min 5

   Lenin, newly returned to Petrograd in April 1917, explains that the book was written in Zurich in 1916 for legal publication under the tsarist censorship, so its political conclusions had to be muted. He states them plainly: imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution, and the socialists who supported the war (“social-chauvinists”) and the Kautskyan centre have gone over to the bourgeoisie. He explains that Japan and Korea in chapter IX stand for Russia and its subject nations.

2. Introduction 2 min 3

   Lenin names his sources — Hobson’s Imperialism (1902) and Hilferding’s Finance Capital (1910) — and sets out to show, briefly and in popular form, how the chief economic features of capitalism at the beginning of the 20th century are connected.

3. I Concentration of Production and Monopoly 37 min 26

   German and American statistics show production concentrated in a handful of giant enterprises. Free competition has turned into monopoly: cartels and trusts, which spread after the crash of 1873 and became the basis of economic life after the crisis of 1900–03. Monopoly socialises production and technical progress, but the monopolies use every means — price wars, boycotts, control of raw materials — to crush outsiders, and they intensify rather than abolish crises.

4. II The Banks and Their New Role 36 min 25

   The banks, concentrated into a few giants with networks of branches and participations, change from intermediaries into monopolists controlling almost all capital. Through shareholdings, interlocking directorates and links with the state, banks and industry fuse. The beginning of the 20th century marks the turn from the rule of capital in general to the rule of finance capital.

5. III Finance Capital and Financial Oligarchy 31 min 26

   Finance capital — bank capital merged with monopolised industrial capital — produces a financial oligarchy. Holding-company pyramids let a small capital control a vast one; falsified balance sheets, company promotions, issues of securities, land speculation and bankruptcies yield enormous profits. The separation of ownership from production creates a class of rentiers, and four great countries hold most of the world’s securities.

6. IV The Export of Capital 11 min 8

   Under monopoly capitalism the export of capital, rather than of goods, becomes typical. Capital is “superabundant” only because capitalism will not raise the living standards of the masses. Britain invested mainly in its colonies and the Americas, France in Europe and Russia, Germany more evenly; loans are tied to orders and concessions. The export of capital speeds capitalist development abroad and spreads finance capital across the world.

7. V The Division of the World Among Capitalist Groups 18 min 9

   Monopolies divide the world market among themselves: electrical (AEG and General Electric), oil (Standard Oil against Nobel and Rothschild), shipping and rail cartels, some 100 international cartels by 1910. Lenin rejects the hope that such cartels mean peace: they divide the world according to strength, and when strength changes the division is fought over again.

8. VI The Division of the World Among the Great Powers 25 min 14

   The great powers completed the territorial division of the world in the late 19th century, especially in Africa and the Pacific, exactly when monopoly capitalism arose. Cecil Rhodes saw empire as the way to avoid civil war at home. Colonies supply raw materials and safe outlets for capital; semi-colonies such as China, Persia and Turkey, and financially dependent states such as Argentina and Portugal, show the many forms of dependence. Since the world is now divided, only redivision remains.

9. VII Imperialism as a Special Stage of Capitalism 24 min 15

   Lenin’s summary: imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism, with five features — monopoly, finance capital and a financial oligarchy, the export of capital, international monopolies dividing the world, and the completed territorial division of the earth. He attacks Kautsky’s view of imperialism as a policy, and his idea of “ultra-imperialism,” a peaceful joint exploitation of the world by the powers. Uneven development constantly changes the balance of forces, as Germany’s overtaking of Britain shows, so war is the only means of redivision under capitalism.

10. VIII Parasitism and the Decay of Capitalism 23 min 21

    Monopoly produces a tendency to stagnation and decay, and imperialism creates rentier states living on interest from abroad. Following Hobson, Lenin describes the parasitism of the imperial nations; super-profits allow the capitalists to bribe an upper stratum of workers, the social basis of reformism, as Engels saw in England. Opportunism has become the ally of the bourgeoisie and must be split from the workers’ movement.

11. IX The Critique of Imperialism 30 min 14

    The bourgeois and petty-bourgeois critics of imperialism — American anti-imperialists, German liberal economists — and above all Kautsky refuse to see that imperialism is rooted in capitalism itself and dream of a return to free competition. Lenin examines Kautsky’s trade statistics and Lansburgh’s loan figures, insists that “ultra-imperialist” alliances can only be truces between wars, and that opposition to annexations is honest only if it includes the right of the annexed to secede.

12. X The Place of Imperialism in History 13 min 5

    Imperialism’s place in history: monopoly arising from concentration, the seizure of raw materials, the banks and colonial policy deepen all the contradictions of capitalism. Monopoly profits allow the corruption of sections of the working class. Imperialism is capitalism in transition — dying capitalism; the economists’ talk of “interlacing” conceals the socialisation of production. The edition ends with Lenin’s mockery of Schulze-Gaevernitz’s appeal to Saint-Simon.

13. Appendix: Sources 20 min

    Lenin’s references, numbered as in the 1926 edition: German statistical yearbooks, Hilferding, Riesser, Jeidels, Liefmann, Lansburgh’s Die Bank, Hobson, Schulze-Gaevernitz, Supan and others.