Quiz: Imperialism, the Last Stage of Capitalism

All 34 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. Which work by an Austrian Marxist, published in Vienna in 1910, does Lenin rely on?

   Karl Kautsky’s The Road to Power Otto Bauer’s The Nationalities Question Rosa Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital Rudolf Hilferding’s Finance Capital
2. 2. Which of these is not one of Lenin’s five essential features of imperialism?

   The abolition of the national state Concentration of production creating monopolies The export of capital The territorial division of the whole earth among the great powers
3. 3. Which example did Lenin use in chapter IX to stand for Russia and its subject nations?

   Austria and Bohemia Japan and Korea Germany and Alsace Britain and India
4. 4. What, according to Supan whom Lenin quotes, characterises the period 1876–1900?

   The independence of the Latin American republics The division of Africa and Polynesia The decline of empires The opening of Japan and China to Western trade
5. 5. Which letter of Engels to Marx (7 October 1858) does Lenin quote?

   “The revolution is near” “Workers of the world, unite” “The point, however, is to change the world” “The English working class is actually becoming more and more bourgeois”
6. 6. What union of industrial and banking capital does Lenin say the most advanced countries have achieved?

   A “personal union” A state union A gold-standard monetary union A customs union
7. 7. What does the export of capital become, according to Lenin, for a few wealthy states?

   A solid basis for capitalist parasitism A source of losses A means of aiding poor countries to develop A temporary phase
8. 8. Which famous American petrol trust does Lenin cite?

   The Royal Dutch-Shell group The Standard Oil Company General Motors U.S. Steel
9. 9. Which opposition does Lenin call “the last of the Mohicans of bourgeois democracy”?

   The American anti-imperialists after the war with Spain in 1898 The French Radicals who protested against the conquest of Tonkin in 1885 The British Liberals who opposed the Boer War under Campbell-Bannerman The German Centre Party after the Herero rising in South-West Africa
10. 10. What becomes the typical feature of monopoly capitalism, as distinct from the old capitalism of free competition?

    Protective tariffs The export of goods The export of capital The import of colonial labour
11. 11. How does Lenin define “social-Chauvinism”?

    Socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds Socialism in one country Pacifism preached to the workers of a nation at war Nationalism of the oppressed small nations
12. 12. Which statistic does Lenin use to show the uneven development that changes the balance of forces?

    The growth of population in each of the great powers Army sizes The growth of railway mileage in different regions Gold reserves
13. 13. What does the “participation” (holding) system allow, according to Lenin?

    Control of enormous capital with a relatively small one, through pyramids of companies State control of the banks through public holdings in their share capital Equal distribution of shares among the workers, so that each holds a stake in the firm The abolition of shares, replacing them with fixed loans from a single bank
14. 14. What class does Lenin say grows under imperialism, “people who live by clipping coupons”?

    Bondholders Civil engineers Skilled industrial workers Small peasants
15. 15. What does Lenin say monopoly is a transition to?

    A more highly developed order Feudalism Anarchy Free competition
16. 16. What is Lenin’s briefest possible definition of imperialism?

    The policy of armed colonial conquest The export of goods to the colonies The monopoly stage of capitalism The rule of empires
17. 17. Which two wars does Lenin say stimulated the literature on imperialism?

    The Crimean War (1853–56) and the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) The Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) and the Balkan Wars (1912–13) The Spanish-American War (1898) and the Boer War (1899–1902) The Second Opium War (1856–60) and the Zulu War of 1879
18. 18. What does Lenin say imperialism is the eve of?

    World peace The socialist revolution The collapse of civilisation A new feudalism
19. 19. What do the banks become under monopoly capitalism, according to Lenin?

    Modest savings institutions, gathering the small deposits of workers and village artisans Cooperatives of depositors, lending to small producers at moderate rates of interest Departments of the state, administering credit under ministerial supervision Powerful monopolies controlling nearly all money capital, not modest intermediaries
20. 20. What has free competition turned into, according to Lenin?

    Monopoly Socialism Free trade State ownership
21. 21. Why does Lenin say the book’s political conclusions were muted?

    It had to pass the tsarist censorship His publisher in Petrograd objected to them He wrote for academics He was unsure of them
22. 22. What forms of dependence besides colonies does Lenin describe?

    Only military alliances, binding smaller states such as Belgium and Holland to the great powers Only trade agreements, by which weaker states grant low tariffs to the goods of stronger ones None at all: every country, in his view, is either a colony or a fully independent power Semi-colonies and financially dependent states such as Argentina and Portugal
23. 23. When, according to Lenin, did the development of cartels begin?

    In 1848 With the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 With the crash of 1873 and the depression after it With the Baring crisis of 1890 in the London market
24. 24. Which idea of Kautsky’s does Lenin attack?

    “The general strike”, a single universal stoppage of labour to prevent any future war “Ultra-imperialism”, peaceful joint exploitation of the world by finance capital “Colonial independence”, the immediate surrender of all colonies by the great powers “State socialism”, the gradual nationalisation of industry by the existing monarchies
25. 25. Which English book on imperialism does Lenin say he used “with all the care it deserves”?

    J. A. Hobson’s Imperialism (1902) Angell’s Great Illusion Kipling’s poem The White Man’s Burden Seeley’s Expansion of England (1883)
26. 26. What is the second of the five features?

    The fusion of church and state, giving the clergy control over national education The fusion of labour and capital, as the workers become shareholders in the trusts The fusion of bank capital with industrial capital, creating a financial oligarchy The fusion of town and country, as industry spreads out into agricultural districts
27. 27. Which four countries does Lenin say hold a privileged position, each controlling 100 to 150 milliard francs in securities?

    The United States, Canada, Australia and England Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain England, Russia, Japan and the Kingdom of Italy England, France, the United States and Germany
28. 28. Which term does Lenin say is passing into economic literature?

    The workers’ state The night-watchman state of the liberals The “Bondholder State” (Rentnerstaat) The welfare state
29. 29. Which admirer of German imperialism does Lenin quote at the end, appealing to Saint-Simon’s prophecies?

    Schulze-Gaevernitz Rudolf Hilferding Riesser Liefmann
30. 30. Between which two groups, according to the Jeidels passage Lenin quotes, was the world oil market already divided in 1905?

    French and Italian companies, competing for the oilfields of Romania and Galicia Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and the Russian oil of Rothschild and Nobel The Ottoman and Persian governments, quarrelling over concessions in Mesopotamia The Shell group and the Anglo-Persian Company, backed by the British Admiralty
31. 31. Why, according to Lenin, is capital “superabundant” in advanced countries?

    Because of the great gold discoveries in South Africa and the Klondike Because there is nothing left to produce, the home market being full Because capitalism will not use it to raise the standard of living of the masses Because high wages have raised workers’ savings beyond what industry can use
32. 32. Where and when did Lenin write Imperialism?

    Petrograd, October 1917 Geneva, 1908 London, 1902 Zurich, spring 1916
33. 33. What did Cecil Rhodes say, according to Stead, after an unemployed meeting in the East End in 1895?

    To avert civil war, colonial statesmen must acquire new lands for the surplus population Workers should be given land at home, since only small property could save Britain from socialism Imperialism had grown too costly, and Britain must spend instead on relief for its unemployed The unemployed should be deported to the colonies at public expense, to remove the danger of riots
34. 34. Whose financial revenues, besides those of small property-holders and civil servants, does Lenin say are collected by the banks?

    A small upper stratum of the working class Peasants The landed aristocracy and the officer corps Foreign states borrowing on the Paris bourse