This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. How many chapters or pages we will cover per week will vary based on the density and difficulty of the book, but I'm generally aiming at 30 to 40 pages per week, which should take you about an hour or two.
This week, we are finishing Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Next week, we will move on to Super Imperialism - The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance, by Michael Hudson.
Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location.
This week, we will be reading Chapter 9: Critique of Imperialism, and Chapter 10: The Place of Imperialism in History. If you want, you can also read the Appendix: Imperialism and the Split in Socialism.
Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.
0__0 [he/him] - 10mon
Drinking game: Take a shot every time Lenin shits on Kautsky
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FunkyStuff [he/him] - 10mon
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SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him] - 10mon
gonna write enemies to enemies fanfiction about them
If you're joining us when we move on to Michael Hudson's Superimperialism next week, make sure to grab a copy of the book somewhere at some point over this week or next week. If you're not joining us, let me know and I will take you off the ping list.
I appreciate the ping list but I was a shitty comrade and didn’t join the last reading list.
I commit to joining the next. Thank you.
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FunkyStuff [he/him] - 10mon
If you want a quick summary of what Lenin talked about and a good primer for Super Imperialism, check out Vijay Prashad's talk with Gabriel Rockhill where he talks about Lenin's Imperialism and how imperialism has transformed since then; he does plug his own book there, maybe 72T could consider adding it to the queue after Hudson's.
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quarrk [he/him] - 10mon
That particular video is a banger. Seconded
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kittin - 10mon
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HexReplyBot [none/use name] - 10mon
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
And so completes Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism! These last two chapters were basically Lenin picking fights with everybody (especially Kautsky) and then summarizing the book.
I will repost all my chapter summaries below, for easy access for those viewing this thread later on.
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SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him] - 10mon
Chapter 1: Concentration of Production and Monopolies
::: spoiler spoiler
Capitalism’s most characteristic feature is perhaps the growth and concentration of industry into massive enterprises. Lenin quotes figures to this effect in Germany between 1882 and 1907; both in terms of concentration of workers and production. The latter is much greater due to massive businesses being more productive; less than 1% of businesses use over 75% of the steam+electric power. Lenin also quotes figures from America, demonstrating an even greater degree of monopolization, showing that it is an international trend.
A single massive enterprise can be part of many branches of industry, which makes them less reliant on trading between those branches (particularly when raw materials are expensive), which increases profits relative to other enterprises, leading to them becoming yet more powerful. Countries with high tariffs only further lead to monopolization. In countries with freer trade, such as Britain in Lenin’s day, monopolization instead occurs because once a massive, technically-advanced enterprise is established (with a massive amount of capital investment), it is harder to launch competing enterprises both due to the initial capital demand, and because a new enterprise would flood the market with new products, and - unless there is a sudden expansion in demand - the price of the products produced would not generate sufficient profit for either the new or old enterprise. Hence, Marx’s analysis that competition must lead to monopoly is proven correct.
Monopoly capitalism overcame competitive capitalism at the beginning of the 20th century, but it has a rich prehistory which begins in the 1860s. There was an international industrial depression from the 1870s to the 1890s. By the start of the depression, Britain had completed its construction of competitive capitalism and Germany was still the battleground between handicraft and industry. During the depression, the cartels slowly coalesced. At the end of the depression, these business cartels collaborated to take advantage of a brief boom in 1889-1890, driving up prices to their own ultimate detriment, leading to a five-year period of bad trade and low prices. This did not dissuade the cartels, but instead emboldened them, leading them to soon take control of entire fields of industry; mining most notably, initially. The cartel system acquired a coke syndicate, then a coal syndicate. By the 1910s, many industrial fields now no longer had free competition.
A cartel is a group of enterprises, businesses, etc, who use pre-arranged agreements to subvert market mechanisms, deciding the quantities and prices of goods and dividing profits between them. This is more efficient than markets, hence their growth. Some examples are the Rhine-Westphalian Coal Syndicate, which by 1910 controlled over 95% of all coal output in the area. Another is the Standard Oil Company in the US, and the United States Steel Corporation, which hire engineers specifically for inventing more cost-efficient production methods. The Tobacco Trust’s organisation is particularly enlightening; it formed subsidiary companies just to acquire patents, and its massive capital means it can form its own machine shops for various inventions in the field of cigarette production. Ease of access to raw materials is no substantial factor for monopolization; the German cement industry was highly cartelised into regional syndicates which raised prices, despite the ease of access to the raw materials for cement.
Eventually, all sources of raw material are analyzed, their yearly output predicted and divided up between enterprises, transportation methods are bought up by them, and they have near-guaranteed access to the most skilled labour. For new businesses that which to compete, their logistics are halted; unions are forbidden from working with them; prices are cut to ruin them (as the monopolies can better handle it than new businesses); boycotts are created; and many other underhanded and dishonest tricks. This is how the social order transforms from free competition to complete socialisation, to benefit a few. The bulk of profits now go to those adept at financial manipulation, such as speculators.
Cartels cannot abolish capitalist crises; on the contrary, they intensify them. As cartelised industries increase in strength, other industries suffer from an increasing lack of coordination. In this disparity, there is anarchy and crises. In turn, crises increase the tendency towards monopoly. For example, during the crisis of 1900 in which prices and demand fell, the non-cartel enterprises were in a precarious position, which barely affected the cartel enterprises, due to their durability, created by the magnitude of capital invested and the complicated methods that provide a significant barrier of entry to other enterprises.
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SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him] - 10mon
Chapter 2: Banks and their New Role
::: spoiler spoiler
Banks transform capital that is inactive into capital that can yield profit for use by the capitalist class.
When banks merely carry the current accounts of a few capitalists, it is a mostly technical and auxiliary operation. However, banks also undergo concentration and monopolization, meaning that they eventually come to possess vast amounts of the money capital of all larger and smaller capitalists in any one country; and, therefore, control over much of the means of production. This transforms them into something else entirely.
Lenin returns to Germany for an example, demonstrating a 40% growth in combined deposits from 1907 to 1912 among fairly large banks (above a capital of 1 million marks), while small banks become either squeezed out of the story or become branches of the larger banks. However, when looking at total bank capital, the nine biggest Berlin banks controlled over 80% of total German bank capital; and these massive banks have affiliated banks which they have acquired via purchase or exchanging shares, annexing them into their own groups/concerns. For example, Deustche Bank comprised 87 banks in some fashion.
In Germany, the six largest banks rapidly expanded at the turn of the 20th century, transforming thousands of scattered enterprises into a single national capitalist economy, then later into a world capitalist economy. These trends are only more advanced in older capitalist systems like in Britain and France. In the United States, two very large banks - Rockefeller and Morgan - control a capital of 11 billion marks; about equivalent to those of the nine largest banks in Germany.
Bank monopolists are capable, due to their banking connections, to determine the financial positions of capitalists and then control them by restricting or enlarging them, or give or restrict credit. This gives them the power to either destroy them or increase their capital rapidly. Like with industrial enterprises, “competing” banks are often collaborators, forming increasingly durable agreements. In doing so, banks now control, directly and indirectly, much of the population of their countries; and agricultural capital stagnates and lags behind profitable heavy industries, to the detriment of the working classes. It is under this paradigm that even industry cartels can be commanded from yet higher in the economy.
The bank monopolists link up with the industrial enterprises and bank directors are appointed to the supervisory boards of industrial and commercial enterprises. This leads to increasing interdependency between banks and industry; for example, six of the biggest Berlin banks were represented by their directors in over 300 industrial companies and by their board members in over 400. These companies range across the whole of society, not merely heavy industry. The opposite also occurs, in which the supervisory boards of banks are staffed by industrialists. Additionally, bank monopolists collaborate with the state; supervisory board seats are sometimes given to members of parliament or city councillers.
At a certain level of power and concentration, this leads to a division of labour among the bank monopolists. Each director has his own special function; for example, a director may specialize in dealing with industry; or another with a certain set of specific enterprises with which he has good connections; or yet another with a foreign enterprise. This leads them out of pure banking, into becoming experts and analysts of fields of industry, or insurance, or commercial trade, and so on. This makes them more competent at those roles, resulting in better decisions, and thus more profit. This is supplemented by efforts to introduce experts to supervisory boards, such as the aforementioned industrialists. Indeed, one large French bank has a financial research service which has departments on many sectors on the economy. The largest banks become universal, without specialisation.
Lenin says that the turn of the 20th century marked the death of the old banking system of middlemen, and the birth of the new system of the domination of financial capital over industrial capital. Indeed, the crisis of 1900, right on the turn of the century, massively intensified this process, albeit with mergers taking place in the years before then.
The savings-banks and post offices are more decentralized, spreading to more remote places and wider sections of the population, and are beginning to compete with banks. But as they pay interest on deposits and seek profitable investments for their capital to provide that interest, they become more and more like the banks (and indeed become controlled by the very same banking monopolists).
Lenin remarks that larger banks become increasingly like stock exchanges; whereas before the 1870-90 depression the Stock Exchange was regarded by bourgeois economists as “youthful”, they are now essentially dominated by the big banks.
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SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him] - 10mon
Chapter 3: Finance Capital and the Financial Oligarchy
::: spoiler spoiler
As capitalism progresses, money capital is separated from industrial/productive capital. Rentiers, who purely survive on income from money capital, are separated from entrepreneurs, who are involved in the management of productive capital. Under imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, financial oligarchy takes hold and the rentier is dominant.
Nonetheless, as bank monopolists sink their funds into industry, and take control away from the original industrialists, they increasingly become industrial capitalists themselves. Bank capital which is transformed into industrial capital can thus can be called finance capital. Under a system which produces commodities and has private property, such as capitalism, a financial oligarchy invariably arises. Part of what enables this is the “holding system”:
A concern needs only hold 50% of the shares to control another company (in practice, about 40%). This means that, through subsidaries companies, a principal company may control a set of subsidiary companies which then control their own subsidiaries and so on, while only requiring a relatively small amount of capital, by using the capital of acquired subsidiaries to control yet more subsidiaries. For example, the General Electric Company held sufficient shares in ~200 other companies to dominate their dealings, and thereby controlled a total capital of 1500 million marks despite not actually possessing that capital directly.
If the ownership of shares is “democratized” (”every worker should be a shareholder!” etc), the financial oligarchy can actually further strengthen itself by overpowering small, scattered shareholders. There are certain limits on this process; Germany, for example, does not allow shares to be issued below the value of 1000 marks. However, in more advanced capitalist countries, like Britain, the limit is just one pound (20 marks), which allows them to be more imperialist.
As these holding (”mother”) companies are technically separate from the subsidiary (”daughter”) companies, there are many tricks that can be performed without accountability, such as drawing up false balance sheets which do not violate the law on strict technicalities but nonetheless allow the monopolists to confidently make otherwise very risky major transactions that smaller companies cannot do, and conceal information from shareholders.
In Russia, the banks are divided into 1) those under this holding system and 2) “independent banks; the former consists of German, British, and French holdings. Over 75% of the capital of the big banks actually belonged to banks that were mere daughter companies of foreign banks; thereby making Russian shareholders relatively powerless compared to German shareholders. Additionally, over 40% of the working capital in the major St. Petersburg banks is devoted to mining, oil, metallurgical, and cement industries - indicating the merging of industrial and bank capital.
There are many tricks that monopoly allows you to do. Oligarchs can buy up the shares of many firms and then establish high prices under their monopoly, increasing their profits well in excess of the initial price of buying the shares. Additionally, bank monopolies can make substantial profit out of large loans received by countries, such as that which Morocco received in 1904 in which ~20% of the total loan went to French monopoly banks (essentially, international usury). A country can have a stagnant population and economy and yet grow rich via usury. An extraordinarily high rate of profit can be obtained via bonds; the profit gained by floating foreign loans is much more profitable than regular businesses.
During industrial booms, the financial oligarchy makes large profits; in industrial depressions, these oligarchs buy failing businesses for cheap, and are “reconstructed” or “reorganised”, and new capital invested, in order to bring in enough profit to make up for the purchase. This not only increases the profits of the banks, but also eliminates competition. Oligarchs also speculate in land in the suburbs of growing towns, also allowing them a monopoly on rents.
A monopoly is unbound by the form of government and most other political details; political or economic “freedom” is made increasingly worthless. Those who work for the government may aspire to work for the large banks, and those in state cartel committees may go on to work for those very same cartels.
The growth in issued securities grew relatively slowly in the decades after 1870, and then exploded, doubling from 1900 to 1910 (reflecting the aforementioned establishment of the financial oligarchy at the turn of the century). Britain, the United States, France, and Germany dominate the total issued securities, jointly owning 80% of the global total, with Russia in distant fifth and the rest of Europe far behind. Two of these economies are old capitalist economies and possess many colonies (Britain and France); while the other two are rapidly developing and have capitalist monopolies in industry (Germany and the United States). The rest of the world are the debtors to these four countries.
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SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him] - 10mon
Chapter 4: Export of Capital
::: spoiler spoiler
During the era of capitalism with free competition, there was the export of goods. During the era of capitalism with monopoly rule, is the export of capital.
As capitalism develops, corporations and countries alike grow unevenly, resulting in internal and international exchange; such as England during the mid-19th century, who reached industrial production first among the countries of the world. By the end of the 19th century, other European powers erected tariffs to encourage their own industries to develop, thereby no longer being mere suppliers of raw material. Now, there are monopoly capitalist associations throughout Europe, and particularly of the four aforementioned richest countries; they have produced large surpluses of capital.
A lack of internal development (e.g. through boosting agriculture) is no accident and is in fact a fundamental condition of capitalism; if surplus capital was used to raise the living standards of the masses, it would decrease their profits. This becomes a positive feedback loop: the poverty of the masses means they have less money, which means they cannot buy as many commodities, which means they generate less profit for the capitalists, which prompts the capitalists to find other profitable avenues rather than supporting the masses, causing further impoverishment.
The profitable avenue is to export capital abroad. Profits are higher abroad because capital is scarce, land and raw materials are cheap, and wages are low. Transportation lines are constructed and the basic conditions for industrial development are being created. As with other phenomena we’ve discussed so far, the export of capital began reaching major heights at the turn of the 20th century. Just before WW1, the capital invested abroad by Britain, France, and Germany was ~200 billion francs, providing ~10 billion francs per year of income, which allows them the money to further exploit the many nations of the world.
Naturally, Britain invests largely in their colonies in America, Asia, Africa, and Australia, but not so much in Europe. French investments are instead mostly in Europe, but also differ from British imperialism for being usurious capital gained from government loans, whereas Britain’s capital is largely colonial. Germany has few colonies and instead invests in Europe and America.
Exporting capital delivers and accelerates the development of capitalism to foreign countries; development is decelerated at home and in exchange, accelerated abroad. However, capital-exporting corporations obtain advantages, such as favourable treaties or ownership of some station or harbor. France, for instance, often stipulates that part of the loan be spent on French war materials or ships, to create a market for commodities. Or, British capitalists may stipulate that transportation links in the developing world use building materials bought from British corporations. The capital-exporting corporations and countries often look at each other with jealousy; particularly Germany’s poor colonial position compared to Britain.
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SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him] - 10mon
Chapter 5: Division of the World Among Capitalist Associations
::: spoiler spoiler
Monopoly capitalist formations like cartels initially conquered their own national markets, and then expanded throughout the world. These national cartels formed deals between themselves, and further consolidated into international cartels - supermonopolies.
Lenin uses the example of the German electrical industries. Prior to 1900, there were several corporations backed by several banks in the electrical industry; then, there was a crisis in which smaller firms were ruined and the banks refused to support many of them with capital, resulting in only the banks’ closest allies thriving. By the 1910s, a monopoly had formed, with just two corporations (AEG and Siemens) existing and in very close cooperation. AEG grew to its massive position via the aforementioned holding system, comprising many subsidiary companies.
A similar process occurred in the United States, which created its own electric company, the GEC. In 1907, these two trusts formed an agreement which divided up the world between them, agreeing not to compete, and they exchanged inventions and information. Competition against this mega-trust is made enormously difficult.
These alliances are not permanent; trusts can still be brought to compete with each other if conditions change. Lenin uses the example of the oil industry, which is divided on an international scale between the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, as well as several smaller companies such as in Baku, Austria, Romania, and those in Dutch colonies. Earlier, Deutsche Bank supported these smaller companies. These companies battle each other for larger monopolies by buying up oilfields. This eventually led to Deutsche Bank having to take the L (though they later tried to create a state oil monopoly which only led to various German corporations bickering about how to divide the profits, forestalling the plan until it was shelved due to the beginning of WW1). In the end, private and state monopolies are interwoven, supporting each other to create profit.
Lenin draws upon further examples of international trust formation, by talking about shipping companies, the international rail cartel, the steel cartel, and the zinc cartels. In most cases, the constituent companies agree to divide up the world and force any companies outside of the international cartel into submission, usually resulting in their collapse (and/or joining the international cartel).
Lenin points out that far from guaranteeing peace among nations - the argument essentially being that the development of international corporations means that they would not tolerate the disruptions in logistics and manpower that war would cause - the opposite is true. International competition and battle between cartels, and their division of the world, is the current form of the economic struggle that is inherent to a class system. Indeed, the international cartels divide up the world in accordance with both their own strength (e.g. their total capital invested, their manpower, etc) but also in accordance to the strength of their governments/militaries and the territory they control. Dividing international competition/cooperation into the categories of warlike/peacelike (and therefore saying that international monopolization is good between it might reduce war and increase peace) is nonsense, because as monopolization continues, national bourgeoisie are all still fundamentally in conflict for the highest profits, and this strategy of conflict fluctuates between the mere appearances of “peacelike” or “warlike”. Devastating military actions between governments aren’t some outside factor that the cartels are total victims to; they’re yet another way in which international cartels battle each other and seek to increase their strength. Meanwhile, non-military actions - the international cartels getting along nicely - still accelerate the impoverishment of the working classes. Either way, the poor are being disadvantaged - “peace” or “war”, it’s ALL class warfare.
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SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him] - 10mon
Chapter 6: Division of the World Among the Great Powers
::: spoiler spoiler
The characteristic feature of capitalism in Lenin’s time is the end of world partitioning - there are no more “unoccupied” territories for the capitalists to claim. The world can now only be repartitioned. The fact that this coincides with the development of finance capital is not accidental.
Great Britain saw a massive period of colonial expansion from 1860 to 1880, although they continued a lesser (but still significant) rate of expansion for 1880 to 1900. France and Germany, however, saw their most massive rate of expansion from 1880 to 1900, as Africa and Polynesia was being partitioned. Overall, from 1876 to 1914, the six Great Powers (Britain, Russia, France, Germany, America, Japan) went from 40 million to 65 million square kilometers (compared to the mere ~16 million square kilometers of the Great Powers themselves). This growth was, unsurprisingly, uneven; aside from Britain and Russia, four of those Powers had virtually no colonies in 1876, and France gained substantially more than Germany despite their similar land areas (as they started off much richer). Additionally, Russia has had large colonies but nonetheless is still enmeshed in pre-capitalist relations.
During the period of competitive capitalism, in the mid-1800s, British politicians frequently opposed colonial policy and sought for their eventual separation from Britain, regarding them as disadvantageous for Britain’s own development. Once there was major competition for colonies from Europe and America, the value of monopoly was realized simultaneously by the capitalists and the politicians, resulting in a resurgence in nakedly imperialist policy and rhetoric; Lenin quotes Cecil Rhodes, responsible for the Anglo-Boer War, who plainly states that imperialism and resettlement was necessary to prevent civil war inside Britain.
Lenin notes that not all the world has fallen under the dominion of the Great Powers - there exists small states with some colonies (such as the Dutch and their colonies), as well as semi-colonial states like Persia and China, which exist as transitory forms. The battle over these remaining semi-colonial states will be increasingly bitter as the Great Powers seek the last remaining pieces of territory between themselves. There are other forms of state dependence, such as Argentina, in which they are so financially dependent on Britain that they might as well be a colony; or Portugal, which has been a British protectorate for hundreds of years, with Britain receiving privileges and preferential conditions “in return” for protecting Portugal from Spain and France. These arrangements are not new to capitalism, but now form links in the chain of world finance capital.
In a similar way, imperialism and international state competition existed before the Great Powers, but the socio-economic systems behind, say, the Roman Empire and Great Britain are fundamentally different, and there are even major differences in this regard between competitive and monopoly capitalism (as we already saw this chapter with Britain).
Uniquely, we are now in an economic stage in which ALL the sources of raw materials can be controlled and divided up between cartels, and as resources are finite (oil, ore, and soil can and will be depleted), the competition to acquire and hold on to these resources will become increasingly bitter; Lenin notes that timber, leather, and textile materials are rising in price over time, and that the capitalists are trying to match the ever-growing demand for these materials. Bourgeois reformists state that simply by improving agricultural conditions, the supply of raw materials could be increased, but this would require the raising of wages for workers and hence the reduction of profits, which the capitalists would not allow.
As technology advances, the ability of corporations to extract more raw materials from existing sources (or make viable entirely new sources) increases. Hence, corporations strive to seize as much land as possible, regardless of its current worth, in the hopes that resources that could one day be profitable can be found there; the competition between corporations and Great Powers is thus not limited by the apparent worth of the land they are fighting over. These powers grow and harvest what they can with what land they have, to try and put themselves in a better position that their competitors.
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SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him] - 10mon
Chapter 7: Imperialism, as a Special Stage of Capitalism
::: spoiler spoiler
Imperialism emerged from the characteristics of capitalism, but only at a certain point in capitalist development. Free competition transformed into its opposite - monopoly capitalism - which now exists above free competition, ignoring it almost entirely.
A brief (and not incorrect) definition of imperialism is that it is the monopoly stage of capitalism; that is, finance capital is established out of the merger of industrialists and bankers, and colonialists take control of swathes of the world’s territories to generate profit. A fuller definition has five key points:
Production and capital has been concentrated into monopolies that play a decisive role in the economy.
Bank capital has merged with industrial capital to create finance capital; imperialism is NOT a tendency of industrial capitalists, but rather of finance capitalists.
Capital - not just commodities - is substantially exported abroad; selling things on the market to other countries is NOT imperialism.
Monopoly capitalist associations become international; factories are owned abroad, there are bank branches throughout several countries, etc.
The world has been fully partitioned between capitalist powers; imperialist powers now struggle for control of semi-colonial powers or to repartition what already exists.
Imperialism is therefore a distinctly new phase of capitalism, though as system boundaries are fluid, it’s impossible to give an exact decade, year, month, etc on which the transformation between phases occurred (though the start of the 20th century is a useful general marking point).
Lenin then starts fighting with Kautsky, as he tends to do.
He disagrees with Kautsky’s definition of imperialism, which is essentially that it is a policy and not inherent to the capitalist system. Lenin has demonstrated that imperialism is not a consciously-chosen political policy of the capitalists; that is to say, it is not as if the capitalists could join together and agree to stop doing imperialism and start doing something else. It IS capitalism in its highest stage.
He disagrees with Kautsky’s argument against the progressivism of capitalism and imperialism as argued by Cunow; as Kautsky believes that imperialism is largely a widespread political policy that could be changed and reformed, he therefore opposes (what he believes to be) imperialism but does not want to truly change the economic conditions that allow and sustain imperialism.
He disagrees with Kautsky’s argument of the creation of an “ultra-imperialism”; that is, the ultimate drawing together of all the world’s monopoly corporations into a single, gargantuan monopoly corporation, internationally unified.
While imperialism might be tending towards this in the most abstract sense - one could draw a line of best fit on a graph and extrapolate it to centuries from now - this hypothesis is problematic in that it ignores existing antagonisms in the real world economy that would actually prevent this from occurring; after all, finance capital does not lessen contradictions and unevenness around the world, it instead increases them. There are increasingly violent struggles between imperialist states; there will not be a peaceful ultra-imperialist monopoly at the end of it, only total destruction. There are no solutions to contradictions inside capitalism other than the exertion of force and violence, and as unevenness continues to increase, so too will violence. This unevenness occurs both between an imperialist power and its colonies, but also between the imperialists themselves; Germany is a good example of this (as we, with the benefit of hindsight, know even better than Lenin).
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SeventyTwoTrillion in theory
The Imperialism Reading Group - Week 5 - February 10th to February 16th - Finishing Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism!
Welcome to the fifth week of the Imperialism Reading Group! Last week's thread is here.
This is a weekly thread in which we read through books on and related to imperialism and geopolitics. How many chapters or pages we will cover per week will vary based on the density and difficulty of the book, but I'm generally aiming at 30 to 40 pages per week, which should take you about an hour or two.
This week, we are finishing Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Next week, we will move on to Super Imperialism - The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance, by Michael Hudson.
Every week, I will write a summary of the chapter(s) read, for those who have already read the book and don't wish to reread, can't follow along for various reasons, or for those joining later who want to dive right in to the next book without needing to pick this one up too. I will post all my chapter summaries in this final thread, for access in one convenient location.
This week, we will be reading Chapter 9: Critique of Imperialism, and Chapter 10: The Place of Imperialism in History. If you want, you can also read the Appendix: Imperialism and the Split in Socialism.
Please comment or message me directly if you wish to be pinged for this group.
Drinking game: Take a shot every time Lenin shits on Kautsky
gonna write enemies to enemies fanfiction about them
*friends to enemies
I'd die instantly
The final week of Lenin's Imperialism!
If you're joining us when we move on to Michael Hudson's Superimperialism next week, make sure to grab a copy of the book somewhere at some point over this week or next week. If you're not joining us, let me know and I will take you off the ping list.
@RedDawn@hexbear.net @Cowbee@hexbear.net @kittin@hexbear.net @Sebrof@hexbear.net @TrippyFocus@lemmy.ml @OrionsMask@hexbear.net @0__0@hexbear.net @SummerIsTooWarm@hexbear.net @mbt2402@hexbear.net @BanjoBolshevik@hexbear.net @BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net @NinjaGinga@hexbear.net @Test_Tickles@hexbear.net @luddybuddy@hexbear.net @Coca_Cola_but_Commie@hexbear.net @niph@hexbear.net @redline@lemmygrad.ml @glimmer_twin@hexbear.net @MF_COOM@hexbear.net @MiraculousMM@hexbear.net @StarkWolf@hexbear.net @StillNoLeftLeft@hexbear.net @BGDelirium@hexbear.net @THEPH0NECOMPANY@hexbear.net @devils_dust@hexbear.net @iridaniotter@hexbear.net @Ehrmantrout@hexbear.net @quarrk@hexbear.net @RaisedFistJoker@hexbear.net @Lemmygradwontallowme@hexbear.net @darkmode@hexbear.net @PaulSmackage@hexbear.net @FunkyStuff@hexbear.net @IceWallowCum@hexbear.net @Babs@hexbear.net @PerryGirl@hexbear.net @Rojo27@hexbear.net @OgdenTO@hexbear.net
I appreciate the ping list but I was a shitty comrade and didn’t join the last reading list.
I commit to joining the next. Thank you.
If you want a quick summary of what Lenin talked about and a good primer for Super Imperialism, check out Vijay Prashad's talk with Gabriel Rockhill where he talks about Lenin's Imperialism and how imperialism has transformed since then; he does plug his own book there, maybe 72T could consider adding it to the queue after Hudson's.
That particular video is a banger. Seconded
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I didn't participate in this round (sorry Vladimir) but I will atone by linking all the week posts together in one comment.
And so completes Lenin's Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism! These last two chapters were basically Lenin picking fights with everybody (especially Kautsky) and then summarizing the book.
I will repost all my chapter summaries below, for easy access for those viewing this thread later on.
Chapter 1: Concentration of Production and Monopolies
::: spoiler spoiler Capitalism’s most characteristic feature is perhaps the growth and concentration of industry into massive enterprises. Lenin quotes figures to this effect in Germany between 1882 and 1907; both in terms of concentration of workers and production. The latter is much greater due to massive businesses being more productive; less than 1% of businesses use over 75% of the steam+electric power. Lenin also quotes figures from America, demonstrating an even greater degree of monopolization, showing that it is an international trend.
A single massive enterprise can be part of many branches of industry, which makes them less reliant on trading between those branches (particularly when raw materials are expensive), which increases profits relative to other enterprises, leading to them becoming yet more powerful. Countries with high tariffs only further lead to monopolization. In countries with freer trade, such as Britain in Lenin’s day, monopolization instead occurs because once a massive, technically-advanced enterprise is established (with a massive amount of capital investment), it is harder to launch competing enterprises both due to the initial capital demand, and because a new enterprise would flood the market with new products, and - unless there is a sudden expansion in demand - the price of the products produced would not generate sufficient profit for either the new or old enterprise. Hence, Marx’s analysis that competition must lead to monopoly is proven correct.
Monopoly capitalism overcame competitive capitalism at the beginning of the 20th century, but it has a rich prehistory which begins in the 1860s. There was an international industrial depression from the 1870s to the 1890s. By the start of the depression, Britain had completed its construction of competitive capitalism and Germany was still the battleground between handicraft and industry. During the depression, the cartels slowly coalesced. At the end of the depression, these business cartels collaborated to take advantage of a brief boom in 1889-1890, driving up prices to their own ultimate detriment, leading to a five-year period of bad trade and low prices. This did not dissuade the cartels, but instead emboldened them, leading them to soon take control of entire fields of industry; mining most notably, initially. The cartel system acquired a coke syndicate, then a coal syndicate. By the 1910s, many industrial fields now no longer had free competition.
A cartel is a group of enterprises, businesses, etc, who use pre-arranged agreements to subvert market mechanisms, deciding the quantities and prices of goods and dividing profits between them. This is more efficient than markets, hence their growth. Some examples are the Rhine-Westphalian Coal Syndicate, which by 1910 controlled over 95% of all coal output in the area. Another is the Standard Oil Company in the US, and the United States Steel Corporation, which hire engineers specifically for inventing more cost-efficient production methods. The Tobacco Trust’s organisation is particularly enlightening; it formed subsidiary companies just to acquire patents, and its massive capital means it can form its own machine shops for various inventions in the field of cigarette production. Ease of access to raw materials is no substantial factor for monopolization; the German cement industry was highly cartelised into regional syndicates which raised prices, despite the ease of access to the raw materials for cement.
Eventually, all sources of raw material are analyzed, their yearly output predicted and divided up between enterprises, transportation methods are bought up by them, and they have near-guaranteed access to the most skilled labour. For new businesses that which to compete, their logistics are halted; unions are forbidden from working with them; prices are cut to ruin them (as the monopolies can better handle it than new businesses); boycotts are created; and many other underhanded and dishonest tricks. This is how the social order transforms from free competition to complete socialisation, to benefit a few. The bulk of profits now go to those adept at financial manipulation, such as speculators.
Cartels cannot abolish capitalist crises; on the contrary, they intensify them. As cartelised industries increase in strength, other industries suffer from an increasing lack of coordination. In this disparity, there is anarchy and crises. In turn, crises increase the tendency towards monopoly. For example, during the crisis of 1900 in which prices and demand fell, the non-cartel enterprises were in a precarious position, which barely affected the cartel enterprises, due to their durability, created by the magnitude of capital invested and the complicated methods that provide a significant barrier of entry to other enterprises. :::
Chapter 2: Banks and their New Role
::: spoiler spoiler Banks transform capital that is inactive into capital that can yield profit for use by the capitalist class.
When banks merely carry the current accounts of a few capitalists, it is a mostly technical and auxiliary operation. However, banks also undergo concentration and monopolization, meaning that they eventually come to possess vast amounts of the money capital of all larger and smaller capitalists in any one country; and, therefore, control over much of the means of production. This transforms them into something else entirely.
Lenin returns to Germany for an example, demonstrating a 40% growth in combined deposits from 1907 to 1912 among fairly large banks (above a capital of 1 million marks), while small banks become either squeezed out of the story or become branches of the larger banks. However, when looking at total bank capital, the nine biggest Berlin banks controlled over 80% of total German bank capital; and these massive banks have affiliated banks which they have acquired via purchase or exchanging shares, annexing them into their own groups/concerns. For example, Deustche Bank comprised 87 banks in some fashion.
In Germany, the six largest banks rapidly expanded at the turn of the 20th century, transforming thousands of scattered enterprises into a single national capitalist economy, then later into a world capitalist economy. These trends are only more advanced in older capitalist systems like in Britain and France. In the United States, two very large banks - Rockefeller and Morgan - control a capital of 11 billion marks; about equivalent to those of the nine largest banks in Germany.
Bank monopolists are capable, due to their banking connections, to determine the financial positions of capitalists and then control them by restricting or enlarging them, or give or restrict credit. This gives them the power to either destroy them or increase their capital rapidly. Like with industrial enterprises, “competing” banks are often collaborators, forming increasingly durable agreements. In doing so, banks now control, directly and indirectly, much of the population of their countries; and agricultural capital stagnates and lags behind profitable heavy industries, to the detriment of the working classes. It is under this paradigm that even industry cartels can be commanded from yet higher in the economy.
The bank monopolists link up with the industrial enterprises and bank directors are appointed to the supervisory boards of industrial and commercial enterprises. This leads to increasing interdependency between banks and industry; for example, six of the biggest Berlin banks were represented by their directors in over 300 industrial companies and by their board members in over 400. These companies range across the whole of society, not merely heavy industry. The opposite also occurs, in which the supervisory boards of banks are staffed by industrialists. Additionally, bank monopolists collaborate with the state; supervisory board seats are sometimes given to members of parliament or city councillers.
At a certain level of power and concentration, this leads to a division of labour among the bank monopolists. Each director has his own special function; for example, a director may specialize in dealing with industry; or another with a certain set of specific enterprises with which he has good connections; or yet another with a foreign enterprise. This leads them out of pure banking, into becoming experts and analysts of fields of industry, or insurance, or commercial trade, and so on. This makes them more competent at those roles, resulting in better decisions, and thus more profit. This is supplemented by efforts to introduce experts to supervisory boards, such as the aforementioned industrialists. Indeed, one large French bank has a financial research service which has departments on many sectors on the economy. The largest banks become universal, without specialisation.
Lenin says that the turn of the 20th century marked the death of the old banking system of middlemen, and the birth of the new system of the domination of financial capital over industrial capital. Indeed, the crisis of 1900, right on the turn of the century, massively intensified this process, albeit with mergers taking place in the years before then.
The savings-banks and post offices are more decentralized, spreading to more remote places and wider sections of the population, and are beginning to compete with banks. But as they pay interest on deposits and seek profitable investments for their capital to provide that interest, they become more and more like the banks (and indeed become controlled by the very same banking monopolists).
Lenin remarks that larger banks become increasingly like stock exchanges; whereas before the 1870-90 depression the Stock Exchange was regarded by bourgeois economists as “youthful”, they are now essentially dominated by the big banks. :::
Chapter 3: Finance Capital and the Financial Oligarchy
::: spoiler spoiler
As capitalism progresses, money capital is separated from industrial/productive capital. Rentiers, who purely survive on income from money capital, are separated from entrepreneurs, who are involved in the management of productive capital. Under imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, financial oligarchy takes hold and the rentier is dominant.
Nonetheless, as bank monopolists sink their funds into industry, and take control away from the original industrialists, they increasingly become industrial capitalists themselves. Bank capital which is transformed into industrial capital can thus can be called finance capital. Under a system which produces commodities and has private property, such as capitalism, a financial oligarchy invariably arises. Part of what enables this is the “holding system”:
A concern needs only hold 50% of the shares to control another company (in practice, about 40%). This means that, through subsidaries companies, a principal company may control a set of subsidiary companies which then control their own subsidiaries and so on, while only requiring a relatively small amount of capital, by using the capital of acquired subsidiaries to control yet more subsidiaries. For example, the General Electric Company held sufficient shares in ~200 other companies to dominate their dealings, and thereby controlled a total capital of 1500 million marks despite not actually possessing that capital directly.
If the ownership of shares is “democratized” (”every worker should be a shareholder!” etc), the financial oligarchy can actually further strengthen itself by overpowering small, scattered shareholders. There are certain limits on this process; Germany, for example, does not allow shares to be issued below the value of 1000 marks. However, in more advanced capitalist countries, like Britain, the limit is just one pound (20 marks), which allows them to be more imperialist.
As these holding (”mother”) companies are technically separate from the subsidiary (”daughter”) companies, there are many tricks that can be performed without accountability, such as drawing up false balance sheets which do not violate the law on strict technicalities but nonetheless allow the monopolists to confidently make otherwise very risky major transactions that smaller companies cannot do, and conceal information from shareholders.
In Russia, the banks are divided into 1) those under this holding system and 2) “independent banks; the former consists of German, British, and French holdings. Over 75% of the capital of the big banks actually belonged to banks that were mere daughter companies of foreign banks; thereby making Russian shareholders relatively powerless compared to German shareholders. Additionally, over 40% of the working capital in the major St. Petersburg banks is devoted to mining, oil, metallurgical, and cement industries - indicating the merging of industrial and bank capital.
There are many tricks that monopoly allows you to do. Oligarchs can buy up the shares of many firms and then establish high prices under their monopoly, increasing their profits well in excess of the initial price of buying the shares. Additionally, bank monopolies can make substantial profit out of large loans received by countries, such as that which Morocco received in 1904 in which ~20% of the total loan went to French monopoly banks (essentially, international usury). A country can have a stagnant population and economy and yet grow rich via usury. An extraordinarily high rate of profit can be obtained via bonds; the profit gained by floating foreign loans is much more profitable than regular businesses.
During industrial booms, the financial oligarchy makes large profits; in industrial depressions, these oligarchs buy failing businesses for cheap, and are “reconstructed” or “reorganised”, and new capital invested, in order to bring in enough profit to make up for the purchase. This not only increases the profits of the banks, but also eliminates competition. Oligarchs also speculate in land in the suburbs of growing towns, also allowing them a monopoly on rents.
A monopoly is unbound by the form of government and most other political details; political or economic “freedom” is made increasingly worthless. Those who work for the government may aspire to work for the large banks, and those in state cartel committees may go on to work for those very same cartels.
The growth in issued securities grew relatively slowly in the decades after 1870, and then exploded, doubling from 1900 to 1910 (reflecting the aforementioned establishment of the financial oligarchy at the turn of the century). Britain, the United States, France, and Germany dominate the total issued securities, jointly owning 80% of the global total, with Russia in distant fifth and the rest of Europe far behind. Two of these economies are old capitalist economies and possess many colonies (Britain and France); while the other two are rapidly developing and have capitalist monopolies in industry (Germany and the United States). The rest of the world are the debtors to these four countries. :::
Chapter 4: Export of Capital
::: spoiler spoiler During the era of capitalism with free competition, there was the export of goods. During the era of capitalism with monopoly rule, is the export of capital.
As capitalism develops, corporations and countries alike grow unevenly, resulting in internal and international exchange; such as England during the mid-19th century, who reached industrial production first among the countries of the world. By the end of the 19th century, other European powers erected tariffs to encourage their own industries to develop, thereby no longer being mere suppliers of raw material. Now, there are monopoly capitalist associations throughout Europe, and particularly of the four aforementioned richest countries; they have produced large surpluses of capital.
A lack of internal development (e.g. through boosting agriculture) is no accident and is in fact a fundamental condition of capitalism; if surplus capital was used to raise the living standards of the masses, it would decrease their profits. This becomes a positive feedback loop: the poverty of the masses means they have less money, which means they cannot buy as many commodities, which means they generate less profit for the capitalists, which prompts the capitalists to find other profitable avenues rather than supporting the masses, causing further impoverishment.
The profitable avenue is to export capital abroad. Profits are higher abroad because capital is scarce, land and raw materials are cheap, and wages are low. Transportation lines are constructed and the basic conditions for industrial development are being created. As with other phenomena we’ve discussed so far, the export of capital began reaching major heights at the turn of the 20th century. Just before WW1, the capital invested abroad by Britain, France, and Germany was ~200 billion francs, providing ~10 billion francs per year of income, which allows them the money to further exploit the many nations of the world.
Naturally, Britain invests largely in their colonies in America, Asia, Africa, and Australia, but not so much in Europe. French investments are instead mostly in Europe, but also differ from British imperialism for being usurious capital gained from government loans, whereas Britain’s capital is largely colonial. Germany has few colonies and instead invests in Europe and America.
Exporting capital delivers and accelerates the development of capitalism to foreign countries; development is decelerated at home and in exchange, accelerated abroad. However, capital-exporting corporations obtain advantages, such as favourable treaties or ownership of some station or harbor. France, for instance, often stipulates that part of the loan be spent on French war materials or ships, to create a market for commodities. Or, British capitalists may stipulate that transportation links in the developing world use building materials bought from British corporations. The capital-exporting corporations and countries often look at each other with jealousy; particularly Germany’s poor colonial position compared to Britain. :::
Chapter 5: Division of the World Among Capitalist Associations
::: spoiler spoiler Monopoly capitalist formations like cartels initially conquered their own national markets, and then expanded throughout the world. These national cartels formed deals between themselves, and further consolidated into international cartels - supermonopolies.
Lenin uses the example of the German electrical industries. Prior to 1900, there were several corporations backed by several banks in the electrical industry; then, there was a crisis in which smaller firms were ruined and the banks refused to support many of them with capital, resulting in only the banks’ closest allies thriving. By the 1910s, a monopoly had formed, with just two corporations (AEG and Siemens) existing and in very close cooperation. AEG grew to its massive position via the aforementioned holding system, comprising many subsidiary companies.
A similar process occurred in the United States, which created its own electric company, the GEC. In 1907, these two trusts formed an agreement which divided up the world between them, agreeing not to compete, and they exchanged inventions and information. Competition against this mega-trust is made enormously difficult.
These alliances are not permanent; trusts can still be brought to compete with each other if conditions change. Lenin uses the example of the oil industry, which is divided on an international scale between the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, as well as several smaller companies such as in Baku, Austria, Romania, and those in Dutch colonies. Earlier, Deutsche Bank supported these smaller companies. These companies battle each other for larger monopolies by buying up oilfields. This eventually led to Deutsche Bank having to take the L (though they later tried to create a state oil monopoly which only led to various German corporations bickering about how to divide the profits, forestalling the plan until it was shelved due to the beginning of WW1). In the end, private and state monopolies are interwoven, supporting each other to create profit.
Lenin draws upon further examples of international trust formation, by talking about shipping companies, the international rail cartel, the steel cartel, and the zinc cartels. In most cases, the constituent companies agree to divide up the world and force any companies outside of the international cartel into submission, usually resulting in their collapse (and/or joining the international cartel).
Lenin points out that far from guaranteeing peace among nations - the argument essentially being that the development of international corporations means that they would not tolerate the disruptions in logistics and manpower that war would cause - the opposite is true. International competition and battle between cartels, and their division of the world, is the current form of the economic struggle that is inherent to a class system. Indeed, the international cartels divide up the world in accordance with both their own strength (e.g. their total capital invested, their manpower, etc) but also in accordance to the strength of their governments/militaries and the territory they control. Dividing international competition/cooperation into the categories of warlike/peacelike (and therefore saying that international monopolization is good between it might reduce war and increase peace) is nonsense, because as monopolization continues, national bourgeoisie are all still fundamentally in conflict for the highest profits, and this strategy of conflict fluctuates between the mere appearances of “peacelike” or “warlike”. Devastating military actions between governments aren’t some outside factor that the cartels are total victims to; they’re yet another way in which international cartels battle each other and seek to increase their strength. Meanwhile, non-military actions - the international cartels getting along nicely - still accelerate the impoverishment of the working classes. Either way, the poor are being disadvantaged - “peace” or “war”, it’s ALL class warfare. :::
Chapter 6: Division of the World Among the Great Powers
::: spoiler spoiler The characteristic feature of capitalism in Lenin’s time is the end of world partitioning - there are no more “unoccupied” territories for the capitalists to claim. The world can now only be repartitioned. The fact that this coincides with the development of finance capital is not accidental.
Great Britain saw a massive period of colonial expansion from 1860 to 1880, although they continued a lesser (but still significant) rate of expansion for 1880 to 1900. France and Germany, however, saw their most massive rate of expansion from 1880 to 1900, as Africa and Polynesia was being partitioned. Overall, from 1876 to 1914, the six Great Powers (Britain, Russia, France, Germany, America, Japan) went from 40 million to 65 million square kilometers (compared to the mere ~16 million square kilometers of the Great Powers themselves). This growth was, unsurprisingly, uneven; aside from Britain and Russia, four of those Powers had virtually no colonies in 1876, and France gained substantially more than Germany despite their similar land areas (as they started off much richer). Additionally, Russia has had large colonies but nonetheless is still enmeshed in pre-capitalist relations.
During the period of competitive capitalism, in the mid-1800s, British politicians frequently opposed colonial policy and sought for their eventual separation from Britain, regarding them as disadvantageous for Britain’s own development. Once there was major competition for colonies from Europe and America, the value of monopoly was realized simultaneously by the capitalists and the politicians, resulting in a resurgence in nakedly imperialist policy and rhetoric; Lenin quotes Cecil Rhodes, responsible for the Anglo-Boer War, who plainly states that imperialism and resettlement was necessary to prevent civil war inside Britain.
Lenin notes that not all the world has fallen under the dominion of the Great Powers - there exists small states with some colonies (such as the Dutch and their colonies), as well as semi-colonial states like Persia and China, which exist as transitory forms. The battle over these remaining semi-colonial states will be increasingly bitter as the Great Powers seek the last remaining pieces of territory between themselves. There are other forms of state dependence, such as Argentina, in which they are so financially dependent on Britain that they might as well be a colony; or Portugal, which has been a British protectorate for hundreds of years, with Britain receiving privileges and preferential conditions “in return” for protecting Portugal from Spain and France. These arrangements are not new to capitalism, but now form links in the chain of world finance capital.
In a similar way, imperialism and international state competition existed before the Great Powers, but the socio-economic systems behind, say, the Roman Empire and Great Britain are fundamentally different, and there are even major differences in this regard between competitive and monopoly capitalism (as we already saw this chapter with Britain).
Uniquely, we are now in an economic stage in which ALL the sources of raw materials can be controlled and divided up between cartels, and as resources are finite (oil, ore, and soil can and will be depleted), the competition to acquire and hold on to these resources will become increasingly bitter; Lenin notes that timber, leather, and textile materials are rising in price over time, and that the capitalists are trying to match the ever-growing demand for these materials. Bourgeois reformists state that simply by improving agricultural conditions, the supply of raw materials could be increased, but this would require the raising of wages for workers and hence the reduction of profits, which the capitalists would not allow.
As technology advances, the ability of corporations to extract more raw materials from existing sources (or make viable entirely new sources) increases. Hence, corporations strive to seize as much land as possible, regardless of its current worth, in the hopes that resources that could one day be profitable can be found there; the competition between corporations and Great Powers is thus not limited by the apparent worth of the land they are fighting over. These powers grow and harvest what they can with what land they have, to try and put themselves in a better position that their competitors. :::
Chapter 7: Imperialism, as a Special Stage of Capitalism
::: spoiler spoiler Imperialism emerged from the characteristics of capitalism, but only at a certain point in capitalist development. Free competition transformed into its opposite - monopoly capitalism - which now exists above free competition, ignoring it almost entirely.
A brief (and not incorrect) definition of imperialism is that it is the monopoly stage of capitalism; that is, finance capital is established out of the merger of industrialists and bankers, and colonialists take control of swathes of the world’s territories to generate profit. A fuller definition has five key points:
Imperialism is therefore a distinctly new phase of capitalism, though as system boundaries are fluid, it’s impossible to give an exact decade, year, month, etc on which the transformation between phases occurred (though the start of the 20th century is a useful general marking point).
Lenin then starts fighting with Kautsky, as he tends to do.
He disagrees with Kautsky’s definition of imperialism, which is essentially that it is a policy and not inherent to the capitalist system. Lenin has demonstrated that imperialism is not a consciously-chosen political policy of the capitalists; that is to say, it is not as if the capitalists could join together and agree to stop doing imperialism and start doing something else. It IS capitalism in its highest stage.
He disagrees with Kautsky’s argument against the progressivism of capitalism and imperialism as argued by Cunow; as Kautsky believes that imperialism is largely a widespread political policy that could be changed and reformed, he therefore opposes (what he believes to be) imperialism but does not want to truly change the economic conditions that allow and sustain imperialism.
He disagrees with Kautsky’s argument of the creation of an “ultra-imperialism”; that is, the ultimate drawing together of all the world’s monopoly corporations into a single, gargantuan monopoly corporation, internationally unified.
While imperialism might be tending towards this in the most abstract sense - one could draw a line of best fit on a graph and extrapolate it to centuries from now - this hypothesis is problematic in that it ignores existing antagonisms in the real world economy that would actually prevent this from occurring; after all, finance capital does not lessen contradictions and unevenness around the world, it instead increases them. There are increasingly violent struggles between imperialist states; there will not be a peaceful ultra-imperialist monopoly at the end of it, only total destruction. There are no solutions to contradictions inside capitalism other than the exertion of force and violence, and as unevenness continues to increase, so too will violence. This unevenness occurs both between an imperialist power and its colonies, but also between the imperialists themselves; Germany is a good example of this (as we, with the benefit of hindsight, know even better than Lenin). :::