Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism

by Vladimir Lenin

"This transformation of competition into monopoly is one of the most important - if not the most important - phenomena of the modern capitalist economy"

During the First World War, Lenin found himself isolated, but he was not afraid to fight against the stream. He dedicated all his strength to educating and training the Bolsheviks on the basis of the genuine ideas of Marxism. His masterpiece, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, is an immortal monument to this weight in the vital field of theory.

No book has ever explained the phenomena of modern capitalism better. Indeed, all of Lenin's predictions concerning the concentration of capital, the dominance of the banks and finance capital, the growing antagonism between nation states and the inevitability of war arising out of the contradictions of imperialism have been shown to be true by the entire history of the last 100 years.

Using the empirical evidence and statistics at his disposal, Lenin explains that, in the stage of imperialist monopoly capitalism, the entire economy is under the domination of the banks and financial capital. Today, over 100 years after it was first published, this domination is 100 times greater. Lenin's text therefore stands as required reading for revolutionaries.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Economics, Philosophy, Theory, History, Classics

132 pages, Unknown Binding

First published April 1, 1917

About the author

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, leader of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks), statesman and political theorist. After the October Revolution he served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1924.

Reviews

[Fug o' Slavia · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you think Ultraimperialism exists, i feel bad for you son, Capitalism's got stages and imperialism's the highest one

[The Conspiracy is Capitalism · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perpetual War Economy: The Highest Stage of Capitalism?

Preamble:
--2024 update: I'm currently reading 2 works that use rather different lenses to engage with Lenin's short text:
a) Orthodox Marxist* Anthony Brewer's textbook Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey: describes Lenin's work as an outline (lacking in rigour) popularizing existing political economy theory (Hilferding/Hobson/Bukarin).
b) Global South Marxist-Leninist* organization Tricontinental Institute for Social Research's paper Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage: treats Lenin's work as describing a dynamic situation ("conjuncture") and takes inspiration from Lenin's method, rather than treating it as a static grand theory (see interview of Vijay Prashad).
*Labels are rough approximates, as always.

...in hindsight, my review seems to be inspired by the latter. I first provide the highlights of the text itself, and then I try to take the next step.

Highlights:
--Lenin's 1916 text (during WWI) stands alongside his era of pioneering theorists of imperialism such as:
i) liberal J.A. Hobson's 1901 Imperialism: A Study
ii) Marxist Rudolf Hilferding's 1910 Finance Capital: A Study in the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development
iii) "socialism or barbarism" Rosa Luxemburg's 1913 The Accumulation of Capital
iv) pioneering US sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois's 1915 essay "The African Roots of War" on how the imperialist “Scramble for Africa” were at the roots of WWI.

--Lenin's ABC's of Imperialism:
a) Monopoly Capitalism: stage of concentrated production reached in late 19th century, as it dominates profitability (efficiency, resilience during capitalist crises), while control/profit remains private. Petty bourgeoisie want to return to “free competition”, while “Tens of thousands of huge enterprises are everything; millions of small ones are nothing.”
b) Finance Capitalism: concentration of banks and industry, given the growing use of finance capital (controlled by banks, employed by industry), resulting in the financial oligarchy.
c) Colonial foreign policy: accumulated capital exported abroad to achieve greater profits (cheaper costs) instead of invested domestically. Accelerated division of the world for its raw materials and markets.
--Also: “super-profits” of imperialism used to bribe the “labour aristocracy” in the core capitalist countries (where Marx had envisioned the socialist revolutions), limiting their domestic workers' movements to opportunist reformism and social chauvinism (includes interesting tidbit of Engels and Marx discussing this tendency in mid-19th century Britain).

The Missing:
--Lenin's preface:

This pamphlet was written with an eye to the tsarist censorship. Hence, I was not only forced to confine myself strictly to an exclusively theoretical, specifically economic analysis of facts, but to formulate the few necessary observations on politics with extreme caution, by hints, in an allegorical language […]

--Next steps?

1) Perpetual War Economy:
--Global capitalism's rising contradictions of vast productive factories dictated by the needs of capitalist short-term profits rather than long-term social needs led to the Great Crash/Depression in the 1930s, vividly illustrated in the novel The Grapes of Wrath.
--The first capitalist countries to escape capitalism's pessimism (blocking long-term investments to revive the factories) used fascism, i.e. scapegoating/expansionist war/the visible fist to destroy socialist alternatives: Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism.
--Fascism's expansionism eventually revived imperialist world war (WWII), leading to the "creative destruction" to revive investments and rescue global capitalism from the Great Depression.
...However, with the end of WWII's booming war markets, the US's war factories risked crashing into another Great Depression. Its new productive capacity could only be harnessed by the demand of global war's insatiable appetite. Capitalist investments require profit, which requires finding buyers for ever-more commodities (compound growth!). Oh, the irrationality of capitalism, the ability to crash from a boom!
--Peacetime consumerism (despite subsidies to build the "middle class") often failed to suffice, ex. "the near-bankrupt aircraft industry" (Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation). Thus, the crucial role of the US military industrial complex, to artificially keep alive the war markets (Cold War "arms race"), to keep the flow of profits going.
...Related: "surplus recycling mechanism", see The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy
--I've yet to find a masterpiece on this, relying on bits and pieces:
-War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
-Ellsberg's The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner was written before he really started getting into the economics, as he mentions in this insightful interview series.

2) History of Imperialism up to today:
-Overview of coups, debt, SAPs, unequal trade/intellectual property: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions (taking the best from Chang's "kicking away the ladder" Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism while avoiding the "US Enlightenment" rose-colored glasses.
-intro: Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations (see Vijay Prashad on imperialism's ideological censorship ...my favorite lecturer, along with Michael Parenti)
-The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
-The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump
-The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
-The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South
-The British Empire before WWI: Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World

3) Updating Theories of Imperialism:
--Similar to how theories of imperialism are a crucial challenge to rigidly-linear "stages of development" theories, we can expand on Lenin's linear "highest stage" framing by considering the lifetime of the global economic system ("structural time") and cycles within it ("cyclic time"): World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Hyman P. Minsky's "debt cycles" are also a useful framing (see The Bubble and Beyond).
--On Global South resources:
-intro: The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry (see Utsa Patnaik interview).
-dive: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present.
-overview (including "super profits": The Veins of the South Are Still Open: Debates Around the Imperialism of Our Time
-debate between the Patnaiks vs. David Harvey in A Theory of Imperialism.
-Intermediate economic (esp. geopolitical/monetary) theory of imperialism (i.e. dollar imperialism) from a Global North lens: Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance (see Michael Hudson interview) and free trade imperialism: Trade, Development and Foreign Debt
-Anwar Shaikh's nuanced debate on reductionist "Monopoly Capitalism" vs. "real competition".

Quotes:
--Super-profits/labour aristocracy:

Obviously, out of such enormous superprofits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their “own” country) it is possible to bribe the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy. And that is just what the capitalists of the “advanced” countries are doing: they are bribing them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert.

This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour aristocracy, who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is the principal prop of the Second International, and in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie. For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real vehicles of reformism and chauvinism. In the civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie they inevitably, and in no small numbers, take the side of the bourgeoisie, the “Versaillese” against the “Communards”.

Unless the economic roots of this phenomenon are understood and its political and social significance is appreciated, not a step can be taken toward the solution of the practical problem of the communist movement and of the impending social revolution.

Imperialism is the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat. This has been confirmed since 1917 on a world-wide scale.

--On shell in state of decay:

Private property based on the labour of the small proprietor, free competition, democracy, all the catchwords with which the capitalists and their press deceive the workers and the peasants – are things of the distant past. Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the populations of the world by a handful of “advanced” countries. And this “booty” is shared between two or three powerful world marauders armed to the teeth (America, Great Britain, Japan), who involve the world in their war over the sharing of their booty.

When a big enterprise assumes gigantic proportions, and, on the basis of an exact computation of mass data, organises according to plan the supply of primary raw materials to the extent of two-thirds, or three-fourths, of all that is necessary for tens of millions of people; when the raw materials are transported in a systematic and organised manner to the most suitable places of production, sometimes situated hundreds or thousands of miles from each other; when a single centre directs all the consecutive stages of processing the material right up to the manufacture of numerous varieties of finished articles; when these products are distributed according to a single plan among tens and hundreds of millions of consumers (the marketing of oil in America and Germany by the American oil trust)—then it becomes evident that we have socialisation of production, and not mere “interlocking”, that private economic and private property relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay if its removal is artificially delayed, a shell which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period (if, at the worst, the cure of the opportunist abscess is protracted), but which will inevitably be removed. [Note: emphasis added]

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book I’ve read by Lenin. This one’s short, invective, and theoretically sweet. Could a Marxist ask for more…?

In this book, Lenin is exploring the contradictions inherent in 18th century capitalism, and the resolution capitalism seeks, within its own structures, to resolve the contradiction - or, the negation of the negation – which equals Imperialism. For Lenin, the increased concentration of the means of production, by those who ‘win’ on the ‘free market’ (even if winning means cheating and free market is a misnomer) will rise to a monopoly position. Lenin of course seems spot on about this observation, and this view is now generally accepted, hence trust busting, heavy state regulation, the requirement for too big to fail intervention, etc. Monopoly is a stage of capitalism, we’ve come to accept it, and Lenin chose to fight against it.

Lenin believes, again rightfully so, that members of an industrial and productive monopoly will begin to sit on the board of directors, intermingle with, and holds strong ties, with monopoly banks, or those that garner profit via ‘Finance Capital.’ Again, this is no surprise today. If you analyze who sits on the board of most of Wall Street’s banks, along with GE, Lockheed Martin, Shell, etc, you’ll find the same names cropping up. Thus, there is no real democracy in this ‘free market,’ there is influence and oligarchy. A financial oligarchy to be precise.

This oligarch will then be sure to guarantee that finance capital works in its interest, and prevents up-and-comers, from usurping their position, or even damaging their position, as the newest Monopoly Man. Moreover, whereas the Capitalism of Marx’s period was obsessed with exporting commodities, once all colonies are fully colonized, and the territory is fully seized by the state, finance capital enters through the back door – hell maybe even the front, sometimes armed (i.e., with the state police, or US military on its side) – to cease exporting commodities, and begin to export capital. Capital will serve as the catalyst for production in the colony, where the colony will begin to do the exporting of raw materials, as backed by finance capital from a hegemon (albeit Lenin doesn’t use this term), and ship the resources back to the hegemon, while paying interest on the finance capital lent to it. Thus, Imperialism is what follows successful colonization. Again, check out what the US was doing in Latin America after WWII, and the Middle East now, and it’s hard to deny Lenin’s claims.

There is a new development though in Capitalism, a negation of imperialism if you will. Now the oligarch doesn’t just shift from board to board acting in its own interest, but it shifts from board, to board, to regulation agency, to seat in congress, to cabinet position in the White House, etc, using all these various outlets to act in the interest of monopoly capital. This is now known as the “revolving door” phenomena in Washington. Henry Paulson goes from Goldman Sachs, to Secretary of Treasury, to a private closed door meeting with Wall Street’s oligarchy, constantly acting in the interest of finance capital, to name one example. Of course I doubt any of this would surprise Lenin, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone else either, only offend them.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn near prophetic.

Imperialism reads like Vladimir Lenin’s attempt to write a sort of addendum, or update to Marx’s Das Kapital. To provide a materialist, statistically-derived examination of the ways capitalism changed between the time of Marx, up to the first world war.

That sounds like a dry theoretical project, but what Lenin achieves here is almost scary. This book is possibly the first coherent statement about the nature of capitalism once it transcends specific national origins and becomes a truly global phenomenon.

Here at last, we are in the proper world of global finance that we still occupy 100 years later. In which global banks wielding staggering amounts of wealth have superseded industry as the real makers and breakers of economic life.

He gets it all. The panicked global rush to find new resource chains and new markets to sell to. The cycles of war and peace that are the only ways those resources can be redistributed on an already thoroughly owned planet. The rise of a global power elite (ever heard of the 1%?). The inevitable transfer of the working class away from the major powers into the developing world…sound familiar yet?

It’s still Lenin’s world. We just live in it.

[Samichtime · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall impressive! This is a classic Russian history lesson, for reasons not limited to the fact that Lenin had to cloak his revolutionary language in criticizing other countries who behaved the same way as those Romanovs did. Plenty of tie ins to the modern age of monopolies and big banks. 🏦

I think the audiobook I was listening to might’ve been AI, it’s hard to tell these days. At any rate, it literally coughed at times and said “excuse me”…. UM WHAT??? 🤖

[Dina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why isn't this book present in high school curriculums? It clearly explains what the present system is, and how its going to end up. Self-destruction, wars and depletion of natural resources. And for what so a few parasites can derive imaginary wealth? Indeed - human being claims to have bigger brain yet not that different from a yeast.

[VV · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hauntingly accurate in its predictions of finance capital. Eerily prescient of the 2008 bank bailouts and America's overseas adventurism during the last 110+ years. Lenin does a fine job of highlighting the inherent flaws and contradictions of capitalism, and how monopolies and imperialism hurt us all, especially the peoples of abused territories. Many references to economists and historians I am unfortunately unfamiliar with, yet many cited facts and insightful accessible data via charts and graphs.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the book, but it reminds me of a story. I used to teach talented students at Hunter college and one of them, a Russian girl, wrote a book report on this for her political science class. She sought to show how pro-American she was by criticizing all of Lenin's assumptions, and did a respectable job. Little did she know that her Marxist professors at Hunter would be horrified by her analysis. Her professor wrote in the margins to her paper: Can't you see Lenin was right!?!

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inside the thicket of familiar Communist polemic are some thought-provoking and still-relevant insights.

In the 1990s I used to read The Globe and Mail, and one of my favorite contributors was Donald Coxe, who had a column in the business section. Coxe is an investment analyst and he manages one or more mutual funds of his own. Recently I was reading an interview with him on BullionVault.com, a British website devoted to buying and selling gold, and in the course of it he mentioned this book by Lenin, praising it as a brilliant analysis of how the business machinations of the European powers led to World War I. Intrigued by this recommendation from a capitalist I respected, I took the plunge and bought my own copy of Lenin's Imperialism.

Now I've read it, and while I think that Mr. Coxe overstated the quality of this book, I did find some valuable ideas in it.

First the negatives: this is a Communist tract that is mainly preaching to the converted. It is filled with the typical rhetorical clutter of name-calling, sarcasm, and ad hominem jabs, all of which severely impair the seeming objectivity and credibility of the author. He spends much time excoriating other Marxist authors for their perversion of Marx's doctrines. And it doesn't help that Lenin himself went on to become a dictator and a tyrant.

Allowing for all of that, I found the book to be of definite interest. For one thing, Lenin is comfortable with facts and figures, and he presents a number of short tables showing the growth of industrial and then banking monopolies and cartels in 19th-century Europe and America. He observes how the frenzy of colonial land-grabs of the late-19th century followed hard on these developments, and he infers a causal connection: The original capitalism of free trade, which had made England so rich, had evolved to a later stage of monopolistic capitalism, in which competition has given way to coercion. He gives plenty of persuasive evidence of the predatory and anticompetitive behavior of the cartels in steel, railroads, oil, and electricity, to name a few. The tycoons at the top divided the world into fixed territories and set the prices. If competitors appeared, they were bought out or crushed.

Profits are bigger if you control the cost of raw materials yourself; this is achieved by capturing the territory where they're produced. This is where a national element enters, for the cartels of different countries don't necessarily play nicely with each other; their agreements can collapse. The cartels of each country drive their country's colonial agenda. Lenin shows how Earth was completely parceled into colonies in the second half of the 19th century. And since World War I led to a big realignment of these, one has to wonder what role colonial competition played in that ferocious conflict.

In the last century, most colonies have achieved nominal independence. But war remains a big business. Why exactly is it that one country--one possessing vast resource wealth--is invaded to seize its nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction", while another country--one possessing no resource wealth--is left alone, despite actually possessing such weapons? I'm speaking of Iraq and North Korea, but other examples come to mind.

War is justified to credulous voters in terms of ideology, "security", or even emotional slights; but its real business appears to be what it has always been: the seizure of assets by force.

V. I. Lenin saw this 100 years ago. He thought that Marxism was the cure. Apparently it isn't. So the disease rages on.

The ancient dictum still applies: cui bono?--"who benefits?" Or, in the words of the Watergate source Deep Throat: "follow the money." Lenin followed the money, but neither he nor anyone else has been able to do much about it.

[Mahnam · Rating 3 out of 5]

این کتاب کوتاه را لنین در سال ۱۹۱۶ نوشته؛ آن‌زمان انحصارها تازه به رسمیت شناخته می‌شدند و هنوز برخی از اقتصاددان‌ها در وجود عصر امپریالیسم شک داشتند.
در فصول اولی لنین با مراجعه به آمارهایی که اکثراً در کتاب‌های اقتصاددان‌های هواخواه رقابت آزاد و سرمایه‌داری یا برخی مشوقین امپریالیسم آمده است، برای خواننده‌ی عصر خود اثبات می‌کند عصر انحصار واقعی است و پیشبینی مارکس درست از آب درآمده است. برای خواننده‌ی عصر حاضر این فصول چندان نکات جدیدی در بر ندارد.
سپس به تعریف مرحله‌ای از روابط تولید می‌پردازد که در آن تولید زیاد و انباشت سرمایه موجب به وجود آمدن سرمایه‌ی مالی شده که به نوبه‌ی خود نقش سنتی بانک‌ها را دچار تغییر جدی کرده است. او فهم درست رابطه‌ی میان نظام بانکی و امپریالیسم را از مهم‌ترین ارکان بررسی شرایط اقتصادی-سیاسی حاضر می‌داند.
هم‌چنین با آرای کائوتسکی به‌شدت مخالفت می‌ورزد که امپریالیسم را صرفا یکی از رویکردهای سیاسی سرمایه‌داری می‌دانست نه مرحله‌ای اجتناب‌ناپذیر از آن. در ادامه‌ ایده‌ی ابرامپریالیسم را که از دل آن می‌تواند صلح جهان بیرون آید، می‌کوبد و نشان می‌دهد انحصار در کنار وجه دیگر اما متضاد سرمایه‌داری یعنی رقابت آزاد وجود خواهد داشت و این به تناقض‌های شدید درونی منجر خواهد شد. انحصار به کمبود مواد خام و اراضی و بازارهای سودزا منجر خواهد شد و کشورهای امپریالیست را بر سر تقسیم مجدد جهان به جان هم خواهد انداخت. هرگونه صلحی در زیر پرچم امپریالیسم نه تنها پایدار نخواهد بود که مطمئناً جنگی دیگر را در پی خواهد داشت. در این میان بخشی زیاد از کتاب را به ارائه‌ی آمار مربوط به استعمار می‌پردازد. استعماری که ابتدا به‌صورت صدور کالا و درمرحله‌ی اولیه‌ی انحصار، صدور سرمایه صورت می‌گیرد. در بالاترین مرحله‌ی امپریالیسم هم وام‌دهی و کشورهای رانت‌خوار را خواهیم داشت که حتی پیشرفت صنعت خود را فدای تصاحب سود از راه وام و مزایای بانکی خواهند کرد.
اگرچه سال‌ها از زمان نگارش این کتاب می‌گذرد، آماری که وجود دارد و درگیری‌های کشورهای قدرتمند جهان را به‌وضوح نشان می‌دهد، می‌تواند دلیل برخی از مسائل کنونی جهان را تاحد زیادی روشن کند.

[Yogy TheBear · Rating 1 out of 5]

First I need to rant a little:
Dear Lenin, I am against the state; I am against imperialism, militarism, colonialism, statism; I am against interventionism discrimination(positive and negative) of economic agents by the state that breeds long standing cartels and monopolies; I am for a free market, for liberty and for private property. My position can be described and falls into the category of libertarianism, a position you never thought about and you may consider absurd. But my position, althrough I do not hold the pretension of absolute truth or of covering all possible nuances of human activity and morality; my position is way more consistent and moral then yours !!

This book has big propaganda and rhetorical value but it is a abuse and total lack of economic knowledge. Firstly Lenin dose not bother to make a distinction between real capitalism and crony capitalism. His definition and usage of the term "capital" unveils his illiteracy in economics; Thus he throws statistics after statistics in witch he dose not take into consideration inflation and the money supply over the years. Capital for him in marxist tradition is just a monetary abstraction that just regenerates and generates new capital... noting more to it.

His rhetoric on monopoly is a smart one. But I fail to understand what is his definition of monopoly... The possible phenomenon that may occur under capitalism are exaggerated and misunderstood to serve his purpose, the advance of his theory on the inevitable progress of free market capitalism to imperialism... Yet he dose not consider the help the state has gave to those firms... That is crony !! And if monopoly is bad for him... Dose he realize that a socialist super state monopoly is the worst possible ?? Yes monopoly and cartels form under capitalism. But they also dissolve under true capitalism. The concentration of capital also leads to the flooding with consumer goods for the population, witch Lenin skilfully ignores !! Yes as competition diminishes the flooding of the masses with consumer goods is more reduced but even a monopoly in shoes wants to sell shoes to all people and wants all people to be able to buy shoes. The argument of the hiding and stockpiling of consumer goods for speculation is again silly. Yes the phenomenon of speculation is real but a firm can not speculate by stockpiling in the event of a future major shortage and in the same time produce at the same level and pay wages !! It is an impossibility and another example of the exaggerations marxist employ to demonize capitalism. Speculation on the scale, for the scope and in such a class conspiracy manner as marxist dreams never happens.

His chapter on the banks is pure stupidity. You can not speak of bancking without mentioning fractional reserve banking ! His figures of the asset of banks is irrelevant when you clearly do not know about monetary expansion by private and central banks !

The chapters on imperialism, statism and militarism may be worth but it is poisoned with his attempt to put those ill tendencies of states as attributes of capitalism. Everything wrong is because capitalism... What a stupid and dangerous simplification of evil... What about the evil within you Lenin ?

[thekar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very important and topical book. It is also hard to read, especially in the first chapters, due to the lengthy tables and financial data.

All those numbers serve Lenin in order to demonstrate his analysis of capitalism on the eve of the First World War; the Imperialism. Corporations have been united and became large monopolies, owned and financed by big banks and investment funds. Free market is officially dead in large economic scales, and the banking-industrial complex in close cooperation with their respective states, divide the world into spheres of influence for markets, cheap working force and raw materials. In this process the most advanced, "civilized" states engage into competition with each another, making occasional wars (even world wars) inevitable. Imperialist, the monopoly capitalism cannot be fixed, or turned back to a free-market capitalism; it can only get worse.


And what is for today? Corporations and banks back in 1914 were giants; now they are titans. Regional wars killed thousands; now kill hundreds of thousands, even millions. And back then no one anticipated the First World War, though all signs were there...

[Jonathan Hinckley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and brief. An essential read which is as prophetic as the work it is expanding on.

Lenin succincly brings Das Kapital up to date with a close examination of the conglomeration of Capital outside of the bounds of 'free competition', the dominant part played by financial oligopoly and the final expression of monopoly in the total partition of the world... the backdrop, of course, to World War One.

Most significantly, integral to Lenin's analysis is that the transformation of the motion of capital is a property inherent in Capital, and past a certain point, dragged unendingly by the coercive laws of competition, it must resort to imperialism to offset the stagnation of domestic investment and ultimatley, the entropic tendency of the declining rate of profit.

Also key is Lenin's response to Kautsky (who gets trolled in literally every single piece of writing Lenin does) which discusses the fallacy of ultra-imperialism which was an idea I had been tending toward.

It's only about 150 pages long and its an unbelievably relevant read, perhaps more so than when it was written. A 100 year interval of unimpeded capitalism has borne out these tendencies to the extreme and we have arrived back at the precipice, far more precarious than before, of the RE-DIVISION of the world. Whatever form that may take, this book is the ideal basis for understanding (in pure economic terms) how the fuck we got here then, and why the fuck we are back here now.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Penguin Great Ideas editions are so convenient to carry around when you know there will be a waiting period. I saved this one for just such a situation. Writing in 1916, Lenin builds upon Marx to propose a theory of imperialism as the most recent (at the time) stage of capitalism. The interplay between capitalism and colonialist imperialism is a lively topic in the context of climate change these days, considered in The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis by Amitav Ghosh and White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism by Andreas Malm & the Zetkin Collective for example. Lenin considers the key characteristic to be consolidation of massive monopolies, which capture primary commodities, are facilitated by the financial speculation of vast banks, and follow the shape of colonial empires. He notes that imperialism existed before capitalism, and indeed different forms of imperialism coexisted with earlier forms of capitalism. What he describes is specific: 'the colonial policy of finance capital'.
Lenin is at pains to point out that this reduction in competition leads to greater labour exploitation and does not reduce the instability and tendency to crisis in capitalism; indeed the opposite. As the First and Second World Wars demonstrated, imperialist and economic rivalries can encourage catastrophic conflicts.

Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism is both of historical interest and continued relevance. It describes globalisation, albeit not by that name, and the increasing consolidation of the banking industry into monopolies that are heavily interdependent with big corporations and governments. That certainly hasn't changed and led to the 2007/8 financial crisis. Moreover, the independence of former colonies has not freed them from financial exploitation by rich countries, often their former colonisers. This certainly has contemporary resonance:

But if capitalism did these things it would not be capitalism; for uneven development and wretched conditions of the masses are fundamental and inevitable conditions and premises of this mode of production. As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will never be utilised for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists; it will be used for the purpose of increasing those profits by exporting the capital abroad to the backward countries. In these backward [now known by euphemisms like 'less developed' or 'developing'] countries profits are unusually high, for capital is scarce, the price of land is relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap.

Lenin foresaw that, given the instability of globalised capitalism, the economically dominant counties would change over time. He already saw Britain as in decline and of course China has become a huge economic power in the past 40 years. The monopolistic and parasitic structure of the global economy that he describes is still useful, although capitalism has taken destructive new turns over the subsequent century. The detailed and ill-tempered refutation of Kautsky's alternative definition of imperialism has less relevance, other than historical. Lenin ends by acknowledging the difficulty of countering imperialist capitalism, due to 'opportunism' i.e. worker solidarity being undermined by incorrect theories, political policies that create a minority of privileged workers, nationalism, etc. I found Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism a quick and interesting read, one notable for describing economic phenomena that were freshly redicovered and critiqued in the nineties and noughties. RIP V.I. Lenin, you would have loved analysing platform enshittification as a consequence of monopolistic surveillance capitalism.

[Manlio Mascareño · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible work about how capitalism made its own contradictions due to free market giving as consequence a new stage of economy: Imperialism. Lenin given us a study about how capitalism turned into a imperialism through a researches that he made of bourgeois data using a critical approaching in marxism. This book was made when World War I began and socialism yet was seeing such as new alternative of see the life. Despite of data which Lenin used and the time the book was written this work contains current elements to understand the fall of capitalism in our times and how capitalism fell in parasitism what is manifested in wars of First World against Third World for its resources and economical routing. Necessary in the study of marxism and economy.

[Vladimir Vasilyev · Rating 5 out of 5]

really touch me

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

great little book!!! also, the first thing I’ve read by Lenin. I really enjoyed it. He is so direct and scathing in his analysis that it is humorous at times. The book is essentially about the creation of financial monopolies, and the subsequent development of imperialism and colonialism. Lenin shows that these are features inherent in the development of capitalism. It was also great to read this at the same time as listening to Rodney’s ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’. There is definitely some crossing over of ideas.

[Jayden gonzalez · Rating 5 out of 5]

actually lenin, i think youll find that imperialism is a form of militant government, and capitalism is an economic system. hth. signed, an undergraduate majoring in sonic the hedgehog

[Gerwin van der Linden · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Yumeko (blushes) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm actually pleasantly surprised with all I learned. Not to say I thought Lenin didn't have anything to say, but unfortunately he would most times never say anything of substance because of the insistence to bash someone or the other. I was reading The three Sources of Marxism too until I realized there's nothing to learn in it for that reason. I can see why this book is considered a must in Marxist readings, I think it gives a very good explanation on how imperialism fits into the understandings of current day capitalism (well not that current, but yeah).

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lars T Lih should do a "Lenin in context" for this book. To some degree, Bill Warren has done so with his Imperialism.

Lenin's Imperialism is as much a critique of political economy as it is now itself part of an older political economy in need of critique. With the US a net importer of capital, a receding western world imperialism and the end of formal colonialism, it's past its due date. Most of all, a thorough understanding of the relation between workers, state and world economy is missing. The 'labour aristocracy' thesis advanced in the book is less crude than I remembered — Lenin doesn't argue that rising wages across the board are enabled solely by imperialism; rather he points out that certain sectors can only exist by virtue of imperialist administration. Think of the sailors manning British gunboats, the Belgian rubber industry or the Israeli military-industrial complex. One might add today's workers in fossil industries under a similar nomer.

As ole Bernstein demanded even before Lenin wrote his stuff, we must separate the logical method of an analysis, which is a timeless tool, from its discrete conclusion, which is contingent and nonsensical outside its context. I hope to contribute to this very soon.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

"El imperialismo es el capitalismo en la fase de desarrollo en que se ha implantado el dominio de los monopolios y del capital financiero, en que la exportación del capital ha adquirido gran relevancia, en que los trusts internacionales han empezado ha repartirse el mundo y en que ha terminado el reparto del planeta entre las grandes potencias capitalistas."

Vladimir Lenin

[Severi Saaristo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lenin's Imperialism is a classic and should be read by everyone. However, to those who want to use Lenin's theory against modern China, to suggest that China is imperialist because it is exporting capital to developing countries, I recommend reading Tharappel, J. (2021). Why China's Capital Exports Can Weaken Imperialism. World Review of Political Economy. Vol. 12(1):27-49.

Tharappel's main argument is that the rivalry between US and China is not an inter-imperialist rivalry, but a conflict between a currency hegemon (US) and a mercantile rival (China). In this context US tries to obstruct the industrial evolution of the developing countries to maintain the value of the dollar where as China's capital exports to these countries spur industrial development and growth for them i.e. China is an industrializing force for the peripheries. Read, for example Deborah Brautigam (Professor of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University) on China's positive role in African development.

[tara bomp · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent discussion of imperialism and capitalism. It's short so it only provides a sketch but it highlights many points which are essential to grasp for leftists today and are often ignored (the inevitability of imperialism, uneven development, labour aristocracy etc). I'm rating it 5 because, even though it's not as developed as you might hope for various reasons and it could obviously be better, it is clear about the important details of capitalist development - it's perceptive, clear and easy to read and doesn't outstay its welcome. I recommend it to people thinking about capitalism now - in my opinion the ideas it talks about are absolutely essential.

One criticism is that he's not as unequivocal about the misery inflicted by exploitation of dependent countries. Maybe a little superficial but still.

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lenin's explanation of the development from free-market capitalism into imperialist monopoly is at once terrifying, and after reading, glaringly obvious. The intrinsic connection between big banks, big industry, and the state is insidious but also wholly necessary for the development of imperialism, and the destruction of the less developed countries in the world. Whilst we may think that the 'Empire' is dead, the division of the world into the hands of monopoly giants is more all-consuming than ever.

[abbey]

lenin kind of went off in this one

[Gianni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Groenlandia, Canada e canale di Panama a stelle&strisce, remigrazione, amministrazione statale ”leggera”, esplosione delle criptovalute, spese militari in forte rialzo, militarizzazione e autoritarismo; l’incubo Trump tra boutade e mire neanche tanto nascoste prende l’avvio, mentre il resto del mondo non se la passa molto bene. È solo il frutto diabolico di individui ”impazziti”, di think - thank perversamente fascistoidi o c’è dell’altro?
Lungi dall’essere storicamente e politicamente datato, questo testo di Lenin redatto nel 1916 ha ancora molto da dire e può ancora aiutare a leggere le dinamiche in atto. Non è l’esito di una astratta elucubrazione mentale, ma una lucida analisi storico-politica marxista basata su documenti, dati e statistiche, saggi e giornali, pubblicati dalla controparte borghese.
Il concetto di imperialismo non è di Lenin, ma Lenin lo ha rielaborato mostrandone tutte le sfaccettature rimaste nascoste.
Vale la pena riportare per intero la definizione e le caratteristiche dell’imperialismo, i “cinque contrassegno che Lenin ha individuato:

”dobbiamo dare una definizione dell'imperialismo che contenga i suoi cinque principali contrassegni, e cioè:
1) la concentrazione della produzione e del capitale, che ha raggiunto un grado talmente alto di sviluppo da creare i monopoli con funzione decisiva nella vita economica;
2) la fusione del capitale bancario col capitale industriale e il formarsi, sulla base di questo “capitale finanziario”, di un'oligarchia finanziaria;
3) la grande importanza acquistata dall'esportazione di capitale in confronto con l'esportazione di merci;
4) il sorgere di associazioni monopolistiche internazionali di capitalisti, che si ripartiscono il mondo;
5) la compiuta ripartizione della terra tra le più grandi potenze capitalistiche.

L'imperialismo è dunque il capitalismo giunto a quella fase di sviluppo in cui si è formato il dominio dei monopoli e del capitale finanziario, l'esportazione di capitale ha acquistato grande importanza, è cominciata la ripartizione del mondo tra i trust internazionali, ed è già compiuta la ripartizione dell'intera superficie terrestre tra i più grandi paesi capitalistici”.

Nonostante sia passato più di un secolo e molto sia cambiato dai tempi dell’elaborazione teorica di Lenin, le dinamiche in corso sono ancora quelle; sarebbe errato leggere i testi di Lenin, ma anche di Marx, come fossero degli oracoli e avessero miracolistiche proprietà predittive, ma la capacità di penetrare a fondo nei movimenti e nelle tensioni del capitalismo li rende adatti a leggere i processi attuali levando i veli di ipocrisia, i ”panegirici e imbellettamenti dell'imperialismo, giacché essi sono possibili in quanto non tengono conto della più importante caratteristica del capitalismo moderno: i monopoli. Il libero mercato appartiene sempre più al passato, ed è sempre più ridotto dai sindacati e trust monopolistici, mentre il “semplice” miglioramento dell'agricoltura richiede che siano migliorate le condizioni delle masse, elevati i salari e ridotti i profitti. Dove esistono, fuori che nella fantasia dei soavi riformisti, trust capaci di curarsi della situazione delle masse, anziché di conquistare colonie?
Per il capitale finanziario sono importanti non solo le sorgenti di materie prime già scoperte, ma anche quelle eventualmente ancora da scoprire, giacché ai nostri giorni la tecnica fa progressi vertiginosi, e terreni oggi inutilizzabili possono domani esser messi in valore, appena siano stati trovati nuovi metodi (e a tal fine la grande banca può allestire speciali spedizioni di ingegneri, agronomi, ecc.) e non appena siano stati impiegati più forti capitali. Lo stesso si può dire delle esplorazioni in cerca di nuove ricchezze minerarie, della scoperta di nuovi metodi di lavorazione e di utilizzazione di questa o quella materia prima, ecc. Da ciò nasce inevitabilmente la tendenza del capitale finanziario ad allargare il proprio territorio economico, e anche il proprio territorio in generale. Nello stesso modo che i trust capitalizzano la loro proprietà valutandola due o tre volte al di sopra del vero, giacché fanno assegnamento sui profitti “possibili” (ma non reali) del futuro e sugli ulteriori risultati del monopolio, così il capitale finanziario, in generale, si sforza di arraffare quanto più territorio è possibile, comunque e dovunque, in cerca soltanto di possibili sorgenti di materie prime, con la paura di rimanere indietro nella lotta furiosa per l'ultimo lembo della sfera terrestre non ancora diviso, per una nuova spartizione dei territori già divisi.

[Daniela Velez · Rating 4 out of 5]

“As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will never be utilised for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists.” Capitalism is a scam. Profits over people isn’t sustainable and we’re seeing the consequences of this today.

[Christopher Moltisanti's Windbreakers fan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it about 6-7 years ago when I was going through the transition of becoming a communist. It left me with so much fuel that to this day I am still using it to not feel small living in the midst of the exploitative death cult called Capitalism. Lenin was not only a great thinker and a comrade, but also was a fantastic writer. And Everyone should read him.

PS: There is a breed of dumbasses who say they don't read theory because it's hard and boring or written by dead white men. Reading theory, as David Harvey once put it is a "struggle" not because it's difficult on purpose, but because our lives are made difficult by capitalism. As a result theory at times becomes difficult to read. Let's put these fictions down for a bit, and read some of the theories, some of the analysis, to waken up the class consciousness. Reading theory and historical analysis of class-struggles/imperialism/colonialism might be difficult for those who were barred from higher education and those who do not get the time to sleep. Shouldn't be difficult for college-educated people who seem not to mind any other book that doesn't help to realize their class consciousness. Reading tweets and some articles on Teen Vogue's hot take on capitalism is not enough. "Theories are difficult or not fun, thus I am not gonna read it" is a sad excuse to use.

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Considered one of Lenin's classics, 'Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism' had to live up to two standards for me: Being a somewhat analytical work about capitalism, while at the same time shedding light upon this issue in the early 20th century climate.
In my opinion, it very much succeeds in that effort.
Lenin begins to talk a lot about monopolies, cartels and syndicates - these chapters are even more interesting from our modern 21th century standpoint, where you can observe which leading economical forces completely changed (f. ex. from steel manufacturers to tech giants), and which ones are literally the same companies Lenin mentions more than a hundred years ago (like the Deutsche Bank).
More importantly, he then goes on to explain in what sense these few western burgeois use capital to control the entirety of the global economy and, as he likes to call it 'the parasitic nature of capitalism'.
Although this book is intended to be more of a pamphlet, it uses a lot of statistics, numbers and figures to carefully prove the huge claims. On top of that, Lenin references many contemporary scholars from either side and reasons for or against them.
All of this makes this book not only a must-read for everyone generally interested in Marxist/Leninist ideas, but also for anyone interested in history and the development of economy and globalisation as it is today.