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Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism. With Facing Russian Text
Vladimir Illich Lenin (1870-1924) also known by his alias Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary and politician.
219 pages, Paperback
Published April 9, 2021
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Vladimir Lenin
2,746 books1,856 followersVladimir 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.
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January 6, 2026And of course, just one day after I picked up this book, the US embarked on another imperialist venture in Latin America.
Lenin's argument goes as follows. As capitalism develops, the old capitalism of free competition — through mergers and acquisitions, predatory pricing, the buying up of patents, etc. — is replaced by monopoly capitalism and cartelization. Lenin specifically identifies a trend toward monopoly in the second half of the 19th century: the Panic of 1873 accelerated the process of monopolization (because it led to the adoption of protective tariffs and nationalization), and the crisis of the early 20th century finally resulted in monopoly becoming ''one of the foundations of all economic life'' (see, for instance, the formation of the Northern Security Company, a railroad trust, in the US as a result of the Panic of 1901).
In this advanced stage of capitalism, not only the industrial capitalists, but banks too have become monopolists; instead of merely functioning as intermediaries between savers and borrowers through loans, big banks actively invest in the capital of industrial capitalists, controlling them through shareholdings and the installment of bank directors on company boards to ensure returns on their investments. This is the merger of banking and industrial capital, i.e. finance capital, and forms the basis of imperialism.
The emergence of finance capital causes a change in wealth accumulation from manufacturing and trade to speculation and collecting interest on loans, i.e. a development toward rentier capitalism. In relation to this, the emergence of monopoly capitalism causes a change in export from the export of goods to the export of capital, because monopoly capitalism generates enormous profits and increases capital accumulation, so a surplus of capital is produced which cannot find profitable investment domestically and is thus exported to backward countries in the form of loans and investments that make those countries more dependent. In this way, monopolies not only divide up the internal market, but also the external world market; the possession of colonies and economic dominance over countries is, after all, the best guarantee for eliminating competition.
To illustrate this more clearly, perhaps 18th-century Holland makes for a useful case study; it precedes the period Lenin discusses, but it makes sense that capitalism in Holland was already highly advanced in the 18th century, given its uniquely early capitalist development.
In the 18th century, inequality in Holland was on the rise, which is largely explained by a decrease in the wage share of the total income and an increase in the capital share. Despite relative economic decline, both economic activity in Asia and the Atlantic slave trade were expanding alongside growth in the financial sector. The VOC, a monopolistic enterprise, started to pay out dividends to its shareholders on a more regular basis despite economic losses; in Suriname, the colony was run by the Society of Suriname (a private company with the WIC, Amsterdam, and the Van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck family as the only three shareholders), while banking families took control of plantations, with huge injections of capital into the colony to the point of overinvestment. Simultaneously, there was a rapid increase in investments in foreign government bonds and interest payments on the national debt.
What we see here unfolding very clearly is the cooperation between monopolies and finance capital, leading to the export of capital and the emergence of rentier capitalism — imperialism as the inevitable outcome of capitalism in its highest phase, of capitalism in decay.
All in all, this is a seminal work of dependency theory and a refreshing historical investigation of the period of New Imperialism (1880-1914). Importantly, this lays focus on the economic dimension of imperialism and thereby challenges conclusions like those of historians such as Merriman that downplay the economic dimension as a relatively minor aspect of New Imperialism. It's true that the income from colonial trade was perhaps not always that significant, but the income of the rentier stratum of society was often much greater, as Lenin shows; again, finance capital as the foundation of imperialism. Of course this is not only interesting as a historical analysis but also still highly topical in light of today's neocolonialism: price dumping, the exploitation of cheap labour in periphery countries, structural adjustment programs by the IMF and WB, foreign direct investments by the US in particular, France's continued economic dominance over West Africa through the CFA franc, etc.
If you're planning on picking up a copy, I would opt for a different edition than this one by Graphyco. It's very poorly edited, the facing Russian text can be a bit distracting, and the translation is very literal.
Lenin's argument goes as follows. As capitalism develops, the old capitalism of free competition — through mergers and acquisitions, predatory pricing, the buying up of patents, etc. — is replaced by monopoly capitalism and cartelization. Lenin specifically identifies a trend toward monopoly in the second half of the 19th century: the Panic of 1873 accelerated the process of monopolization (because it led to the adoption of protective tariffs and nationalization), and the crisis of the early 20th century finally resulted in monopoly becoming ''one of the foundations of all economic life'' (see, for instance, the formation of the Northern Security Company, a railroad trust, in the US as a result of the Panic of 1901).
In this advanced stage of capitalism, not only the industrial capitalists, but banks too have become monopolists; instead of merely functioning as intermediaries between savers and borrowers through loans, big banks actively invest in the capital of industrial capitalists, controlling them through shareholdings and the installment of bank directors on company boards to ensure returns on their investments. This is the merger of banking and industrial capital, i.e. finance capital, and forms the basis of imperialism.
The emergence of finance capital causes a change in wealth accumulation from manufacturing and trade to speculation and collecting interest on loans, i.e. a development toward rentier capitalism. In relation to this, the emergence of monopoly capitalism causes a change in export from the export of goods to the export of capital, because monopoly capitalism generates enormous profits and increases capital accumulation, so a surplus of capital is produced which cannot find profitable investment domestically and is thus exported to backward countries in the form of loans and investments that make those countries more dependent. In this way, monopolies not only divide up the internal market, but also the external world market; the possession of colonies and economic dominance over countries is, after all, the best guarantee for eliminating competition.
To illustrate this more clearly, perhaps 18th-century Holland makes for a useful case study; it precedes the period Lenin discusses, but it makes sense that capitalism in Holland was already highly advanced in the 18th century, given its uniquely early capitalist development.
In the 18th century, inequality in Holland was on the rise, which is largely explained by a decrease in the wage share of the total income and an increase in the capital share. Despite relative economic decline, both economic activity in Asia and the Atlantic slave trade were expanding alongside growth in the financial sector. The VOC, a monopolistic enterprise, started to pay out dividends to its shareholders on a more regular basis despite economic losses; in Suriname, the colony was run by the Society of Suriname (a private company with the WIC, Amsterdam, and the Van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck family as the only three shareholders), while banking families took control of plantations, with huge injections of capital into the colony to the point of overinvestment. Simultaneously, there was a rapid increase in investments in foreign government bonds and interest payments on the national debt.
What we see here unfolding very clearly is the cooperation between monopolies and finance capital, leading to the export of capital and the emergence of rentier capitalism — imperialism as the inevitable outcome of capitalism in its highest phase, of capitalism in decay.
All in all, this is a seminal work of dependency theory and a refreshing historical investigation of the period of New Imperialism (1880-1914). Importantly, this lays focus on the economic dimension of imperialism and thereby challenges conclusions like those of historians such as Merriman that downplay the economic dimension as a relatively minor aspect of New Imperialism. It's true that the income from colonial trade was perhaps not always that significant, but the income of the rentier stratum of society was often much greater, as Lenin shows; again, finance capital as the foundation of imperialism. Of course this is not only interesting as a historical analysis but also still highly topical in light of today's neocolonialism: price dumping, the exploitation of cheap labour in periphery countries, structural adjustment programs by the IMF and WB, foreign direct investments by the US in particular, France's continued economic dominance over West Africa through the CFA franc, etc.
If you're planning on picking up a copy, I would opt for a different edition than this one by Graphyco. It's very poorly edited, the facing Russian text can be a bit distracting, and the translation is very literal.
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