7. Imperialism as a Special Stage of Capitalism¶
Core Argument¶
Imperialism, in Lenin’s analysis, is not merely a policy or a passing tendency but the monopoly stage of capitalism—a distinct and historically necessary phase of development. It emerges when the concentration of production and capital reaches so high a level that free competition is displaced by monopoly. Yet monopoly does not abolish competition; it exists above and alongside it, generating ever sharper antagonisms. The briefest definition of imperialism is therefore the monopoly stage of capitalism, encompassing the fusion of bank and industrial capital into finance capital, and the monopolist division of the world. A fuller definition includes five basic features: the decisive role of monopolies arising from high concentration; the creation of a financial oligarchy through the merging of bank and industrial capital; the exceptional importance of capital export; the formation of international monopolist associations that share the world among themselves; and the completed territorial division of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers.
This conception is sharply opposed to that of Karl Kautsky, who treats imperialism not as a stage of economic development but as a policy “preferred” by finance capital. Kautsky defines imperialism as the striving of industrial capitalist nations to annex large agrarian territories. Lenin rejects this as one-sided, inaccurate, and un-Marxist: the characteristic feature of imperialism is finance capital, not industrial capital, and its drive is to annex even highly industrialised regions. By detaching the politics of imperialism from its economics, Kautsky implies that monopolies are compatible with a non-annexationist policy, thereby blunting the depth of capitalism’s contradictions and descending into bourgeois reformism. His theory of “ultra-imperialism”—a peaceful union of world imperialisms—is dismissed as a reactionary and lifeless abstraction. Concrete economic data demonstrate that finance capital intensifies, rather than lessens, the unevenness and contradictions within the world economy, and that the struggle among imperialist states is becoming more acute.
The disparity between the development of productive forces and the division of colonies is starkly illustrated by the concentration of railways. Around 80% of all railways are held by the five biggest powers, but the concentration of finance capital ownership is even greater: French and British millionaires hold vast shares and bonds in American, Russian, and other railways. Britain, through its colonies, extended ‘its’ railways by 100,000 kilometres—four times Germany’s length. Yet Germany’s productive forces, particularly in coal and iron, developed far more rapidly: in 1892 Germany produced 4.9 million tons of pig-iron to Britain’s 6.8 million; by 1912 Germany produced 17.6 million tons to Britain’s 9 million, giving Germany overwhelming superiority. Under capitalism, the only means to resolve this contradiction between the growth of productive forces and capital accumulation on one side, and the existing division of colonies and spheres of influence on the other, is war.