Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

A POPULAR OUTLINE

X. THE PLACE OF IMPERIALISM IN HISTORY

We have seen that in its economic essence imperialism is
monopoly capitalism. This in itself determines its place in
history, for monopoly that grows out of the soil of free
competition, and precisely out of free competition, is the
transition from the capitalist system to a higher socio-economic
order. We must take special note of the four principal types of
monopoly, or principal manifestations of monopoly capitalism,
which are characteristic of the epoch we are examining.

Firstly, monopoly arose out of the concentration of production
at a very high stage. This refers to the monopolist capitalist
associations, cartels, syndicatess, and trusts. We have seen
the important part these play in present-day economic life. At
the beginning of the twentieth century, monopolies had acquired
complete supremacy in the advanced countries, and although the
first steps towards the formation of the cartels were taken by
countries enjoying the protection of high tariffs (Germany,
America), Great Britain, with her system of free trade, revealed
the same basic phenomenon, only a little later, namely, the
birth of monopoly out of the concentration of production.

Secondly, monopolies have stimulated the seizure of the most
important sources of raw materials, especially for the basic and
most highly cartelised industries in capitalist society: the
coal and iron industries. The monopoly of the most important
sources of raw materials has enormously increased the power of
big capital, and has sharpened the antagonism between cartelised
and non-cartelised industry.

Thirdly, monopoly has sprung from the banks. The banks have
developed from modest middleman enterprises into the monopolists
of finance capital. Some three to five of the biggest banks in
each of the foremost capitalist countries have achieved the
“personal link-up” between industrial and bank capital, and have
concentrated in their hands the control of thousands upon
thousands of millions which form the greater part of the capital
and income of entire countries. A financial oligarchy, which
throws a close network of dependence relationships over all the
economic and political institutions of present-day bourgeois
society without exception—such is the most striking manifestation of this monopoly.

Fourthly, monopoly has grown out of colonial policy. To the
numerous “old” motives of colonial policy, finance capital has
added the struggle for the sources of raw materials, for the
export of capital, for spheres of influence, i.e., for spheres
for profitable deals, concessions, monopoly profits and so on,
economic territory in general. When the colonies of the European
powers,for instance, comprised only one-tenth of the territory
of Africa(as was the case in 1876), colonial policy was able to
develop—by methods other than those of monopoly—by the “free grabbing” of territories, so to speak. But when
nine-tenths of Africa had been seized (by 1900), when the whole
world had been divided up,there was inevitably ushered in the
era of monopoly possession of colonies and, consequently, of
particularly intense struggle for the division and the redivision
of the world.

The extent to which monopolist capital has intensified all the
contradictions of capitalism is generally known. It is sufficient to mention the high cost of living and the tyranny of
the cartels. This intensification of contradictions constitutes
the most powerful driving force of the transitional period of
history, which began from the time of the final victory of world
finance capital.

Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for
freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or
weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful
nations—all these have given birth to those distinctive
characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as
parasitic or decaying capitalism. More and more prominently
there emerges, as one of the tendencies of imperialism, the
creation of the “rentier state”, the usurer state, in which the
bourgeoisie to an ever-increasing degree lives on the proceeds
of capital exports and by “clipping coupons”. It would be a
mistake to believe that this tendency to decay precludes the
rapid growth of capitalism. It does not. In the epoch of
imperialism, certain branches of industry, certain strata of the
bourgeoisie and certain countries betray, to a greater or lesser
degree, now one and now another of these tendencies. On the
whole, capitalism is growing far more rapidly than before; but
this growth is not only becoming more and more uneven in
general, its unevenness also manifests itself, in particular, in
the decay of the countries which are richest in capital
(Britain).

In regard to the rapidity of Germany’s economic development,
Riesser, the author of the book on the big German banks, states:
“The progress of the preceding period (1848-70), which had not
been exactly slow, compares with the rapidity with which the
whole of Germany’s national economy, and with it German banking,
progressed during this period (1870-1905) in about the same way
as the speed of the mail coach in the good old days compares
with the speed of the present-day automobile ... which is
whizzing past so fast that it endangers not only innocent
pedestrians in its path, but also the occupants of the car.” In
its turn, this finance capital which has grown with such
extraordinary rapidity is not unwilling, precisely because it
has grown so quickly, to pass on to a more “tranquil” possession
of colonies which have to be seized—and not only by peaceful methods—from richer nations. In the United
States, economic development in the last decades has been even
more rapid than in Germany, and for this very reason , the parasitic features of modern American capitalism have stood
out with particular prominence. On the other hand, a comparison
of, say, the republican American bourgeoisie with the monarchist
Japanese or German bourgeoisie shows that the most pronounced
political distinction diminishes to an extreme degree in the
epoch of imperialism—not because it is unimportant in general, but because in all these cases we are talking about a
bourgeoisie which has definite features of parasitism.

The receipt of high monopoly profits by the capitalists in one
of the numerous branches of industry, in one of the numerous
countries, etc., makes it economically possible for them to
bribe certain sections of the workers, and for a time a fairly
considerable minority of them, and win them to the side of the
bourgeoisie of a given industry or given nation against all the
others. The intensification of antagonisms between imperialist
nations for the division of the world increases this urge. And
so there is created that bond between imperialism and opportunism, which revealed itself first and most clearly in
Great Britain, owing to the fact that certain features of
imperialist development were observable there much earlier than
in other countries. Some writers, L. Martov, for example, are
prone to wave aside the connection between imperialism and
opportunism in the working-class movement—a particularly
glaring fact at the present time—by resorting to “official optimism” ( à la Kautsky and Huysmans)
like the following: the cause of the opponents of capitalism
would be hopeless if it were progressive capitalism that led to
the increase of opportunism, or, if it were the best-paid
workers who were inclined towards opportunism, etc. We must have
no illusions about “optimism” of this kind. It is optimism in
respect of opportunism; it is optimism which serves to conceal
opportunism. As a matter of fact the extraordinary rapidity and
the particularly revolting character of the development of opportunism is by no means a guarantee that its victory will be
durable: the rapid growth of a painful abscess on a healthy body
can only cause it to burst more quickly and thus relieve the
body of it. The most dangerous of all in this respect are those
who do not wish to understand that the fight against imperialism
is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the
fight against opportunism.

From all that has been said in this book on the economic essence
of imperialism, it follows that we must define it as capitalism
in transition, or, more precisely, as moribund capitalism. It is
very instructive in this respect to note that bourgeois
economists, in describing modern capitalism, frequently employ
catchwords and phrases like “interlocking”, “absence of
isolation”, etc.; “in conformity with their functions and course
of development”, banks are “not purely private business
enterprises: they are more and more outgrowing the sphere of
purely private business regulation”. And this very Riesser,
whose words I have just quoted, declares with all seriousness
that the “prophecy” of the Marxists concerning “socialisation”
has “not come true”!

What then does this catchword “interlocking” express? It merely
expresses the most striking feature of the process going on
before our eyes. It shows that the observer counts the separate
trees, but cannot see the wood. It slavishly copies the
superficial, the fortuitous, the chaotic. It reveals the
observer as one who is overwhelmed by the mass of raw material
and is utterly incapable of appreciating its meaning and
importance. Ownership of shares, the relations between owners of
private property “interlock in a haphazard way”. But underlying
this interlocking, its very base, are the changing social
relations of production. 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.

The enthusiastic admirer of German imperialism, Schulze-Gaevernitz, exclaims:

“Once the supreme management of the German banks has been
entrusted to the hands of a dozen persons, their activity is
even today more significant for the public good than that of the
majority of the Ministers of State. .. . (The “interlocking” of
bankers, ministers, magnates of industry and rentiers is here
conveniently forgotten.) If we imagine the development of those
tendencies we have noted carried to their logical conclusion we
will have: the money capital of the nation united in the banks;
the banks themselves combined into cartels; the investment
capital of the nation cast in the shape of securities. Then the
forecast of that genius Saint-Simon will be fulfilled:
‘The present anarchy of production, which corresponds to the fact
that economic relations are developing without uniform regulation, must make way for organisation in
production. Production will no longer be directed by isolated
manufacturers, independent of each other and ignorant of man’s
economic needs; that will be done by a certain public institution. A central committee of management, being able to
survey the large field of social economy from a more elevated
point of view, will regulate it for the benefit of the whole of
society, will put the means of production into suitable hands,
and above all will take care that there be constant harmony
between production and consumption. Institutions already exist
which have assumed as part of their functions a certain organisation of economic labour, the banks.’ We are still a
long way from the fulfilment of Saint-Simon’s forecast, but we
are on the way towards it: Marxism, different from what Marx
imagined, but different only in form.” [1]

A crushing “refutation” of Marx indeed, which retreats a step
from Marx’s precise, scientific analysis to Saint-Simon’s
guess-work, the guess-work of a genius, but guess-work all the
same.

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Notes:
[1]

Grundriss der Sozialökonomik , S. 146.
— Lenin