Concerning these remarks on the general part of the programme, I must note the following.

The revision of the entire general part of the programme, in my opinion, is not called for by necessity. The plan for such a revision outlined by the section seems to me theoretically incorrect.

In its present formulation, the general part of the programme contains a description and analysis of the chief and most essential features of capitalism as a socio-economic system. These features are not fundamentally altered by imperialism, the epoch of finance capital. Imperialism is a continuation of the development of capitalism, its highest stage, transitional, in a certain respect, to socialism.

I cannot, therefore, regard the addition of an analysis of imperialism to the analysis of the basic features of capitalism in general as “mechanical”. In reality, imperialism does not and cannot restructure capitalism from top to bottom. Imperialism complicates and sharpens the contradictions of capitalism, “entangles” monopoly with free competition, but it is unable to eliminate exchange, the market, competition, crises, etc.

Imperialism is moribund capitalism, but not yet dead; dying, but not dead. Not pure monopoly, but monopoly alongside exchange, the market, competition, crises—this is the essential feature of imperialism in general.

It is theoretically incorrect, therefore, to throw out the analysis of exchange, commodity production, crises, etc., in general, and to “replace” this analysis with an analysis of imperialism as a whole. For there is no such whole. There is a transition from competition to monopoly, and it will be much more correct, therefore, and will reproduce reality much more accurately, to have a programme that retains the general analysis of exchange, commodity production, crises, etc., while adding a description of the growing monopolies. It is precisely this combination of mutually contradictory “principles”: competition and monopoly, that is essential to imperialism, and it is precisely this that prepares the collapse, i.e., the socialist revolution.

In Russia, moreover, it would be incorrect to depict imperialism as a coherent whole (imperialism in general is an incoherent whole)—because in Russia there are still very many regions and branches of labour in transition from natural and semi-natural economy to capitalism. This is backward, this is weak, but it nevertheless exists, and under certain conditions it may introduce an element of prolongation in the collapse of capitalism.

The programme ascends—and must ascend—from the simplest manifestations of capitalism to the more complex and “higher” ones, from exchange to commodity production, to the displacement of small enterprises by large ones, to crises, and so on, right up to imperialism, as the highest stage that is growing and has only now matured in the advanced countries. That is precisely how things stand in life. To begin by juxtaposing “exchange” in general and the export of capital—is historically incorrect and theoretically incorrect.

Such is my objection to the section’s remarks.