N. Lenin

“ It embraces only the most striking aspect of the process being accomplished before our eyes. It shows that the observer cannot see the wood for the trees. It slavishly follows the obvious, the fortuitous, the chaotic. It reveals him as a man overwhelmed by raw materials and entirely incapable of understanding its meaning and importance. Ownership of shares and relations between owners of private property "mingle in a haphazard way." But beneath this interlacing, what constitutes its very base are the changing social relations of production. ”

“ If German trade with the British colonies is developing more rapidly than that of Britain with the same colonies, that only proves that German imperialism is younger, stronger, and better organised than British; in short, is superior to it. But this by no means proves the superiority of free competition, for it is not free competition fighting against protectionism and colonial dependence in this struggle, but two rival imperialisms, two monopolies, two groups of finance-capital. ”

“ Now there is no doubt that, if capitalism could develop agriculture, which to-day has been everywhere left far behind by industry, if it could raise the standard of living of the masses, who are everywhere still poverty-stricken and badly fed in spite of a dizzy advance in technical knowledge, there could be no talk of an excess of capital. ”

“ The banking kings seem to be afraid lest the State monopoly should unexpectedly catch them up. But it stands to reason that this fear does not make them go any further than the limits of competition between two department managers in the same office, if we may use the comparison; for, actually, it is still the same set of banking magnates who handle the billions entrusted to the Savings Banks, while State monopoly in a capitalist society is never anything else than a means of guaranteeing the income of millionaries who are on the point of going bankrupt in one branch of industry or another. ”

“ We ask, was there under capitalism any means of remedying the disproportion between the development of production and the accumulation of capital on the one side, and the division of colonies and spheres of influence by finance-capital on the other side—other than by the resort to arms? ”

“ Free competition is the fundamental quality of capitalism, and of commodity production generally. Monopoly is exactly the opposite of free competition; but we have seen this latter beginning to be transformed into monopoly beneath our very eyes, creating big industry and eliminating small, replacing big industry by still bigger industry, finally leading to such a concentration of production and capital that monopoly has been and is the result: cartels, combines and trusts, and, fusing with them, the power of a dozen or so banks manipulating thousands of millions. ”

“ So it was with the monopoly of potash, so it is with the oil monopoly, so it will be with the monopoly of electricity. It is time for our State-Socialists, who let themselves be blinded by beautiful principles, to understand once and for all that in Germany the monopolies have never had as their aim or effect the advantage of the consumer or even a share of the profits of industry for the State, but have only served to revive, at the expense of the State, private industry which was on the verge of bankruptcy. ”

“ At the same time monopoly, which has sprung from free competition, does not drive the latter out of existence, but co-exists over it and with it, thus giving rise to a number of very acute and very great contradictions, antagonisms and conflicts. Monopoly is the transition from capitalism to a more highly developed order.
If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, it would be defined as the monopoly stage of capitalism. ”

“ It is not an ideal such as the restoration of free trade—now become a reactionary ideal—which should be the object of proletarian policy, but solely the complete abolition of competition by the overthrow of capitalism. ”

“ That capitalism would develop more rapidly if free trade were not restrained either by monopolies in general or by the "connections" or the yoke, (i.e., again the monopoly) of finance capitalism, or yet again by the colonial monopoly of certain countries?
Kautsky's reasoning can have no other meaning. Admitting that this is so, admitting that free competition, without any sort of monopoly, would develop capitalism and trade more rapidly. But the more rapidly capitalism and trade develops, the greater is the concentration of trade and capital which gives birth to monopoly. ”

“ The official economists tried to kill, by a conspiracy of silence, the works of Marx which showed, by means of a theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism, that free competition gives rise to the concentration of production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to monopoly. Nowadays, monopoly has become a fact. The economists are piling up volumes to describe the diverse manifestations of monopoly, and are continuing to declare in chorus that "Marxism is refuted." ”

“ An approximate inventory of markets is also made, and the trusts divide them up amongst themselves by contract. Skilled labour is monopolised, the best engineers are engaged; monopoly seizes the means of transport—railways in America, shipping companies in Europe and America. Capitalism, in its imperialist phase, arrives at the threshold of the complete socialisation of production. To some extent it causes the capitalists, whether they like it or no, to enter a new social order, which marks the transition from free competition to the socialisation of production. ”

“ Production will be directed not by chiefs of businesses independent of each other and and ignorant of man's economic needs, but by a special institution. The central committee of control, being able to consider the large field of social economy from a more elevated point of view, will regulate it in such a way that it will be useful to the whole of society, will be able to put the means of production into suitable hands, and above all will occupy itself more particularly with maintaining constant harmony between production and consumption. ”

“ I thought about this on the way home, and I became more and more convinced of the importance of imperialism. My cherished idea provides a solution for the social problem. In order to save 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must take possession of new lands for peopling by the surplus population of this country, where we shall be able to find new markets for the goods produced in our factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a question of the belly. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become an imperialist. ”

“ They quoted the words of Lincoln: "It is self-government when the white man governs himself; but when he governs himself and also governs others, it is no longer self-government, it is despotism." [2]
But while all this criticism shrank from recognising the indissoluble bond between imperialism and the trusts, and, therefore, between imperialism and the very foundations of capitalism, while it shrank from joining up with the mighty forces engendered by large-scale capitalism as it develops—it remained a "pious hope."
This is also the attitude of Hobson in his critique of imperialism. ”

“ For there can be no other conceivable basis, under capitalism, for the sharing out of spheres of influence, of interests, of colonies, etc., than a calculation of the strength of the participants, their general economic, financial, military strength, etc. And strength among them is constantly varying, for there cannot be, under capitalism, an equal development of different undertakings, trusts, branches of industry or countries. Half-a-century ago, Germany was an insignificant country, as far as capitalist strength is concerned, by comparison with Britain. ”

“ Imperialism is capitalism in that phase of its development in which the domination of monopolies and finance-capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired very great importance ”

“ The Division of the World Among Capitalist Groups
The capitalist monopoly groups—cartels, syndicates, trusts—divide among themselves first of all the whole internal trade of a country, grasping the whole of industry more and more firmly. But in capitalist society, internal trade is connected with foreign trade. Capitalism has long ago created a world market. ”

“ Finance Capital and Financial Oligarchy
"An increasing proportion of industrial capital," says Hilferding, "does not belong to the industrialists who employ it. They obtain the use of it only through the goodwill of the bank, which as against them represents the owner of the capital. On the other hand, the bank is forced to place a more and more important part of its funds in business. Thus it is continually becoming more of an industrial capitalist: and this banker's capital, this money capital, turned into industrial capital, is what I call 'finance-capital'. ”

“ Monopolies, oligarchy, the tendency towards domination instead of the tendency towards liberty, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by an extremely small minority of the richest or most powerful nations—all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which oblige us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism. ”

“ We now have to describe how the domination of capitalist monopolies inevitably becomes, in conditions of commodity production and private property, the domination of a financial oligarchy. It should be noticed that the representatives of German bourgeois learning—and not of German learning alone—such as Riesser, Schulze-Gaevernitz, Liefmann, etc.—are all apologists for imperialism and for finance-capital. ”

“ We have foreshadowed the possibility of even a larger alliance of Western States, a European federation of great Powers, which, so far from forwarding the cause of world civilisation, might introduce the gigantic peril of a Western parasitism, a group of advanced industrial nations, whose upper classes drew vast tribute from Asia and Africa, with which they supported great tame masses of retainers, no longer engaged in the staple industries of agriculture and manufacture, but kept in the performance of personal or minor industrial services under the control of a new financial aristocracy. ”

“ All regulating laws, such as the necessity to publish balance sheets and to draw them up on certain models, the supervision of financial houses; these things about which professors and officials with the best intentions—that is, with the best intention of defending capitalism—discourse to the public, can have no kind of importance here. For private property is sacred, and no one can be hindered in buying, selling, exchanging or mortgaging shares, etc. ”

“ We shall see later how imperialism may and must be defined if consideration is given not only to the economic factors—to which the above definition is limited—but also to the historical place of this phase of capitalism as an aspect of capitalism in general or of the relations between imperialism and the two fundamental tendencies of the working class movement. The point to be noted just now is that imperialism, as we understand it, undeniably represents a particular phase of capitalist development. ”

“ In the same way that the trusts capitalise their property by estimating it at two or three times its value, taking into consideration its "possible" future revenues and the further results of monopoly, so finance-capital tends in general to take possession of the greatest area of land of any and every kind in any and every place and in any and every way, estimating possibilities of finding raw materials there, and fearing to be left behind in the insensate struggle for the last available scraps of unappropriated territory, or for the re-partition of that which was already appropriated. ”

“ Imperialism, which means the partition of the world and the exploitation not of China alone, and which means the high profits of monopoly for a handful of very rich countries, creates the economic possibility of corrupting the upper layers of the proletariat, and thereby nourishes, defines and strengthens opportunism. Only, it must not be forgotten that the Social-Liberal Hobson naturally cannot see the forces acting directly against imperialism in general and opportunism in particular. ”

“ The statement that combines do away with crises is only a tale for the marines, used by bourgeois economists who set out to justify capitalism at all costs. On the contrary, when monopoly appears in certain branches of industry, it increases and intensifies the chaos proper to capitalist production as a whole. The disparity between the development of agriculture and that of industry, which is already a characteristic of capitalism, becomes increased. ”

“ As for the second cause, Hobson writes: "One of the strangest symptoms of the blindness of Imperialism is the reckless indifference with which Great Britain, France and other imperial nations are embarking on this perilous dependence. Great Britain has gone farthest. Most of the fighting by which we have won our Indian Empire has been done more recently by natives. In India, as in Egypt, great standing armies are placed under British commanders: almost all the fighting associated with our African dominions, except in the Southern part, has been done for us by natives." ”