Written by Lenin in the middle of WW1, this book is an important foundation for ML theory and is still highly relevant. If you’ve never read it, even if you have a solid understanding of modern imperialism, you’re almost certainly going to learn something. You can read the text here.
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For those struggling to find the time with everything going on, try to make an effort to find the time to read, for it is precisely in periods of crisis that Marxist theory is most relevant.
I trust that this pamphlet will help the reader to understand the fundamental economic question, that of the economic essence of imperialism, for unless this is studied, it will be impossible to understand and appraise modern war and modern politics.
Special attention has been devoted in this pamphlet to a criticism of Kautskyism, the international ideological trend represented in all countries of the world by the “most prominent theoreticians”, the leaders of the Second International
This ideological trend is, on the one hand, a product of the disintegration and decay of the Second International, and, on the other hand, the inevitable fruit of the ideology of the petty bourgeoisie, whose entire way of life holds them captive to bourgeois and democratic prejudices.
To combat these tendencies is the bounden duty of the party of the proletariat, which must win away from the bourgeoisie the small proprietors who are duped by them, and the millions of working people who enjoy more or less petty-bourgeois conditions of life.
Also:
It is precisely the parasitism and decay of capitalism, characteristic of its highest historical stage of development, i.e., imperialism. (…) out of such enormous superprofits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their “own” country) it is possible to bribe the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy. And that is just what the capitalists of the “advanced” countries are doing: they are bribing them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert.
Unless the economic roots of this phenomenon are understood and its political and social significance is appreciated, not a step can be taken toward the solution of the practical problem of the communist movement and of the impending social revolution.
Even a century later this text is still extremely relevant, for imperialism still rules over most of the world, and as such it is a necessary read for anyone trying to understand modern day politics and economics, what the imperial core is doing, and how on the long-term their dependency on financial capital will always be outperformed by the sheer productive power of the AES.
Correct me if i’m wrong but on my own words, imperialism in it’s essence is when the pool of savings of a country is controlled by a foreign institutions. In other words, when the vast majority of banks in X country is owned by Y-Z countries, it is imperialism. This means that X country does not get to decide on what the savings are going to be invested, Y-Z countries get to decide.
I would go as far as saying that if X country does not nationally (preferably by the state) own the majority of banks, they’re simply not sovereign, even if somehow they manage to locally produce all the commodities needed to operate.
That’s often part of it, but the core of imperialism is control over the bulk of manufacturing and resource extraction. In this case, a country will be unable to develop regardless of how much money is owned by the domestic banks – investing domestic currency in multinational corporations has limited effect when the imperial actor controls the global reserve currency. Of course, this is usually combined with financial control, but the point of having control of banks is to “invest in” (control) the production pipeline for exporting commodities (usually lightly processed raw material)
Not exactly, altough the use of financial capital to dominate the “zones of influence” is an important factor, it is just a means through which it works and not imperialism in itself.
Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental attributes of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental attributes began to be transformed into their opposites,
If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.
But very brief definitions, although convenient, for they sum up the main points, are nevertheless inadequate, because very important features of the phenomenon that has to be defined have to be especially deduced. And so, (…) we must give a definition of imperialism that will embrace the following five essential features:
(1.) The concentration of production and capital developed to such a high stage that it created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life. (2.) The merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital,” of a “financial oligarchy.” (3.) The export of capital, which has become extremely important, as distinguished from the export of commodities. (4.) The formation of international capitalist monopolies which share the world among themselves. (5.) The territorial division of the whole world among the greatest capitalist powers is completed.
Understanding that according to Lenin: “Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental attributes of capitalism in general.” We must then remember what are some of the fundamental attributes of capitalism in general, and for that let’s take a look at Marx’s “Value, Price and profit”
The surplus value, or that part of the total value of the commodity in which the surplus labour or unpaid labour of the working man is realized, I call profit. The whole of that profit is not pocketed by the employing capitalist. The monopoly of land enables the landlord to take one part of that surplus value, under the name of rent,
On the other hand, the very fact that the possession of the instruments of labour enables the employing capitalist to produce a surplus value, or, what comes to the same, to appropriate to himself a certain amount of unpaid labour, enables the owner of the means of labour, which he lends wholly or partly to the employing capitalist — enables, in one word, the money-lending capitalist to claim for himself under the name of interest another part of that surplus value, so that there remains to the employing capitalist as such only what is called industrial or commercial profit.
Rent, interest, and industrial profit are only different names for different parts of the surplus value of the commodity, or the unpaid labour enclosed in it, and they are equally derived from this source and from this source alone.
So understanding the connection between both works we can reach the conclusion that Imperialism is when, trough the 5 main points that Lenin summed up, the capitalist class of the main countries are able to extract not only resources or labour from their colonies, which already happened in the previous phase of capitalism, but are able to extract chunks of the actual surplus value being created in those countries.
This is how one can understand how, for instance, the U.S. managed to reach 30% of the world’s economy in the 60s, because after it’s decisive victory in the second imperialist war it was able to colonize the entire Free™ world and consequently extracted parts of the surplus value produced in the entire world which flowed straight to the U.S. Banks.
Ultimately it’s all about the monopoly on finance capital because at the end of the day the monopoly on oil or whatever commodity has to deposit the surplus value extracted somewhere, so effectively the monopoly on finance capital has a monopoly on all the surplus value. In some way, private banks are the only sovereign holders of their surplus value.
A nationally owned monopoly on finance capital means the nation controls the destiny of this surplus value, the nation decides where to spend the surplus value of the people whereas in a private bank a board of foreign stockholders decide where to spend it.
China hosting foreign corporations is benefitting for them since they get to hold the surplus value of these operations in China, through the nationally owned Banks, very different than in Mexico where literally all banks are privately owned by the bank cartel, so Mexico barely benefits from foreign investment.
While it’s not wrong to highlight the monopoly of finance capital that banks from the imperial core hold over their Neo-colonies, what I was bringing attention to is that reducing imperialism to just that is missing many of its important aspects.
Lenin himself mentioned 5 essential features, attempting to use less than those inevitably leads to incomplete definitions, for instance, if we consider imperialism to be just monopolistic foreign control over banks, then we would need say that Spain, Portugal and Holland in the 16th-18th were imperialist because they held monopolistic control over their colonies’ banking and trading.
And what I would say is the biggest issue with that reduction is that it focuses on one of the consequences of imperialism rather than looking at the source of it, a distinction that is very important for Dialectical Materialism.
And it’s interesting to look at China as an example because they are able to fight imperialism precisely by paying attention to all those aspects. (1.) They have laws that makes it impossible for private monopolies to form in their country. (2.) They implemented regulations to reduce impact of that banks can have in the industry, looking to limit the mixing between bank and industrial capital and therefore obstructing financial capital in its inception. (3.) Even having the biggest GDP-PPP of the world China still focus more on production over the exportation of capital. (4.) The limitation of foreign companies in Chinese territory, having laws that prevent them from having complete control of their branches in China. (5.) Chinese investment in underdeveloped countries that undermine the main source of profit of the imperialist core.
It’s precisely because China is aware and struggles against imperialism in all these 5 fronts that it is being so successful against it.
Maybe we should do a rain delay on this one? I know I’m not going to get to rereading it for a week at least.
If there’s no engagement by the end of the week, I’ll probably just delay it for a few weeks and try again later. People might be a bit preoccupied with the war
