Transition of Capitalism from Free Competition to Monopoly

Leninism arose at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the epoch when capitalism developed towards monopoly.

The second industrial revolution marked by the electrical technology pushed forward the progress of the capitalist mode of production and the capitalist world economic system was finally formed. Within developed capitalist countries, new industrial sectors, represented by heavy industry, had sprung up. The scale of enterprises was continuously expanding, and the capital was more abundant, which promoted the concentration of production and capital. The anarchy of production and the fierce competition of capital caused frequent global economic crises between 1873 and 1907, which caused great damage to social productive forces and accelerated the process of enterprise merger and the devouring of small capital by large capital. The concentration of production and capital in capitalist countries eventually led to the emergence of monopoly organizations, and capitalism developed from the stage of free competition to the stage of imperialism.

After entering the stage of imperialism, capitalism exposed an obvious parasitism and decadence. Monopoly organizations often deliberately hindered technological progress to prevent new inventions from endangering high monopoly profits. Moreover, with the emergence and development of monopoly, capitalists separated from the production process and circulation process formed a new class of profiteers who relied solely on “clipping coupons” for a living, and a small number of imperialist powers also became profiteers, which indicated that the capitalist system had become a decadent and declining social system, and the monopoly bourgeoisie has become a decadent and declining reactionary class. In order to maintain its monopoly at home and hegemony abroad, the monopoly bourgeoisie was moving towards fully reactionary in politics. All these intensified contradictions between imperialist countries, between imperialist and colonial and semi-colonial countries, and between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie within imperialist countries, resulting in many crises of imperialism. Under such circumstances, the objective conditions for the proletariat to form an alliance with the working masses of its own country and unite all the oppressed countries and oppressed peoples of the world to struggle against imperialism were increasingly mature.