Preliminary Study on Imperialism

Lenin made a preliminary exposition of the new phenomena in the imperialist era in a series of works from 1895 to 1913. Lenin pointed out that capital concentration and accumulation had a serious impact on social life; big industrial capital and big bank capital were becoming more and more international in nature; the development of capitalism led to the plundering of colonies; the formation of monopoly capital deepened the crisis of capitalism in the global level; and there was an inseparable relationship between monopoly capitalists and bourgeois governments.

The development of syndicate monopoly organizations had a profound impact on capitalist economy, politics and foreign policies, etc. At the same time, Lenin also paid great attention to collecting and reading the latest published articles and books on the new changes of capitalism and formed the habit of writing and taking notes along with reading. In 1905, Lenin began to use the word “imperialism” and the phrase “Japanese imperialism” in the article “The Fall of Port Arthur (Lushunkou)”. Before 1914, Lenin’s research on the new changes of capitalism was scattered in multiple works, such as Draft and Explanation of a Programme for the Social-Democratic Party, War in China, Marxism and Revisionism, Growth of Capitalist Wealth and Bourgeois Financial Magnates and Politicians, but no systematic theory on imperialism had yet been formed. The understanding of the imperialist war triggered more of Lenin’s in-depth thinking.

When the World War I broke out in 1914, in the late period of the Second International, opportunism and revisionism gradually gained the dominant position. At that time, most parties openly betrayed this anti-war declaration, “Basel Manifesto”, adopted by the Extraordinary 9th Congress of the Second International in 1912, and fell to the side with their own governments. For example, by propagating the narrow nationalist slogan of “defend the motherland”, the Social-Democratic Party of Germany drove 2.5 million members to the fronts of the imperialist war. Leaders of socialist parties in Austria, Italy, the United States, Netherlands and Denmark also unconditionally supported their governments. At the critical juncture of historical development, it was urgent to make further scientific explanations on the nature of imperialism and war.

Bolsheviks led by Lenin and the leftists in national parties under Second International held a clear stand in upholding proletarian internationalism and opposing imperialist wars. In October 1914, Lenin drafted the “Declaration of War and the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party”, which revealed the nature of war, and put forward the slogan of “turn imperialist war into civil war”. However, at that time, the leftists in Second International were not strong or mature enough in theory and politic standing. The final results of the struggle were not significant. Lenin realized the crucial importance of “understanding the basic economic problem—the economic essence of imperialism”, because as long as the problem wasn’t solved, one would never know how to understand the war and politics at that time.

Lenin’s revelation of imperialism was based on scientific theories and detailed data. Lenin’s research on imperialism was directly based on Marx’s Capital and the whole theory of political economy, and on Marxist world outlook and methodology. Lenin excerpted important discourses from the works of Marx and Engels and listed the important works of Marx and Engels as a bibliography. Lenin also carefully studied the analysis of imperialism by Marxist theorists of the Second International at that time, including the theory of the accumulation of capital put forward by Rosa Luxemburg, a Marxist theorist and revolutionary praised by Lenin as the “eagle of the revolution”. In the struggle against Bernstein’s revisionism, Rosa Luxemburg proposed to study imperialism from the perspective of capital accumulation and based on the analysis of Marx’s social reproduction theory. She pointed out that imperialism is a “period of universally sharpened world competition between the capitalist states” and a period for backward countries to promote industrialization and capitalist liberation—it is the final phase of capitalism. Paul Lafargue, praised by Engels as “a great light in Paris, the illuminating city”, analyzed the root causes of foreign expansion and aggression by imperialism, and pointed out that the development of monopoly capitalism had accumulated enough material conditions to transit to socialism. In his book Les Trusts Americains, he took the United States as an example to analyze the three characteristics of monopoly capitalism: unprecedented concentration of capital and production; ubiquitous tentacles of financial capital; monopoly organizations have ruled and manipulated people’s economy, politics, spiritual life, and foreign policies, intensified class conflicts and made war inevitable. Lenin spoke highly of these research results.

After migrating to Switzerland in September 1914, Lenin read and took extracts from up a large number of materials in the libraries of Bern, Zurich and other cities, took notes on imperialism and finished 20 notebooks. At the same time, he also quoted the views and materials of many bourgeois or petty-bourgeois scholars, and used pretty much data on world economy, international trade, science and technology, and enterprise management. Materials that revealed the imperialist colonial policy and aggressive war policy especially attracted Lenin’s great attention. He aimed at revealing opportunistic compromising policies and treachery through studying imperialism, and thus formulating correct strategies for proletarian revolutionary movements.