Imperialism

Monopoly capitalism is a special stage of capitalist development. Lenin called it the highest stage of capitalism.

With the development of science and technology and productive forces, the capitalism of free competition is developing to monopoly capitalism. Monopoly capitalism strengthens exploitation and oppression at home and invades and expands externally, which intensifies the inherent contradictions of capitalism and makes wars happen constantly. The Spanish-American war broke out in 1898, the Anglo-Boer war broke out in 1899, and the World War I broke out in 1914.

War has brought unprecedented disasters to human society. “More and more economic and political works published in the old and new continents use the concept of imperialism to illustrate the characteristics of our times.” In 1902, Hobson, the British economist, published the book Imperialism, which explained the basic economic and political characteristics of imperialism in detail. In 1910, German economist Hilferding published the book Financial Capital, which made a valuable theoretical analysis on “the latest stage of capitalist development”. However, both of them have the standpoint and viewpoint of social reformism and opportunism.

Lenin is the epitome of scientific imperialism theory. The outbreak of the World War I prompted Lenin to intensify the systematic study of imperialist theory. He studied all kinds of books and magazines about imperialism, including political and economic, science and technology, history and geography, labor movement and national liberation movement in capitalist countries, and made a lot of notes. These notes reveal the lies of the bourgeois scholars in defending imperialism, and at the same time draw on their beneficial achievements in the study of imperialism.

In 1917, Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism was published, marking the establishment of Marxist imperialism theory. In this classic work on imperialism, Lenin inherited and developed the principles expounded by Marx in Capital, investigated the formation and development process of imperialism by using the method of combining historical and logical analysis, and scientifically analyzed the nature and development law of economy in the era of monopoly capitalism, i.e., imperialism.

Lenin revealed that monopoly is the economic essence of imperialism, but this kind of monopoly is not a pure monopoly, but a monopoly mixed with and a monopoly which coexists with competition. Under the monopoly conditions, the competition is more intense and cruel.

Lenin summarized the five basic characteristics of imperialism and pointed out the internal relations among them. On this basis, Lenin gave a scientific definition of imperialism: “Imperialism is capitalism that develops to the stage when the rule of monopoly organizations and financial capital has been established, the capital export is of great significance. International Trust begins to carve up the world, and some of the largest capitalist countries have finished dividing up the whole world.”

Lenin pointed out the historical position of imperialism. In the stage of imperialism, capitalism showed its unique parasitic and decadent nature. However, in the stage of imperialism, the trend of economic stagnation and decay coexists with the trend of rapid development. In fact, the development of capitalism in this stage is much faster than before, but the development is more unbalanced. Lenin argued that in the period of imperialism, the law of unbalanced economic and political development made the development of capitalist countries in a leap like way. Some later capitalist countries can catch up with or even surpass the old capitalist countries in a relatively short period of time. When the world territory has been divided, the change in the balance of power caused by unbalanced development will inevitably lead to the war of re dividing the world territory. The imperialist war weakened the strength of some imperialist countries and created conditions for the victory of the proletarian socialist revolution. “Imperialism is the eve of the proletarian social revolution.” In his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin deeply analyzed Kautsky’s definition of imperialism. Kautsky denies that imperialism is a period or a stage of the development of capitalism, and thinks that imperialism is the “preferred” policy of financial capital.

Lenin argued that the key point of Kautsky’s definition of imperialism is to separate the imperialist policies from the economic basis of financial capital, which is to advocate his theory of “super imperialism” as long as he struggles with the imperialist policies and does not touch the economic basis of financial capital. Lenin’s imperialist theory enriched and developed Marx’s capitalist theory and created a new stage of Marxist development; the victory of Russian October Revolution under Lenin’s guidance made socialism move from theory to practice, from ideal to reality, and entered a new era of proletarian socialist revolution.