Reaction Everywhere in the Politics of Imperialism

It is also known as “fully moving towards reactionary politics”.

The political retrogression and reactionary trend revealed by Lenin after analyzing the economic characteristics of imperialism. The inevitable result of financial capital’s monopolistic domination in economy is that it moves towards full reactionary in politics. Lenin said: “Imperialism is an era of financial capital and monopoly organizations. Financial capital and monopoly organizations everywhere have a tendency of domination rather than freedom. As a result of this trend, there will be a full-scale reaction under all political systems”. The specific manifestations are as follows:

Firstly, monopoly makes the basic contradictions of capitalism develop and sharpen day by day; economic crises break out frequently; class contradictions intensify constantly; financial oligarchs can no longer maintain their rule by relying on the coat of freedom and democracy; therefore, they turn from democracy to political reaction, until the implementation of open, terrorist and autocratic fascist dictatorship. The ideology of imperialism also penetrated into the working class.

The high monopoly profits of capitalists buy off workers and nobles, strengthen opportunism and cultivate “social imperialists”.

Secondly, the monopoly group intensified the destruction of national self-determination, carried out the colonial policy crazily, and strengthened the trend of national oppression and annexation. For example, the United States annexed the Philippines, Japan annexed Korea, and the “Eight Allied Forces” suppressed the Chinese Boxer Uprising.

Thirdly, after the division of colonies and “spheres of influence” by imperialism, the struggle to redistribute the world was particularly acute due to unbalanced development, till the 1914 imperialist war began, which brought great disasters to mankind.

“To what extent monopoly capitalism sharpens all contradictions in capitalism is known to all.” All these show the decadent and dying nature of imperialism and the deceptive and reactionary nature of “super imperialism” theory advocated by Kautsky. Only by replacing capitalism with socialism under the dictatorship of the proletariat can the world move towards real lasting peace, harmonious development and human progress.