From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism (1916), by Vladimir Lenin, describes the
relationship between capitalism and imperialism, wherein the merging of banks
and industrial cartels produces finance capital. The final,
imperialist stage of capitalism, originates in the financial function of
generating greater profits than the home market can yield; thus,
business exports (excess) capital, which, in due course,
leads to the economic division of the world among international
business monopolies, and imperial European states colonising large
portions of the world to generate investment profits. Imperialism,
thus, is an advanced stage of capitalism based upon monopoly and the export of
capital — not goods, and of which colonialism is one but one feature (Bowles
2007).
The super-profits that colonial exploitation yields, permit
business to bribe politicians — labour leaders and the labour aristocracy (upper stratum of the
working class) — to politically thwart the risk of worker revolt in
the capitalist homeland; thus, the new proletariat (working class)
are the exploited workers in the Third World colonies of the
European powers. In the preface to the French and German editions
(1920) of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,
Lenin said that revolt against the capitalist global system will be
effected with the "thousand million people" of the colonies and
semi-colonies (the system’s weak points), rather than with the
urban people of Western Europe’s industrialised societies (V.I.
Lenin 2000: 37-8). He prophesied that revolution would spread to
the advanced capitalist states from under-developed countries, such
as Russia, where he had successfully seized the political command
of the October Revolution (Read 2005:
116-26).
Lenin’s syntheses of the political, economic, and social
analyses of the works of Karl Kautsky, John A. Hobson (Imperialism: A Study,
1902), and Rudolf Hilferding (Das
Finanzkapital, 1910), were the philosophic bases to the pragmatic application the
political philosophy (Leninism) to the new circumstances of the First World War
(1914–18) between the German and the British empires — which
exemplified imperial capitalist competition, the thesis of his
Imperialism disquisition essay. In an imperial world
theatre, Russia was a socially-retarded economic subsidiary of the
latter capitalist countries. In the post war edition introduction,
Lenin said that the punitive treaties of Brest-Litovsk (1918) and Versailles (1919) demonstrated the
(true) economic motivation of the First World War, as described in
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Read 2005:
116-26).
Publication
history
Lenin wrote Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism (1916) in Zürich, between January and June 1916. It was
first published by Zhzn i, Znaniye Publishers, Petrograd in mid
1917; Lenin wrote a new Preface for the French and German editions
(6th July 1920), first published in the Communist
International No 18, 1921 (V.I. Lenin 2000).
References
- Paul Bowles (2007) Capitalism, Pearson: London.
- Vladimir Lenin (1948) Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism, London: Lawrence and Wishart.
- Vladimir Lenin (2000) Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism, with Introduction by Prabat Patnaik, New Delhi:
LeftWord Books
- Christopher Read (2005) Lenin. London: Routledge.
See also
External
links
| Significant works by Lenin |
|
|
|
|
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
