Excerpt
X. THE
PLACE OF IMPERIALISM IN HISTORY
We have
seen that in its economic essence imperialism is monopoly
capitalism. This in itself determines its place in history,
for monopoly that grows out of the soil of free competition,
and precisely out of free competition, is the transition
from the capitalist system to a higher socioeconomic
order. We must take special note of the four principal
types of monopoly, or principal manifestations of monopoly
capitalism, which arc characteristic of the epoch we
are examining.
Firstly,
monopoly arose out of the concentration of production
at a very high stage. This refers to the monopolist
capitalist associations, cartels, syndicates and trusts.
We have seen the important part these play in present-day
economic life. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
monopolies had acquired complete supremacy in the advanced
countries, and although the first steps towards the
formation of the cartels were taken by countries enjoying
the protection of high tariffs (Germany, America), Great
Britain, with the system of free trade, revealed the
same basic phenomenon only a little later, namely, the
birth of monopoly out of the concentration of production.
Secondly,
monopolies have stimulated the seizure of the most important
sources of raw materials, especially for the basic and
most highly cartelised industries in capitalist society:
the coal and iron industries. The monopoly of the most
important sources of raw materials has enormously increased
the power of big capital, and has sharpened the antagonism
between cartelised and non-cartelised industry.
Thirdly,
monopoly has sprung from the banks. The banks have developed
from modest middleman enterprises into the monopolists
of finance capital. Some three to five of the biggest
banks in each of the foremost capitalist countries have
achieved the "personal link-up" between industrial
and bank capital, and have concentrated in their hands
the control of thousands upon thousands of millions
which form the greater part of the capital and income
of entire countries. A financial oligarchy, which throws
a close network of dependence relationships over all
the economic and political institutions of present-day
bourgeois society without exception - such is the most
striking manifestation of this monopoly.
Fourthly,
monopoly has grown out of colonial policy. To the numerous
"old" motives of colonial policy, finance
capital has added the struggle for the sources of raw
materials, for the export of capital, for spheres of
influence, i.e., for spheres for profitable deals, concessions,
monopoly profits and so on, economic territory in general.
When the colonies of the European powers, for instance,
comprised only one-tenth of the territory of Africa
(as was the case in 1876), colonial policy was able
to develop by methods other than those of monopoly--by
the "free grabbing" of territories, so to
speak. But when nine-tenths of Africa had been seized
(by 1900), when the whole world had been divided Up,
there was inevitably ushered in the era of monopoly
possession of colonies and, consequently, of particularly
intense struggle for the division and the redivision
of the world. . . .
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 23
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