essays-ccs/reviews/lenin_imperialism_book_study_notes.md

# Lenin's Imperialism book study notes

## Context

- Written in 1916, during WW1, written for two purposes
- To educate people on this new state of capitalism.
  - IE an early or middle to a late stage, where
  - "free competition" of the early stage of capitalism is dying.
  - Monopolies have formed
  - Capitalism becomes a world system.
  - Production is exported abroad, Colonialism overtakes internal production.
  - The world becomes divvied up by a handful of imperial core countries (GB, France, US, Germany, Holland, Japan)
  - Finance capital overtakes industrial capital in the rich countries.
- As a polemic against a lot of groups:
  - Pacifists or imperialist apologists who thought that imperialism and monopoly was bringing about a "world democracy".
  - Bourgeios economists who denied the reality of the export of production, monopoly, and imperialism.
  - Small and Middle Capitalists who want to go back to the days of "free competition".
  - Those groups who accepted all of the above, but saw imperialism as beneficial.
  - Reformists, pacifists, chauvinist socialists, kautskyites, capitalists and their apologists, etc

## Other interesting points

- Seems like it was written yesterday, mainly because we still live in the imperialist era.
- Even a lot of the companies are still existing: Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan (Chase bank) Rockefeller, ThyssenKrupp.
- Continues on from Engels in creating the field of dependency theory / social bribery, and furthers concepts of labor aristocracy, and the struggle between rich and poor nations.

## Definition

### General

The domination of a weaker country by a stronger one; referring primarily to the conquering and exploitation of the land, labor, and natural resources of the weaker country. In

### Leninist

> Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.

## Chapter 1 - Creation of Monopolies

### Summary

- By the beginning of the 19th century, due to the growth of industry, free competition has been superceded by monopoly capitalism: the concentration of production into a few giant firms ( who often form cartels ) that dominate their industry.
- These monopolies control all the expertise, resources, trading networks,
- In a sense production has become "socialized", and development internal to firms, but the benefits / surplus goes to the company owners.
  - Peoples republic of walmart - makes this same point.
- Goes over these statistics for Germany, US, GB.
- Goes over monopolistic practices and methods they use to push out small and middle producers.

### Quotes

> In Germany, Less than one-hundredth of the total number of enterprises utilise more than three-fourths of the total amount of steam and electric power! [...] Tens of thousands of huge enterprises are everything; millions of small ones are nothing.

## Chapter 2 - Banks and their new role

### Summary

- Banks grow from the middlemen taking fees for providing money capital to industrialists to secure raw materials, to taking over their role entirely ( or subsuming them): banks become experts in industry, and choose how and where to allocate resources themselves.
- Goes over this in GB, France, and Britain, how the # of banks has decreased.
- In many countries, the

### Quotes

> As banking develops and becomes concentrated in a small number of establishments, the banks grow from modest middlemen into powerful monopolies having at their command almost the whole of the money capital of all the capitalists and small businessmen and also the larger part of the means of production and sources of raw materials in any one country and in a number of countries. This transformation of numerous modest middlemen into a handful of monopolists is one of the fundamental processes in the growth of capitalism into capitalist imperialism.

> We see the rapid expansion of a close network of channels which cover the whole country, centralising all capital and all revenues, transforming thousands and thousands of scattered economic enterprises into a single national capitalist, and then into a world capitalist economy.

## Chapter 3 - Finance capital

### Summary

- Industrial and banking capital merge, to form finance capital.
- Goes over bank assets to show this new state of affairs.

- Social democrats think share issueing is the "democratization of capital", when in reality its 1 dollar = 1 vote, so even "40 per cent of the shares of a company in order to direct its affairs".
-

### Quotes

> The concentration of production; the monopolies arising therefrom; the merging or coalescence of the banks with industry—such is the history of the rise of finance capital and such is the content of that concept.

> Speculation in land situated in the suburbs of rapidly growing big towns is a particularly profitable operation for finance capital. [Talks about how means of communication / infrastructure increase the value of land ].

> It is characteristic of capitalism in general that the ownership of capital is separated from the application of capital to production, that money capital is separated from industrial or productive capital, and that the rentier who lives entirely on income obtained from money capital, is separated from the entrepreneur and from all who are directly concerned in the management of capital. Imperialism, or the domination of finance capital, is that highest stage of capitalism in which this separation reaches vast proportions. The supremacy of finance capital over all other forms of capital means the predominance of the rentier and of the financial oligarchy; it means that a small number of financially “powerful” states stand out among all the rest. The extent to which this process is going on may be judged from the statistics on emissions, i.e., the issue of all kinds of securities.

## Chapter 4 - Export of Capital

### Summary

- When wages in the imperial core become high, it becomes more profitable to export capital and production to undeveloped countries, where wages, land, and natural resources are cheap.
- Shows figures for money capital invested by GB, france, and germany in america, europe, asia, africa, etc.

### Quotes

> Capitalism is commodity production at its highest stage of development, when labour-power itself becomes a commodity. [...] England became a capitalist country before any other, and by the middle of the nineteenth century, having adopted free trade, claimed to be the “workshop of the world,” the supplier of manufactured goods to all countries, which in exchange were to keep her provided with raw materials. But in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, this monopoly was already undermined; for other countries, sheltering themselves with “protective” tariffs, developed into independent capitalist states. On the threshold of the twentieth century we see the formation of a new type of monopoly: firstly, monopolist associations of capitalists in all capitalistically developed countries; secondly, the monopolist position of a few very rich countries, in which the accumulation of capital has reached gigantic proportions. An enormous “surplus of capital” has arisen in the advanced countries.

> As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will be utilised not for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists, but for the purpose of increasing profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries. In these backward countries profits are usually high, for capital is scarce, the price of land is relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap. The export of capital is made possible by a number of backward countries having already been drawn into world capitalist intercourse; main railways have either been or are being built in those countries, elementary conditions for industrial development have been created, etc. The need to export capital arises from the fact that in a few countries capitalism has become “overripe” and (owing to the backward state of agriculture and the poverty of the masses) capital cannot find a field for “profitable” investment.

## Chapter 5 - Division of the world by capitalist monopolies

### Summary

- These capitalist monopolies begin a "great game" / race to conquer poorer nations and divide the world into spheres of influence.
- Talks about how essentially 2 electric companies so dominated the world market, that no other company could be completely independent from them. Same for oil, shipping, railways, and steel.

### Quotes

Against the imperialism is bringing peace "socialists":

> Certain bourgeois writers (now joined by Karl Kautsky, who has completely abandoned the Marxist position he had held, for example, in 1909) have expressed the opinion that international cartels, being one of the most striking expressions of the internationalisation of capital, give the hope of peace among nations under capitalism. Theoretically, this opinion is absolutely absurd, while in practice it is sophistry and a dishonest defence of the worst opportunism. [...] but the substance of the struggle, its class content, positively cannot change while classes exist. [...] The question as to whether these changes are “purely” economic or non-economic (e.g., military) is a secondary one, which cannot in the least affect fundamental views on the latest epoch of capitalism. To substitute the question of the form of the struggle and agreements (today peaceful, tomorrow warlike, the next day warlike again) for the question of the substance of the struggle and agreements between capitalist associations is to sink to the role of a sophist.

## Chapter 6 - Division of the world among the great powers

### Summary

- Existing imperial-core capitalist states, needing to seek profit abroad, accelerate colonialism, moreso than they did during the "free competition" era.
- Compares the colonial possessions of GB, Germany, France, Russia, US, and Japan, in terms of land and population.
- Many of these had larger land and populations outside their own borders.
- Continues on from Engels and creates some of the foundations for labor aristocracy theory, talking about a bourgeois proletariat who benefits from imperialism.

### Quotes

> It is not without interest to observe that even then these leading British bourgeois politicians saw the connection between what might be called the purely economic and the socio-political roots of modern imperialism. Chamberlain advocated imperialism as a “true, wise and economical policy,” and pointed particularly to the German, American and Belgian competition which Great Britain was encountering in the world market. Salvation lies in monopoly, said the capitalists as they formed cartels, syndicates and trusts. Salvation lies in monopoly, echoed the political leaders of the bourgeoisie, hastening to appropriate the parts of the world not yet shared out. And Cecil Rhodes, we are informed by his intimate friend, the journalist Stead, expressed his imperialist views to him in 1895 in the following terms: “I was in the East End of London (a working-class quarter) yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for ‘bread! bread!’ and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism.... My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists."

> Colonial policy and imperialism existed before the latest stage of capitalism, and even before capitalism. Rome, founded on slavery, pursued a colonial policy and practised imperialism. But “general” disquisitions on imperialism, which ignore, or put into the background, the fundamental difference between socio-economic formations, inevitably turn into the most vapid banality or bragging, like the comparison: “Greater Rome and Greater Britain.” Even the capitalist colonial policy of previous stages of capitalism is essentially different from the colonial policy of finance capital.
>
> The principal feature of the latest stage of capitalism is the domination of monopolist associations of big employers. These monopolies are most firmly established when all the sources of raw materials are captured by one group, and we have seen with what zeal the international capitalist associations exert every effort to deprive their rivals of all opportunity of competing, to buy up, for example, ironfields, oilfields, etc. Colonial possession alone gives the monopolies complete guarantee against all contingencies in the struggle against competitors, including the case of the adversary wanting to be protected by a law establishing a state monopoly. The more capitalism is developed, the more strongly the shortage of raw materials is felt, the more intense the competition and the hunt for sources of raw materials throughout the whole world, the more desperate the struggle for the acquisition of colonies.

## Chapter 7 - Imperialism as a special stage of capitalism

### Summary

- Gives several definitions of imperialism
  - The short one: When free competition has been replaced by monopoly capitalism
  - Longer one
  - 5 characteristics
    - monopoly capitalism
    - merging of industrial and bank into finance capital
    - export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities
    - Formation of int'l cartels that share the world
    - territorial division of the world among the biggest capitalist states.
- Debates with Kautsky over definitions: kautsky thinks its just a policy, and that industrial capital is still dominant.

### Quotes

> Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.

## Chapter 8 - Parisitism and the decay of capitalism

### Summary

- The imperial core countries become parasitic blood-suckers on their colonies.
- They turn from industrial into Creditor states.
- Talks about the bribing native politicians, recruiting the armies from among the colonies themselves.
- Talks about increase in immigration to the imperial core countries, rather than away.
- Talks more about the social bribery, labor aristocracy / bourgeois proletariat in England, due to the benefits imperialism brings.

### Quotes

> As for the second circumstance, Hobson writes: “One of the strangest symptoms of the blindness of imperialism is the reckless indifference with which Great Britain, France and other imperial nations are embarking on this perilous dependence. Great Britain has gone farthest. Most of the fighting by which we have won our Indian Empire has been done by natives; in India, as more recently in Egypt, great standing armies are placed under British commanders; almost all the fighting associated with our African dominions, except in the southern part, has been done for us by natives."

> It must be observed that in Great Britain the tendency of imperialism to split the workers, to strengthen opportunism among them and to cause temporary decay in the working-class movement, revealed itself much earlier than the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries; for two important distinguishing features of imperialism were already observed in Great Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century—vast colonial possessions and a monopolist position in the world market. Marx and Engels traced this connection between opportunism in the working-class movement and the imperialist features of British capitalism systematically, during the course of several decades. For example, on October 7, 1858, Engels wrote to Marx: “The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.”[13] Almost a quarter of a century later, in a letter dated August 11, 1881, Engels speaks of the “worst English trade unions which allow themselves to be led by men sold to, or at least paid by, the middle class”. In a letter to Kautsky, dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote: “You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers’ party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies.”[13] (Engels expressed similar ideas in the press in his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, which appeared in 1892.)
>
> This clearly shows the causes and effects. The causes are: (1) exploitation of the whole world by this country; (2) its monopolist position in the world market; (3) its colonial monopoly. The effects are: (1) a section of the British proletariat becomes bourgeois; (2) a section of the proletariat allows itself to be led by men bought by, or at least paid by, the bourgeoisie.

## Chapter 9 - Critique of imperialism

### Summary

- Summarizes the attitude of different classes of society towards imperialism.
- Many socdem parties like the SDP of germany or fabians are "social-imperialists": socialism in words but imperialism in deed.
- Critiques people (mainly kautsky ) who want to reform imperialism;
- Critiques the tendency of bourgeois economists to be naive and talk about peace under imperialism.

### Quotes

> From this Kautsky concludes that “we have no reason to suppose that without military occupation the growth of British trade with Egypt would have been less, simply as a result of the mere operation of economic factors.” “The urge of capital to expand ... can be best promoted, not by the violent methods of imperialism, but by peaceful democracy.”

> Kautsky’s obscuring of the deepest contradictions of imperialism, which inevitably boils down to painting imperialism in bright colours, leaves its traces in this writer’s criticism of the political features of imperialism. Imperialism is the epoch of finance capital and of monopolies, which introduce everywhere the striving for domination, not for freedom. Whatever the political system, the result of these tendencies is everywhere reaction and an extreme intensification of antagonisms in this field. Particularly intensified become the yoke of national oppression and the striving for annexations, i.e., the violation of national independence (for annexation is nothing but the violation of the right of nations to self-determination). Hilferding rightly notes the connection between imperialism and the intensification of national oppression. “In the newly opened-up countries,” he writes, “the capital imported into them intensifies antagonisms and excites against the intruders the constantly growing resistance of the peoples who are awakening to national consciousness; this resistance can easily develop into dangerous measures against foreign capital. The old social relations become completely revolutionised, the age-long agrarian isolation of ‘nations without history’ is destroyed and they are drawn into the capitalist whirlpool. Capitalism itself gradually provides the subjugated with the means and resources for their emancipation and they set out to achieve the goal which once seemed highest to the European nations: the creation of a united national state as a means to economic and cultural freedom. This movement for national independence threatens European capital in its most valuable and most promising fields of exploitation, and European capital can maintain its domination only by continually increasing its military forces.”

## Chapter 10 - The place of imperialism in history

### Summary

- Talks about how this imperialist / monopoly capitalism stage intensifies class contradictions, and that this is a transitional period in history.
- Even though capitalism and industrial development appear to slow down in the imperial core countries, things are accelerating as a whole.
- Talks about how usurer / rentier / creditor states become pitted against colonized ones.... more labor aristocracy theory.

### Quotes

> From all that has been said in this book on the economic essence of imperialism, it follows that we must define it as capitalism in transition, or, more precisely, as moribund capitalism.

> Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations—all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism. More and more prominently there emerges, as one of the tendencies of imperialism, the creation of the “rentier state”, the usurer state, in which the bourgeoisie to an ever-increasing degree lives on the proceeds of capital exports and by “clipping coupons”. It would be a mistake to believe that this tendency to decay precludes the rapid growth of capitalism. It does not. In the epoch of imperialism, certain branches of industry, certain strata of the bourgeoisie and certain countries betray, to a greater or lesser degree, now one and now another of these tendencies. On the whole, capitalism is growing far more rapidly than before; but this growth is not only becoming more and more uneven in general, its unevenness also manifests itself, in particular, in the decay of the countries which are richest in capital (Britain).

> The receipt of high monopoly profits by the capitalists in one of the numerous branches of industry, in one of the numerous countries, etc., makes it economically possible for them to bribe certain sections of the workers, and for a time a fairly considerable minority of them, and win them to the side of the bourgeoisie of a given industry or given nation against all the others. The intensification of antagonisms between imperialist nations for the division of the world increases this urge. And so there is created that bond between imperialism and opportunism, which revealed itself first and most clearly in Great Britain, owing to the fact that certain features of imperialist development were observable there much earlier than in other countries. Some writers, L. Martov, for example, are prone to wave aside the connection between imperialism and opportunism in the working-class movement—a particularly glaring fact at the present time—by resorting to “official optimism” (à la Kautsky and Huysmans) like the following: the cause of the opponents of capitalism would be hopeless if it were progressive capitalism that led to the increase of opportunism, or, if it were the best-paid workers who were inclined towards opportunism, etc. We must have no illusions about “optimism” of this kind. It is optimism in respect of opportunism; it is optimism which serves to conceal opportunism. As a matter of fact the extraordinary rapidity and the particularly revolting character of the development of opportunism is by no means a guarantee that its victory will be durable: the rapid growth of a painful abscess on a healthy body can only cause it to burst more quickly and thus relieve the body of it. The most dangerous of all in this respect are those who do not wish to understand that the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism.