Description
Many of the leaders of the Second International, who had capitulated to social chauvinism, portrayed imperialism as simply a “bad” policy implemented by one or another country’s capitalist government, or a consequence of nationalistic attitudes. In Imperialism Lenin cut through this confusion and politically rearmed the most advanced workers with a materialist analysis of how predatory wars, annexationism, etc. flowed directly from capitalism in its monopoly stage.
He outlined the processes through which the “old” capitalism, characterized by free market competition, has been replaced by imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. Imperialism is characterized by the domination of monopolies and finance capital on an international scale, with the export of capital leading to the big imperialist powers carving up the world.
That competition would eventually give way to monopolistic domination was something that Marx and Engels had predicted in advance. The fact that Marx and Engels’ predictions were borne out by history is a testament to the strength of the dialectical materialist method and to the continuity of theory stretching from the founders of scientific socialism to Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
Throughout the book, as he outlines his analysis of imperialism, Lenin also attacks petit-bourgeois reformists and social chauvinists like Kautsky for their failure to provide a Marxist explanation of imperialism, and consequently their failure to take an independent working class position on the eve of WWI, which was the ultimate betrayal that killed the Second International.
Imperialism remains a vital theoretical tool for Marxists to cut across confusion on this question within the labour movement. All around the world the correctness of Lenin’s argument is proven as the balance of forces between imperialist powers – declining American imperialism and rising Chinese imperialism in particular – is laying the basis for new struggles for markets and spheres of influence, reflected in growing tensions, trade wars, proxy wars, etc.
Summary by communist.red
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