Book: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

Overview
Lenin defines imperialism as the monopoly stage of capitalism, arising when competitive capitalism gives way to the dominance of giant enterprises, powerful banks, and their fusion into finance capital. He presents imperialism not as a policy choice but as a determinate stage grounded in economic concentration, and he links it to the outbreak of the First World War. The stage is marked by monopolies, the supremacy of finance capital, the export of capital, international monopolist associations that divide markets, and the territorial partition and repartition of the world among the great powers.

Economic foundations
Concentration and centralization of production produce cartels, syndicates, and trusts that command entire branches of industry. Banks, once intermediaries, evolve into controllers of industrial capital through credit, shareholding, and interlocking directorates. Their merger with industrial groups yields a finance oligarchy able to plan prices, output, and market division beyond the reach of ordinary competition. The state increasingly serves these interests, furnishing subsidies, tariffs, and diplomatic protection. Monopoly superprofits, extracted through restriction and organization, become the hallmark of this phase and shape both domestic and international politics.

Export of capital and global hierarchy
Imperialism shifts emphasis from the export of commodities to the export of capital. Excess capital in advanced countries, facing limited profitable outlets at home, seeks higher returns in less developed regions where labor, resources, and land are cheaper. Loans, concessions, and investments bring railways, mines, and plantations under metropolitan control. The result is dependency: colonial and semi-colonial economies are integrated as appendages specializing in raw materials and subject to creditor discipline. Advanced countries increasingly become rentier powers living off interest and dividends, deepening parasitism and social decay at the core.

Division of the world and inter-imperialist rivalry
By the turn of the twentieth century the colonial division of the globe was largely complete. With new capitalist powers rising unevenly, the only avenue for adjustment is repartition through coercion and war. Spheres of influence, protectorates, and annexations are instruments for monopolies to secure sources of raw materials, outlets, and investment fields. Militarism and naval expansion flow from these needs. The uneven development intrinsic to capitalism guarantees periodic clashes among the great powers; peace agreements are truces in a continuing struggle for redivision.

Political consequences
The extraction of superprofits enables the bourgeoisie in the imperialist centers to cultivate a labor aristocracy through higher wages and privileges, fostering opportunism and social chauvinism within workers’ organizations. This mechanism helps explain the collapse of the Second International in 1914, when many socialist parties supported their own governments in war. At home, monopoly fosters reaction and the curtailment of democratic rights; abroad, it enforces domination and annexation. National liberation movements in colonies and dependent countries become integral to the global struggle against imperialism and are entitled to support, including the right to self-determination.

Polemics with Kautsky
Against Karl Kautsky’s notion of “ultra-imperialism” , a peaceful cartel of great powers transcending rivalry , Lenin argues that monopolist combinations are themselves unstable. Uneven growth, profit hunger, and the pressure of finance capital incessantly break cartels apart and push states toward violent settlements. A stable, peaceful imperialism is a utopia that disarms the proletariat. Only the overthrow of capitalist property and the establishment of socialism can put an end to imperialist wars.

Strategic implications
Imperialism is capitalism in decay and transition, yet it intensifies contradictions to the breaking point. Revolutionary strategy follows: oppose imperialist war, turn the clash of states into a struggle between classes, and unite proletarian movements in the centers with national liberation struggles at the periphery. The chain of imperialism breaks at its weakest link, making revolution possible first where contradictions are most acute.