Thoughts on Imperialism and Monopoly

Years ago when I started to get active in left wing politics I was a very heterodox reader, I subscribed to all kinds of Socialist blogs, YT channels, saw as many documentaries as I could and bought a load of cheap paperbacks of famous socialist books. One of them was Lenin's `Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism` to be honest I wasn't particularly enamoured with it, but since I was aware of my own lack of experience or frames of reference, I decided to ask others.

I quickly learnt to stop asking questions about this book, it wasn't the anonymous hostility of online forums, well it wasn't just the anonymous hostility. I also became disheartened because its seemed to me that most people who were fans of the work hadn't actually read it but were pretending they did. And it wasn't just random forum users either, the clips of videos and audio of supposed Marxist theorist and experts on Lenin's thought also seemed to be at best tangentially aware of the books contents. Now obviously I can't say for sure, nor can I go back and check since this was years ago, but it left a bad impression. I remember specifically someone denying that the Roman Empire was really an Empire because it didn't have monopoly capitalism, even though Lenin brought up Rome to concede that Imperialism did in fact predate the year 1876.


Anyway its been in the back of my mind for a long time, and I have encountered some people who can recite parts of it with confidence, but if anything that just increased my disquiet, since often the bits that were cited seemed to me to be the parts that were most obviously dated if not incorrect.

After reading another blog that criticised the theoretical framework of the book I decided to give it another read. And credit where its due the online version on Marxist Internet Archive is very easy to get back into once you're familiar with certain bits of jargon.

Here's some notes I jotted down while reading it.

Honestly its not great, as a document on monopolisation trends in Europe and the USA from the 1870s-1910s its a good resource with many figures and diverse sources. But as a tract of political analysis and prediction its dated and struggles to prove its main arguments.

Lenin believed this showed that monopoly financial capitalism is key to a new period of imperialism. He's inconsistent, at times he acknowledges that imperialism predates the monopolisations he's describing, but other times he uses his new term exclusively.


He also believed this period of increasing monopoly capitalism and imperialism would pave the way for world revolution, and well we no longer have colonies and haven't for many decades, and monopolies have come and gone, and yet the world capitalist economy endures.


Another strange issue is that Lenin often includes examples that run counter to his arguments.

"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. "

All of these "new" motives aren't new, they've been key features of colonialism since the age of discovery if not earlier. Lenin is correct that the period after 1876 make massive expansion into Africa he's own data shows that a sizeable portion of the world was already under the control of what he calls core Imperial powers, (Britain, Canada, Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, most of the Indian subcontinent etc) and Germany a power that Lenin shows quite convincingly is far advanced in this highest stage of monopoly capitalism had very little in the way of territorial colonies. And much of the investments from these major monopolies in the USA, France and Germany according to the statistics used were not in the colonies but in other independent states.


Lenin does sort of account for some of this with his views on semi-colonies, and semi independent nations, but a lot of this investment is within and between other imperial powers, so what exactly is the point attempting to be made? In addition Lenin includes Russia as an imperial power and compares its exploitation of territories like Turkestan to the exploitation of Egypt by the British Empire. But Lenin's own data shows that during this period Russia had few if any large scale monopolies, most of its financial capital was owned by foreign powers, so if it can still operate at this highest stage of imperialism without reaching the supposed highest stage of capitalism, is that stage really that important to the perpetuation of imperialism?


I think what's happened here is that Lenin made a pretty common mistake in economics, he saw an economic trend of greater and greater centralisation of capital, and convinced himself that this was the inevitable development of the economy, and since there's a limit to how much you can centralise the economy, once this was reached there was nowhere to go but to fall.

Instead what we see is that monopoly is ultimately unstable, the number of combinations go up and down.

So it jumps about a bit but I think this covers the main issues, he doesn't explain why 1876-1914 is somehow unique, he shows the number of monopolies jumped up often corresponding to an increase in colonial expansion, but a lot of his data comes from Germany which had very little colonial expansion, and Britain and France, but they already had well established colonial holdings before this period.

And the inclusion of Russia, which in my experiences a lot of people tend to forget, adds more confusion.

The British capitalists are exerting every effort to develop cotton growing in their colony, Egypt (in 1904, out of 2,300,000 hectares of land under cultivation, 600,000, or more than one-fourth, were under cotton); the Russians are doing the same in their colony, Turkestan, because in this way they will be in a better position to defeat their foreign competitors, to monopolise the sources of raw materials and form a more economical and profitable textile trust in which all the processes of cotton production and manufacturing will be “combined” and concentrated in the hands of one set of owners.

By Lenin's own evidence it should economically speaking be at best a semi-independent nation, but in practice despite the dominance of French and German finance within the Empire its still able to establish colonies and develop them in a way that'll enable it to build its own monopolies. But surely this process is backwards now, rather finance capital stimulating Imperial ambitions in Russia it's Imperial ambitions that were stimulating its limited financial capital.

Speaking personally, I 've always viewed it as both options being viable, there are examples of monopolised companies driving military conquest and economic expansion, this goes back to the Tudor period if not further with its merchant companies and the East India Company. But on the other hand it can work the other way, territorial conquest and the labour and resources that come with it can then be used to enrich the dominant power and stimulate the growth of a dominant and eventual monopoly.

And let's address the elephant in the room here, the whole point of the book being written was because Lenin believed it would be the final stage of Capitalism because he thought it and the World War it had largely created and exacerbated was going to lead to world revolution.

Now as we know there was significant revolutionary outbreaks in many parts of the world and the end of the First World War would mark the deaths of several empires, but the world revolution didn't occur, it didn't destroy capitalism, and so it has continued to develop and change, and it has become divorced from the Imperialism of the 19th century.

This isn't a case of criticising a man for failing to predict the future, the argument that underpins Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism simply no longer applies. The structure of the capitalist economy is different, the methods powerful nations use to get what they want from the less powerful has also changed.

Its a highly flawed and dated work. Its not without its merits, but this using of the book as bible and strategy document needs to stop.

One caveat, I think its more accurate to say Lenin's theory was based on his interpretation of Marx's analysis, there's not much of his work in Imperialism, Engels gets more citation, and most of the references are to what Lenin thinks is the correct Marxist view in opposition to rival Marxists