The following text develops the author's presentation as a panelist at the round-table on “Imperialism and Revolution” during the Seminar for the Centenary of the Russian Revolution, which took place at the Social Sciences Faculty of the UBA in november 2017.

Among many historic reassesments, the centenary of October's revolution is also an opportunity to put Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by Lenin (1916) in its right place – one of the works that decisively contributed to the programme and action of those who would lead the revolution. This contribution would be completed by The April Theses (1917) and The Estate and the Revolution (august 1917).

Imperialism... has sometimes been belittled and, many times, distorted. The most usual of these deceitful presentations justifies itself on the text's brevity or the popular style of its writing. In other cases, Lenin's work is presented as the mere enumeration of the transformations that characterized capitalism during the last quarter of the 19th century: the concentration of industrial capital and the emergence of capitalist monopolies; the subsequent concentration of capital in banks and its consequences – the 'personal union' between banks and industry and the emergence of financial capital -; the passage from the export of goods – typical of free competition capitalism- to the export of capital; the distribution of the world among monopolist groups; the definite occupation of the colonial world by the great powers that foster those corporations and the struggle – political and military – for 'a new distribution of the world'.

    But is this the whole of Lenin's Imperialism…'s contribution? If it were for the mere enumeration of the capitalist transformations during the late 19th century, Lenin himself admits that he took them, broadly, from two publications that preceeded his. In the first place, Study of Imperialism (1902), by the liberal John A. Hobson, a monumental work – in terms of the amount of evidence and accusations – about the accumulation of the world in the hands of the great capitalist powers and the corporations that emerged along them. Then, in connection with the articulation between bank capital and industrial capital, Lenin took as reference Financial Capital (1913), by the Austro-German socialist Rudolf Hilferding. The particular character of Lenin's work does not reside in the so called 'popularization' of these previous elaborations, but in what he called the 'critique of imperialism' or, further down the same text, the 'historical place of imperialism'.  

    Another vulgarization of Lenin's work consists in presenting it as the mere description of the passage from 'free competition capitalism to monopoly'[1]. If it were about this, there would not be any originality in this work: Marx himself, in The Poverty of Philoshopy as well as in Capital, had developed the contradictory relation between competence and monopoly in the progression of capitalist development.

Historic transition

       In fact, 'Lenin's' imperialism does not refer to a 'type of market' – as monopoly is presented by neoclassic economy – but ro a historic transition. Capitalism has completed its 'civilising' task, capital accumulation has spread to the whole of the planet. The fierce fight for a 'new distribution of the world' gives way to a historic period of  'wars and revolutions'.

       In his text, Lenin warned about the attempt to turn this historic category into a mere taxonomy:  'The bourgeois scholars and publicists usually present their defence of imperialism in a somewhat veiled form, obscure the fact that it is in complete domination, and conceal its deep roots; they strive to concentrate attention on special aspects and characteristics of secondary importance (…)'[2]. Lenin associated these interpretations to the attempts to reform monopolist capitalism, such as 'police supervision of cartels and trusts', a reference to the so called 'anti trust regulations'. In contrast to these views, Lenin points out that 'private economic and private property relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay if its removal is artificially delayed; a shell which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period (if, at the worst, the cure of the opportunist abscess is protracted), but which will inevitably be removed'. Upon this point emerges the main conclusion in Imperialism…, already stated in its title, – that is, the 'highest' stage of capitalism – or in Lenin's own words, 'a capitalism in transition or, more precisely, moribund'.

    Capitalism inaugurates a new development characterized by the expansion of moneyed capital which circulates as mere right or promise of rent perception (ficticious capital), and very much above its possibilities of exchange with productive capital; credit hipertrophy as a resource to cover the antagonism between production and consumption; by militarization and a tendency to war which adds, to the 'old' stealing and hoarding goals, the 'new' function of terminating productive forces making possible – at the cost of social and humanitarian catastrophes – a new balance in the accumulation of capital. This is the content of the declining or mature capitalism depicted by Lenin.

    It is true that Imperialism… constituted a weapon of political and theoretical struggle on the big dispute which took place during those years – between the opportunism that accompanied imperialist burgeoisies in the First World War butchery, on the one side, and a scarce number of revolutionaries who made a call to transform the imperialist war into a war against the burgeosie itself, on the the other. But insomuch as Lenin rightly associated war and barbarism with capitalism's definite decadence, his 'imperialism' projects itself, even more strongly, to the present.

 

Imperialism, ultraimperialism, 'globalization'

      One of the main conclusions in Imperialism… refers to the impossibility of its 'reform' or peaceful 'amendment'. This was, precisely, Hobson's view, when he characterised British imperialism as 'condemned as a business policy, in that at enormous expense it has procured a small, bad, unsafe increase of markets, and has jeopardised the entire wealth of the nation in rousing the strong resentment of other nations, we may ask, “How is the British nation induced to embark upon such unsound business?” The only possible answer is that the business interests of the nation as a whole are subordinated to those of certain sectional interests that usurp control of the national resources and use them for their private gain.'[3] Hobson cannot perceive the historically necessary character of the hoarding perpetrated by such 'sectional interests' (capitalist monopolies) and he 'recommends' the British empire a way of reform or correction of their abuses.

      But Lenin is even more ruthless on Karl Kautsky, who declares in 1914/1915 that imperialism is just 'the favourite policy' of capitalism back then. In Kautsky's view, imperialism is characterized 'by each industrial nation's tendency towards appending or subjugating larger and larger rural areas'. Lenin describes this definition as one-sided at least. Lenin highlights that it is not industrial capital which predominates, but financial capital over the rest of the forms of capital – whether agrarian or industrial and, mainly, the ferocious struggle for markets, signed by violence and political reaction. In his criticism on Kautsky, Lenin places him even 'behind' liberal Hobson, who, within the limits already pointed out, had outlined the tendency towards dispute between 'rival empires' and visualized – at least descriptively – the predominance of financial capital over the other forms of capital. 

    Against the reformist pretension of a 'harmonic' development of all forms of production – industrial and agricultural – in countries where an excess of capital is generated, Lenin points out that, if that were possible, 'then capitalism would not be capitalism; for unevenness of development and semi-starvation of the masses are fundamental, inevitable conditions and prerequisites of this method of production.'[4]. And he concludes: 'The possibility for exporting capital is created by the entry of a number of backward countries into international capitalist intercourse, the main railway lines have either been built or are being built there, the elementary conditions for industrial development have been assured, etc. The necessity for exporting capital arises from the fact that in a few countries capitalism has become 'over-ripe', and, owing to the backward stage of agriculture and the impoverishment of the masses, capital lacks opportunities for 'profitable' investment.'[5].

    This principle puts forward the historical necessity – and not the mere possibility – of imperialism, and it is 'a direct descendant' of Marx's development on the tendency of the profit rate to fall and its counteracting causes. Lenin attributes capital exports to the search for means of production not produced (land, natural resources) and cheap labor force; that is, a resource to oppose to the declining revenues of capital, which is the result of the increasing replacement of  living labor – creator of value – for dead labor – which only transmits value.[6]

    Next, Lenin charges at the more general consequences of Kautsky's considerations: if imperialism is not the necessary form of capitalist decline, then it may lead to a new progressive phase: 'that of the extension of  cartel policy to foreign policy, the phase of ultra-imperialism' (Kautsky). The 'final' concentration of capital would thus lead to 'a union of world imperialisms and not struggles among them; a phase when wars shall cease under capitalism, a phase of the joint exploitation of the world by an internationally combined finance capital.'[7]. According to this, world domination by financial capital would apease the contradictions of world economy. Cartels would thus act as a moderating factor in crises.

    Lenin rejects Kautsky's views, proving that 'finance capital and trusts are aggravating instead of diminishing the differences between the rates of development of the various parts of world economy'. And he describes, on this point, the ruthless looting carried out by imperialist powers over colonies and semi colonies. Lenin wonders, then, about the possibility of a lasting and stable alliance among imperialist powers for the 'peaceful' distribution of the colonial world. And he answers the following: 'there can be no other conceivable basis, under capitalism, for partition of spheres of influence, of interests, of colonies, etc., than a calculation of the strength of the participants, their general economic, financial, military and other strength. Now, the relative strength of these participants is not changing uniformly, for under capitalism there cannot be an equal development of different undertakings, trusts, branches of industry or countries.(…) Peaceful alliances prepare the ground for wars and in their turn grow out of wars. One is the condition of the other, giving rise to alternating forms of peaceful and non-peaceful struggle on one and the same basis, that of imperialist connections and inter-relations of world economics and world politics.'[8] As we shall see, this critic of 'ultraimperialim' will become enourmously current a century afterwards.

Imperialism, monopoly and competition

      The pretension of reducing the historic category of imperialism to a sort of theory of monolopy has led to other distortions of Lenin's work. For example, the one that attributes a 'theoretical duality' to the theory of imperialism and an estrangement from the Marxist theory of value. According to Rolando Astarita[9], there would be two theories: one held by 'Hilferding and Lenin, (who) claim that prices are established by the market power of corporations', and one by 'Marx, who claims that prices are determined in an objective manner in markets'.[10] The theory of imperialism, thus, would be inconsistent with the law of value itself.

      But the pretense of an opposition between prices fixed by 'the power of corporatios' and others by 'the market' is alien to Imperialism…, which, following Marx, develops the dialectical unity between monopoly and competition. In the chapter referred to 'parasitism and the decay of capitalism', Lenin mentions 'monopolist prices' – which become 'temporarily' fixed – and the barriers on competition – such as patents –  as causes for 'the tendency of the stimulus to technical progress to disappear'. But, right ahead, he adds that 'Certainly, monopoly under capitalism can never completely, and for any length of time, eliminate competition on the world market (and this is one of the reasons why the theory of ultraimperialism is absurd).'[11]  According to Lenin, monopolist capitalism, which emerges as the negation of competition, ends up posing it again in a more acute and ruthless phase: the struggle among monopolies backed by their Estates, where economic despotism must necessarily take the shape of political reaction and war.

      The link between imperialism and the law of value exists, thus, in a very different form from the way it is presented in the text cited. In truth, monopoly is an extreme attempt, on the one side, to control or annul the action of the law of value, which operates in the context of competition and which leads to the decay of the rate of profit. And on the other side, it is an attempt to overcome the anarchy rooted in the capitalist regime of production, which operates outside of all plan or regulation.

    The great capitalist corporation, with its internal division of labor and its rigorous strategic planning, constitutes a 'general rehearsal' of society subjected to a conscious plan.[12]  To achieve this, however, the current gigantic material and technical basis must rip off its private property 'wrapping', which all the time fosters anarchy and an ever growing wastefulness  – that of the competition among monopolies, corporations and their Estates.

    In relation to the law of value, monopoly temporarily violates its validity when, by means of the assembly of cartels or agreements of other nature, it assigns itself prices that guarantee its participants returns superior to the medium profit rate. By putting a stop to competition, capitalists delay the tendency to incorporate technical means to surpass their rivals: by doing this, they withhold the replacement of living labor – creator of value – for that one that only transmits value, and withhold, therefore, the tendency of the profit rate to fall. But, just as Lenin points out, agreements are only gregarious truces. Contradictorily, the obtainance of  extraordinary profits within the monopolist cartels constitutes a formidable stimulus for unaffiliated capitals to try to enter their markets.[13]

What is more, monopolist 'arrangements' on prices or market distribution, which preserve the profit rate of the capitalists involved, block the accumulation of capital insofar as they nulify its driving force – competition. This is the reason why antitrust legislation has emerged – from the Sherman law (1890, USA) onwards. The grand litigations related to monopolist manouvres – from the dissolution of Rockefeller's Standard Oil to the recent sanctions on Microsoft – are the 'judicial' scenery of this ruthless struggle among capitalist monopolies, between those who safeguard their market to obtain super profits and those who strive to break those barriers in order to enter a market. It must be noticed, on this point, that the capitalist Estate's mediation – which is always pictured as a morigerating or regulating factor on 'the market' or competition – acts in this case to promote it, confessing thus that monopolist capitalism – presented by reformism as a principle or guarentee of harmonic accumulation – is, in ultimate extent, a means of withholding or blocking such accumulation. But, as Lenin highlights, truces among monopolies are ephemeral, they barely give enough time for 're-arming' and renewed struggle for the distribution of markets. The law of value, despite the attempts to contain and regulate it, ends up imposing itself and operating through despotism and violence.

    On the other hand, and against the pretense that the theory of imperialism would be in contradiction with the law of value, it is Marx himself who proves that the law comes into effect in the – contradictory – interaction among 'many' capitals. Its effect is verified by capital considered as a whole, or, at a world level. More or less monopolized branches operate within it,  which are more or less technified (organic composition). Surplus value transference among them does not deny the fact that, in all, social wealth produced is the representation of the general labour invested in them. But the law of value, under the current historical transition, operates under the convulsive shape of competition among monopolies, of branches and countries disparity, of ongoing unequal development.   

    As the Marxist historian Richard Day sharply points out[14], Lenin developed this point of view, even in opposition to other views of imperialism within bolchevism, such as Nicolas Bujarin's. In fact, the latter held that 'combines in industry and banking syndicates unite the 'entire' national production, which assumes the form of a company of companies, thus becoming a state-capitalist trust'[15]. Day points out that, according to Bujarin, imperialism exacerbates competition at the level of antagonism among imperialist nations, and their respective 'state capitalisms'. Lenin, on the contrary, highlights that 'monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter but exist over and alongside of it and thereby give rise to a number of very acute, intense antagonisms, frictions and conflicts.'[16]

      Along the same lines as Astarita, the Mexican economist Diego Guerrero[17] criticizes harshly the 'theoretic current' that fed the concepts of monopolist capitalism and, then, of imperialism, and qualifies Lenin as 'its most vulgar exponent'. Just like Astarita, Guerrero opposes the law of value to 'relations of force' that prevail in the capitalism of monopolies. But in the era of imperialism, war and political reaction are the manifestation, not of the law of value's denial, but of its actuality. It is competition in its extreme form – war – which ends up imposing itself over 'controls' and agreements among capitalist monopolies. The pretense that the law of value could only operate as a 'metabolic' or abstract phenomenon of market regulation, independent from superstructure and class political action, that is, from commercial, political or military wars, reduces marxism to an 'economic model', and separates it from a general comprehension of the dynamics of human society through class struggle. 

    When capitalist crises occur – which always reflect an excess of capital in relation to the current valuation conditions – the law of value operates under the action of social catastrophes, wars, devaluations and destruction of productive forces. As a whole, imperialism expresses the most extreme attempt of capital to dominate its insurmountable contradictions. On the one hand, monopoly and capital centralization impose the most extreme socialization, in an attempt to overcome anarchy which will end up reappearing in more intense and acute shapes. On the other hand, finance capital, and the most sophisticated forms of credit, try to overcome the contradiction between uprising production and necessarily restricted consumption due to the growing magnitude of unpaid labour. Capitalist crises, finally, get imperialist capitalism and the law of value together.   

 

Imperialism and capitalist decline

      Imperialism…'s publication takes place in the context of the first steps towards the III International, and its opposition to imperialist war. But it also establishes the historic framework for the October revolution: the extension of capitalism and of the working class itself at a world escale; the penetration of capital in backward nations, which strengthens the unequal development of their productive forces and marks the incapacity of the native dominant classes to emancipate from imperialist domination. That emancipation, and the overcoming of backwardness, will become an episode in the socialist revolution. But at the same time, the October revolution could only be conceived as the first step of world revolution.

      Is imperialism, as the debut of capitalist decline and the historic necessity of socialist revolution,  water under the bridge? That's the point of view in Claudio Katz' text[18], which points out that imperialism 'as the highest stage of capitalism, characterized by historic decline, was conditioned by the catastrophe of war.' Thus, instead of focusing on a 'mega phase of historic decline', he proposes to study 'the different phases that capitalism went through', rejecting the thesis of a historic decline of this social regime. To support this, Katz states that 'such decadence was not part of Marx's view, who limited his periodizations to the processes of this system's conception (primitive accumulation) and the modalities of its industrial development (cooperation, manufacture, big industry)[19].

    Opposite to this view, Capital contains monumental foresight of capitalim's fate and the tendency to its dissolution, as a result of the same laws that mark its development. In Book III Marx develops the conditions that lead to the fall of the system being studied – capitalism – under the weight of capital accumulation itself.

    But let's take a step further: the characterization of mature or high capitalism as 'a turning point' and historic transition towards another social regime is present even in Hilferding. His development on the function of cartels and trusts and capital's transformation into financial capital accounts for imperialism's 'setting' of the objective conditions for its overcoming. 'Financial capital – Hilferding states – means the creation of social control over production. But it is an antagonistic form of socialization; the domination over social production is in the hands of an oligarchy. The struggle for its confiscation constitutes the last phase of class struggle between the burgeoisie and the proletariat.'[20]. Hilferding's conclusion, however, will be 'to transform with the help of the Estate, with the help of conscious regulation, this economy organized and run by capitalists into an economy run by the democratic Estate'[21] – that is, socialism would arise, in a harmonic and painless way, from the development of monopolist capitalism itself. But even this reformist view admitted thar capitalism had reached 'its highest stage'! Katz' rejection of imperialism as a historic transition is not only opposite to Lenin. It leaves aside the most important pillar of  the 'critique of political economy' – that is, the characterization of capitalism as a transitory regime, whose development is at the same time that of the historic conditions for its negation and overcoming.

    The attempt to present imperialism as a historic period 'narrowed down' to Lenin's times leads Katz to other capricious statements. For example, he questions the control of financial capital over other forms of capital, which would be put into question by 'the industrial supremay during the post war boom'. But one cannot present as 'industrial supremacy' the reconstruction of industrial areas by the main imperialist powers after a fanstastic destruction of productive forces during the Second World War. That rebuilding, which, on the other hand, took place over just two decades of the last century, was fostered through a line of credit oriented to ensure the political and economic penetration of yankee imperialism in Europe (Marshall Plan) – that is, it was 'industrial supremacy' guided by financial capital. As soon as that process was over, all the tendencies towards overaccumulation emerged – that is, the excess of monetary capital in relation to its possibilities of valuation.

    In that same work, Katz presents Lenin's characterization of capitalist decline as a hypothesis of  'lasting stagnation', which, as we have already stated, is another misrepresentation of Imperialism… Lenin, on the contrary, points out that 'it would be a mistake to believe that this tendency (to the creation of usurious Estates) disposes of the rapid development of capitalism. No: certain industrial branches, certain fractions of the burgeoisie, certain countries, present, in the phase of imperialism, with more or less strength, either one, or another of these tendencies. As a whole capitalism grows at a faster pace than ever before, but that growth is not only more and more uneven, but this unevenness is at the same time manifested, in a particular way, in the decomposition of those countries who are stronger in capital.'[22]

         On the same lines as Marx, Lenin figures out the tendency to the decline of capitalism, not from its stagnation, but from the more intense character of capital accumulation, which is, at the same time, the stressing of all the preexisting imbalances. Imperialism is not 'stagnation', but the extended reproduction of all the contradictions present in the current social regime. Finally, Katz concludes that the view of imperialism as a 'mega phase of historic decline' 'exaggerates the crisis' scope and forgets about the determining role of political action'. Things are the other way around: it is the understanding of capitalist decomposition – the 'over ripening' of objective conditions – which brings forth the question of a revolutionary direction. When this is avoided, then the delay of the revolution is accounted for by an alleged vitality that capitalism has ceased to exhibit long ago.

Imperialism and socialist revolution

       The political struggle which Imperialism… exudes – between Marxism and opportunism – was vividly brought back to life in our times. The theory of globalization gave way to the illusion of a long lasting period of harmonic and integrated development of the world under the aegis of corporations. On top of the illusions surrounding the end of history, the creation of the World Trade Organization, the European Union and the Euro were added. 

      Although Kautsky was not given credit for it, it seemed like the 'general exploitation of the world by the united financial capital' had taken place. The theoreticians of 'the globalization of capital' foresaw, in turn, a political harmonization thar might put an end to international political disputes and wars. The theory of globalization worked as a cover and justification for restorationist bureaucracies in their interwining with global capital – under the excuse of their estates not being able to compete with 'globally articulated' capital. And, in the same way, it gave shelter to the theoretical and political recycling on the part of Stalinists all over the planet, who, after the bankruptcy of the regimes that supported them, gave closure to the historic period of the October revolution and became direct apologists of capital. On this side we can also find the 'trotskism' which 'gave new meaning' to the role of burgeois democracy and even characterized the European Union as the 'necessary overcoming' of national antagonisms, and not as the new oppresive wrapping of financial capital over the peoples of Europe.

    But very soon, 'globalization' and 'the end of history' collided against their own forecast: the so called 'new' historic phase deepened all economic and political imbalances, wars were multiplied, and nations were dismembered. The theory of globalization was still 'shiny' when the world witnessed the 'balkanization' of the Balkans, in the context of a war of robbery for the division of the economies and markets in Eastern Europe.

    History backed Lenin once again, not only as regards the general picture of 'a time of wars and revolutions' but also in terms of the arguments that he had put forth in order to characterize this historic transition. In fact: it is not possible to understand the convulsive character of capitalist restoration without perceiving how it operates in the framework of  'a senile, mature, and declining' capitalism, as described by Lenin. What was envisaged as a way out for exceeding capitals – the capitalist control of the USSR and China – ended up deepening the tendencies to overproduction and overaccumulation, and generating acute antagonisms within estates where capital had been expropriated. Capitalist penetration in China pushed a mass of peasants towards the cities to become semi slave labour at the exporting industrial centers. Restoration, therefore, followed the brutal laws of the imperialist era, which are those of uneven development, and not those of the progressive and 'harmonic' creation of an internal market, as it happened under capitalism in ascent. Thus, capital accumulation in China financed, on the one hand, the speculative wave that rescued North American economy at the beginning of the century, but which concluded in the 2007/2008 bankruptcy, whose economic and political consequences are still under development. And on the other hand, it fostered, within the Chinese borders, an industrial overcapacity and a real estate bubble of explosive scope.

    'Globalization' supporters face today the collapse of their institutions – the World Trade Organization's stagnation; the European Union crisis; Brexit and Trump's hour. Clashes between free commerce and recurring protectionist intentions deepen yet another contradiction: between capital accumulation, which needs a global framework, and national Estates.

    The current state of affairs, which involves the deepening of the commercial war and the multiplication of local wars, adds up – to the struggle for 'the division of the world' – the question of the definite destiny of capitalist restoration in the USSR and China, which will not be solved without further political and military confrontations and, eventually, a general war.

    Given these circumstances, Imperialism… by Lenin should be read and characterized as a fantastic forecast of the fate of decomposing capitalism: the imperialist dispute for markets – with its sequel of 100 millon deaths in two world wars and subsequent wars; the control by financial capital and the deepening of national oppresion, which finds its expression in the so called 'debt economy'; the hypertrophy of payment methods, where financial byproducts have been multiplied many times over the world gross product and commerce; finally, the deepening of social polarization and rebellions of the exploited against capital.

    The construction of a revolutionary subjectivity is the understanding of this historic transition, and its consequences in terms of programme and political action.