V. I. Lenin
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism
(A Popular Outline)
[…]
IV.
EXPORT OF CAPITAL
Typical
of the old capitalism, when free competition held undivided sway, was the
export of goods. Typical of the latest stage of capitalism,
when monopolies rule, is the export of capital.
Capitalism
is commodity production at its highest stage of development, when labour-power
itself becomes a commodity. The growth of internal exchange, and, particularly,
of international exchange, is a characteristic feature of capitalism. The
uneven and spasmodic development of individual enterprises, individual branches
of industry and individual countries is inevitable under the capitalist system.
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.
It
goes without saying that if capitalism could develop agriculture, which today
is everywhere lagging terribly behind industry, if it could raise the living
standards of the masses, who in spite of the amazing technical progress are
everywhere still half-starved and poverty-stricken, there could be no question
of a surplus of capital. This “argument” is very often advanced by the
petty-bourgeois critics of capitalism. But if capitalism did these things it would
not be capitalism; for both uneven development and a semi-starvation level of
existence of the masses are fundamental and inevitable conditions and
constitute premises of this mode of production. 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.
[…]
VI.
DIVISION OF THE WORLD AMONG THE GREAT POWERS
Finance
capital is interested not only in the already discovered sources of raw
materials but also in potential sources, because present-day technical
development is extremely rapid, and land which is useless today may be improved
tomorrow if new methods are devised (to this end a big bank can equip a special
expedition of engineers, agricultural experts, etc.), and if large amounts of
capital are invested. This also applies to prospecting for minerals, to new
methods of processing up and utilising raw materials, etc., etc. Hence, the inevitable striving of finance capital to enlarge its
spheres of influence and even its actual territory. In the same way that
the trusts capitalise their property at two or three times its value, taking
into account its “potential” (and not actual) profits and the further results
of monopoly, so finance capital in general strives to seize the largest
possible amount of land of all kinds in all places, and by every means, taking
into account potential sources of raw materials and fearing to be left behind in
the fierce struggle for the last remnants of independent territory, or for the
repartition of those territories that have been already divided.
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.
The
interests pursued in exporting capital also give an impetus to the conquest of
colonies, for in the colonial market it is easier to employ monopoly methods
(and sometimes they are the only methods that can be employed) to eliminate
competition, to ensure supplies, to secure the necessary “connections”, etc.
The
non-economic superstructure which grows up on the basis of finance capital, its
politics and its ideology, stimulates the striving for colonial conquest.
“Finance capital does not want liberty, it wants domination,” as Hilferding very truly says. And a French bourgeois writer,
developing and supplementing, as it were, the ideas of Cecil Rhodes quoted
above,[7] writes that social causes should be added to the economic causes of
modern colonial policy: “Owing to the growing complexities of life and the
difficulties which weigh not only on the masses of the workers, but also on the
middle classes, ‘impatience, irritation and hatred are accumulating in all the
countries of the old civilisation and
are becoming a menace to public order; the energy which is being hurled out of
the definite class channel must be given employment abroad in order to avert an
explosion at home’.”[8]
Since
we are speaking of colonial policy in the epoch of capitalist imperialism, it
must be observed that finance capital and its foreign policy, which is the
struggle of the great powers for the economic and political division of the
world, give rise to a number of transitional forms of state dependence. Not
only are the two main groups of countries, those owning colonies, and the
colonies themselves, but also the diverse forms of dependent countries which,
politically, are formally independent, but in fact, are enmeshed in the net of
financial and diplomatic dependence, typical of this epoch. We have already
referred to one form of dependence—the semi-colony. An example of another is
provided by
“South
America, and especially
A
somewhat different form of financial and diplomatic dependence, accompanied by
political independence, is presented by
In
order to finish with the question of the division of the world, I must make the
following additional observation. This question was raised quite openly and
definitely not only in American literature after the Spanish-American War, and
in English literature after the Anglo-Boer War, at the very end of the
nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth; not only has German
literature, which has “most jealously” watched “British imperialism”,
systematically given its appraisal of this fact. This question has also been
raised in French bourgeois literature as definitely and broadly as is thinkable
from the bourgeois point of view. Let me quote Driault,
the historian, who, in his book, Political and Social Problems at the End of
the Nineteenth Century, in the chapter “The Great Powers and the Division of
the World”, wrote the following: “During the past few years, all the free
territory of the globe, with the exception of China, has been occupied by the
powers of Europe and North America. This has already brought about several conflicts
and shifts of spheres of influence, and these foreshadow more terrible
upheavals in the near future. For it is necessary to make haste. The nations
which have not yet made provision for themselves run the risk of never
receiving their share and never participating in the tremendous exploitation of
the globe which will be one of the most essential features of the next century
(i.e., the twentieth). That is why all Europe and
Notes
[8]
Wahl, La
[9]
Schulze-Gaevernitz, Britischer
Imperialismus und englischer
Freihandel zu Beginn des 20-ten Jahrhunderts, Leipzig,
1906, S. 318. Sartorius v. Waltershausen says the
same in Das volkswirtschaftliche System der Kapitalanlage im
[10]
Schilder, op. cit., Vol. I, S. 160-61. —Lenin
[11]
J. E. Driault, Problèmes politiques et sociaux,