As is well known, the industrial revolution first took place in Great Britain, roughly between the years 1720 to 1760. From there, it spread first to neighbouring countries, and then around the world. In fact, it is still spreading.
Historians refer to this industrial revolution, as the greatest thing to happen to humanity, since the domestication of plants and animals. In this, historians are absolutely correct.
Before the industrial revolution, all items were made by hand. Potters worked with clay to produce containers, women worked with looms to produce cloth, carpenters worked with wood to produce wooden items, and blacksmiths worked with metal to produce various items, such as nails. Regardless of how highly skilled these people were, the process was time consuming. Trades people can work only so fast. As a result, even ordinary household goods, such as spoons and bowls, were scarce and rather expensive.
This changed, quite dramatically, with the industrial revolution. The use of machines, enabled far more goods to be produced, far faster, with people who were by no means, highly skilled trades people. For that reason, the price of goods dropped, and dramatically so. At the same time, those highly respected trades people, were largely ruined. There was no longer a demand for their services.
In fact, all of society was transformed. The merchants who lived in town, referred to as burghers, saw the potential of investing their money in factories, banks, railroads and shipping lines, among other things, and becoming quite rich. They succeeded, beyond their wildest dreams.
Incidentally, the factories, mills, mines and such, are referred to as the ‘’means of production’’, while the railroads, shipping lines and trucking companies, are referred to as the ‘’means of transportation’’. The banks and credit unions are referred to as ‘’financial institutions’’.
I mention this for the sake of working people, who may not be familiar with those technical terms, favoured by the capitalists. They will not hesitate to use our lack of awareness against us.
This is to say that the industrial revolution gave birth to two new classes. The burghers became transformed into a class of capitalists, referred to as bourgeois. Yet as no class can exist in isolation, a second class was also created. That second class is commonly referred to as the working class, technically referred to as the proletariat. Such a class has nothing to sell, but their labour power, and this they sell, by the hour.
When we say that no class can exist in isolation, we mean that slaves can exist only with the existence of slave owners, the nobility can exist only with the existence of commoners, and landlords can exist only with the existence of farmers, otherwise known as peasants. In much the same way, the bourgeois can exist only with the existence of the proletariat. In technical jargon, we say that a class can exist only with the class opposite to it, its antipode.
This technical jargon may be tiresome, but it is important to learn these terms, as the class struggle is about to break out into open warfare, and knowledge is power. Now to proceed.
At first, even within the country of Great Britain, there was competition between the capitalists, the bourgeois. This is to say that different capitalists would set up different factories, perhaps cotton mills, for example, producing the same product. Each would make every effort to put the other out of business. As they phrase it, ‘’nothing personal, just business’’. Competitive capitalism.
As capitalism developed, this competition spread to different countries. Capitalists within any given country, were not only in competition with each other, but also with capitalists of other countries. International competitive capitalism.
It was Karl Marx who conducted a scientific examination of capitalism, in the nineteenth century. This was a time of early, competitive capitalism, before it evolved to the stage of monopoly. Quite reasonably, it is also referred to as pre monopoly capitalism.
As a result of this, both Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto, in 1848.
As the title of this article suggests, our concern is mainly with the differences between competitive capitalism, as opposed to monopoly capitalism. First we will examine competitive capitalism, as is outlined in the Communist Manifesto, and then monopoly capitalism, otherwise known as imperialism, as outlined by Lenin, in his work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
Further, it is impossible to examine capitalism, in any form, without considering the classes that are first created, under capitalism, as well as the classes that are destroyed, by the capitalists.
Having said that, let us examine that which Marx stated, concerning the capitalists, the bourgeoisie:
‘’The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
‘’The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ―natural superiors, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ―cash payment. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
‘’The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.
‘’The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
‘’The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.
‘’The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
‘’The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
‘’The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
‘’The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
‘’The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West
‘’The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralized the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralization. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.
‘’The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground – what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
‘’We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.
‘’Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.’’
I have deliberately chosen to quote the preceding, at such great length, as it is of such vital importance. This is to stress the fact that the class of capitalists exist, the bourgeoisie, and have certain characteristics. It is also a fact that the modern mainstream media outlets, continue to deny the existence of classes.
This in no way changes the fact, that the bourgeoisie exists, as does the working class, they are in conflict, and in fact, the class conflict is about to break out, into open warfare. Capitalists against workers, bourgeois against proletarians. It is also a fact that, as Sun Zsu pointed out many years ago, in his landmark book, The Art of War, it is of vital importance to know your enemy. Workers, know the capitalists!
This brings us to the subject of workers, proletarians. The Communist Manifesto has a few words to say, on that subject, also:
‘’But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.
‘’In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
‘’Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labor, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. What is more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labor increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time, or by increased speed of machinery, etc.
‘’Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army, they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois state; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over looker, and, above all, in the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.
‘’The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labor, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labor of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labor, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.
‘’No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, then he is set upon by the other portion of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.
‘’The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus, the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.
‘’The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first, the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the work of people of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois condition of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labor, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.
‘’At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.
‘’But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labor, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (trade unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.
‘’Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lie not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by Modern Industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralize the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.
‘’This organization of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently, into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the Ten-Hours Bill in England was carried.
‘’Altogether, collisions between the classes of the old society further in many ways the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.
‘’Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.
‘’Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
‘’Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a genuinely revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.’’
The preceding was the scientific description, by Marx, of competitive capitalism. It created two new classes, the bourgeois and the proletariat, while destroying all other classes.
Of the utmost importance, is the fact that the ‘’proletariat alone is a genuinely revolutionary class’’, the ‘’special and essential product’’. As that is the case, it is the proletariat, the working class, that is destined to overthrow the class of monopoly capitalists, the bourgeoisie, and establish a state of scientific socialism, in the form of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
This brings us to the subject of monopoly capitalism, otherwise known as imperialism. As previously mentioned, it was Lenin who conducted a scientific examination of imperialism, and wrote his conclusions in his book, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, first published in 1917.
In Chapter 1, titled Concentration of Production and Monopolies, he first states:
‘’The enormous growth of industry and the remarkably rapid concentration of production in ever-larger enterprises are one of the most characteristic features of capitalism. Modern production censuses give most complete and most exact data on this process.’’
This is to say that his analysis, of imperialism, is based upon the ‘’modern production censuses’’, of the most conscientious bourgeois scholars. He then proceeds to summarize those statistics, as a means of proving that the ‘’concentration of capital’’ leads to monopolies.
Incidentally, he also noted that the use of ‘’high tariffs’’, merely ‘’accelerates’’ the development of monopolies. This is significant, as Trump is currently using high tariffs, in order to promote the development of manufacturing in the country, in order to service a local market. This is characteristic of early, pre monopoly, competitive capitalism.
This despite the fact that monopoly capitalism is already well established. It is not going anywhere! The monopoly capitalists will see to that! The ‘’protective tariffs’’ will serve only to strengthen the already existing monopolies. They will have the exact opposite effect, of that intended by Trump.
As Lenin stated, ‘’Today, monopoly has become a fact….the rise of monopolies, as a result of the concentration of production, is a general and fundamental law of the present stage of development of capitalism’’.
Strangely enough, these are facts, which only the most conscientious, of the bourgeois economists, are facing. The vast majority of such economists, either cannot or will not, face these unpleasant facts.
Lenin then proceeded to give a date at which the early, competitive capitalism, was transformed into imperialism, monopoly capitalism. ‘’For Europe, the time when the new capitalism was definitely substituted for the old can be established fairly precisely: it was the beginning of the twentieth century.’’ (italics by Lenin)
Of course, in other parts of the world, such as North America and Asia, the time of transition was somewhat later.
It should be noted that monopolies come in different forms, and one of those forms is cartels. Lenin also had a few words to say about cartels:
‘’Cartels come to an agreement on the terms of sale, dates of payment, etc. They divide the markets among themselves. They fix the quantity of goods to be produced. They fix prices. They divide the profits among the various enterprises, etc…. Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialization of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialized….This is something quite different from the old free competition between manufacturers, scattered and out of touch with one another, and producing for an unknown market…. Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialization of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialization.’’
Lenin then gave a list of the ‘’modern and civilized’’ ways, that the monopolies resort to, in their strivings for ‘’organization’’:
‘’(1) stopping supplies of raw materials … one of the most important methods of compelling adherence to the cartel); (2) stopping the supply of labour by means of “alliances” (i.e., of agreements between the capitalists and the trade unions by which the latter permit their members to work only in cartelized enterprises); (3) stopping deliveries; (4) closing trade outlets; (5) agreements with the buyers, by which the latter undertake to trade only with the cartels; (6) systematic price cutting (to ruin outside firms, i.e., those which refuse to submit to the monopolists. Millions are spent in order to sell goods for a certain time below their cost price; there were instances when the price of petrol was thus reduced from 40 to 22 marks, i.e., almost by half!); (7) stopping credits; (8) boycott.’’
Lenin then proceeded to make another point, which I consider to be most relevant, as we are facing a crisis in capitalism:
‘’Crises of every kind—economic crises most frequently, but not only these—in their turn increase very considerably the tendency towards concentration and towards monopoly.’’
The crisis which Trump has created, through his use of tariffs, with the goal of returning the country to a state of competitive capitalism, will merely strengthen the existing monopolies. The very opposite of his intention!
This brings us to Chapter 2, titled, The Banks and Their New Role.
‘’The principal and primary function of banks is to serve as middlemen in the making of payments. In so doing they transform inactive money capital into active, that is, into capital yielding a profit; they collect all kinds of money revenues and place them at the disposal of the capitalist class.
‘’As banking develops and becomes concentrated in a small number of establishments, the banks grow from modest middlemen into powerful monopolies having at their command almost the whole of the money capital of all the capitalists and small businessmen and also the larger part of the means of production and sources of raw materials in any one country and in a number of countries. This transformation of numerous modest middlemen into a handful of monopolists is one of the fundamental processes in the growth of capitalism into capitalist imperialism; for this reason we must first of all examine the concentration of banking….I have emphasized the reference to the affiliated banks because it is one of the most important distinguishing features of modern capitalist concentration. The big enterprises, and the banks in particular, not only completely absorb the small ones, but also ‘annex’ them, subordinate them, bring them into their ‘own’ group or ‘concern’ (to use the technical term) by acquiring ‘holdings’ in their capital, by purchasing or exchanging shares, by a system of credits, etc…. we find that a handful of monopolists subordinate to their will all the operations, both commercial and industrial, of the whole of capitalist society; for they are enabled-by means of their banking connections, their current accounts and other financial operations—first, to ascertain exactly the financial position of the various capitalists, then to control them, to influence them by restricting or enlarging, facilitating or hindering credits, and finally to entirely determine their fate, determine their income, deprive them of capital, or permit them to increase their capital rapidly and to enormous dimensions, etc…..Thus, the twentieth century marks the turning-point from the old capitalism to the new, from the domination of capital in general to the domination of finance capital.’’
As regards our current situation, in which Trump is determined to restore competitive capitalism, through the use of tariffs, this is significant. He thinks that if the price of goods, within the country is high enough, then manufacturing companies will build factories, within the country, and sell their products locally. Nonsense!
Even the bourgeois economists estimate that such a ‘’capital investment’’ would require several hundred billion dollars, for each factory, and take three to five years to construct. And where are those businesses supposed to get that money? They certainly do not have that kind of money on hand! From the banks, of course.
The trouble being that the ‘’handful of banks’’, know precisely the ‘’financial position’’ of those manufacturing companies, and they ‘’control them’’, are able to ‘’determine their fate’’, to ‘’deprive them of capital’’. There is no way that the banking monopolies are about to invest their capital in American manufacturing companies, producing goods for the local market. It is much more profitable to invest that capital elsewhere!
This is followed by Chapter 3, titled Finance Capital and Financial Oligarchy.
Lenin explains that the ‘’merging or coalescence of banking with industry’’, gives rise to the term ‘’finance capital’’. He also stated that these monopolies ‘’inevitably becomes the domination of a financial oligarchy’’.
The American Oligarchy is living proof of the correctness of that statement!
This is followed by Chapter 4, The 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….
”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.’’
Under competitive capitalism, ‘’protective tariffs’’ were used, by under developed countries, as a means of developing capitalism, within those countries. Now Trump is using ‘’protective tariffs’’, within a highly industrialized country, complete with monopoly capitalism, in order to develop capitalism! This makes absolutely no sense! Madness! What is more, the bourgeois economists are remaining silent on this point!
From the view point of the working class, the export of capital is one of the most striking characteristics of monopoly capitalism. This is to say that capital is defined as ‘’accumulated labour’’. Anything that has been created by labour, is capital. And rest assured, factories have been created by labour. A great deal of labour! That makes them high value capital, and under monopoly capitalism, such items are exported.
A great many manufacturing plants, which pay quite well, have been ‘’relocated’’ to other countries. The workers of those factories, are of course out of a job. In this way, capitalism spreads to under developed countries. There is a reason for this, as Lenin explains:
‘’As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will be utilized 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.’’
This stands in stark contrast to competitive capitalism, under which goods, the articles produced by the factories, were the only items which were exported.
This brings us to Chapter 7, Imperialism As A Special Stage of Capitalism.
For our purposes, perhaps the most significant section in this chapter, is that in which Lenin states:
‘’If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. …But very brief definitions, although convenient, for they sum up the main points, are nevertheless inadequate, since we have to deduce from them some especially important features of the phenomenon that has to be defined…..
- the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.’’
This concerns the working class, in several ways. For one thing, it explains the creation of the Oligarchy. They came about as a result of the merger of bank capital with financial capital. As well, the export of capital has resulted in the loss of countless factories, as they are relocated to other countries. The ‘’international monopolist capitalist associations’’ make every effort to set prices of all goods. Then too, the ‘’territorial division of the whole world’’, leads to wars among the monopoly capitalist powers, in which the working people are expected to kill each other, for the benefit of the monopoly capitalists.
This brings us to Chapter 8, The Parasitism and Decay of Capitalism.
In this chapter, Lenin points out that parasitism is a ‘’feature of imperialism…. like all monopoly, it inevitably engenders a tendency of stagnation and decay. Since monopoly prices are established, even temporarily, the motive cause of technical and, consequently, of all other progress disappears to a certain extent and, further, the economic possibility arises of deliberately retarding technical progress….Certainly, the possibility of reducing the cost of production and increasing profits by introducing technical improvements operates in the direction of change. But the tendency to stagnation and decay, which is characteristic of monopoly, continues to operate, and in some branches of industry, in some countries, for certain periods of time, it gains the upper hand.’’
That explains the lack of any great recent inventions!
This brings us to Chapter 9, The Critique of Imperialism.
‘’By the critique of imperialism, in the broad sense of the term, we mean the attitude of the different classes of society towards imperialist policy in connection with their general ideology….The questions as to whether it is possible to reform the basis of imperialism, whether to go forward to the further intensification and deepening of the antagonisms which it engenders, or backward, towards allaying these antagonisms, are fundamental questions in the critique of imperialism. Since the specific political features of imperialism are reaction everywhere and increased national oppression due to the oppression of the financial oligarchy and the elimination of free competition, a petty-bourgeois democratic opposition to imperialism arose at the beginning of the twentieth century in nearly all imperialist countries.’’
In America, this attempt to reform the ‘’basis of imperialism’’, has been taken up by various middle class intellectuals, and in particular, the Democratic Socialists of America. On their web site, they have a most extensive list of demands, in an attempt to ‘’allay these antagonisms’’. A ‘’step backwards’’! That which is required, is so ‘’further intensify and deepen the antagonisms engendered by imperialism’’. After all, imperialism is ‘’reaction everywhere and increased national oppression, due to the oppression of the financial oligarchy, and the elimination of free competition.’’ The Oligarchy must be fought, crushed, not placated!
In summary, this article was written in response to the efforts of Trump, to set the American economy back one hundred years, to a time of competitive capitalism. Not about to happen!
Yet as he raised the issue, perhaps it will inspire workers to examine the differences, through a careful reading of the Communist Manifesto, and Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. This, I highly recommend.
Gerald McIsaac
Gerald McIsaac Science Project 