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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 Argentina.
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 Argentina.
(…) 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 America have lately been afflicted with the fever of colonial expansion, of ‘imperialism’, that most noteworthy feature of the end of the nineteenth century.” And the author added: “In this partition of the world, in this furious hunt for the treasures and the big markets of the globe, the relative strength of the empires founded in this nineteenth century is totally out of proportion to the place occupied in Europe by the nations which founded them. The dominant powers in Europe, the arbiters of her destiny, are not equally preponderant in the whole world. And, as colonial might, the hope of controlling as yet unassessed wealth, will evidently react upon the relative strength of the European powers, the colonial question—“imperialism”, if you will—which has already modified the political conditions of Europe itself, will modify them more and more.” [11]
(…) 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 America have lately been afflicted with the fever of colonial expansion, of ‘imperialism’, that most noteworthy feature of the end of the nineteenth century.” And the author added: “In this partition of the world, in this furious hunt for the treasures and the big markets of the globe, the relative strength of the empires founded in this nineteenth century is totally out of proportion to the place occupied in Europe by the nations which founded them. The dominant powers in Europe, the arbiters of her destiny, are not equally preponderant in the whole world. And, as colonial might, the hope of controlling as yet unassessed wealth, will evidently react upon the relative strength of the European powers, the colonial question—“imperialism”, if you will—which has already modified the political conditions of Europe itself, will modify them more and more.” [11]
'''VI. LE PARTAGE DU MONDE ENTRE LES GRANDES PUISSANCES'''
Le capital financier ne s'intéresse pas uniquement aux sources de matières premières déjà connues. Il se préoccupe aussi des sources possibles; car, de nos jours, la technique se développe avec une rapidité incroyable, et des territoires aujourd'hui inutilisables peuvent être rendus utilisables demain par de nouveaux procédés (à cet effet, une grande banque peut organiser une expédition spéciale d'ingénieurs, d'agronomes, etc.), par l'investissement de capitaux importants. Il en est de même pour la prospection de richesses minérales, les nouveaux procédés de traitement et d'utilisation de telles ou telles matières premières, etc., etc. D'où la tendance inévitable du capital financier à élargir son territoire économique, et même son territoire d'une façon générale. De même que les trusts capitalisent leur avoir en l'estimant deux ou trois fois sa valeur, en escomptant leurs bénéfices "possibles" dans l'avenir (et non leurs bénéfices actuels), en tenant compte des résultats ultérieurs du monopole, de même le capital financier a généralement tendance à mettre la main sur le plus de terres possible, quelles qu'elles soient, où qu'elles soient, et par quelques moyens que ce soit, dans l'espoir d'y découvrir des sources de matières premières et par crainte de rester en arrière dans la lutte forcenée pour le partage des derniers morceaux du monde non encore partagés, ou le repartage des morceaux déjà partagés.
L'exportation des capitaux trouve également son intérêt dans la conquête des colonies, car il est plus facile sur le marché colonial (c'est parfois même le seul terrain où la chose soit possible) d'éliminer un concurrent par les moyens du monopole, de s'assurer une commande, d'affermir les "relations" nécessaires, etc.
La superstructure extra-économique qui s'érige sur les bases du capital financier, ainsi que la politique et l'idéologie de ce dernier, renforcent la tendance aux conquêtes coloniales. "Le capital financier veut non pas la liberté, mais la domination" dit fort justement Hilferding.
Dès l'instant qu'il est question de politique coloniale à l'époque de l'impérialisme capitaliste, il faut noter que le capital financier et la politique internationale qui lui est conforme, et qui se réduit à la lutte des grandes puissances pour le partage économique et politique du monde, créent pour les Etats diverses formes transitoires de dépendance. Cette époque n'est pas seulement caractérisée par les deux groupes principaux de pays : possesseurs de colonies et pays coloniaux, mais encore par des formes variées de pays dépendants qui, nominalement, jouissent de l'indépendance politique, mais qui, en réalité, sont pris dans les filets d'une dépendance financière et diplomatique. Nous avons déjà indiqué une de ces formes : les semi-colonies. En voici une autre, dont l'Argentine, par exemple, nous offre le modèle.
(…) Référons-nous à l'historien Driault, qui, dans son livre Problèmes politiques et sociaux de la fin du XIXe siècle, au chapitre sur les grandes puissances et le partage du monde, s'est exprimé en ces termes : "Dans ces dernières années, sauf en Chine, toutes les places vacantes sur le globe ont été prises par les puissances de l'Europe ou de l'Amérique du Nord : quelques conflits se sont produits et quelques déplacements d'influence, précurseurs de plus redoutables et prochains bouleversements. Car il faut se hâter : les nations qui ne sont pas pourvues risquent de ne l'être jamais et de ne pas prendre part à la gigantesque exploitation du globe qui sera l'un des faits essentiels du siècle prochain (le XXe). C'est pourquoi toute l'Europe et l'Amérique furent agitées récemment de la fièvre de l'expansion coloniale, de "l'impérialisme", qui est le caractère le plus remarquable de la fin du XIXe siècle." Et l'auteur ajoutait : "Dans ce partage du monde, dans cette course ardente aux trésors et aux grands marchés de la terre, l'importance relative des Empires fondés en ce siècle, le XIXe, n'est absolument pas en proportion avec la place qu'occupent en Europe les nations qui les ont fondés. Les puissances prépondérantes en Europe, qui président à ses destinées, ne sont pas également prépondérantes dans le monde. Et comme la grandeur coloniale, promesse de richesses encore non évaluées, se répercutera évidemment sur l'importance relative des Etats européens, la question coloniale, "l'impérialisme", si l'on veut, a modifié déjà, modifiera de plus en plus les conditions politiques de l'Europe elle-même [10]."
[J. E. Driault, "Problemes Politiques et sociaux", París, 1907, pág. 299].

Latest revision as of 10:37, 12 August 2021

Excerpts of Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism – a popular outline https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch06.htm

I. CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION AND MONOPOLIES Half a century ago, when Marx was writing Capital, free competition appeared to the overwhelming majority of economists to be a “natural law”. Official science tried, by a conspiracy of silence, to kill the works of Marx, who by a theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism had proved that free competition gives rise to the concentration of production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to monopoly. Today, monopoly has become a fact. Economists are writing mountains of books in which they describe the diverse manifestations of monopoly, and continue to declare in chorus that “Marxism is refuted”. But facts are stubborn things, as the English proverb says, and they have to be reckoned with, whether we like it or not. The facts show that differences between capitalist countries, e.g., in the matter of protection or free trade, only give rise to insignificant variations in the form of monopolies or in the moment of their appearance; and that the rise of monopolies, as the result of the concentration of production, is a general and fundamental law of the present stage of development of capitalism.

II.BANKS AND THEIR NEW ROLE These simple figures show perhaps better than lengthy disquisitions how the concentration of capital and the growth of bank turnover are radically changing the significance of the banks. Scattered capitalists are transformed into a single collective capitalist. When carrying the current accounts of a few capitalists, a bank, as it were, transacts a purely technical and exclusively auxiliary operation. When, however, this operation grows to enormous dimensions 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.

III. FINANCE CAPITAL AND THE FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY “A steadily increasing proportion of capital in industry,” writes Hilferding, “ceases to belong to the industrialists who employ it. They obtain the use of it only through the medium of the banks which, in relation to them, represent the owners of the capital. On the other hand, the bank is forced to sink an increasing share of its funds in industry. Thus, to an ever greater degree the banker is being transformed into an industrial capitalist. This bank capital, i.e., capital in money form, which is thus actually transformed into industrial capital, I call ‘finance capital’.” “Finance capital is capital controlled by banks and employed by industrialists.”[1] This definition is incomplete insofar as it is silent on one extremely important fact—on the increase of concentration of production and of capital to such an extent that concentration is leading, and has led, to monopoly. But throughout the whole of his work, and particularly in the two chapters preceding the one from which this definition is taken, Hilferding stresses the part played by capitalist monopolies. The concentration of production; the monopolies arising therefrom; the merging or coalescence of the banks with industry—such is the history of the rise of finance capital and such is the content of that concept.

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. (…) 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.

V. 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 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 Argentina. (…) 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 America have lately been afflicted with the fever of colonial expansion, of ‘imperialism’, that most noteworthy feature of the end of the nineteenth century.” And the author added: “In this partition of the world, in this furious hunt for the treasures and the big markets of the globe, the relative strength of the empires founded in this nineteenth century is totally out of proportion to the place occupied in Europe by the nations which founded them. The dominant powers in Europe, the arbiters of her destiny, are not equally preponderant in the whole world. And, as colonial might, the hope of controlling as yet unassessed wealth, will evidently react upon the relative strength of the European powers, the colonial question—“imperialism”, if you will—which has already modified the political conditions of Europe itself, will modify them more and more.” [11]