represent the reality of capitalism. Those who drew this conclusion, could, of course, not remain Marxists. There were others, though, who were too deeply impressed with the basic Marxian picture of the world (a class society engaged in class struggle moving from present exploitation of the workers to justice through a proletarian revolution) to abandon it just because Marx was wrong in his analysis of the present society. They proceeded, instead, to re-think the analysis of capitalism in order to allow for the developments that were at variance with Marx's forecast. This "revision" resulted in two divergent branches of Marxist thought. On the one hand, Edward Bernstein (main work: Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus, 1899) concluded that in present society the increase of wealth would not necessarily entail the increasing misery of the workers and therefore the bourgeois and proletarian classes were not doomed to irreconcilable struggle. Bernstein's view of the present society, which became the pattern of actual policies of socialdemocratic parties, endorsed collaboration between the classes insofar as it can produce social improvement. In sharp opposition to this view, Lenin stuck to Marx's assertion that the class struggle is, in the very nature of the system, irreconcilable. It then became necessary to explain why the workers' lot in modern capitalist nations had improved, why capitalism had not yet collapsed, and why people were in no mood to stage a revolution against their capitalist exploiters. Lenin's answer to these questions is contained in his book Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), which will be presented here in its main points. "Monopoly capitalism” Lenin, in his revised description of the present society, derived key ideas from two books: Imperialism by J. A. Hobson (1902), which discussed the division of the world among the leading European nations, and Finanzkapital by Rudolf Hilferding (1910), which showed how huge banking enterprises controlled vast economic processes. These two ideas Lenin combined into the following picture of the present capitalist society. The salient feature of modern capitalism is the rule of monopoly. Competition (which Marx said was the basic law of capitalist development) has given way to the concentration of enormous wealth in a few hands. This transformation of competition into monopoly is one of the most important-if not the most important-phenomena of modern capitalist economy. * Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialisation of production.. 44836-59-pt. 1—4 . The framework of formally recognised free competition remains, but the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable.20 Marx asserted that power in capitalist society belonged to the factory owner who could buy the worker's labor power and employ it to produce surplus value. Lenin says that power now is in the hands of the financier: the development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still "reigns" and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the big profits go to the “genius” of financial manipulation.21 ... the concentration of capital . . . is radically changing the significance of the banks. Scattered capitalists are transformed into a single collective capitalist.22 The concentration of production; the monopoly arising therefrom; the merging or coalescence of banking with industry: this is the history of finance capital and what gives the term "finance capital" its content.23 Monopoly, in the form of finance capital, governs the present society in all its aspects: A monopoly, once it is formed and controls thousands of millions, inevitably penetrates into every sphere of public life, regardless of the form of government and all other "details".24 The "need for foreign markets" The driving power of capitalism, as Lenin describes it, is no longer the need of one capitalist to compete with the other, but the need of the banker-monopolist to export excess capital, obtain more foreign markets, and get them under his exclusive control. Under the old type of capitalism, when free competition prevailed, the export of goods was the most typical feature. Under modern capitalism, when monopolies prevail, the export of capital has become the typical feature.25 This tendency, according to Lenin, explains not only the political system under which modern (capitalistic) nations live, but also the international political developments on a world scale: Monopolist capitalist combines-cartels, syndicates, trusts-divide among themselves, first of all, the whole internal market of a country, and impose 20 V. I. Lenin, "Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism” (January-July 1916), Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1943), vol. V, pp. 15, 21, 22. Ibid., p. 23. Ibid., p. 31. "Ibid., p. 42. "Ibid., pp. 51, 52. Ibid., p. 56. their control, more or less completely upon the industry of that country. But under capitalism, the home market is inevitably bound up with the foreign market. . . . As the export of capital increased, and as the foreign and colonial relations, the "spheres of influence" of the big monopolist combines, expanded, things tended "naturally" toward . . . the formation of international cartels.26 Division and redivision of the world Now, this division of the world is not merely a division of economic spheres of influence, but of political control. This is where imperialism enters. The principal feature of modern capitalism is the domination of monopolist combines of the big capitalists. These monopolies are most durable when all the sources of raw materials are controlled by the one group. . . . Colonial possession alone gives complete guarantee of success to the monopolies. . . .28 This leads to a double concentration of capitalist power: First, there are monopolist capitalist combines in all advanced capitalist countries; secondly, a few rich countries in which the accumulation of capital reaches gigantic proportions, occupy a monopolist position.29 [Hence, the world is divided] . . . into two principal groups-of colonyowning countries on the one hand and colonies on the other. . . .30 . . Imperialism . . . means the partition of the world, and the exploitation of other countries which means high monopoly profits for a handful of very rich countries. . . ... 31 And these rich countries, Lenin continues, do not even produce anything, but lead a parasitical existence by merely "clipping coupons." The export of capital, one of the essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers [the people who live by clipping coupons] from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by the exploitation of the labour of several overseas combines and colonies.3 32 ... for this very reason the parasitic character of modern American capitalism has stood out with particular prominence.33 In such a "parasitic" state, even parts of the working class are corrupted and stop being revolutionary: Imperialism has the tendency of creating privileged sections even among the workers, and of detaching them from the main proletarian masses.3 34 Imperialism ... creates the economic possibility of corrupting the upper strata of the proletariat, and thereby fosters, gives form to, and strengthens opportunism.35 Opportunism in a number of countries . . . has grown ripe, overripe, and rotten, and has become completely merged with bourgeois policy in the form of "social-chauvinism" 36 The new image of capitalism Now Lenin has just about exchanged all the parts of the Marxist structure for new ones and still retained the structure! The "exploiters" are, in addition to factory owners, the rich countries; the "exploited" are, in addition to industrial workers, the colonies. The "chain of bondage" is no longer the sale of labor-power on the commodity market, but the political control of territory, and the economic control of markets. The ruling power is to be morally condemned, not for "pocketing the product of his employee's labor," but for idly clipping coupons while other people work. Thus, without giving up Marx's idea of the irreconcilable class struggle and Marx's condemnation of the present (capitalist) society Lenin managed to explain why capitalism has not yet collapsed, why the lot of the people under capitalism has improved, and why workers in capitalist countries are not revolution-minded. His answer is that capitalism has not yet collapsed because the advanced capitalistic societies found a new field of expansion which yielded them new wealth, that the lot of the people under capitalism has improved at the expense of the colonial populations, and that the upper part of the working class has allowed itself to become "corrupted" into preferring this shared wealth to the cause of the revolution. The latter observation served Lenin also as a means to read his opponents, the social-democratic parties, out of the "proletarian movement." Lenin himself characterized the significance of his reinterpretation of capitalism: the forms of the struggle may and do vary in accordance with varying, relatively particular and transitory causes, but the essence of the struggle, its class content, cannot change while classes exist.37 34 Ibid., pp. 97, 98. 35 Ibid., p. 95. 36 Ibid., p. 99. In other words, the "class struggle" is for Lenin no longer an object of scientific inquiry-it is a dogma into which one tries to fit the changing facts of history. 4. Lenin's Views About the Dynamics of Capitalism Among Marx's basic concepts was also that of the inevitably catastrophic development of capitalism. Lenin did not abandon this concept, either, but gave it a new content that seemed compatible with the all but catastrophic course which capitalism had taken since Marx wrote. Monopoly capitalism, Lenin said, is the "highest stage" of capitalism. Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental attributes of capitalism in general. But capitalism only becomes capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high state of its development, when certain of its fundamental attributes began to be transformed into their opposites, when the features of the period of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system began to take shape... Monopoly is the transition from capitalism to a higher system. 38 imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. ... In other words, the "higher system," socialism, is at hand. But will it grow organically out of capitalism? Will it emerge peacefully? No, answers Lenin, it will come as the result of "inner contradictions" in the capitalist system in combination with a violent struggle between the ruling powers of that system and the "gravediggers" the system has produced within itself. According to Marx, the "inner contradictions" of capitalism were those inherent in its economic production, as the producers were driven on by the whip of competition to seek cheaper and cheaper ways of making commodities. The politics of "imperialism" Lenin, writing in 1916, could no longer explain the facts of capitalistic development in these economic terms, because Marx's concepts had turned out to be wrong. Instead, Lenin pointed to political contradictions produced by imperialism. .. the characteristic feature of this period is the final partition of the globe-not in the sense that a new partition is impossible on the contrary, new partitions are possible and inevitable-but in the sense that the colonial policy of the capitalist countries has completed the seizure of the unoccupied territories on our planet. For the first time the world is completely shared out, so that in the future only re-division is possible. 39 One would think that, since monopoly control of markets and raw materials is supposed to be the motive behind the foreign policy of the |