10.06.08
Lenin prediction?
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20946.htm
Did Vladimir Lenin Predict The Banking Disaster Of 2008?
“Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism”
By V. I. Lenin LCW vol.22,
Lenin enumerated the following five features characteristic of the epoch of
imperialism:
The epoch of imperialism opens when the expansion of colonialism has covered
the globe and no new colonies can be acquired by the great powers except by
taking them from each other, and the concentration of capital has grown to a
point where finance capital becomes dominant over industrial capital. Lenin
enumerated the following five features characteristic of the epoch of
imperialism:
(1) 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 monopoly 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. [Lenin, Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, LCW
Volume 22, p. 266-7.]
“[Imperialism] 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. Concentration [of production] has reached
the point at which it is possible to make an approximate estimate of all
sources of raw materials (for example, the iron ore deposits)…
[throughout] the whole world. Not only are such estimates made, but these
sources are captured by gigantic monopolist associations [now called
multi-national conglomerates]. An approximate estimate of the capacity of
markets is also made, and the associations “divide” them up amongst
themselves by agreement. Skilled labor is monopolized, the best engineers
are engaged; the means of transport are captured * railways in America,
shipping companies in Europe and America. 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.
“Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social
means of production remain the private property of a few. The general
framework of formally recognized free competition remains, and the yoke of a
few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times
heavier, more burdensome and intolerable.” (p. 205)
“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 bulk of
the profits go to the “geniuses” of financial manipulation. At the basis of
these manipulations and swindles lies socialized production; but the immense
progress of mankind, which achieved this socialization, goes to benefit…
the speculators.” (p. 206-207)
Monopoly, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the
exploitation of an increasing number of small and weak nations by a handful
of the richest or most powerful nations * all these have given rise to those
distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as
parasitic or decaying capitalism. * It would be a mistake to believe that
this tendency to decay precludes the rapid growth of capitalism. It does
not. In the epoch of imperialism, certain branches of industry, certain
strata of bourgeoisie and certain countries betray* now one and now another
of these tendencies. On the whole, capitalism is growing far more rapidly
than before.” Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, VI Lenin,
Selected Works in one volume, p 260
(ch.7) Parasitism and the Decay of Capitalism…parasitism is characteristic
of imperialism… the deepest economic foundation of imperialism is
monopoly. This is capitalist monopoly, i.e., monopoly which has grown out of
capitalism and which exists in the general environment of capitalism,
commodity production and competition, in permanent and insoluble
contradiction to this general environment. Nevertheless, like all monopoly,
it inevitably engenders a tendency of stagnation and decay….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…. imperialism is an
immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries, amounting, as we
have seen, to 100,000-50,000 million francs in securities. Hence the
extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of a stratum of rentiers, i.e.,
people who live by “clipping coupons”, who take no part in any enterprise
whatever, whose profession is idleness. The export of capital, one of the
most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates
the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole
country that lives by exploiting the labour of several overseas countries
and colonies….
Imperialism….CH. 10… the bourgeoisie to an ever-increasing degree lives
on the proceeds of capital exports and by “clipping coupons”. It would be a
mistake to believe that this tendency to decay precludes the rapid growth of
capitalism. It does not. In the epoch of imperialism, certain branches of
industry, certain strata of the bourgeoisie and certain countries betray, to
a greater or lesser degree, now one and now another of these tendencies. On
the whole, capitalism is growing far more rapidly than before; but this
growth is not only becoming more and more uneven in general, its unevenness
also manifests itself, in particular, in the decay of the countries which
are richest in capital….
…the tendency of imperialism to split the workers, to strengthen
opportunism among them and to cause temporary decay in the working-class
movement, revealed itself much earlier than the end of the nineteenth and
the beginning of the twentieth centuries; for two important distinguishing
features of imperialism were already observed in Great Britain in the middle
of the nineteenth century*vast colonial possessions and a monopolist
position in the world market. Marx and Engels traced this connection between
opportunism in the working-class movement and the imperialist features of
British capitalism systematically, during the course of several decades. For
example, on October 7, 1858, Engels wrote to Marx: “The English proletariat
is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of
all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois
aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a
nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent
justifiable.”[15] Almost a quarter of a century later, in a letter dated
August 11, 1881, Engels speaks of the “worst English trade unions which
allow themselves to be led by men sold to, or at least paid by, the middle
class”. In a letter to Kautsky, dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote: “You
ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly
the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers’ party
here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers
gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the
colonies.” [13] (Engels expressed similar ideas in the press in his preface
to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England,
which appeared in 1892.)…
The distinctive feature of the present situation is the prevalence of such
economic and political conditions that are bound to increase the
irreconcilability between opportunism and the general and vital interests of
the working-class movement: imperialism has grown from an embryo into the
predominant system; capitalist monopolies occupy first place in economics
and politics; the division of the world has been completed; on the other
hand, instead of the undivided monopoly of Great Britain, we see a few
imperialist powers contending for the right to share in this monopoly, and
this struggle is characteristic of the whole period of the early twentieth
century. Opportunism cannot now be completely triumphant in the
working-class movement of one country for decades as it was in Britain in
the second half of the nineteenth century; but in a number of countries it
has grown ripe, overripe, and rotten, and has become completely merged with
bourgeois policy in the form of “social-chauvinism”. [14]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch10.htm
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