Monopoly and Socialism in Lenin's Analysis of Imperialism

Monopoly and socialism in Lenin’s
analysis of Imperialism
by Anders Molander, anonymous translation
Original Swedish publication in TEKLA no.1 1977.
Amidst the fires of World War, Lenin wrote his 1916 book Imperialism: the highest stage of
capitalism.1 It had two immediate purposes. First, to determine the present historical situation
with regard to the potential of revolutionary change. Lenin’s conclusion from his analysis of
the new forms of organization of capitalist production - monopoly and financial capital - was
that capitalism was a dying social system. It had completed its progressive historical task (the
development of productive forces and the socialization of production) and had entered a phase
of war and intensified class struggle, whose only possible outcome was the proletarian
revolution. Second, Lenin's study aimed at giving theoretical ammunition to the revolutionary
opposition towards the social democratic parties' policies of peaceful coexistence between
classes, and to condemn the German Social Democrat Karl Kautsky's theory of a possible
peaceful expansionism in the form of a holy alliance between imperialist states 2. Opposed to
his homeland’s Social Democrats and Kautsky, Lenin argued that the task of the labor
movement was to transform the "imperialist war" into "civil war" (the working class of the
different countries would not aim their rifles against one another but against their respective
bourgeoisies) and that imperialism was aggressive by nature: the war was not the result of any
particular policy, but a consequence of inter-imperialist conflicts that necessarily arise from the
uneven development of various national monopoly capitals.
Lenin's theory of imperialism was primarily an attempt to clarify a specific historical situation.
This was already pointed out by Lukács (1924) in his book on Lenin:
“Lenin's theory of imperialism […] is less a theory of its necessary economic

generation and limitations than the theory of the concrete class forces which,
1
Lenin, V. (2011) 'Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism', in Hanna, G. (ed.) Collected Works vol 22.
Moscow: Progress Publishers, pp. 185-304.
2
Kautsky: "Der Imperialismus" i Die Neue Zeit nr 32, 1914.
1
unleashed by imperialism, are at work within it: the theory of the concrete world
situation created by imperialism.”3
Later on, however, Lenin's study of imperialism has been taken from its historical context,
deprived of its revolutionary theoretical character and turned into a general theory of the
imperialist (monopolistic) stage of capitalism. It was raised to an ultimate truth in Stalin's
Marxist-Leninist worldview-machine, and is still considered in Soviet Marxism and its
offshoots around the world as the only and given starting point for an analysis of contemporary
capitalism (the theory of so called state monopolistic capitalism).4 Also, in other Marxist circles
Lenin's has study been evaluated as a general theory of "monopoly capital" and "imperialism".
This applies, for example, to both the New Marxists Paul A. Baran and Paul Sweezy and for
Ernest Mandel.5
Only in recent years has Lenin's analysis of imperialism been subject to critical review. This
has happened in connection with the settling of scores within the Lenin-exegetic Stamocap
theory6 and in the recent attempts to analyze the movements of the world market of capital7.
The most notable criticism of the analysis of imperialism has been made by Christel Neusüss.
More extensive Lenin-critical work has also been presented by Bernd Rabehl, Ulf Wolter and
Projekt Klassenanalyse.8
This article is a critical inquiry into Lenin's study of imperialism. The following review will try
to show that Lenin's study does not live up to the status ascribed to it in the post-Leninist
tradition, especially in the Stamocap theory, and partly the problematic conclusions about the
transition to socialism that follows. In the first section, I review the understanding of Marx's
criticism of the political economy, which led to Lenin's analysis of imperialism as the
monopolistic stage of capitalism. The monopoly was for Lenin a summary expression of the
necessity of the revolution (the stagnation and deterioration of capitalism) as well as its
3
Lukács, Lenin: A Study in the Unity of His Thought, p 42
4
"The Leninist theory of imperialism provides the key to understanding the concrete particularities that
characterize imperialism in its current developmental stage" (Brezhnev, cited: Der Imperialismus der BRD,
Berlin 1972, p. 128-29.)
5
Baran/Sweezy: Monopoly Capital; Mandel: Late Capitalism
6
Example: Margaret Wirth: "Zur Kritik der Theorie des staatsmonopolistischen Kapitalismus" in Prokla 8/9,
Berlin 1973
7
Christel Neusüss: Imperialismus und Weltmarktbewegung des Kapitals, Erlangen 1972; Klaus Busch: Die
multinationalen Konzerne. Zur Analyse der Weltmarktbewegung des Kapitals, Frankfurt 1974; Claudia von
Braunmühl: "Weltmarktbewegung des Kapitals, Imperialismus und Staat" i Braunmühl m.fl.: Probleme einer
materialistischen Staatstheorie, Frankfurt 1973.
8
Rabehl: Marx und Lenin, Berlin 1973, Wolter: Grundlagen des Stalinismus, Berlin 1975, och Projekt
Klassenanalyse: Leninismus - neue Stufe des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus?, Berlin 1972.
2
possibility (socialization), in other words the monopoly's rise determined imperialism as the
highest stage of capitalism. In the following sections I will study Lenin's concept of monopoly
and his theory of financial capital. The intention here is to point out the limitations of Lenin,
not to positively present a definition of the concept of monopoly and the role of banking capital
in the reproduction of capital. The same goes for the chapter on capital exports, which also falls
a little far from the article's theme: monopoly and socialism. However, in a later article in
TEKLA, the internationalization of capital will be addressed. In conclusion, the consequences
of Lenin's theory of imperialism (the concept of socialization) on his theory of the transition to
socialism are presented.
Lenin and the critique of political economy

Characteristic of Lenin's Marxism is its immediate orientation towards praxis. As revolutionary
politician and organizer, Lenin sought to use Marxism in concrete-historical situations and in
the struggles of the labor movement, thereby providing a tactical and strategic basis for the
struggle of the working class. Lenin developed his principal understanding of Marxism in the
battle with the so-called "Friends of the People" in the 1890s. Opposed to their utopian
socialism and idealization of the Russian village community he emphasized scientific socialism
and attempted, in concrete studies, to show that the capitalist mode of production's subsumption
of Russian social relations was an already present and inevitable process.
Marx's "ingenious idea" was, according to Lenin, the "hypothesis" of materialism's

"application" in sociology 9 [9], which made it possible to overcome the subjectivity of the
former social theory.
“Hitherto, sociologists had found it difficult to distinguish the important and the
unimportant in the complex network of social phenomena (that is the root of
subjectivism in sociology) and had been unable to discover any objective criterion
for such a demarcation[.] Materialism provided an absolutely objective criterion
by singling out “production relations” as the structure of society, and by making
it possible to apply to these relations that general scientific criterion of recurrence
whose applicability to sociology the subjectivists denied.”10
9
Lenin, V. (2008) 'What the "Friends of the People" are and how they fight the social-democrats', in (ed.)
Collected Works vol 1. Moscow: Progress Publishers, pp. 129-332.
10
Ibid., p 140
3
On the basis of the repetitions and regularities identified by the "objective criterion" of relations
of production, it became possible to "generalise the systems of the various countries in the
single fundamental concept: social formation. It was this generalisation alone that made it
possible to proceed from the description of social phenomena (and their evaluation from the
standpoint of an ideal) to their strictly scientific analysis, which isolates, let us say by way of
example, that which distinguishes one capitalist country from another and investigates that
which is common to all of them”11. Such a strict scientific analysis was Marx's exploration of
"the system of commodity production", through which the materialistic hypothesis of the
applicability of the "that general scientific criterion of recurrence" to society was completed. 12
However, the Marxian method does not consist in distinguishing the important phenomena from
the unimportant by means of an "objective criterion", but by penetrating the diversity of
phenomena that manifest themselves on the surface of bourgeois society. In his research, Marx
analyzed the simplest, most abstract determinations (commodity, value), to then in the
presentation (Capital) begin a gradual concretization by providing more definitions. Through
this conceptual reconstruction, it becomes possible to understand the diversity of phenomena
as manifestations of a hidden core structure (the essence). The concrete is reproduced as
something "imagined concrete" - the concentration of many determinations.13 Marx's method
thus consisted in an abstraction process that revealed the essence of the appearances, and not in
the generalization of them. This approach was determined by bourgeois society's own structure,
its "opacity", that is to say. that the inner relations (the essence) do not appear as they are on
the surface of society but in distorted forms.14 On the other hand, the approach Lenin outlines
is on the level of appearances. It does entail a cleansing and arrangement of the current
11
Ibid., p 140
12
Ibid., p 142 "Now—since the appearance of Capital—the materialist conception of history is no longer a
hypothesis, but a scientifically proven proposition. And until we get some other attempt to give a scientific
explanation of the functioning and development of some formation of society—formation of society, mind you,
and not the way of life of some country or people, or even class, etc.—another attempt just as capable
of introducing order into the “pertinent facts” as materialism is, that is just as capable of presenting a living
picture of a definite formation, while giving it a strictly scientific explanation— until then the materialist
conception of history will be a synonym for social science."
13
Marx, K. (1973) Grundrisse, : Penguin., p 42
14
“Thus everything appears reversed in competition. The final pattern of economic relations as seen on the
surface, in their real existence and consequently in the conceptions by which the bearers and agents of these
relations seek to understand them, is very much different from, and indeed quite the reverse of, their inner but
concealed essential pattern and the conception corresponding to it.” Marx, K., Capital vol 3 (Marxists.org 1999)
p. 143
4
appearances, but not their deciphering, that is to say the reverberation of "the inner real
movement"15, and is thus unable to understand them as historically specific forms of it
Lenin's methodology meant that he misunderstood the relationship between logic and history
in Capital. Capital's logical-dialectical representation of bourgeois society's anatomy, i.e. the
development of the concepts of capital appeared to him as a representation of the historical
origins and development of capitalism: "[Marx] follows the development of the commodity
economy from its very beginning" 16 and "makes it possible to discern how the commodity
organisation of social economy develops, how it becomes transformed into capitalist
organisation [...] is the skeleton of Capital”.17
However, in his commodity analysis, Marx does not investigate the origin of capitalist
production, but the "elementary form" of this production18. The commodity - the contradictory
unity of use-value and value - is the logical starting point for the ascension to increasingly
concrete categories. Marx therefore begins from simple commodity circulation, where neither
the labor nor capital exists, and develops from the internal contradictions of the commodity the
money category, which then allows the next step into capital, etc. The simple commodity
circulation can, as Marx pointed out, "pass without the exchange value having seized the
production of a whole people", and historically it turns out "how the circulation itself leads to
bourgeois, i.e. exchange-rate-setting production, and creates a different base than that of the
immediately departed from."19 The immanent development of the categories in Capital thus
also implies a historical logic of development20, but this does not mean that we're dealing with
the historical transition of circulation into capital, but with the simple commodity circulation as
a logical category, which makes it possible to understand the value-form of the commodity as
the "economic cell form" from which the contradiction of capital movements appears. Even
though Marx in the first three chapters has not yet developed the concept of capital, the capital
ratio is assumed in the development of the commodity and money category.
15
Ibid., p 213 “…it is a work of science to resolve the visible, merely external movement into the true intrinsic
movement”
16
Lenin: Der ökonomische Inhalt der Volkstumlerrichtung, Lenin Werke band I, s. 515. Cited: Projekt
Klassenanalyse: Leninismus - neue Stufe des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus? band I, s. 75.
17
Lenin, V. (2008) 'What the "Friends of the People", p 141
18
Marx, K. (1887) Capital vol 1, Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers., p 34
19
Marx: Grundrisse, Berlin 1953, p. 921
20
see Schanz: Til rekonstruktionen af kritiken af den politiske ekonomis omfangslogiske status, Århus 1974 (3:e
uppl), s. 153-70.
5
In Lenin's study of capitalism's development in Russia, his understanding of Capital is made
apparent. As a generalized historical presentation, Capital served as a "disposition" for the
analysis, and the whole of Lenin's interest was aimed towards, with empirical material support,
attest the transition from natural economy to simple commodity production and from there to
capitalist commodity production. Lenin's analysis focused on the emergence and propagation
of the internal market, and he ignored the world market and the Tsarist state - two major
developments of Russian capitalism, both of which were beyond the "disposition". This
unilateral presentation of the analysis led to overestimation of the capitalization trend and an
underestimation of the contradictions of Russian society: the coexistence of modern capitalist
forms and primitive pre-capitalist elements.21
The "historically" interpretation of Capital also returns in the "mature" Lenin. In the text Karl
Marx (1914), Marx's deduction of money from the logic of the value-form22 is reduced to a
study in the “historical process of the development of exchange"23, similarly the portrayal of
simple collaboration, division of labor and manufacturing, as well as the machinery and large
industry is understood as immediately historical24, and not as a conceptual development of the
relative surplus-value production methods that enable an historical understanding of labor-
process development. Lenin summarily characterizes Marx's "economic doctrine" as the
exploration of capitalist society "in their inception, development, and decline."25 In another
contemporary text, it is stated: "Marx traced the development of capitalism from embryonic
commodity economy, from simple exchange, to its highest forms, to large-scale production."26
The categories in Marx's critique of political economy are, as ideal reflections of the life process
of bourgeois society, i.e. as real abstraction27 and, of course, always historical categories. They
could only develop when capitalist production reached a certain level28, and they also disappear
21
Rabehl: Marx og Lenin, s. 129–170 och 223–244.
22
See: Lundkvist: Introduktion till metoden i Kapitalet, Göteborg 1975; Reichelt: Kapitalbegrebets logiske
struktur; och Schanz: Til rekonstruktionen af kritiken af den politiske ekonomis omfangslogiske status.
23
Lenin, V. (2011) Karl Marx', in Katzer, J. (ed.) Collected Works vol 21. Moscow: Progress Publishers, pp. 61.
24
Ibid., p 63–64
25
Ibid., p 59
26
Lenin, V. The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm
27
That is, they are not abstracts that exist only in the head of the political economist but have a real existence.
For example, if the reduction of concrete work to abstract work Marx writes: “This reduction appears to be an
abstraction, but it is an abstraction which is made every day in the social process of production. The conversion
of all commodities into labour-time is no greater an abstraction, and is no less real, than the resolution of all
organic bodies into air.”
28
Marx, Capital vol 1, p 507
6
with it.29 But for that reason, logic and history are not identical30, the description of bourgeois
society's anatomy is not the same as the description of its historical development. Of course,
capital historically assumes money, and money in turn, the commodity, just as the concept of
capital through its logical structure presupposes money and the commodity as its simplest
categories. The same applies to the relationship between absolute and relative surplus-value.
The relative surplus-value is preceded both logically and historically by the absolute surplus-
value, i.e. capital's subsumption of the craft necessitates the industry not only in Capital but
also in real history. However, the history of this really precedes the constitution of capital as a
specific mode of production, and therefore does not directly affect Marx's production. Only
once capital has been fully established as a social subject have all categories from the
commodity and the value-form to the equalization of the general rate of profit and the tendency
of the rate of profit to fall etc. become historically established. To produce the anatomy of
bourgeois society involves developing these categories in the relationship they stand to each
other in the society in which capital seems as an overall subject, and not in a historical
progression.
“It would therefore be unfeasible and wrong to let the economic categories follow
one another in the same sequence as that in which they were historically decisive.
Their sequence is determined, rather, by their relation to one another in modern
bourgeois society, which is precisely the opposite of that which seems to be their
natural order or which corresponds to historical development.”31
For example, land ownership precedes capital, but in bourgeois society capital is "the dominant
power”. Land estate and rent therefore cannot be produced until the concept of capital has
evolved. Similarly, trading capital, which historically precedes the industrial capital, but as in
the capitalist mode of production is subject to the latter, cannot be understood until the industrial
capital has been investigated. Thus, it is not capital's history that gives the key to its "differentia
specific". On the other hand, the latter gives the key to the former:
“[I]t is not necessary to write the real history of the relations of production, But
the correct observation and deduction of these laws, as having themselves become
in history, always leads to primary equations […] which point towards a past lying
29
Se KOMMUNIST nr 18, s. 13 och Reichelt a.a., s. 67f.
30
See Zelenys critique of Engels (Metod och teori i Kapitalet, Stockholm 1976, kap. 5).
31
Marx, Grundrisse, p 48
7
behind this system. These indications, together with a correct grasp of the present,
then also offer the key to the understanding of the past”32
Marx therefore treats the so-called primitive accumulation first in Chapter 24 of the first volume
of Capital: the record of capitalist production relations is only possible when the concept of
capital has been developed.
In Lenin's understanding of the development of categories in Capital, the special relationship

between logic and history in Marx's dialectical method is lost. "Lenin understands the
conceptual reproduction of bourgeois society's anatomy in the form of dialectical preparation,
the immanent excess of contradictions of themselves, as the theoretical reproduction of its
historical development; the production of the historically-framed form of capitalist production
is distorted by Lenin in the preparation of its historical development process." 33 Such an
understanding of Capital means that Marx's analysis reflects the evolution of capitalism up to
a certain stage, and that capitalist society can reach new stages in its development that goes
beyond Marx's exposition.34 But Capital's object is not a particular historical step in capital
development, but the general legal bases that govern the capitalist mode of production. In
Capital volume I and II, Marx develops capital's general determinations in its production and
circulation process. With the transition from value to price and from surplus-value to profit in
the third volume of Capital, Marx leaves the level of "capital in general"35 and goes over to
determine the general forms of movement of capital in its fragmented, autonomous parts, i.e.
how the "inner nature of capital" is realized in the competition between the many individual
capitals. What is produced in the three volumes is "the inner organisation of the capitalist mode
of production, in its ideal average, as it were."36, and the real circumstances are only drawn into
it to the extent that they respond to their concept.37 Thus, any investigation of "the capital in its
reality" (capital in its concrete-historical particular), which Lenin's understanding of Capital
implies, is not found in Capital. What we find there are categories for the analysis of capital’s
empirical forms.
32
Ibid., p 393
33
Projekt Klassenanalyse, a.a., p. 75-76
34
Ibid., s. 371.
35
see Rosdolsky: Kapitalen i almenhed og de mange kapitaler, Kurasje nr 7, Köpenhamn 1973. Om övergången
från Kapitalband II till III se Schanz: Skitse til en bestemmelse af övergången fra II. til III. Kapitalbind, Kurasje
nr 11, Köpenhamn 1975.
36
Marx, Capital vol 3, p 565
37
Ibid., p 130(?)
8
In the “Philosophical Notebooks”, which Lenin wrote during his intense Hegel studies in 1914,
there are remarks that point beyond his previous understanding Capital's logical structure. The
dialectical method describes him as thinking from the abstract to the concrete38 and as the unit
of logical and historical analysis39. Thus, the status of commodity analysis in Marx's theory of
capital is a new way of understanding: the simple form of value is the "cell form" of bourgeois
society, which in undeveloped form encompasses all its contradictions. 40 However, the
realizations Lenin gained from his Hegel studies he didn’t develop further. In his study of
imperialism, developed shortly after, he sticks to his previous understanding of Marx's theory
of capital, as a theory of the historical stages of capitalist production from simple exchange to
large-scale production, and simply adds, based on a generalization of the movement of capital's
new manifestations, a new stage: imperialism. Its distinguishing features Lenin summarized in
five points:
“(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 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.”41
In the systematization of these appearances, which, according to Lenin, signaled a new stage in
capitalism's development, the imperialism analysis stopped. It was limited to the description of
the empirical forms, and did not try to go beyond them and connect them with the general laws
of motion of capital. This is most clearly expressed in the treatment of the monopoly, which is
the very core of the analysis of imperialism.
38
Note missing, TN: Lenin’s ‘Conspectus of Hegel’s bock The Science of Logic’, found in Collected Works vol
38. I believe that they’re referring to page 171 of the English version. The nature of the text has led me to leave
the page numbers blank in subsequent footnotes, since I hardly know what to even look for.
39
Ibid., p n/a
40
Ibid., p n/a ;180. It’s in the later which Lenin makes his famous remark that “[i]t is impossible completely to
understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood
the whole of Hegel’s Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!”
41
Lenin, Collected Works vol 22, p 266
9
The Concept of Monopoly
The starting point for Lenin's analysis of "the highest stage of capitalism" is the increasing
concentration and centralization of capital in the late 19th century. This process, according to
Lenin, followed the competition between many individual capitals and led to a monopolization
of production42, which meant that capitalism grew into its imperialist stage.
” The supplanting of free competition by monopoly is the fundamental economic

feature, the quintessence of imperialism.”43
The monopolistic organization of production meant that commodity production was

undermined.44 "[T]he old free competition between manufacturers, scattered and out of touch
with one another, and producing for an unknown market"45 was replaced by more or less "all-
powerful" monopolies that could monitor the market and, by mutual agreement, divide it
between themselves.
“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.”46
It appears here that the monopolistic associations are not subject to any external constraints, as
if they are sovereignly in control of their reproductive conditions. Their prices are not regulated
by the competition of the law of value, but they can autonomously determine them, and the total
produced surplus-value is not distributed among the various capitalists in accordance with the
average profit quota, but by mutual agreement between the different monopoly groups. The
monopoly, therefore, is not forced to compete with other capital through increases in
productivity and so on, but can, with raw power, force "adherence to the cartel."47
“Here we no longer have competition between small and large, between

technically developed and backward enterprises. We see here the monopolists
throttling those who do not submit to them, to their yoke, to their dictation.”48
42
Ibid., p 200
43
Lenin, Collected works vol 23, p 105
44
Lenin, Collected Works vol 22, p 214-215
45
Ibid., p 205
46
Ibid., p 202
47
Ibid., p 206
48
Ibid., p 206
10
The monopoly thus ceases to function as an individual capital, and transforms into
"[d]omination”.49 It is no longer, as in Marx, the capital that acts with an "automatically active
character" 50 and with its logic enforcements certain patterns of action of the individual
capitalists, but instead it is the monopoly, which (freed from this objective, necessary structure)
with its power masters society.
Behind Lenin's thesis about the transformation of competition to monopoly, there's an

underlying conception of competition, limiting its validity to undeveloped capitalism with an
atomized production structure ("scattered entrepreneurs who know nothing about each other
and produce for sale on an unknown market"). As this undeveloped stage passes, competition
loses its blind, objective character and is replaced with the conscious actors of the big capitals.
However, competition in Marxist opinion cannot be reduced to the external secrecy of
individual capitalists, but it is a crucial and necessary intermediary for the laws of capitalist
production. Mediated over competition, the value law appears in the "silent barometric
exchanges of market prices", and claims to be the regulator of capitalist production. The
valuation produces through the competition the average conditions for the production of the
goods in the various productive spheres, and establishes the most advanced production
conditions as the average, and benefits the social labor, both the living and the object-made, to
different production spheres in relation to the needs of the accumulation process. 51 Thus,
competition is not only as it may seem, and as Lenin emphasizes52, an anarchic process, but is
the mechanism by which the internal laws of the capitalist mode of production is realized, and
a social total capital is established.
“Conceptually, competition is nothing other than the inner nature of capital, its
essential character, appearing in and realized as the reciprocal interaction of many
capitals with one another, the inner tendency as external necessity. Capital exists
and can only exist as many capitals, and its self-determination therefore appears
as their reciprocal interaction with one another.”53
49
Ibid., p 207
50
Marx, Capital 1, p 107. TN: the Swedish term used would translate to “independent subject” which the author
claim would be closer to the German. While the idea of capital as the subject of capitalism is a notion shared (as
I’ve understood it) by certain Value-Form theorists, I’ve here chosen to use the translation found in Capital.
51
Neusüss: Imperialismus und Weltmarktbewegung des Kapitals, p. 110.
52
See ibid., s. 88–91.
53
Marx, Grundrisse, p 347
11
Because Lenin did not reflect this conceptual context, but perceived competition as a particular
market structure, the emergence of cartels and trusts, which abolished the production's
atomization and could monitor the market, appeared to him simply as a "replacement of the old
free competition". Thus, he confused the "adequate mode of production of capital"54 with a
particular phase of capitalism, thereby missing the problem of presenting a derivation of its
monopoly concept, that is to say, to connect it to the system of categorization in the critique of
political economy, and to clarify the relationship between the law of value and monopoly.
Lenin explained the origin of monopoly with the "concentration of production". On the basis of
industrial statistics of the advanced capitalist countries, he concluded that “at a certain stage of
its development concentration itself, as it were, leads straight to monopoly". 55 From the
empirically detectable concentration process, Lenin moved over directly to monopoly as a
concept, without also reflecting on the general monopoly determination in the critique of
political economy. 56 That is, he did not investigate how the "concentration of production"
seemed to hinder the movement of capital in the equalization of the average profit quota,
enabling individual capital to achieve monopoly position, that is to say, obtain a more lasting
superprofit.57. Thus, monopolization appears as a result of the conscious actions of individual
capitalists: "a score or so of giant enterprises can easily arrive at an agreement".58
The imperialist stage was characterized by Lenin as "a mixture of free competition and
monopoly".59
“[M]onopoly is the exact opposite of free competition […] At the same time the
monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter,
but exist above it and alongside it”.60
With formulations similar to this, Lenin tried in different contexts to clarify his relationship
between the "old" and the "new" capitalism. But they are hardly enlightening, as they only state
the existence of a non-monopolized sphere beside the monopolized. Monopolies and
54
Ibid., p 448
55
56
See Ebbinghausen m.fl: Monopol og stat, p 107-136.
57
It is worth noting that in Lenin's notes to Das Finanzkapital, he only once implies Hilferding's treatment of the
relationship between capital concentration and the barriers to the equalization trend of profit. See: Collected
Works vol 39, p. 333. Regarding Hilferding’s anlysis of monopoly see Ebbinghausen et al. p 137ff. in "Die
allgemeine Struktur des Monopols", Prokla 24, Berlin 1976
58
59
Ibid., p 219
60
Ibid., p 265-266
12
competition are treated simply as an opposite pair, and without examining the internal
relationship between the two on the basis of the definitions of the concepts of capital, Lenin
postulates the monopoly's independence from competition (its position "above and alongside
it").
However, monopoly can only be understood as a particular form of appearance for competition.
It cannot escape competition because the goals of each capital - to achieve as high a profit as
possible - contradict the goals of each other capital since the total value of the total capital is
quantitatively limited61, similarly the use-value basis of surplus-value production are limited
(labor force size, working day length, labor intensity, productive power of labor). Monopoly
profits cannot be absolute. They can also not be permanent, as it would assume that capital's
competition for investment spikes (capital movements between different industries due to
profit-rate differences) would be abolished.62
Lenin's contradictory concept of competition and thus insufficient treatment of the economic
mechanisms underlying the monopoly profit led him to determine monopoly as a "power
relationship" rather than a modified form of surplus-value's impact.
Monopoly as a tool for political struggle

From the power of monopoly, Lenin "inevitably engenders a tendency to stagnation and
decay".63 Due to the ability of monopolies to set prices the impetus to develop the productive
forces disappears, and "the motive cause of technical and, consequently, of all other progress
disappears to a certain extent".64
Capital which has achieved a profit above the average is not forced to immediately convert its
capital into fixed capital, and thus technical progress can be delayed. However, this possibility
61
” Finally, if equalisation of surplus-value into average profit meets with obstacles in the various spheres of
production in the form of artificial or natural monopolies, and particularly monopoly in landed property, so that a
monopoly price becomes possible, which rises above the price of production and above the value of the
commodities affected by such a monopoly, then the limits imposed by the value of the commodities would not
thereby be removed. The monopoly price of certain commodities would merely transfer a portion of the profit of
the other commodity-producers to the commodities having the monopoly price. A local disturbance in the
distribution of the surplus-value among the various spheres of production would indirectly take place, but it
would leave the limit of this surplus-value itself unaltered.” Marx, Capital vol 3, p 586
62
” But capital withdraws from a sphere with a low rate of profit and invades others, which yield a higher profit.
Through this incessant outflow and influx, or, briefly, through its distribution among the various spheres, which
depends on how the rate of profit falls here and rises there, it creates such a ratio of supply to demand that the
average profit in the various spheres of production becomes the same, end values are, therefore, converted into
prices of production.” Ibid. p 131. See also Altvater: Problemer omkring monopoler og statens rolle (Kurasje
8/9, Köpenhamn 1974),
63
64
Ibid., p 276
13
has its limit in the special profit ratio's fall to the average, and if the profit ratio of a single
capital is above the average due to a technological advance, the obvious compulsion is through
continued technical development try to maintain the lead. Ultimately, the general condition for
technological renewal under capitalism must also apply to a monopoly capital, namely that new
and more efficient machines are only introduced if their value is less than the value of the labor
they replace. Otherwise, the profit ratio would have ceased to act as the spur of the monopoly-
organized production.65
The monopoly price is, as Neusüss pointed out, also an important part of Lenin's argument in
another aspect:
"Because the monopolistic form of production eliminates the compulsion for

individual capitalists to increase their profitability as a single capital by the
development of labor productivity, then according to Lenin the monopolies on the
world market can only fight for politically secured spheres that can be used for
the production and realization of monopolistic superprofits. The stagnation of
capitalism's monopolistic phase imposes a competition on the world market,
whose form is the war and whose content is the division of the world. "66
This new kind of world market competition - "imperialist rivalry" 67 - does not change the
monopoly's character as monopoly, that is to say, hampering the possibility of setting monopoly
prices and achieving monopoly profits, which would have been the case under the so-called
free competition, but on the contrary, it is a result of the monopoly's character of power relations.
Competition does not appear to the monopoly in a blindly acting, naturalistic form, but is their
own conscious struggle for the division of dividends. In this way, Lenin tried to capture a
definite historical situation (FirstWorld War), in which the "silent constraints of economic
conditions" were replaced by the violent outbreaks of contradictions.
Based on the monopolistic organization of production, which hampered the development of

productive forces and hence the growth of social wealth (the tendency to stagnation and
deterioration) and which changed competition on the world market from being a battle for
superprofits (through productivity advances) to an imperialist rivalry, which at its height
assumed the form of war, Lenin tried to show that capitalism has reached its end. It no longer
65
See Jürgen Mendner: Technologische Entwicklung und Arbeitsprozess, Frankfurt 1975.
66
Neusüss: Imperialismus und Weltmarktbewegung des Kapitals, p. 30
67
Lenin, Collected works vol 22, p 310
14
produced progress but barbarism. Socialism was therefore the necessary solution. But it was
now also historically possible. In addition to stagnation, violence and political reaction, the
monopoly represented a "immense progress in the socialisation of production"68, which enabled
the transition to socialism:
“It is clear why imperialism is moribund capitalism, capitalism in transition to

socialism: monopoly, which grows out of capitalism, is already dying capitalism,
the beginning of its transition to socialism. The tremendous socialisation of labour
by imperialism […] produces the same result”69
Lenin's monopoly concept can thus be seen as a theory of revolution. With it Lenin attempted
to summarize both the necessity and the opportunity of the revolution in a concrete historical
situation, and it is therefore rather a concept of political struggle than a political economic
category.
Stamocap theory’s understanding of Lenin

The Soviet-Marxist interpretation of Lenin's monopoly concept is different. In the theory of
state monopolistic capitalism, it is transferred directly to the analysis of contemporary
capitalism. The monopoly is regarded as its essence, a category that includes all the
contradictions specific to the imperialist stage, and is therefore considered to be the obvious
starting point for analyzes of capital development from the turn of the century to today.
"The starting category is necessarily an abstraction. In the system of imperialism, the monopoly
is such an abstraction. The monopoly contains the embryo of all other determinations and their
systematic development. Because the monopoly produces the economic essence of imperialism,
all other determinations of imperialism must be derived from it."70
The monopoly is presented as an abstraction of the same kind as Marx's commodity concept,
and Fritz Kumpf has also made an analogy between Lenin's monopoly and Marx's commodity
analysis:
"Thus, Marx derived the all contradictions of capitalist formation from the general
and foremost abstract contradiction between value and use-value, between
abstract and concrete labor. Lenin develops all contradictions of imperialism from
68
Ibid., p 205
69
70
H. & K. Lehman: Die Dialektik in Lenins Imperialismusanalyse, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1971 part
3, East Berlin 1971.
15
the fundamental contradiction between monopoly and competition, which in turn
is evident from the fundamental contradiction of capitalism."71
Lenin's empirically oriented attempt to give " a composite picture of the world capitalist system
in its international relationships at the beginning of the twentieth century"72 is thus regarded as
"a direct continuation of Marx's analysis of capitalism"73. Imperialism implies such a profound
qualitative change of capitalism that a new starting point for the analysis of society is needed,
which, according to Stamocap theory, is Lenin's concept of monopoly. Marx's general concept
of capital is then transformed into an analysis of a passed stage of development, and instead of
deriving the historical forms as expressions of the general capital concept, Stamocap theory sets
the monopoly form in its place as a starting point. It means, as Neusüss expresses it, that
"A specific historical form of capitalist development is explained as the essence.

With the monopoly, capitalism has reached a new quality in which it no longer
develops on capital but on the basis of the monopoly."74
In Stamocap theory's view, Lenin's monopoly concept is of a purely formal character. While
for Lenin it was a summary of the contradictions that foretold the collapse of capitalism,
Stamocap theory uses the monopoly concept to analyze the expansion phase after World War
II, and while Lenin saw in the monopoly a tendency towards stagnation in the development of
productive forces, the tribunal talks about a technical-scientific revolution. Nevertheless, the
theory maintains that capitalism since the beginning of this century has been downward and
found itself in a "general crisis". This dilemma has been attempted through different stages,
distinctions between permanent crisis, acute crisis, internal lability, etc.75 But the "innovations"
of these concepts are nothing but an expression that the theory, in its dogmatism, is not fit for
the real dynamics of capitalism.
Finance capital
The centralization process at the forefront of Lenin's analysis included not only industrial
capital but also bank capital. Accordingly, it was not possible to understand the "real power and
71
Fritz Kumpf: Probleme der Dialektik in Lenins Imperialismusanalyse, East Berlin 1969, p. 146. Cited in
Neusüss: a.a., p. 69.
72
73
Kumpf: a.a., p. 106. Cited in Neusüss, a.a., p. 69.
74
Neusüss, a. a, p. 68. Regarding the Stamocap concept of monopoly see Schubert: Die Theorie des
staatsmonopolistischen Kapitalismus - Kritik der zentralen Aussagen, Mehrwert nr 4, p. 39ff. And Projekt
Klassenanalyse: Stamokap in der Krise, VSA, Berlin 1975.
75
Neusüss, a.a., p. 73. See also Ebbinghausen m.fl: Monopol og stat, p. 48ff.
16
significance" of the monopoly, unless the changed role of banks was taken into account during
the highest stage of capitalism.
Through the finance capital's centralization to a few large banks, the banks were transformed
from "modest middlemen into powerful monopolies"76, which absorbed industrial capital in a
mutually dependent relationship77 and laid the production and circulation process of the capital
under its control:
“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.”78
Through this, "a single national capitalist"79 emerged which turned the scattered capitalists into
a "collective capitalist"80. Instead of the indirect socialization of capitalist production, behind
the backs of the producers, emerged a social organization of social production through the
collective capitalist: from the modern big banks, a "universal book-keeping and distribution of
means of production"81 evolves. This distribution was still private in its content, " conforms to
the interests of big capital, and primarily, of huge, monopoly capital"82 , but it expressed a
common form of productive organization which, according to Lenin, meant a qualitative leap
over and above capitalism.83
76
77
Ibid., p 220
78
Ibid., p 214-215
79
Ibid., p 213
80
Ibid., p 214
81
Ibid., p 216 (from Russ. trans., Marx, Capital Vol. III, part II, p. 144)
82
Ibid., p 217
83
Ibid., p. 219,
17
Lenin's treatment of the bank's new role is based on Hilferding's Das Finanzkapital (1909), and
he borrows from him the term "finance capital" to denote the new relationship between banking
and industrial capital. Finance capital, according to Hilferding, is "bank capital,i.e., capital in
money form, which is thus actually transformed into industrial capital" 84 . The centralized
banking system and the increasingly developed credit organization mean that an increasing
share of industrial capital is bank capital, and the banks' power over industry thus grows: "The
power of banks grows. They become the founder of the industry, and ultimately its master."85
Its end point is when this process reaches such centralization that a bank or banking group has
the total money capital: "Such a 'central bank' would thus exercise control over total social
production."86
Finance capital means, on the one hand, centralization of the property into a few large "capital
associations", thus giving "the issue of property relations its clearest, most unambiguous and
most pronounced expression". On the other hand, "the question of the social economy's
organization is better solved through financial capital's own development"87, and in the big
banks it provides an organizational form that allows for an immediate transition to socialism.
"The socializing function of finance capital facilitates enormously the task of

overcoming capitalism. Once financial capital has brought the most importance
branches of production under its control [sic], it is enough for society, through its
conscious executive organ - the state conquered by the working class - to seize
finance capital in order to gain immediate control of these branches of production
[…] Even today, taking possession of six large Berlin banks would mean taking
possession of the most important spheres of large-scale industry, and would
greatly facilitate the initial phases of socialist policy during the transition
period"88
The socialist transformation is shifted here from the production sphere to the circulation sphere,
where the financial capital creates forms of control of social production that can be directly
84
Ibid., p. 226 (from HIlferding, Finance Capital, Moscow, 1912 (in Russian) pp. 338-39)
85
Hilferding, Das Finanzkapital, Frankfurt 1968, p. 310.
86
Ibid., s. 243.
87
Ibid., s. 302.
88
Hilferding, Finance Capital, London, 1981, p 367-368
18
taken over by socialist society. Socialism is reduced to the change of the already "consciously
regulated society" antagonistic distribution conditions.89
The relationship between banking and industrial capital that Hilferding presents with the term
"financial capital" means a reversal of Marx's determination of the relationship between
production and circulation. "The social production of value is no longer the starting point for
the movement of capital, but instead it's the apperance of value, money."90 Hilferding's analysis
only considers the importance of banks for industrial capital, and does not analyze the reverse
relationship: how the bank capital consists of fictitious capital (debt, equity and government
securities) and the monetary capital of different capitalists depends on industrial capital.
Assuming the capital concept, i.e. the realization of value through the exploitation of living
labor, the long-term dominant role of banking capital appears to be a pure contradiction.91
Hilferding's study can also be questioned in the light of the historical development of capitalism.
For example, Grossman92 has shown that the dominant role of banking capital is a transient
phenomenon. At the lower stages of capital accumulation, when capital formation in industry
is insufficient in relation to the opportunity for valorization, industry is dependent on the inflow
of capital through the banks' intermediation. The banks thus have a great power over the still
weak and credit-dependent industrial capital. In Germany, as Hilferding has in mind, this phase
is in the decades before the First World War. However, at higher stages of capital accumulation,
when industrial capital stands on its own two legs and is concentrated in large companies, the
dependence on external capital inflow lessens and self-financing becomes the predominant
form of funding. Mandel has also emphasized this trend, and believes that overaccumulation
rather than capital shortage is the major concerns main problem:
“They resort less and less to obtaining advances from the banks. Thus, they can no longer be
controlled by banks supplying them with investment credit. They themselves create their own
banks, in order to ensure that their available surpluses bring a ‘return’”93
89
Hilferding, Das Finanzkapital, Frankfurt 1968, p. 322-22
90
Ebbinghausen m.fl, a.a., s. 164.
91
Schubert: a.a., s. 9.
92
Grossman: Das Akkumulations- und Zusaramenbruchsgesetz des kapitalistischen Systems, Frankfurt 1970
(reprint), s. 572-79. Se also Giulio Pietranera: Hilferding und die ökonomische Theorie der Sozialdemokratie,
Merve Verlag, Berlin 1974, s. 48-55 and Paul Sweezy: Teorin för den kapitalistiska utvecklingen, Stockholm
1970, s. 258-62.
93
Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory vol 2, 1968, p 512
19
Lenin criticized Hilferding for his monetary theory - "For Hilferding, money goes into
circulation without value" 94 - but did not push this criticism further in his review of "Das
Finanzkapital", ignoring its consequences for the term "financial capital". He reiterated against
Hilferding's definition that it did not refer to the importance of the concentration process and
the monopolization of financial capital95, but his own presentation underlines the subordination
of industrial capital under the bank capital and the emergence of a financial oligarchy "clipping
coupons", as the dominant fraction in the ruling class96 [ 96]. It would be unjustified by Lenin
to accept Hilferding's concept, if he did not share the notion of the relationship between the two
capital forms that it is intended to express. An unchanged perception of the bank capital's ratio
to industrial capital is also reflected in later writings. In, for example, The threatening
catastrophe and how to fight it, Lenin explicitly speaks of "the sovereignty of the banks over
production."97
Lenin's investigation of the role of banking capital appears to be open to the same objections
that can be aimed against Hilferding's study: without examining the opposing processes - even
the fact that the money is an apperance of the value produced - he assumes that production can
be controlled from the circulation. Like Hilferding, he also perceives banking dominance as a
structural phenomenon bound to the highly developed capitalism. But, importantly, unlike
Hilferding, Lenin emphasized that the new stage of capitalism was characterized by a chaotic
development filled with crises. The criticism he directed against Hilferding's analysis of finance
capital primarily concerned that he didn’t reach the conclusion that capitalism was dying, and
thus the actuality of the proletarian revolution. However, Hilferding's idea of the transition to
socialism he never criticized, although he branded him as a reformist and opportunist. As we
will see later, some features of Lenin's socialism also show a relationship with Hilferding’s,
even though Lenin's perspective was revolutionary while Hilferding’s was reformist.
The export of capital and the labour aristocracy

The new forms of organization of capitalist production - the monopoly and financial capital -
form the starting point for Lenin's study of capital's world market movements. As we have seen
before, Lenin tried to understand the concept of "imperialist rivalry" between the nation-state
organized by monopoly capital. Competition on the world market was no longer primarily
94
Lenin: Notebooks on Imperialism, Collected Works band 39, s. 334. [swe]
95
Lenin: Imperialismen..., s. 494. [swe]
96
sse Lenin: Imperialismen..., s. 494ff. [swe]
97
Lenin: Valda verk II:1, s. 124. [swe]
20
economically (struggle for superprofits through advantage in productivity), but left in a direct
political struggle for stakeholders. Since the world was already divided among world powers,
the unequal development98 of different countries and industrial sectors resulted in a struggle for
a new division of the world in accordance with the new relations of power. At its most
prominent stage, this battle took the form of war. Lenin's term can thus be said to correspond
to the historically-specific reflection of the international antagonisms before and during the
First World War.
The changed character of world market competition was, according to Lenin, the increased
importance of capital exports from the most advanced capitalist countries in the decades before
the First World War.99
“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.”100
Capital exports created an international network of dependency, and enabled the various
financial assets to claim spheres of influence for the disposal of commodities and the extraction
of raw materials. The monopolistic associations divided the world market between themselves
and entered into world-wide agreements (international cartels), and the globe was divided
between the capitalist powers.101
Hilferding was responsible for the first thorough Marxist treatment of capital exports. The
cartelization of industry and the related customs policy was his starting point.
“Cartelization brings exceptionally large superprofits, and we have seen how

these superprofits are capitalized and then flow into the banks as concentrated
sums of capital. But at the same time cartels tend to slow down capital investment;
both in the cartelized industries, because the first concern of a cartel is to restrict
production, and in the non-cartelized industries because the decline in the rate of
profit discourages further capital investment. Consequently, while the volume of
capital intended for accumulation increases rapidly, investment opportunities
contract. This contradiction demands a solution, which it finds in the export of
98
Lenin: Imperialismen..., s. 578 Om begreppet "olikmässig utveckling" hos Lenin se Neusüss: a.a., s. 87-93.
[swe]
99
se Feis: Europe the World's Banker, New York 1961.
100
101
See ibid. Chapter five and six.
21
capital, though this is not in itself a consequence of cartelization. It is a
phenomenon that is inseparable from capitalist development. But cartelization
suddenly intensifies the contradiction and makes the export of capital an urgent
matter.”102 (Hilferding, p 233-234)
If cartelization reduces investment opportunities and forces capital to look overseas, then the
tariff policy forced by "finance capital" exacerbate this compulsion even more. In order to be
able to acquire superprofits in the domestic market, the cartels and trusts enforce protective
tarrifs that locks out foreign competition and enable it to maintain a price level above the world
market. As the different capitalist countries apply such a customs policy, it means that sales
opportunities in the world market will be reduced. This barrier to trade movements can be
overcome if capital instead of exporting its goods puts the production of them inside the
customs walls.103 The capital exports forced by these two causes are facilitated and accelerated
by the ability of major banks to "organize capital exports by planning"104.
This approach is well in accordance with Lenin's general analysis of the monopoly and financial
capital, but he does not personally go into the mechanisms of the monopolistic organization of
production that generates capital exports, and merely states that there has been "a very high
capital surplus" in the advanced countries ", where" capital accumulation reached giant
dimensions ", and continues:
“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. [...] 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. [...] The need to export capital arises from the fact that in
102
Hilferding, Finance Capital, p 233-234
103
Hilferding, Das Finanzkapital, Frankfurt 1968, p. 417-420
104
Ibid., s 426
22
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.”105
Here it is the relationship between capital accumulation and consumption ability (the poverty
of the masses) that is at the heart of the crisis. Capital accumulation has reached such a level
that production capacity expanded beyond domestic consumption, and capital must move
overseas in order to be profitable. Although Lenin refers to the "enormous dimensions" of
capital accumulation, he does not refer to the relationship between organic composition and
profit ratio, which are the central determinants of Marx's accumulation and crisis theory.106
Instead, he tends towards an underconsumptionist point of view, which appears to be influenced

by the British social-liberal John A. Hobson, whose imperialism study Lenin referred to as one
of his most important sources.107
According to Hobson, capital exports (imperialism) caused the disproportionality that existed
between production and consumption as a result of uneven income distribution. However, social
reforms involved in distribution relations could end imperialism.108 Lenin separated himself
from Hobson through his anti-capitalism, but his explanation of capital exports was not
fundamentally different. Faith in the possibility of abolishing imperialism by increasing the
consumption level of the masses Lenin considered as "the petty bourgeois imperialism
criticism"109, but he did not criticize the actual underconsumption theory,110 and based his thesis
on the necessity of capital exports on a, from both a historical and theoretical point of view,
unsustainable theory of misery.
Capitalist development has itself shown that it does not belong to capitalism's "essential and
unavoidable conditions and conditions" that "the standard of living of the masses is kept at the
brink of famine." Surplus-value production is based on the non-conformity between labor-
power's exchange- and use-value, i.e. between the labor-power's historically determined
reproduction costs and the value it recreates in production. The value relation between the value
of the added labor and the surplus-value it creates does not imply any unchanging minimum of
105
106
[note on the lack of impact of the 3rd volume of Capital on Lenin’s work] See Brigitte Nolte: Diskussionerne
om kriseteorien i socialdemokratiet frem til første verdenskrig, Politiske Arbejdstekster, 3-4/1974, s. 64-71.
107
Lenin: Imperialismen..., s 511-12 [swe]
108
Hobson: Imperialism. A study, London 1968 (1902), kap. 6.
109
Lenin: Notebooks on Imperialism, s. 414. [swe]
110
ibid., s. 405ff. [swe]
23
subsistence. The working class's level of living subsistence (wage size) is determined by the
cyclical course of capital accumulation and the given strength ratio between wage labor and
capital. An increase of real wages also does not have to mean that the surplus-value decreases,
as Lenin assumes, if the productivity of labor is increasing simultaneously.111
Lenin perceived capital exports as a sign of capitalism's decaying trend. In the developed
nations, capitalism had exhausted its potential for expansion (become "overwhelmed") and
adopted an increasingly parasitic form.112 Capital fled from its productive form, and appeared
increasingly in its last, most abstract and mystified form, the interest-bearing capital.113 The
accumulation of interest-bearing capital and hence the growth of rentiers had its sharpest
expression in capital exports.
"[I]mperialism is an immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries

[...] Hence the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of a stratum of rentiers,
i.e., people who live by “clipping coupons” [...] 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. [...] For
that reason the term “rentier state” (Rentnerstaat), or usurer state, is coming into
common use in the economic literature that deals with imperialism. The world has
become divided into a handful of usurer states and a vast majority of debtor
states."114
Thus, capitalism at its last stage returned to its origins: "Capitalism, which began its
development with petty usury capital, is ending its development with gigantic usury capital."115
This characteristic, which was possibly historically valid and valid before the First World War,
when capital exports were mainly interest-bearing capital 116 , shows how wrong it is to
111
Marx: Kapitalet I, s. 456. Om förhållandet mellan reallöneutveckling och produktivitetsutveckling i Sverige
under efterkrigstiden, se Dencik i "Arbete, stat, kapital" (Stockholm 1974) och Hansen m.fl: Svensk kapitalism,
Göteborg 1976. [swe]
112
Imperialismens parasitära karaktär var ett tema i Hobsons imperialismstudie, och Lenin åberopar sig flitigt på
honom. Se Imperialismen..., s. 556ff. Hobson talar också om hur de härskande klasserna genom imperialismen
får möjlighet att "korrumpera" sina lägre klasser, och denna tes återfinns också hos Lenin, som vi ska se nedan.
[swe]
113
Marx: Kapitalet III, s. 356) Se också Theories of Surplus Value III, Moskva 1971, s. 453ff. [swe]
114
115
Ibid., p 233
116
Portföljinvesteringarnas (köp av utländska värdepapper) andel av de utländska kapitalplaceringarna 1914 har
uppskattats till 90% (Dunning: Studies in International Investment, London 1971, s. 2). Se också Bucharin:
Imperialismus und Weltwirtschaft, Frankfurt 1969 (reprint), s. 106. [swe]
24
generalize Lenin's analysis of imperialism into a theory of capital's world market movements
since the turn of the century and up to today. What characterized the period after World War II
is not the developed national capital's parasitic usury, but instead an internationalization of
productive capital, that is, of surplus-value production, in the form of multinational groups117:
capital has not evolved from, but is increasingly consistent with its concept!
Lenin's characterization of imperialism as a parasitic and rotten capitalism leads to another topic
in his imperialism analysis: the spread of reformism / opportunism in the Western European
labor movement.118
“What is the economic basis of this world-historical phenomenon? It is precisely

the parasitism and decay of capitalism [...] capitalism has now singled out a
handful [...] of exceptionally rich and powerful states which plunder the whole
world simply by “clipping coupons”. Capital exports yield an income of eight to
ten thousand million francs per annum [...] Obviously, out of such enormous
superprofits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists
squeeze out of the workers of their “own” country) it is possible to bribe the labour
leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy. And that is just what the
capitalists of the “advanced” countries are doing: they are bribing them in a
thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert. This stratum of
workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour aristocracy [...] the principal prop of the
Second International, and in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of
the bourgeoisie. For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-
class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real vehicles of
reformism and chauvinism."119
Here, Lenin's tendency to reduce the capital relations to the conscious acting of the capitalists,
emphasized in the context of the concept of monopoly, reappears today. He ignores how a
fracturing of the working class emerge from the different positions the total worker’s different
117
Se härom Schoeller: Weltmarkt und Reproduktion des Kapitals, Frankfurt 1976, s. 90ff, och Busch:
Multinationale Konzerne. [swe]
118
Gunnar Olofsson har i artikeln "Teorier om reformism och arbetararistokrati hos Engels & Lenin" (Arkiv nr
6) visat att det finns andra reformismförklaringar hos Lenin än den som redovisas nedan (de "lugna"
förhållandenas inverkan, närheten till småbourgeoisin, de intellektuellas ställning i arbetarrörelsen, det politiska
systemets karaktär, det samhälleliga livets "tröghet" och förhållandet mellan facklig och politisk kamp). Dessa
kan vi inte gå in på här, och som Olofsson påpekar har dessa ytterligare förklaringar försvunnit i den
"leninistiska" teorin, som reducerat problemet till imperialismens inverkan på arbetarklassen och arbetarrörelsen.
[swe]
119
25
parts occupies in the social reproduction process (industry differences, different qualifications
structures, etc.), and instead uses a conspiratorial theory of bribery to explain the emergence of
a "labor aristocracy". This layer, by virtue of its privileged position, forms a social basis for
reformism/opportunism, and the medium through which it penetrates the working class.
Reformism, as a bourgeois consciousness in the working class, is then reduced to something in
external relation to the class, as a result of the influence of corrupt labor aristocrats/leaders.
Such a thesis cannot explain the lasting hegemony of reformism in the Western European labor
movement other than in moral terms (corruption, betrayal, etc.). It breaks down the connection
between the immediate forms of consciousness produced and reproduced in the working class
as a result of the forms in which the essence of bourgeois society appears (wage form, revenue
form, state form, etc.) and, on the other, the political expressions of these objectively
determined forms of consciousness: reformism/opportunism.120 No more can such a theory of
reformism in the labor movement materialistically explain the constitution of class
consciousness in the working class, that is to say. the experiences and organizational forms that
allow for the overrun of a "false consciousness". Instead, the revolutionary party, like the
incarnation of proletarian class consciousness, is raised to a subject which, through its
propaganda and challenge of reformist leadership, leads the working class to a revolutionary
position.
Monopoly, state, and socialism

Lenin saw the monopoly and finance capital as a sign of capitalism's dissolution and as the basis
for the transition to a "new social order". In these two forms of capital, he found a decisive
factor in the abolition of the anarchy of production and commodity circulation. Instead of the
competition of many capitals in an unknown market, the big banks' "general accounts for the
entire capitalist class"121 and the planned organization of production by the monopoly.
“When a big enterprise assumes gigantic proportions, and, on the basis of an exact
computation of mass data, organises according to plan the supply of primary raw
materials [...] when the raw materials are transported in a systematic and
organised manner [...] when a single centre directs all the consecutive stages of
120
Se härom t.ex. Marquardt: Konjunkturforløb og klassebevidsthed, Den jyske historiker 1/74, och
Redaktionskollektiv Gewerkschaften: Betingelser for socialistisk fagforeningsarbejde, Kurasje 11. Ett försök att
bestämma medvetandeformer bland lönearbetarna har gjorts av Projekt Klassenanalyse i "Materialien zur
Klassenstruktur der BRD. Erster Teil: Theoretische Grundlagen und Kritiken", Berlin 1975, s. 213-268. En kritik
av PKA finns i Prokla 22, Berlin 1976. [swe]
121
Lenin: Imperialismen..., s. A82. [swe]
26
processing the material right up to the manufacture of numerous varieties of
finished articles; when these products are distributed according to a single plan
[...] then it becomes evident that we have socialisation of production”122
However, this already socialized production is not conducted as such, but as private production.
According to Lenin, this is also the basic contradiction under the highest stage of capitalism123:
production is social, but the social wealth is dedicated to the few. In the context of such an
understanding of the contradictions of capitalism, production appears in its constitutional form
as a socialist principle (planning) which breaks down in capitalism 124 , and the specifically
capitalist moment is instead found in the form of acquisition. "Is it not clear then that the latter
must inevitably be adapted to the former and also become social, that is, socialist."125. However,
the other side of the capital development expressed in the socialization, that is to say, capital's
ever-increasing subsumption of the labor process and thus increasing power over wage labor126,
disappears from view. Thus, the criticism of capitalism becomes mutilated and superficial: it
focuses on the distribution of production resources and production results, and overrides the
subordination of the producers to production (the alienating character of the labor). This is
evident in Lenin's analysis of imperialism. He condemns capitalism as a stagnant and rotten
system because of the private form of ownership impedes the growth of productive forces and
thus the growth of social wealth. But he does not question the character of capitalist productive
development, that is to say. how productive forces and hence human labor are determined by
the capitalist logic of valorization. Productive forces are perceived as neutral means for the
generation of social wealth, which released from the fetters of private property, can develop
rapidly and planned. "For Lenin, the necessity of the revolution is evident not from the critique
of the productivist form of social labor, but from the critique of the limits of productivistic
development."127
122
123
Lenin: Imperialismen..., s 587-88. [swe]
124
Jfr Engels: Anti-Dühring, Stockholm 1955, där den kapitalismförståelse Lenin presenterar redan finns anlagd:
"I och med trusterna slår den fria konkurrensen om i monopol, det kapitalistiska samhällets planlösa produktion
kapitulerar för det gryende socialistiska samhällets planmässiga organisation." (s. 382)
125
Lenin: Vad är folkvännerna?, Valda verk I:1, s. 91-92. [swe]
126
Om subsumtionsbegreppet se Marx: Den omedelbara produktionsprocessens resultat, i Marx/Engels:
Ekonomiska skrifter i urval, Cavefors 1975.
127
Heidt/Mangeng: "Parteivergesellschaftung. Über den Zusammenhang von Transformationsprozess und
nachrevolutionären Gesellschaftsstrukturen in den nachkapitalistischen Ländern sowjetischen Typs" i Schulze:
Übergangsgesellschaft. Herrschaftsform und Praxis am Beispiel der Sowjetunion, Frankfurt 1974, s. 95. [swe]
27
This limited critique of capitalism resulted in a corresponding limitation of the revolutionary
perspective. It aimed at the abolition of the private capitalist form of ownership and the
development of productive forces in quantitative terms (productivity), but ignored the
transformation of "the nature of labor" and "the real appearance of the entire labor process"128:
the subordination of living labor by the dead, alienating labor, and division of labor's abolition.
The capitalist forms of the organization of the labor process was perceived by Lenin as
purposeful and fully useful for socialist purposes. For example, he considered the Taylorist
system (elimination of redundant movements at the workplace, labor breakdown, adaptation of
labor to the rhythm of machinery) as a great scientific advancement. Under capitalism, it
worked as a refined exploitation tool, but during the Soviet power it could be used for a rational
and productivity-enhancing organization of labor. 129 This "productivistic" perspective of
revolution reproduces the rule of the productive conditions over the producers and the reduction
of human labor into "abstract labor". The socializing moments of the monopolistic organization
of production - the general accounting and planning of production - meant, according to Lenin,
that the capitalists "were pulled against their own will and without their knowledge" into a kind
of new social order "130. Liberated from the "cloak of private property" and seized by the reign
of the proletarian state, the highly organized capitalist forms would form the basis for the
organization of socialist society. In the state control and regulation in the advanced economies
of the advanced capitalist countries, Lenin saw the final stage of the capitalist mode of
production within its own framework.
“Monopoly capitalism, which has been developing into state-monopoly

capitalism in a number of advanced countries with especial rapidity during the
war, means gigantic socialisation of production and, consequently, complete
preparation of the objective conditions for the establishment of a socialist
society”131
This "state monopolistic capitalism" or "state capitalism" (Lenin uses both terms) "united the
enormous power of capitalism with the state to a single mechanism"132 through which social
128
Se KOMMUNIST 18 och Marx: Den omedelbara produktionsprocessens resultat, i Marx/Engels, a.a., s. 116-
30.
129
Lenin: Sovjetmaktens aktuella uppgifter, s. 475ff. [swe] ['The immediate tasks of the Soviet government']
130
Lenin: Imperialismen..., s. 468. [swe]
131
132
Lenin: "War and revolution" i Between the two Revolutions, Moskva 1971, s. 199. [swe]
28
regulation of production was made possible. Although this regulation followed the interest of
big capital, it still created the objective foundation for an immediate transition to socialism.
"[S]tate-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the

threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung
called socialism there are no intermediate rungs."133
When the monopoly capitalists' power over this organized economy is broken and seized for
proletarian state's aims, then socialism is a fact:
"[S]ocialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the

interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist
monopoly."134
The cartels, trusts, major banks and state interventions are not perceived as a result of a
particular accumulation phase, but as socialization in itself. Thus, socialism does not appear to
be anything but the proletariat's (or its "vanguard's") takeover of the highly organized capitalist
industrial and state forms of command.
Even though Lenin here sticks to the framework of a social democratic tradition (Hilferding),
he was forced at the same time under the pressure of class struggle radicalization in Russia to
go beyond this. In opposition to social democratic reformism, he claimed in the State and
Revolution that the capitalist state could not be taken over, but must be crushed and replaced
with a proletarian democratic state, which is in a process of its own abolition. Lenin then
returned to Marx, clarifying in his spirit that the end of the division of labor is the basis of the
destruction of the classes and the state, i.e. for the transition to communism.135 But the end of
the division of labor is for Lenin a vision, because it was not mediated thorough a critique of
capitalism that clarified capital's subsumption of the labor process and hence the division
between manual and intellectual labor. Lenin, therefore, could not imagine an end to the
division of labor in the current revolutionary process. This is reflected in The immediate tasks
of the Soviet government, where he on the one hand claims that the transition to socialism entails
the transition from worker control to production regulated by the workers themselves136, and
the other hand claims the necessity of the chord wage and Taylorist system to increase labor
133
Lenin, collected works vol 25, p 363
134
Ibid., p 362
135
Lenin: Staten och revolutionen, Valda verk band II:1, s. 300. [swe]
136
Lenin: Sovjetmaktens aktuella uppgifter, ibid., s. 477. [swe]
29
productivity137 and that the major industrial processes cannot be organized at all, except by the
absolute authority of one will:
"[L]arge-scale machine industry—which is precisely the material source, the

productive source, the foundation of socialism—calls for absolute and strict unity
of will, which directs the joint labours of hundreds, thousands and tens of
thousands of people. [...] But how can strict unity of will be ensured? By
thousands subordinating their will to the will of one."138
While Lenin talks about the transition to the workers' self-organization of social production, he
thus advocates a "productivist" organization of the labor in authoritarian forms, without seeing
the problem therein, i.e. that such an organization of labor blocks the process of social
transformation to the association of free producers.
Lenin's slogan about crushing the state was also contradictory. As a pendulum to the separation
between, on the one hand, the socialized, tendentially socialist, production, and on the other the
private form of acqusition, Lenin divided state functions in part economically-administrative
and part politically-repressive. The latter were to be crushed, while the former should be
preserved as the backbone of socialist society.139. Already, according to Lenin, a single state
bank would constitute nine tenths of a socialist apparatus.140 This idea of the organization of
socialist society was summarized by Lenin in his famous comparison between the German
postal service and socialism:
"A witty German Social-Democrat of the seventies of the last century called the
postal service an example of the socialist economic system. This is very true. At
the present the postal service is a business organised on the lines of a state-
capitalist monopoly. Imperialism is gradually transforming all trusts into
organisations of a similar type, in which, standing over the “common” people,
who are overworked and starved, one has the same bourgeois bureaucracy. But
the mechanism of social management is here already to hand. Once we have
overthrown the capitalists, crushed the resistance of these exploiters with the iron
hand of the armed workers, and smashed the bureaucratic machinery of the
137
Ibid., s. 482. [swe]
138
Lenin, collected works, vol 27, p 268-269
139
Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power" i On Worker's Control and the Nationalisation of Industry, Moskva
1970, s. 94. [swe]
140
Ibid., s. 94-95. [swe]
30
modern state, we shall have a splendidly-equipped mechanism, freed from the
“parasite”, a mechanism which can very well be set going by the united workers
themselves, who will hire technicians, foremen and accountants, and pay them all,
as indeed all ‘state’ officials in general, workmen’s wages."141
Lenin's revolutionary perspective thus holds two sides. On the one hand, the resumption of
Marx on the experience of the Paris commune, founded ideas of proletarian democracy and his
determination of the transition to communism as a process of dissolution of the division of labor.
On the other hand, these themes could not be integrated into the context of Lenin's lacking
critique of capitalism, and they therefore stand as a radical vision beside a "state-capitalist"
understanding of socialism: the maintenance of capitalist and state-capitalist forms of the
organization of the labor process and the economy. The post-revolutionary development also
did not allow the Bolsheviks by means of political practice to break with this view of socialism.
The October Revolution was never followed by the Western European Revolution, as Lenin
and the Bolsheviks expected, but by the intervention of foreign powers, civil war, catastrophic
production decline, food shortage, and demobilization of the working class. Under these
conditions, a socialist organization of the social labor process could not be realized. Instead,
countermeasures were taken that tended towards the forms and methods of state-capitalism, and
the emancipatory forms of the revolution (soviets and factory committees) were limited and
eventually died out. Instead of Lenin's vision of the extinction of the state, a process began
which ended in Stalinism's terrorist state machinery.
Conclusion
The basic limitation of the Lenin's analysis of imperialism is that it stops at the description of
the empirical forms of the movement of capital, and does not mediate these with the concept of
capital itself. That is, it does not fulfill the intentions of Marx's critique of political economy:
"it is a work of science to bring back the visible, which manifests the prominent movement of
the inner real movement."142 Lenin notes that the monopolistic stage emerged from capital's
inherent concentration and centralization trend (as Marx developed in Capital vol 1, chapter
23), but he does not clarify the meaning of the new stage. If it only involves a change in the
empirical forms in which the capital movement appears, or a qualitative change in the legal
bases of the production itself, this remains an unanswered question. As we have seen, Lenin
141
Lenin, collected works vol 25, p 431-432
142
Marx: Kapitalet III, s. 248. [swe]
31
describes monopoly in such a way that it appears that the laws of value were out of play, but he
does not clarify whether monopoly involves the revocation of the law of value or just a
modification of its impact. The fundamental ambiguity thus adhering to Lenin’s analysis of
imperialism reflects the understanding of the critique of the political economy that Lenin
encompassed. If Capital is perceived as a generalized representation of the historical stages of
capitalist production from the origin of the simple commodity circulation to shareholder capital,
then post-Marxian analysis will add to the new stages of capital development, not clarify the
empirical forms of capital movement as historically-specific forms of capitalism's essential
logic.
The conclusion that the descriptive character of Lenin's study gives rise to is unambiguous: a
generalization of it to a general political economic theory is untenable. It is worth noting that
Lenin in his polemic against Bukharin positioned himself against such use of the analysis of
imperialism 143 , and as Neusüss emphasized, it is only when it is explained in "Marxism-
Leninism" to be the basis for every analysis of the capital movement ever since the first world
war, as it becomes completely wrong.144 For example, if Lenin's determination of capitalism as
dying, which aimed at indicating the imminence of the proletarian revolution, is generalized,
so it involves a direct revision of Marx's theory of the cyclical nature of capital accumulation,
making it impossible to understand the actual dynamics of capital.
Lenin's determination of capitalism’s decay also had another side whose problematic character
was emphasized above. In this way, Lenin stated that capitalism reached such a level of
development that it produced organizational forms that tended to negate capitalism and prepare
for socialism.
Marx already saw the stock company as "a revocation of the capitalist mode of production
within the capitalist mode of production itself" and as "a necessary review stage for the return
of capital to the producers' common, direct corporate property"145. But with Lenin, the reflection
on the double character of capitalist production itself is lost. Thus, he tends to reduce capital
development to the increased contradiction between, on the one hand, the socializing forms of
organization of production (trusts, major banks, etc.) and, secondly, the private dedication, and
socialism to the latter's transformation in accordance with the former. His critique of capitalism
thus ignores capital's increasingly real subsumption of the labor process, that is to say, capital
143
Lenin: Referat om partiprogrammet, Valda verk II:2, s. 147. [swe]
144
Neusüss: a.a., s. 45. [swe]
145
Marx: Kapitalet III, s. 397-401. [swe]
32
establishes itself as a specific form of mediation between man and nature, thus rising to
sovereignty in the technology-material structures themselves. In view of the capital
development of recent decades, it has become increasingly evident how amputated this kind of
criticism of capitalism (which is fixed on the private form of acquisition and does not include
the subsumption trend of capital) is and its inability to grasp the revolutionary transformation
in the entirety of its necessary radicality.
33

Monopoly and Socialism in Lenin's Analysis of Imperialism

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Monopoly and Socialism in Lenin's Analysis of Imperialism

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Monopoly and socialism in Lenin’s

Original Swedish publication in TEKLA no.1 1977.

“Lenin's theory of imperialism […] is less a theory of its necessary economic

Lenin and the critique of political economy

Marx's "ingenious idea" was, according to Lenin, the "hypothesis" of materialism's

In Lenin's understanding of the development of categories in Capital, the special relationship

” The supplanting of free competition by monopoly is the fundamental economic

The monopolistic organization of production meant that commodity production was

“Here we no longer have competition between small and large, between

Behind Lenin's thesis about the transformation of competition to monopoly, there's an

Monopoly as a tool for political struggle

"Because the monopolistic form of production eliminates the compulsion for

Based on the monopolistic organization of production, which hampered the development of

“It is clear why imperialism is moribund capitalism, capitalism in transition to

Stamocap theory’s understanding of Lenin

"A specific historical form of capitalist development is explained as the essence.

“When carrying the current accounts of a few capitalists, a bank, as it were,

"The socializing function of finance capital facilitates enormously the task of

The export of capital and the labour aristocracy

“Cartelization brings exceptionally large superprofits, and we have seen how

Instead, he tends towards an underconsumptionist point of view, which appears to be influenced

"[I]mperialism is an immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries

“What is the economic basis of this world-historical phenomenon? It is precisely

Monopoly, state, and socialism

“Monopoly capitalism, which has been developing into state-monopoly

"[S]tate-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the

"[S]ocialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the

"[L]arge-scale machine industry—which is precisely the material source, the

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