This is a pamphlet which opens on pages and pages of tables to show what has now become incredibly obvious ie. the monopoly tendency and the formation of finance capital. So reading the bulk of it, you do a lot of asking yourself "what is this work actually trying to do and what's new about it"? Lenin wrote Imperialism during WWI when chauvinistic socialist movements in Europe were trying to frame the war as defensive on one side or another. The primary purpose of the work is to debunk this position. Since the First World War is now well and truly in the distant past nobody pretends to believe that there was any principled reason for it anymore so in that sense Imperialism is redundant¹1. Nonetheless one gets the distinct impression that socialists today are eager to make the exact same chauvinistic mistakes.. Where it's still important is its synthesis of bourgeois theories of imperialism, its dialogue with Kautsky's theory of ultra-imperialism, and its diagnosis of the social effects of imperialism.

Summary

Chapter 1-6: There is nothing controversial here. Lenin theorizes that economies of scale led to concentration of production, which leads to concentration of capital, which leads to the formation of monopoly finance capital (which he defines as a joining of banking and industrial capital--a distinction which is no longer easy to grasp). Monopoly tendencies led to an overabundance of capital, so the most advanced capitalist economies move towards export of capital rather than export of goods. Since control of capital is a power relationship, we get the political aspect of imperialism-as-territorial division. This is the majority of the pamphlet but I don't expect it would face much pushback today.

Chapter 7: Lenin's attack on the theory of ultra-imperialism²2. We might call it post-imperialism today. Hobson calls it inter-imperialism which is more clear.. The theory is essentially that the cartelization of capital could continue with the formation of international cartels for the management of imperialism. The resultant foreign policy then would be the abolition of war among imperialist countries and "world" (ie. European) peace. Lenin's essential point is that economies undergo different rates of development at different times, so the balance of power among capitalist nations is always changing. There is no clear way to resolve these contradictions under capitalism except by warfare. I don't think Lenin's argument here is particularly decisive: political self-management of the bourgeoisie exists at the national level and the balance of power among firms shifts all the time without violence.

Chapter 8: The most prophetic section. It literally presages every single development and political tendency in the West today. Lenin outlines three important trends:

1. The tendency towards the development of a "rentier state" in which the national bourgeoisie devotes itself wholely to passive income and what we would now call the finance sector, leaving the majority of the population to service work.
2. The use of high monopoly profits to create a class of comprador proletarians. I see this theory expanded upon to suggest that all or most workers in the imperial core are not exploited. Without commenting on whether this is true, it isn't what Lenin is saying. He is always careful to say that only a section of the most politically powerful workers need to be bribed this way.

The effects are: (1) a section of the British proletariat becomes bourgeois; (2) a section of the proletariat allows itself to be led by men bought by, or at least paid by, the bourgeoisie.

In order to present the condition of the British working class in a rosy light, only this upper stratum—which constitutes a minority of the proletariat—is usually spoken of.

3. A decline in emigration from the imperialist countries which was characteristic of earlier stages of capitalism and a rise in immigration to imperialist countries from the periphery.

It is also interesting to see Lenin's bourgeois sources, Hobson and Schulze-Gaevernitz, tearfully predict the exact fate of the British and then US empires.

Europe will shift the burden of physical toil—first agricultural and mining, then the rougher work in industry—on to the coloured races, and itself be content with the role of rentier, and in this way, perhaps, pave the way for the economic, and later, the political emancipation of the coloured races.

We have foreshadowed the possibility of even a larger alliance of Western states... no longer engaged in the staple industries of agriculture and manufacture, but kept in the performance of personal or minor industrial services under the control of a new financial aristocracy. Let those who would scout such a theory... as undeserving of consideration... reflect upon the vast extension of such a system which might be rendered feasible by the subjection of China to the economic control of similar groups of financiers, investors, and political and business officials, draining the greatest potential reservoir of profit the world has ever known, in order to consume it in Europe.

Woops.

Chapter 9: We're back to a critique of Kautsky (Lenin seems to have been a mediocre organizer of pamphlet sections). Lenin identifies here the reactionary critique of imperialism which is very familiar among socialist-chauvinists in all countries today³3. It is particularly evident among the social-chauvinist Sanders/DSA demographic and among petit-bourgeois Trump supporters. From an objective point of view these tendencies are very similar.. Because the domestic characteristic of imperialism is the smothering of free competition at home, it creates a reactionary anti-imperialist tendency among the petty bourgeoisie. These reactionary anti-imperialists seek to return to the era of free competition and a pre-imperialist foreign policy. Today it is fashionable for them to identify imperialism as "crony capitalism." Since it is precisely the pre-imperialist capitalist free-competitive economy that gives rise to monopoly and thus to imperialism this aim is doomed to fail. Even though Trump's petty-bourgeois reactionary base is to some degree opposed to imperialist war, for example, his administration is being forced into a war with Iran as part of a broader conflict with China. The logic of inter-imperialist conflict with China simply demands it.

Chapter 10: Summary.

Retrospective

What happened next: (Period 1) The period of intense inter-imperialist conflict continued until 1945 when (Period 2) it was terminated by the emergence of the United States as world hegemon. Massive US capital flows into its European and East Asian vassals developed these territories and sustained massive superprofits until (Period 3) these countries were fully capitalized in the 1970s, leading to a crisis--back to that in a second.

Period 1 is essentially a continuation of when Lenin was writing. Period 2 seems like a vindication of Kautsky but it is also not really the mechanism Kautsky predicted. First of all US imperialist hegemony had a definite leader coercing other capitalist powers--it was not really co-operative. Second of all, the imperialized countries were predominantly those very subordinate capitalist powers. Ultra-imperialism proved unable to extract from the traditional periphery in the same way as had been historically done.

Which leads back to the crisis I mentioned. Rather than set up new capital destinations in the rest of the world (why didn't they? one reason could be the global national-liberation struggle led by the USSR and China, which was ultimately being won. another reason could be that they were no longer competitive with their vassals in the production of capital goods), the American ruling class set up what might be characterised as a neo-Habsburg tribute empire, or what might be called retro-imperialism. This situation is actually somewhat the reverse of Lenin's model of imperialism--rather than a creditor nation, the US is a debtor nation which purchases commodities in exchange for dollars.

If the traditional capital valorization process is Money -> Commodities/Capital -> Production -> New Commodities -> Money and the traditional form of imperialism is British Money -> British Produced Commodities/Capital sent to a Foreign Country -> Production in Foreign Country -> New Commodities owned by a British company -> More British Money, the new form of imperialism is Yuan held by Chinese capitalists -> Chinese-produced Commodities/Capital in China -> Production in China -> New Commodities owned by a Chinese company -> more US Money held by China -> US treasuries held by China/more Yuan held by Chinese capitalists/more US Money held by the US. This circuit is a lot more confusing because it is really two circuits acting at this same time. But it is essentially the domestic capital valorization process except that at the end the valorized money has to be exchanged for US debt. Let's take a look more closely to understand why that is:

Three cases:

1. I'm a Chinese capitalist. I use my yuan to purchase inputs. Chinese workers then produce commodities of a greater value than the inputs. I sell these commodities, say domestically for yuan. This is the traditional capital valorization process. No surplus accrues to the US.
2. I'm a Chinese capitalist. I use my yuan to purchase inputs. But the inputs I need come from abroad. The dollar is the global currency of exchange, so I need to purchase dollars. US financial institutions make a profit selling me dollars for yuan. Then I complete the valorization process. US finance has essentially taxed me from afar.
3. I'm a Chinese capitalist. I use my yuan to purchase inputs. yada yada I end up with more commodities. I sell those commodities to Americans for US dollars. Now I have a bunch of US dollars that I can't use for domestic consumption, and domestic inputs are always going to be the largest part of my costs. I could simply trade my US dollars with other Chinese people but that would destroy the financial independence of the PRC state. So I have to exchange my dollars for yuan with the People's Bank of China. The People's Bank of China now has an accumulating amount of dollars. The PBC can't just hold a bunch of cash in a big vault so it has to use these dollars to buy US securities (it might also sell some dollars for yuan to someone in case 2--in that case the dollars continue to circulate in world markets until they are consumed this way). This artificially bids up the price of the US financial sector and provides an unlimited source of demand for US treasuries.

Of course, the traditional imperialist process continues to happen, but it is evident from total capital flows that traditional imperialism is vastly outscaled by retro-imperialism. The critical distinction is that the United States no longer produces capital goods for export. It only produces dollars. In this way, as I alluded to earlier, the United States today could be compared to the Habsburg Spanish empire. The Habsburgs used slave labor to mine silver, which was the exchange currency of its day⁴4. Of course, silver is itself a commodity but as the money commodity it had its own use value apart from its use in jewelry or whatever. In this way it is not that different from fiat money.. It then exchanged that silver directly for manufactured goods from the Netherlands and Britain, which its own sclerotic financialized economy could not produce. This led to the underdevelopment of the forces of production in Spain and the overdevelopment of the forces of production in the Netherlands and Britain. These countries were then able to overcome Spain by economic and military force and marginalize it.

The US can produce as many treasury bonds as it wants and manage the supply of dollars, but it should be remembered that the Spanish empire also didn't decline because silver ran out⁵5. Silver production from the Americas actually peaked for Spain in 1800.. They were still mining silver when they were eclipsed.

Anyway, that's all for now. Takeaway: I should read about Hobson and the crisis of the 1970s.