Lenin and the monopolist/imperialist phase of capitalism

Abstract

This essay examines Lenin's classic work on Imperialism, dealing with its fundamental features, the concentration, and centralization of capital that leads to monopolization, the constitution of finance capital and financial oligarchy, and to the division of the world among the great monopolies capitalists and between the great powers. Here, Imperialism is treated as a specific phase of capitalism, its monopolistic phase – the phase in which contemporary capitalism must be situated – in which tendencies towards decomposition and parasitism are asserted, while, due to the socialization of production, conditions are created for a transition to socialism. Underlying this examination is a proposition, exposed at the end, about the status of class struggle in Lenin's thought, as well as a problematization of Lenin's treatment of dialectics.