IMPERIALISM,
THE HIGHEST STAGE OF CAPITALISM

page 1

IMPERIALISM, THE HIGHEST STAGE
OF CAPITALISM[1]

A Popular Outline

PREFACE

    The pamphlet here presented to the reader was written in the spring of 1916, in Zurich. In the conditions in which I was obliged to work there I naturally suffered somewhat from a shortage of French and English literature and from a serious dearth of Russian literature. However, I made use of the principal English work on imperialism, the book by J. A. Hobson, with all the care that, in my opinion, that work deserves.

    This pamphlet was written with an eye to the tsarist censorship. Hence, I was not only forced to confine myself strictly to an exclusively theoretical, particularly economic analysis of facts, but to formulate the few necessary observations on politics with extreme caution, by hints, in an allegorical language -- in that accursed Aesopian language -- to which tsarism compelled all revolutionaries to have recourse whenever they took up their pens to write a "legal" work.

page 2

    It is painful, in these days of liberty, to reread these passages of the pamphlet, which have been distorted, cramped, compressed in an iron vise on account of the censor. About the fact that imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution; that social-chauvinism (Socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds) is the utter betrayal of Socialism, complete desertion to the side of the bourgeoisie; that this split in the working-class movement is bound up with the objective conditions of imperialism, etc., I had to speak in a "slavish" tongue, and I must refer the reader who is interested in the subject to the articles I wrote abroad in 1914-17, a new edition of which is soon to appear. Special attention should be drawn to a passage on pages 119-20.[2] In order to show the reader, in a guise acceptable to the censors, how shamelessly the capitalists and the social-chauvinists who have deserted to their side (and whom Kautsky opposes with so much inconsistency) lie on the question of annexations; in order to show how shamelessly they screen the annexations of their capitalists, I was forced to quote as an example -- Japan! The careful reader will easily substitute Russia for Japan, and Finland, Poland, Courland, the Ukraine, Khiva, Bokhara, Estonia or other regions peopled by non-Great Russians, for Korea. I trust that this pamphlet will help the reader to under stand the fundamental economic question, viz., the question of the economic essence of imperialism, for unless this is studied, it will be impossible to understand and appraise modern war and modern politics.

Author

Petrograd,
April 26, 1917

page 3

PREFACE TO THE FRENCH AND GERMAN
EDITIONS[3]

I

    As was indicated in the preface to the Russian edition, this pamphlet was written in 1916, with an eye to the tsarist censorship. I am unable to revise the whole text at the present time, nor, perhaps, would this be advisable, since the main purpose of the book was and remains: to present, on the basis of the summarized returns of irrefutable bourgeois statistics, and the admissions of bourgeois scholars of all countries, a composite picture of the world capitalist system in its international relationships at the beginning of the twentieth century -- on the eve of the first world imperialist war.

    To a certain extent it will even be useful for many Communists in advanced capitalist countries to convince themselves by the example of this pamphlet, legal from the standpoint of the tsarist censor, of the possibility -- and necessity -- of making use of even the slight remnants of legality which still remain at the disposal of the Communists,

page 4

say, in contemporary America or France, after the recent almost wholesale arrests of Communists, in order to explain the utter falsity of social-pacifist views and hopes for "world democracy." The most essential of what should be added to this censored pamphlet I shall try to present in this preface.

powerful world marauders armed to the teeth (America, Great Britain, Japan), who involve the whole world in their war over the sharing of their booty.

    The Basle Manifesto of the Second International, which in 1912 gave an appraisal of the very war that broke out in 1914 and not of war in general (there are different kinds of wars, including revolutionary wars), this Mani-

festo is now a monument exposing the utter shameful bankruptcy and treachery of the heroes of the Second International. That is why I reproduce this Manifesto as a supplement to the present edition,[4] and again and again I urge the reader to note that the heroes of the Second International are as assiduously avoiding the passages of this Manifesto which speak precisely, clearly and dehnitely of the connection between that impending war and the proletarian revolution, as a thief avoids the place where he has committed a theft.

    The growing world proletarian revolutionary movement in general, and the Communist movement in particular, can not dispense with an analysis and exposure of the theoretical errors of "Kautskyism." The more so since pacifism and "democracy" in general, which lay no claim to Marxism whatever, but which, like Kautsky and Co., are obscuring the profundity of the contradictions of imperialism and the inevitable revolutionary crisis to which it gives rise, are still very widespread all over the world. To combat these tendencies is the bounden duty of the Party of the proletariat, which must win away from the bourgeoisie the small proprietors who are duped by them, and the millions of toilers who have been placed under more or less petty-bourgeois conditions of life.

    A few words must be said about Chapter VIII entitled: "The Parasitism and Decay of Capitalism." As already pointed out in the text, Hilferding, ex-"Marxist," and now a comrade-in-arms of Kautsky and one of the chief exponents of bourgeois, reformist policy in the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany,[5] has taken a step backward

on this question compared with the frankly pacifist and reformist Englishman, Hobson. The international split of the whole working-class movement is now quite evident (the Second and the Third Internationals). The fact that armed struggle and civil war is now raging between the two trends is also evident: the support given to Kokchak and Denikin in Russia by the Mensheviks and "Socialist-Revolutionaries" against the Bolsheviks; the fight the Scheidemanns, Noskes and Co. have conducted in conjunction with the bourgeoisie against the Spartacists[6] in Germany, the same thing in Finland, Poland, Hungary, etc. What is the economic basis of this world-historic phenomenon?

    Precisely the parasitism and decay of capitalism which are characteristic of its highest historical stage of development, i.e., imperialism. As is proved in this pamphlet, capitalism has now singled out a handful (less than one-tenth of the inhabitants of the globe; less than one-fifth at a most "generous" and liberal calculation) of exceptionally rich and powerful states which plunder the whole world simply by "clipping coupons." Capital exports yield an income of eight to ten billion francs per annum, at prewar prices and according to prewar bourgeois statistics. Now, of course, they yield much more.

    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 the capitalists of the "advanced" countries are bribing them; they bribe them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert.

page 10

    This stratum of bourgeoisified workers, or the "labour aristocracy," who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is 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 channels of reformism and chauvinism. In the civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie they inevitably, and in no small numbers, take the side of the bourgeoisie, the "Versaillese" against the "Communards."

    Unless the economic roots of this phenomenon are un derstood and its political and social significance is appre ciated, not a step can be taken toward the solution of the practical problems of the Communist movement and of the impending social revolution.

    Imperialism is the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat. This has been confirmed since 1917 on a world wide scale.

N. Lenin

July 6, 1920

DURING the last fifteen to twenty years, especially since the Spanish-American War (1898), and the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), the economic and also the political literature of the two hemispheres has more and more often adopted the term "imperialism" in order to describe the present era. In 1902, a book by the English economist J. A. Hobson, Imperialism, was published in London and New York. This author, whose point of view is that of bourgeois social reformism and pacifism which, in essence, is identical with the present point of view of the ex-Marxist, K. Kautsky, gives a very good and comprehensive description of the principal specific economic and political features of imperialism. In 1910, there appeared in Vienna the work of the Austrian Marxist, Rudolf Hilferding, Finance Capital (Russian edition: Moscow, 1912). In spite of the mistake the author commits on the theory of money, and in spite of a certain inclination on his part to reconcile Marxism with opportunism, this work gives a very valuable theoretical analysis of "the latest phase of capitalist development," the subtitle of the book. Indeed, what has been said of imperialism during the last few years, especially in an enormous number of magazine and newspaper articles, and also in the resolutions, for example, of the Chemnitz and Basle con-

    Later on, we shall try to show briefly, and as simply as possible, the connection and relationships between the principal economic features of imperialism. We shall not be able to deal with non-economic aspects of the question, however much they deserve to be dealt with. We have put references to literature ancd other notes which, perhaps, would not interest all readers, at the end of this pamphlet.[7]

    In 1907, there were in Germany 586 establishments employing one thousand and more workers, nearly one-tenth (1,380,000) of the total number of workers employed in industry, and they utilized almost one-third (32 per cent) of the total steam and electric power.[*] As we shall see, money capital and the banks make this superiority of a handful of the largest enterprises still more overwhelming, in the most literal sense of the word, i.e., millions of small, medium and even some big "masters" are in fact in complete subjection to some hundreds of millionaire financiers.

    In another advanced country of modern capitalism, the United States of America, the growth of the concentration of production is still greater. Here statistics single out industry in the narrow sense of the word and group enterprises according to the value of their annual output. In 1904 large-scale enterprises with an output of one million

dollars and over numbered 1,900 (out of 216,180, i.e., 0.9 per cent). These employed 1,400,000 workers (out of 5,500,000, i.e., 25.6 per cent) and their output amounted to $5,600,000,000 (out of $14,800,000,000, i.e., 38 per cent). Five years later, in 1909, the corresponding figures were: 3,060 enterprises (out of 268,491, i.e., 1.1 per cent) employing 2,000,000 workers (out of 6,600,000, i.e., 30.5 per cent) with an output of $9,000,000,000 (out of $20,700,000,000, i.e., 43.8 per cent).[*]

    Almost half the total production of all the enterprises of the country was carried on by one-hundredth part of these enterprises! These 3,000 giant enterprises embrace 258 branches of industry. From this it can be seen that, at a certain stage of its development, concentration itself, as it were, leads right up to monopoly; for a score or so of giant enterprises can easily arrive at an agreement, while on the other hand, the hindrance to competition, the tendency towards monopoly, arises from the very dimensions of the enterprises. This transformation of competition into monopoly is one of the most important -- if not the most important -- phenomena of modern capitalist economy, and we must deal with it in greater detail. But first we must clear up one possible misunderstanding.

    American statistics say: 3,000 giant enterprises in 250 branches of industry, as if there were only a dozen enterprises of the largest scale for each branch of industry.

    But this is not the case. Not in every branch of industryare there large-scale enterprises; and moreover, a very important feature of capitalism in its highest stage of development

entirely -- in the mining and iron industries at least -- under the aegis of the cartels. And while at that time it appeared to be something novel, now the general public takes it for granted that large spheres of economic life have been, as a general rule, removed from the realm of free competition."[*]

    Thus, the principal stages in the history of monopolies are the following: 1) 1860-70, the highest stage, the apex of development of free competition; monopoly is in the barely discernible, embryonic stage. 2) After the crisis of 1873, a lengthy period of developmentt of cartels; but they are still the exception. They are not yet durable. They are still a transitory phenomenon. 3) The boom at the end of the nineteenth century and the crisis of 1900-03. Cartels become one of the foundations of the whole of economic life. Capitalism has been transformed into imperialism.

    Cartels come to an agreement on the conditions of sale, terms of payment, etc. They divide the markets among themselves. They fix the quantity of goods among themselves to be produced. They fix prices. They divide the profits among the various enterprises, etc.

    The number of cartels in Germany was estimated at about 250 in 1896 and at 385 in 1905, with about 12,000 firms par-

ticipating.[*] But it is generally recognized that these figures are underestimations. From the statistics of German industry for 1907 we quoted above, it is evident that even these 12,000 very big enterprises concentrate certainly more than half the steam and electric power used in the country. In the United States of America, the number of trusts in 1900 was 185 and in 1907, 250. American statistics divide all industrial enterprises into those belonging to individuals, to private firms or to corporations. The latter in 1904 comprised 23.6 per cent, and in 1909, 25.9 per cent, i.e., more than one-fourth of the total industrial enterprises in the country. These employed in 1904, 70.6 per cent, and in 1909, 75.6 per cent, i.e., more than three-fourths of the total wage earners. Their output amounted at these two dates to $10,900,000,000 and to $16,300,000,000, i.e., to 73.7 per cent and 79.0 per cent of the total, respectively.

    Not infrequently cartels and trusts concentrate in their hands seven- or eight-tenths of the total output of a given branch of industry. The Rhine-Westphalian Coal Syndicate, at its' foundation in 1893, concentrated 86.7 per cent of the total coal output of the area, and in 1910 it already concentrated 95.4 per cent.** The monopoly so created assures

enormous profits, and leads to the formation of technical productive units of formidable magnitude. The famous Standard Oil Company in the United States was founded in 1900: "It has an authorized capital of $150,000,000. It issued $100,000,000 common and $106,000,000 preferred stock. From 1900 to 1907 the following dividends were paid on the latter: 48, 48, 45, 44, 36, 40, 40, 40 per cent in the respective years, i.e., in all, $367,000,000. From 1882 to 1907, out of total net profits amounting to $889,000,000, $606,000,000 were distributed in dividends, and the rest went to reserve capital.[*] "In 1907 the various works of the United States Steel Corporation employed no less than 210,180 workers and other employees. The largest enterprise in the German mining industry, the Gelsenkirchen Mining Company (Gelsenkirchener Bergwerksgesellschaft) in 1908 had a staff of 46,048 workers and office employees."** In 1902, the United States Steel Corporation already produced 9,000,000 tons of steel.*** Its output constituted in 1901, 66.3 per cent, and in 1908, 56.1 per cent of the total output of steel in the United States.**** The output of ore was 43.9 per cent and 46.3 per cent, respectively.

    The report of the American Government Commission on Trusts states: "Their superiority over competitors is due to the magnitude of its enterprises and their excellent technical equipment. Since its inception, the Tobacco Trust has

devoted all its efforts to the substitution of mechanical for manual labour on an extensive scale. With this end in view it bought up all patents that had anything to do with the manufacture of tobacco and spent enormous sums for this purpose. Many of these patents at first proved to be of no use, and had to be modified by the engineers employed by the trust. At the end of 1906, two subsidiary companies were formed solely to acquire patents. With the same object in view, the trust built its own foundries, machine shops and repair shops. One of these establishments, that in Brooklyn, employs on the average 300 workers; here experiments are carried out on inventions concerning the manufacture of cigarettes, cheroots, snuff, tinfoil for packing, boxes, etc. Here, also, inventions are perfected.[*] "Other trusts also employ so-called developing engineers whose business it is to devise new methods of production and to test technical improvements. The United States Steel Corporation grants big bonuses to its workers and engineers for all inventions suitable for raising technical efficiency, or for reducing cost of production."**

    In German large-scale industry, e.g., in the chemical industry, which has developed so enormously during these last few decades, the promotion of technical improvement is organized in the same way. By 1908 the process of concentration of production had already given rise to two main "groups" which, in their way, were also in the nature of

monopolies. First these groups constituted "dual alliances" of two pairs of big factories, each having a capital of from twenty to twenty-one million marks: on the one hand, the former Meister Factory at Frankfurt and the Cassella Factory at Frankfurt am Main; and on the other hand, the aniline and soda factory at Ludwigshafen and the former Bayer factory at Elberfeld. Then, in 1905, one of these groups, and in 1908 the other group, each concluded an agreement with yet another big factory. The result was the formation of two "triple alliances," each with a capital of from forty to fifty million marks. And these "alliances" have already begun to come "close" to one another, to reach "an understanding" about prices, etc.[*]

    Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The I result is immense progress in the socialization of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialized.

    This is something quite different from the old free competition between manufacturers, scattered and out of touch with one another, and producing for an unknown market. Concentration has reached the point at which it is possible to make an approximate estimate of all sources of raw materials (for example, the iron ore deposits) of a country and even, as we shall see, of several countries, or of the whole world. Not only are such estimates made, but these sources are captured by gigantic monopolist combines. An approximate estimate of the capacity of markets is also made, and the combines "divide" them up amongst themselves

    "The prolonged raising of prices which results from the formation of cartels," says Kestner, "has hitherto been observed only in relation to the most important means of production, particularly coal, iron and potassium, but has never been observed in relation to manufactured goods. Similarly, the increase in profits resulting from this raising of prices has been limited only to the industries which produce means of production. To this observation we must add that the industries which process raw materials (and not semimanufactures) not only secure advantages from the cartel formation in the shape of high profits, to the detriment of the finished goods industry, but secured also a dominating position over the latter which did not exist under free competition."[*]

    The words which we have italicized reveal the essence of the case which the bourgeois economists admit so reluctantly and so rarely, and which the present-day defenders of opportunism, led by K. Kautsky, so zealously try to evade and brush aside. Domination, and violence that is associated with it, such are the relationships that are typical of the "latest phase of capitalist development"; this is what inevitably had to result, and has resulted, from the formation of all-powerful economic monopolies. We will give one more example of the methods employed by the cartels. Where it is possible to capture all or the chief sources of raw materials, the rise of cartels and for-

of agriculture and that of industry, which is characteristic of capitalism in general, is increased. The privileged position of the most highly cartelized, so-called heavy industry, especially coal and iron, causes "a still greater lack of coordination" in other branches of industry -- as Jeidels, the author of one of the best works on "the relationship of the German big banks to industry," admits.[*]

    "The more developed an economic system is," writes Liefmann, an unblushing apologist of capitalism, "the more it resorts to risky enterprises, or enterprises abroad, to those which need a great deal of time to develop, or finally, to those which are only of local importance."[**] The increased risk is connected in the long run with the prodigious increase of capital, which overflows the brim, as it were, flows abroad, etc. At the same time the extremely rapid rate of technical progress gives rise to increasing elements of disparity between the various spheres of national economy, to anarchy and crises. Liefmann is obliged to admit that: "In all probability mankind will see further important technical revolutions in the near future which will also affect the organization of the economic system" . . . electricity and aviation. . . . "As a general rule, in such periods of radical economic change, speculation develops on a large scale." . . .***

    Crises of every kind -- economic crises most frequently, but not only these -- in their turn increase very considerably

    We have emphasized the reference to the "affiliated" banks, because this is one of the most important distinguishing features of modern capitalist concentration. The big enterprises and the banks in particular, not only completely absorb the small ones, but also "annex" them, subordinate them, bring them into their "own" group of "concern" (to use the technical term) by acquiring "holdings" in their capital, by purchasing or exchanging shares by a system of credits, etc., etc. Professor Liefmann has written a voluminous "work" of about 500 pages describing modern "holding and finance companies,"[*] unfortunately adding "theoretical" reflections of a very poor quality to what is frequently undigested raw material. To what results this "holding" system leads as regards concentration is best illustrated in the book written on the big German banks by Riesser, himself a "banker." But before examining his data, we will quote a concrete example of the "holding" system.

    The Deutsche Bank "group" is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, of the big banking groups. In order to trace the main threads which connect all the banks in this group, it is necessary to distinguish between "holdings" of the first, second and third degree, or what amounts to the same thing, between dependence (of the lesser banks on the Deutsche Bank) in the first, second and third degree. We then obtain the following picture:**

operations and their network of branches in the following manner.[*]

    In order to show the "connections" of a big modern bank, Riesser gives the following figures of the number of letters dispatched and received by the Disconto-Gesellschaft, one of the biggest banks in Germany and in the world (its capital in 1914 amounted to 300,000,000 marks):

    The accounts of the big Paris bank, the Crédit Lyonnais, increased from 28,535 in 1875 to 633,539 in 1912.[*]

of the matter, to conceal the wood by trees. To be "surprised" at the results of concentration, to "reproach" the government of capitalist Germany, or capitalist "society" ("ourselves"), to fear that the introduction of stocks and shares might "accelerate" concentration in the same way as the German "cartel" specialist Tschierschky fears the American trusts and "prefers" the German cartels on the grounds that they "may not, like the trusts, excessively accelerate technical and economic progress"[*] -- is not this impotence?

    The banking system "presents indeed the form of common bookkeeping and of the distribution of the means of production on a social scale, but only the form," wrote Marx in Capital half a century ago (Russ. trans. Vol. III, part II, p. 144).[8] The figures we have quoted on the growth of bank capital, on the increase in the number of the branches and offices of the biggest banks, the increase in the number of their accounts, etc., present a concrete picture of this "common bookkeeping" of the whole capitalist class; and not only of the capitalists, for the banks collect, even though temporarily, all kinds of money revenues -- of small businessmen, office clerks, and of a tiny upper stratum of the working class. It is "common distribution of means of

    As they pay interest at the rate of 4 per cent and 4 1/4 per cent on deposits, the savings banks must seek "profitable" investments for their capital, they must deal in bills, mortgages, etc. The boundaries between the banks and the savings banks "become more and more obliterated." The Chambers of Commerce of Bochum and Erfurt, for example, demand that savings banks be "prohibited" from engaging in "purely" banking business, such as discounting bills; they demand the limitation of the "banking" operations of the post office.[*] The banking magnates seem to be afraid that state monopoly will steal upon them from an unexpected quarter. It goes without saying, however, that this fear is no more than the expression of the rivalry, so to speak, between two department managers in the same office; for, on the one hand, the billions entrusted to the savings banks are in the final analysis actually controlled by these very same bank capital magnates, while, on the other hand, state monopoly in capitalist society is merely a means of increasing and guaranteeing the income of millionaires in one branch of industry or another who are on the verge of bankruptcy.

    "'Every bank is a Stock Exchange,' and the bigger the bank, and the more successful the concentration of banking, the truer does this modern aphorism become."[*] "While formerly, in the 'seventies, the Stock Exchange, flushed with the exuberance of youth" (a "subtle" allusion to the Stock Exchange crash of 1873, to the company promotion scandals,[9] etc.), "opened the era of the industrialization of Germany, nowadays the banks and industry are able to 'do it alone.' The domination of our big banks over the Stock Exchange . . . is nothing else than the expression of the completely organized German industrial state. If the domain of the automatically functioning economic laws is thus restricted, and if the domain of conscious regulation by the banks is considerably enlarged, the national economic responsibility of a few guiding heads is immensely increased," so writes the German Professor Schulze-Gaevernitz,** an apologist of German imperialism, who is regarded as an authority by the imperialists of all countries, and who tries to gloss over a "detail," viz., that the "conscious regulation" of economic life by the banks consists in the fleecing of the public by a handful of "completely organized" monopolists. The task of a bourgeois professor is not to lay bare the entire mechanism, or to expose all the machinations of the bank monopolists, but rather to present them in a favourable light.

". . . the Stock Exchange is steadily losing the feature which is absolutely essential for national economy as a whole and for the circulation of securities in particular -- that of being not only a most exact measuring -- rod, but also an almost automatic regulator of the economic movements which converge on it."[*]

of the billionaires Rockefeller and Morgan, control a capital of eleven billion marks.[*] In Germany the absorption of the Schaaffhausenscher Bankverein by the Disconto-Gesellschaft to which we referred above, was commented on in the following terms by the Frankfurter Zeitung,[10] an organ of the Stock Exchange interests:

    "The concentration movement of the banks is narrowing the circle of establishments from whicih it is possible to obtain credits, and is consequently increasing the dependence of big industry upon a small number of banking,groups. In view of the close connection between industry and the financial world, the freedom of movement of industrial companies which need banking capital is restricted. For this reason, big industry is watching the growing trustification of the banks with mixed feelings. Indeed, we have repeatedly seen the beginnings of certain agreements between the individual big banking concerns, which aim at restricting competition."[**]

divided into eight departments: one specializes in collecting information concerning industrial establishments, another studies general statistics, a third with railway and steamship companies, a fourth, securities, a fifth, financial reports, etc.[*]

principles nor a concrete aim in the new activities of the big banks."[*]

    "A steadily increasing proportion of capital in industry," writes Hilferding, "ceases to belong to the industrialists who employ it. They obtain the use of it only through the medium of the banks which, in relation to them, represent the owners of the capital. On the other hand, the bank is forced to sink an increasing share of its funds in industry. Thus, to an ever-increasing degree the banker is being transformed into an industrial capitalis. This bank capital, i.e, capital in money form, which is thus actually transformed into industrial capital, I call 'finance capital.'" "Finance capital is capital controlled by banks and employed by industrialists."[*]

opportunist so-called "Social-Democrats" expect (or say that they expect) the "democratization of capital," the strengthening of the role and significance of small-scale production, etc., is, in fact, one of the ways of increasing the power of the financial oligarchy. Incidentally, this is why, in the more advanced, or in the older and more "experienced" capitalist countries, the law allows the issue of shares of smaller denomination. In Germany, the law does not permit the issue of shares of less than one thousand marks denomination, and the magnates of German finance look with an envious eye at England, where the issue of one-pound shares (= 20 marks, about 10 rubles) is permitted. Siemens, one of the biggest industrialists and "financial kings" in Germany, told the Reichstag on June 7, 1900, that "the one pound share is the basis of British imperialism."[*] This merchant has a much deeper and more "Marxian" understanding of imperialism than a certain disreputable writer who is held to be one of the founders of Russian Marxism[11] and believes that imperialism is a bad habit of a certain nation. . . .