Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism

Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism looks at how Western capitalism inexorably leads from small businesses competing with one another into huge monopolies that concentrated labor, industry, natural resources and finance capital. Competition, a core element of capitalism, was a casualty of this process and most of the profits went to a top strata of society. Because the system was inherently growth-driven, the powerful oligarchy of financiers, industrialists and governments sought new prospects outside of their native countries in the form of a territorial ‘land grab’ backed by military might.
This last inexorable stage of capitalism saw the world’s undeveloped countries carved up between the likes of Great Britain, France and Germany and was, in Lenin’s view, the very essence of imperialism, a state of affairs to be countered at all costs.