Because of the concrete conditions of that period, the foresights regarding the end of the war put emphasis on matters like a shift in the possession of existing colonies and complete colonization of the semi-colonies. In debates of the revolutionary Marxists the question of colonies gained importance which was put on the agenda by the war of re-division of the world. For instance, debates on the attitude of communists against the First World War indispensably became a matter of primary importance.
However, first years of 20 th century were pregnant with storms which would not allow one to concentrate on the economic analysis of this new capitalism which would continuously rise throughout this century. Īfter examining the formation process of the finance capital through the fusion of banking capital with industrial capital, Lenin concluded: “Thus, the twentieth century marks the turning-point from the old capitalism to the new, from the domination of capital in general to the domination of finance capital.” Capitalism has been transformed into imperialism. Cartels become one of the foundations of the whole of economic life. (3) The boom at the end of the nineteenth century and the crisis of 1900-03. (2) After the crisis of 1873, a lengthy period of development of cartels but they are still the exception.
#IMPERIALISM 2 RAILROADS FREE#
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. Lenin tried to expose the transformation of capitalism to imperialism with its main turning points: Lenin did not agree with those assessments presenting 1870s as the beginning of imperialism: “For Europe, the time when the new capitalism definitely superseded the old can be established with fair precision it was the beginning of the twentieth century.” īetween 18 when developed capitalist countries expanded their colonies, formations like monopolist associations and cartels were not widespread despite having showed an important progress. Those years were not the imperialist period itself, in which dominance of finance capital put its remark on the world, but rather a period of preparation and fermentation for it. Leading capitalist countries began to construct the necessary substructure (like railways) for reducing transportation costs for the manufactured goods they produced and the raw materials they imported from others, also in a drive to develop the world commerce as much as possible. On the other hand capital exports from developed capitalist countries to colonies and semi-colonies became important. Therefore the transition period from colonialism to imperialism was accompanied by a colonialist leap in which those capitalist countries expanded their colonial territories and divided the world on that basis. The need of leading industrialised capitalist countries rivalling each other for cheap raw material supplies was incredibly increasing in this transition period. Now let us briefly deal with this period.Īt the end of the period called free competition capitalism, a transition era (1870-1900) took place in which competition led to monopolization and thus capitalism moved forward towards the imperialist stage. Thus, those years of formation of imperialist expansionism appear as if the peak of colonialist expansionism. In the last period of this process a huge quantitative expansion in capitalist colonization is observed because of the reasons mentioned above. Transformation of the tendency of capitalist expansionism from colonialism to imperialism involves a certain historical process.