Page:Imperialism (Lenin).djvu/112

104 extremely important, as distinguished from the export of commodities.

(4) The formation of international capitalist monopolies which share out the world amongst themselves.

(5) The territorial division of the whole earth completed by the greatest capitalist powers.

Imperialism is capitalism in that phase of its development in which the domination of monopolies and finance-capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired very great importance; in which the division of the world among the big international trusts has begun; in which the partition of all the territories of the earth amongst the great capitalist powers has been completed.

We shall see later how imperialism may and must be defined if consideration is given not only to the economic factors—to which the above definition is limited—but also to the historical place of this phase of capitalism as an aspect of capitalism in general or of the relations between imperialism and the two fundamental tendencies of the working class movement. The point to be noted just now is that imperialism, as we understand it, undeniably represents a particular phase of capitalist development. To convince the reader of this fact we have deliberately quoted as often as possible bourgeois economists, who are obliged to recognise beyond dispute the facts of modern capitalist economy. With the same object we have produced detailed statistics which reveal the extent to which banking capital has developed, etc., showing how the transition from quantity to quality, from adult capitalism to imperialism, has expressed itself. Needless to say, the boundaries of all transition stages, both