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146 over which the trusts have the greatest control. The exercise of monopoly over the most important sources of raw materials has terribly increased the power of big capital, and has sharpened the antagonism between productions which is in the hand of the trusts, and production which is not.

(3) Monopoly has sprung from the banks. These have developed into the monopolists of finance-capital out of modest intermediaries. Some three or five of the biggest banks in each of the foremost capitalist countries have achieved the "personal union" of industrial and banking capital, and concentrated in their hands the disposal of thousands upon thousands of millions which form the greater part of the capital and revenue of entire countries. A financial oligarchy, imposing an infinite number of financial ties of dependence upon all the economic and political institutions of contemporary capitalist society without exception—such is the most striking manifestation of this monopoly.

(4) Monopoly has grown out of colonial policy. To the numerous "old" motives of colonial policy the capitalist financier has added the struggle for the sources of raw materials, for the exportation of capital, for "spheres of influence," i.e., for spheres of good business, concessions, monopolist profits, and so on) [sic]; in fine, for economic territory in general. When the European powers did not as yet occupy with their colonies a tenth part of Africa (as was the case in 1876), colonial policy was able to develop otherwise than by the methods of monopoly—by "free grabbing" of territories, so to speak. But when nine-tenths of Africa been seized (towards 1900), when the whole world had