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66 In general, it is characteristic of capitalism that it separates the ownership of capital from its application to production, financial capital from industrial or productive capital, the investor who lives only on his income from the entrepreneur, and all those who, in fact, share in the management of capital. Imperialism or the rule of finance-capital, is that highest stage of capitalism in which this separation reaches vast proportions. The supremacy of finance-capital over all other forms of capital means the rule of the investor and of financial oligarchy, or the crystallisation of a small number of financially powerful States out of the general body. To what extent? This may be judged from the statistics of the issue of securities. In the Bulletin of the International Statistical Bureau, M. A. Neymarck has published very complete figures covering the issue of securities all over the world. These figures have been partially quoted many times in economic literature. The following are the totals he gives for four ten-year periods:

Between 1870 and 1880, the total amount of issues for the whole world was high, through loans resulting from the Franco-German war and the phase of development on which Germany then entered. In general, the increase is not very rapid during the three last decades of the 19th century,