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In the old type of capitalism, that of free competition, the export of goods was the most typical feature. In the modern kind, the capitalism of monopolies, the export of capital becomes the typical feature.

Capitalism is the production of commodities at its highest stage when labour-power itself becomes a commodity. The development of exchange, both national and international, is one of the characteristics of capitalism. Inequality and irregularity in the development of individual undertakings, individual branches of production, individual countries, are inevitable under the capitalist system. England became a capitalist country before any other, and, having introduced free trade, set up in the middle of the 19th century to be the workshop of the whole world, the great provider of manufactured goods for all other countries, which in exchange were to keep her supplied with raw materials. But by the last quarter of the 19th century, this monopoly was already undermined. Other countries, protecting themselves by tariff walls, had developed into independent capitalist countries. On the eve of the 20th century, we see a new class of monopolies coming into existence. First there are combinations of capitalists in all advanced capitalist countries: