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The capitalist monopoly groups—cartels, syndicates, trusts—divide among themselves first of all the whole internal trade of a country, grasping the whole of industry more and more firmly. But in capitalist society, internal trade is connected with foreign trade. Capitalism has long ago created a world market. In proportion as the export of capital increases, and as foreign and colonial relations—"the spheres of influence" of the largest monopolist associations—extend on every side, things tend "naturally" towards an international agreement among these associations and towards the formation of international cartels.

This is a new degree of world concentration of capital and production, infinitely higher than any predecessor. Let us see how this super-monopoly develops.

The electrical industry is the most typical of the latest victories of technical skill, i.e., of capitalism at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. It has developed most in the two most advanced of the new capitalist countries, the United States and Germany. In Germany, the crisis of 1900 had a particularly great effect on its concentration. The banks, already by this time deeply interested in industry, forced