Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

Lenin now embarked on a major theoretical study of imperialism which culminated in his great work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. It was written partly in answer to Hilferding’s Finance Capital, published in 1910, a work in which the latter, ignoring the contradictions inherent in capitalism and the inevitability of inter-imperialist conflict, raised the possibility of a universal cartel, a world planned economy under monopoly capitalism and the resolution of the conflict between wage labour and capital, or ‘organised capitalism’ – an early example of the idea of ‘managed capitalism’, so beloved of reformist leaders in the 1950s and 60s. Kautsky later seized upon Hilferding’s idea of organised capitalism for his theory of ultra-imperialism. Bukharin was struck by this idea which he answered in his book Imperialism and World Economy. Lenin, always on the lookout for young talent, was favourably impressed by Bukharin’s book on imperialism.

These were not the only attempts to revise Marx’s economic theories. Rosa Luxemburg’s Accumulation of Capital, written shortly before the war, posed the idea of the automatic collapse of capitalism, an idea that has since been utilised by revisionists to belittle the role of the subjective factor in carrying out the socialist transformation of society. As always, Lenin’s main task was the education of the cadres. He waged an implacable ideological struggle on two fronts – against opportunism and anarcho-syndicalism. Later on the Stalinists indulged in an unscrupulous attempt to link Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution to the Mensheviks and the ‘Left’ Bolsheviks, Bukharin, Pyatakov, and Bosch! There is absolutely no link between ‘permanent revolution’ and the infantile rejection of democratic demands advocated by the ‘Lefts’. But it is quite possible that Lenin’s attacks on ‘permanent revolution’ in this period were aimed at this group.

Conscription had a big effect on the working class. Seventeen per cent of working class cadres in Petrograd were called up, including almost all the youth. To take their place, a mass of politically untutored layers flooded into the factories, further diluting the class content of the workforce with raw, semi-proletarian elements. The younger, more energetic layers both from town and village were sent to the front. A large number of women and adolescents were drafted into the factories. These new elements – shop assistants, waiters, domestics, innkeepers, porters – brought their class prejudices with them. The factory proletariat was thrown back. The Bolshevik workers had to keep their heads down for a period. Conditions and wages were worsening and ‘military discipline’ imposed in factories. The general political level was reduced in the short term, but the merciless pressure on the workers and the proletarianisation of new layers in turn were preparing the way for a new explosion. The Party itself was temporarily disorganised, and only gradually recovered some semblance of order. But the ideas and traditions of Bolshevism were still alive in the factories and trenches. The fall-off of the movement is reflected in strike statistics in table 5.1.

In the whole period August – December 1914, according to official figures, there were 70 strikes and 37,200 participants in all Russia. In Ivanovo-Voznesensk, one of the main centres of the workers’ struggles, strikes practically ceased. In all these months only one small stoppage was registered. Things were not much better in Petrograd.