“The first point in Sam’s summary,” Segal wrote, “says that, as an aspect of the transition to the imperialist epoch, ‘the lawful workings of capitalism long ago transformed ‘free competition’—a feature of capitalism in its infancy—into its opposite…,’ and now the big cartels divide the world’s markets, decide what to produce, and fix prices. This summary left the impression that competition, having been turned into its opposite, must not be very important to capitalism today.

“From reading the Militant and other communist writings, I along ago got the impression that competition in the context of private ownership of the means of production is the deepest force and the defining feature of capitalist exploitation—even in the imperialist epoch.”

Segal asked whether his reasoning is on the right track and whether the Militant could suggest some more readings on the subject.

The answer is yes, on this point. In Chapter seven of Imperialism, titled, “Imperialism As a Special Stage of Capitalism,” Lenin writes, “Capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites… Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly… At the same time the monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter, but exist above it and alongside it, and thereby give rise to a number of very acute, intense antagonisms, frictions and conflicts” (emphasis added).

Segal made another point, however. “It’s my sense that the imperialists use their monopoly enterprises, their state power, their interimperialist pacts, and their superexploitation of the semicolonies to temporarily manage and defuse capitalism’s crises,” he said. “But it’s the contradictions of ‘classical’ competitive capitalism that still build up and explode in time.”

This is not accurate. All the characteristics of imperialism Segal refers to above exacerbate and accelerate the capitalist crises. They don’t enable the imperialist rulers to diffuse or manage the conflicts. The way this argument is formulated could lead one to think that the monopolist stage of capitalism—capitalist imperialism—allows the wealthy rulers to tame the contradictions and antagonisms their system engenders, while the remnants of the earlier stage of capitalism, characterized chiefly by “free competition,” cause crises to explode.

In chapter 7 of Imperialism Lenin writes, “Finance capital and the trusts do not diminish but increase the differences in the rate of growth of the various parts of the world economy. Once the relation of forces is changed, what other solution of the contradictions can be found under capitalism than that of force?”

Later in the same chapter, Lenin made another point. “Kautsky’s utterly meaningless talk about ultra-imperialism encourages, among other things, that profoundly mistaken idea which only brings grist to the apologists of imperialism, i.e., that the rule of finance capital lessens the unevenness and contradictions inherent in the world economy, whereas in reality it increases them.” Lenin was arguing here against Karl Kautsky, a central leader of the social democratic party in Germany who turned away from Marxism to reformism. Kautsky’s theory of ultra-imperialism consisted of the idea of “a union of the imperialists of the whole world and not struggles among them, a phase when wars shall cease under capitalism,” as Lenin put it.

Monopoly capitalism does not abolish competition. But “free competition,” as Lenin said, “has become impossible after it has given rise to monopoly.” It is not uncommon today for middle-class currents to argue for the utopian, backward perspective of returning to the “classical capitalism” marked by free competition and small-scale industry on the grounds that the world economic crisis stems from “savage” or “globalized” capitalism, that is, imperialism. But classical capitalism is a thing of the past. As Lenin explained, it was transformed into the highest and last stage of capitalism. “Free competition” now exists in a world where raw materials markets have been conquered and thoroughly saturated, and where the emergence of trusts and cartels mark the supremacy of finance capital. It exists in a world that bars a repeat of the earlier, comparatively agreeable division of the world and more importantly makes the violent redivision of the world among imperialist powers inevitable.

As for possible further material: readers of the Militant will find the feature article in New International no. 10, “Imperialism’s march toward fascism and war” along with the article “What the 1987 stock market crash foretold” in the same issue of the Marxist magazine useful. Sections of Capitalism’s World Disorder are also very relevant (see ad on page 6). These materials provide a concrete contemporary explanation of trends of the imperialist crisis as it has developed today.

In the preface to the Russian edition of Imperialism published in August 1917, Lenin wrote that his purpose in writing Imperialism was to make clear its “economic essence,” in order for workers to better understand and appraise modern war and politics and be better equipped to fight to overturn capitalist imperialism and join the worldwide struggle for socialism.  
 
 
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