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Lenin Collected Works:
Volume 39
Preface by
Progress Publishers
Volume 39 of the Collected Works contains Lenin's
Notebooks on Imperialism, the materials he gathered for his
classic Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,
written in the first half of 1916. In it, Lenin for the first time
gives a profound and comprehensive analysis of the highest stage of
capitalism, the inception of which dates to the turn of the
century. He shows that imperialism is a development and continuation
of the chief characteristics of capitalism, that its economic basis,
its very substance, is the dominance of monopoly, that imperialism
is the last stage of capitalism. Lenin conclusively proved that, in
contrast to the pro-monopoly stage, when capitalism was still on the
ascent, monopoly capitalism is parasitic, decaying and moribund
capitalism, with all the contradictions of capitalism carried to
extreme limits, beyond which begins the socialist revolution.
The historic significance of Lenin's book lies in its
economic substantiation of the new theory of socialist
revolution. Proceeding from a Marxist analysis of
imperialism and the law discovered by him of the uneven
economic and political development of capitalist countries,
Lenin scientifically proved that in the era of monopoly
capitalism the simultaneous victory of the socialist
revolution in all or in most civilised countries was
impossible, but that it was fully possible, and inevitable,
first in several countries, or even in one country. Lenin's
theory of the socialist revolution is an immense
contribution to Marxism; it equips the working class of all
countries with a clear and precise programme of struggle for
liberation from imperialism, for the victory of
socialism. The great power and vitality of Lenin's theory of
the socialist revolution has been confirmed in practice by
the experience of the proletarian revolutions in Russia,
China and other countries
of Europe and Asia, which now form the world socialist system.
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism was
the fruit of tremendous and intense labour. Striking
evidence of this is the Notebooks on Imperialism,
the mass of varied preparatory material that went into the
writing of the book. Marx, it will be recalled, used a vast
amount of factual material in working on
Capital. Studying capitalism in the new era of
history, Lenin also analysed and generalised a vast amount
of data on the most diverse problems. He drew his data from
hundreds of books, theses, pamphlets, magazine and newspaper
articles, and statistical reports. The Notebooks
contain extracts from 148 books (106 in German, 23 in
French, 17 in English and two translations into Russian),
and 232 articles (of which 206 in German, 13 in French and
13 in English) from 49 periodicals (34 German, 7 French and
8 English).
Although the Notebooks are not a work in its final
form, they are of immense scientific value and represent an
important contribution to Marxist political economy. The
wealth of material brought together in the
Notebooks provides a closer picture of monopoly
capitalism, and supplements and elucidates the principal
theses of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism.
The great scientific and cognitive value of the
Notebooks is that they reveal Lenin's method of
scientific work, his approach to the material under
investigation—economic and historical facts, and
statistical data. The Notebooks show us the
methodology of Lenin's analysis, his research technique. The
preliminary materials showing how Lenin drew up the plan for
his Imperialism will be read with great
interest. They trace the full process, from the first rough
draft (or subject-outline), with an approximate enumeration
of the problems, to the final research plan, with its
detailed structure of the book and summarised contents of
each chapter (see this volume, pp. 116-17, 196, 201-02,
230-43).
In the Notebooks Lenin meticulously traces the
emergence and development of the principal features of
monopoly capitalism: concentration of production and
capital, which has reached such a high level as to create
monopolies that play a decisive role in economic life; the
merging of bank
capital with industrial capital and the rise of a financial
oligarchy; the export of capital, which, as distinct from
the export of commodities, has acquired exceptional
importance; the formation of international monopolist
associations of capitalists; the completion of the
territorial division of the world by the biggest capitalist
powers and their struggle for its redivision; the
progressive parasitism and decay of capitalism. Lenin shows
that the omnipotence and domination of finance capital and
the monopolies is characteristic of imperialism. Reaction in
.every sphere is its political feature. Lenin reveals,
against a massive background of factual material, the
profound contradictions of imperialism.
To do this, Lenin draws on all available international
literature on economics and technology, modern history,
geography, politics, diplomacy, the labour and national
liberation movements in the era of monopoly capitalism. No
country, no branch of the economy, or of social policy and
politics, remain outside his field of vision. He made a
close study both of economic and historical monographs on
the main development trends in the capitalist countries, and
of small magazine and newspaper articles on particular
problems. All these numerous and diverse sources are
critically assessed and analysed to produce a firm and
reliable foundation of facts and figures for a comprehensive
substantiation of his theoretical propositions and
conclusions about imperialism.
In his study of the monopoly stage of capitalism Lenin used
sources reflecting diverse trends in economic science—
books by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois economists and
statisticians, historians and diplomats, financial experts
and parliamentary leaders, reformists and revisionists. But
in using these sources, and selectively drawing on their
rich factual data, Lenin exposes the bourgeois ideologists
and reformist. apologists of imperialism and their
pseudo-scientific views.
After working through the “half-thousand pages”
of Professor Robert Liefmann's Holding and Financing
Companies, Lenin remarks: “The author is a
double-dyed idiot, who makes a great fuss about
definitions—very stupid ones—all revolving
around the word 'substitution'. His
factual data, however, mostly quite raw, are valuable”
(see p. 373 of this volume). Lenin used Liefmann's
statistical data, checked against and supplemented from
other sources, in his Imperialism to illustrate the
growing concentration of production and the growing incomes
of the top monopolies. Of Schulze-Gaevernitz, the
out-and-out apologist of German imperialism, the author of
British Imperialism from which he made copious
notes, Lenin wrote: "Scoundrel of the first order arid
vulgar to boot, Kantian, pro-religion, chauvinist,—has
collected some very interesting facts about British
imperialism and has written a lively, readable
book. Travelled in Britain arid collected a mass of material
and observations. You've done a lot of plundering, you
British gentlemen; allow us, too, a bit of
plundering—--with Kant, God, patriotism, and science
to 'sanctify' it--such is the sum and substance of the
position of this 'savant'!! (Also a lot of needless
verbiage)" (ibid., p. 446). Lenin used the factual material
in his Imperialism.
The Notebooks show how, from the welter of material
in the numerous sources he used, Lenin selected trustworthy
data on fundamental and typical phenomena of monopoly
capitalism. "...a host of unnecessary and boring
details; I omit them"—he writes about one hook
(p. 99). About another he remarks that it contains “a
most painstaking summary of very rich data ((a mass of basic
figures)).... I select the most important”
(p. 474). In many cases Lenin compiles his own summaries and
tables from scattered data. When studying any book Lenin
takes special note of the sources used in it and afterwards
examines and checks them.
The Notebooks set out detailed factual and
statistical data characterising the principal features of
the monopoly stage of capitalism. They contain revealing
admissions by bourgeois experts of all countries concerning
the new developments in the capitalist economy. All these
materials, Lenin points out, are necessary “to enable
the reader to obtain a more rounded-out idea of
imperialism” (present edition, Vol. 22, p. 267).
The Notebooks contain important data on monopoly
capitalism in Russia. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism was intended for legal publication and Lenin
therefore had to discuss Russian imperialism, and in
particular the
tsarist government's predatory policy, “with extreme
caution, by hints, in an allegorical language—in that
accursed Aesopian language—to which tsarism compelled
all revolutionaries to have recourse whenever they took up
the pen to write a 'legal' work” (ibid., p. 187). The
Notebooks were not trammelled by censorship arid in
them Lenin cites, appraises and comments on numerous facts
relating to various aspects of Russian imperialism. This is
a very valuable supplement to his remarks about Russia in
Imperialism.
In analysing the highest stage of capitalism, both in the
Notebooks and in Imperialism, Lenin uses
mostly factual data and statistics of the period preceding
the First World War. More recent and present-day data on the
capitalist economy fully confirm Lenin's analysis of
imperialism, its principal features and development trends,
and convincingly demonstrate the growth of monopoly
dominance and oppression, the progressing parasitism and
decay of capitalism, the accentuation and deepening of its
contradictions.
The Notebooks are a brilliant example of
partisanship in science, a basic feature being their
militant, attacking approach to bourgeois and
petty-bourgeois ideologists, reformists and
revisionists. Lenin makes a point of exposing Kautskyism; he
sharply criticises the lackeys of imperialism parading as
Marxists. The Kautskyites glossed over the contradictions of
imperialism, sought to whitewash capitalism, and were
“in favour of a cleanish, sleek, moderate and
genteel capitalism” (see p. 116 of this volume). Lenin
shows that “finance capital does not abolish the lower
(less developed, backward) forms of capitalism, but grows
out of them, above them”, and that “finance
capital (monopolies, banks, oligarchy, buying up, etc.) is
not an accidental excrescence on capitalism, but its
ineradicable continuation and product” (p. 196).
Lenin's scientific analysis of imperialism, confirmed by the
reality of contemporary capitalism, fully exposed the
fallacious and reactionary Kautskyite theory of
ultra-imperialism. The Notebooks show that the
opportunists and revisionists, instead of fighting to
overthrow imperialism, strive for reconciliation with
capital; they distort the essential character of imperialism
as the highest and last stage of capitalist development, as
the period of the decline of
world capitalism. “The struggle against imperialism
without breaking with and combating opportunism is
deception," Lenin wrote in an outline plan for his
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
(p. 241).
In our day, too, the Notebooks are a potent weapon
of revolutionary Marxism. They help the Communist and
Workers' Parties combat the ideology of imperialist reaction
and all manifestations of modern reformism and
revisionism. In this era of transition from capitalism to
socialism, when the socialist system is successfully
competing with the obsolescent capitalist system, the
defenders of the old order exert every effort to embellish
capitalism, divert the masses from active struggle for
socialism, and infect them with reformist ideas of
collaboration with capital. The imperialists .encourage
every manner of theory and plan for
“reconstructing” and reforming capitalist
society. Their aim is to perpetuate it under the guise of
“people's capitalism” or “democratic
socialism”. And in this they are aided by the modern
revisionists, who repeat the bankrupt ideas of Kautskyism
and try to excise the revolutionary soul of
Marxism. Declaring that Marxism-Leninism is
“obsolete”, they oppose the socialist revolution
and the dictator ship of the proletariat. Distorting
reality, they maintain that modern capitalism has undergone
a radical change—the proletariat, they allege, is no
longer an oppressed and exploited class, and the capitalists
have become working people. The antagonism between labour
and capital, the struggle between the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie, we are told, have been replaced by peace and
co-operation, and capitalist society is on the way to
prosperity and “universal well being”. For
revolutionary Marxists the Notebooks are a guide
and model of scientific criticism and exposure of these
latter-day theories about the conversion of imperialism into
“people's capitalism” and its peaceful evolution
into socialism.
The plans and outlines of some of Lenin's articles and
lectures during the First World War, included in this
volume, complement the material of the Notebooks
and are of especial value for an understanding of Lenin's
theory of imperialism and socialist revolution. In the
Preface to the first edition of his Imperialism, the
Highest Stage of Capitalism (dated April 26, 1917),
Lenin refers the reader
to his articles of 1914-17, published outside
Russia. Appearing in the uncensored Party press, they
substantiate and develop the propositions that imperialism
is the eve of the socialist revolution, that
social-chauvinism (socialism in words, chauvinism in deeds)
is a complete betrayal of socialism and defection to the
bourgeoisie, that the split in the labour movement is
inseparably connected with the objective conditions created
by imperialism, etc.
The present volume includes Lenin's twenty notebooks on
imperialism together with miscellaneous notes written
between 1912 and 1916. They were first published in 1933-38
in Lenin Miscellanies XXII, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX,
XXX, XXXI. Notebook "δ" ("Delta"),
which was discovered later, was first published in 1938 in
the magazine Proletarskaya Revolutsia No. 9,
pp. 171-84. All the Notebooks were put out in a
separate volume in 1939.
The first fifteen notebooks, numbered by the letters of the
Greek alphabet, are here given in the order followed by
Lenin. He used them in the plan for his book on imperialism,
as indicated in Notebook “v” ("Gamma")
(pp. 230-43 of this volume. Lenin's references to the pages
of the Notebooks are followed by the corresponding
pages of this volume, given in square brackets). The
material of these fifteen notebooks was extensively used in
the writing of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism. The other five notebooks were not numbered
by Lenin and are here published after the numbered ones in
chronological order. In addition to the notebooks, the
present volume contains miscellaneous notes made by Lenin in
1912-16. Directly connected with the Notebooks,
they continue Lenin's elaboration of the theory of
imperialism. They were published in Lenin Miscellany
XXIX and, partly, XXX.
Compared with the preceding 1939 edition of the
Notebooks, the section “Miscellaneous Notes,
1912-16" has in this volume been supplemented by the
following items:
1) E. Corradini, Italian Nationalism; 2) Nitti,
Foreign Capital in Italy; 3) B. Liefmann,
“Does the War Bring Socialism Nearer?"; 4)
Conrad's Jahrbücher, 1915, No. 2, August; 5)
Papers of the Society for Social Policy; 6)
“Social Imperialism and Left Radicalism”; 7)
E. Rappard, Towards National Agreement; 8) A Good
Summary of Comparative
Figures; 9) A. B. Hart, The Monroe Doctrine; 10)
Eug. Philippovich, Monopolies. Several items have
not been included in this edition as having no direct
relation to the subject.
Lenin made all extracts in the language of the
original. With the exception of the notebooks
“κ” ("Kappa"),
“Brailsford”, “On Marxism and
Imperialism”, “Imperialism”, and also, in
part, the notebooks "ζ" ("Zeta") and
“λ” ("Lambda"), which were made by
N. K. Krupskaya on his instructions, all excerpts were made
by Lenin personally.
All the headings in the Notebooks were given by
Lenin. Excerpts from books, articles, outlines and source
references are given separate headings taken from Lenin's
contents table to each notebook, or from the text of the
excerpts.
Lenin's arrangement of the material, his marginal notes,
underlinings, etc., are fully reproduced in this volume by
type variations:
a single underlining by italics,
a double underlining by s p a c e d i t a l i c
s,
three lines by heavy Roman type,
and four lines by s p a c e d h e a v y
R o m a n t y p e.
A wavy underlining is indicated by heavy
italics,
if double—by s p a c e d h e a v y
i t a l i c s.
The entire text has been rechecked with Lenin's manuscripts
and the original sources. Any inaccuracies discovered in the
deciphering of the manuscripts, or in checking with the
original sources, have been corrected.
All the statistical data have been rechecked and are here
given in full accordance with the manuscripts. Apparent
inexact figures of totals, differences and percentages,
which occur in some cases, have been left unchanged, since
they are due to the figures being rounded off by Lenin.
Numerous references to Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism and to other Lenin's works are given in
footnotes. This helps to bring out the close connection
between the Notebooks and Imperialism and
clearly shows how Lenin used his vast fund of preparatory
material in his scientific study of imperialism.
Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of
the C.P.S.U.
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