Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism

Due to the capitalist system, banks and bankers are becoming industrial capitalists. Asset capital is being continuously and more efficiently transferred into bank capital—“capital in money form” (57). It is then transformed into “industrial capital,” or as Lenin puts it, “finance capital” (57). When this finance capital, which the banks control, is put to use, it is concentrated in the hands of a very small number. This wealthy minority “[exact] enormous and ever-increasing profits” by “exercising a virtual monopoly” (65).

Centralization of capital allows the “financial oligarchy” to exercise enormous power over the whole of society (65). Lenin gives the example of the American sugar trust which created a monopoly by buying up fifteen smaller firms. They manipulated the banks into declaring that the value of their newly founded corporation exponentially increased. This allowed them to set up monopoly prices and eventually increase their capital by 1,000%.

In capitalism, there is an increased separation of capital from the means of production—the money is taken from the labor. As Lenin notes, “money capital is separated from industrial or productive capital” (71). The rentier—the investor who lives off returns—"is separated from the entrepreneur and from all who are directly concerned in the management of capital” (71-72).