[BEST OF] Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (Upstream)

May 30, 2025

Brett O'Shea and Alison Escalante, co-hosts of the Red Menace podcast, dive into the intricate connections between capitalism, imperialism, and monopoly. They unpack Lenin's seminal work, highlighting how capitalism inevitably evolves into an imperialist stage. The discussion reveals the state's evolving role in protecting elite interests and critiques the misconceptions surrounding monopoly capitalism. Their insights emphasize the necessity of international solidarity among workers in resisting capitalist exploitation and navigating the challenges of contemporary imperialism.

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INSIGHT

Imperialism as Capitalism's Stage

Imperialism is capitalism's highest stage of development, inherently tied to monopoly capitalism.
It's a global process driven by finance capital merging with industrial capital to dominate world markets.

INSIGHT

Competition Breeds Monopolies

Free competition capitalism inevitably leads to monopoly capitalism due to market concentration.
Giant corporations eliminate competition and gain political influence, protecting monopoly interests.

INSIGHT

Monopoly Is Inherent to Capitalism

Claims that monopoly capitalism is 'not real capitalism' are ideological evasions.
Capitalism's socialized production drags capitalists toward monopoly despite private appropriation contradictions.

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ORIGINALLY RELEASED Jan 2, 2025

Capitalism, imperialism, monopoly—far from being separate concepts that just happen to take shape parallel to one another or to overlap from time to time, these terms all really refer to the exact same overall process. We call it capitalism because it’s not always practical to call it “monopoly capitalism in its imperialist stage” or something like that, but really, capitalism is, as we’ll see, inevitably monopolistic and imperialist.

The process of capitalism’s historical evolution from its so-called, and somewhat fabricated stage of free-enterprise to monopoly capitalism, and then further into what we refer to as imperialism, was outlined both theoretically and empirically by Vladamir Lenin well over a century ago in his classic text, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism. The connection between monopoly and imperialism might not seem quite straightforward to you at first, and an understanding of imperialism itself as a process grounded in political economy may seem somewhat counterintuitive—especially if you’re used to thinking of imperialism and empire in the more popular sense of the words. But that’s why we’ve brought on two guests to walk us through this crucial text and help us make sense of it all.

In this episode, we unpack Lenin’s Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism. This episode is an excellent introduction to the text but it also takes deep dives and gets granular at times, picking apart the nuances and various interpretations of the text. We explore the historical context in which Lenin wrote this book and then trace capitalism’s history from its early stages into its monopoly form. We explore how finance capital emerged and became similarly concentrated, how this merging of concentrated finance and industrial capital began to spread out from capitalist countries into the periphery and began to carve up the world, and how this process led to what we now understand to be capitalism’s final and highest stage: imperialism. And, of course, we apply the text to a variety of current events and explore how we can apply Lenin’s ideas in ways that help us grow and strengthen our socialist movements globally.

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