If our world was impartial and equitable this book would be essential in every economic university and speciality as one of the first and basic books in a course of economic science. In fact, what the floodwaters have revealed is the opposite—the imperial project has accelerated the destruction of American working-class dreams. I recommend it to people thinking about capitalism now - in my opinion the ideas it talks about are absolutely essential. These tensions, sooner or later, build to enormous proportions, and break out into open military conflict.
Welcome back. Towards the end of Imperialism, Lenin argues that the material basis for the socialist movement’s capitulation (or what Lenin called “opportunism”) lay in the “super-profits” of imperialism. Directly involving millions of people in politics necessarily means gambling with revolution. Why did socialist leaders in Europe, who had before the First World War spoken out against it, become allied with their “own” ruling classes once the war broke out? Much work has been done in this magazine and elsewhere to build, on the foundation provided by Lenin, an analysis of imperialism since the Cold War.