Imperalism The Highest Stage of Capitalism

The book Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism was written between January and June 1916. Lenin wrote it while in Switzerland while still in exile, and it was first published in Petrograd in the spring of 1917. In February of that year Lenin went to live in Zurich and continued to work on the book in the Zurich Cantonal Library. He consulted summaries, notes and abstracts, newspapers and books of statistics of foreign bourgeois economists and politicians bearing the author’s signature.

On June 19 (July 2), 1916, Lenin sent the manuscript to Parus Publishers. The Menshevik elements in the publishing house did not allow the publication of the book under the sharp criticism of the opportunist theories of Kautsky and the Russian Mensheviks (liberal and other) and other expressions in it of Lenin’s style and even distorted his ideas. For Lenin’s word “growth” (capitalism growth) they substituted the milder expression “development”, for “ultra-imperialism” they substituted “backward character”, etc. In the middle of 1917, the book was published under the title Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, with a preface by Lenin dated April 26, 1917.

This translation is taken from Volume 22 of the English edition of the Collected Works of V. I. Lenin, Moscow. Changes have been made in accordance with the 5th Russian edition of the Collected Works. This edition follows Lenin’s original version.