In the previous two articles in this series, we’ve discussed imperialism, or monopoly capitalism, which Lenin called “the last stage of capitalism.” We explained how imperialism and monopoly capitalism are synonymous, the laws of motion inherent in capitalism that lead to imperialism, how imperialism means war, and how imperialism has affected the national question. In our last article, we talked about how and why the contradiction between imperialism and the national liberation movements is the principal contradiction on a world scale.

Imperialism means monopoly capitalism, but it brings along with it war and national oppression. Because of the peculiar dynamics of imperialism in the era of proletarian revolution, the national question takes on a particular importance, and, concretely, must be understood and dealt with practically in ways that differ from the pre-imperialist period of competitive capitalism.

Now that we’ve spent some time looking at the basic concepts of Marx’s critique of political economy, let’s move on to Lenin’s analysis of imperialism. Toward the end of the 1800s, the internal laws of motion of capitalism caused it to enter a new and final stage in its development – monopoly capitalism. In the essay “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism,” Lenin defines it like this:

Gelsenkirchen, Germany – The Marxist Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD) celebrated its 40th anniversary with a weekend of celebration from August 25-28. Among the 1500 who attended were party members from across Germany, their families, residents of the local community, and international guests representing revolutionary parties and organizations from 31 countries across five continents. Andy Koch, the National Organizer of Freedom Road Socialist Organization attended the celebration.

It is a fact of historical materialism that the development of the productive forces reduces the amount of labor required by production. As technology and techniques improve, the amount of work required to meet human needs is reduced. This should be a fact that liberates humanity from toil, freeing us to pursue our interests, hobbies, goals of self-development, and so on.

When we enter into employment, our bosses are trying to play a trick on us. They want us to understand the process one way, when, in fact, something else is happening. They want us to think that we have agreed, as equals, upon a deal, where they pay us an agreed upon hourly wage, and we, in turn, do some agreed upon labor for them. They make a profit and we get paid, and everyone gets what they agreed upon. At least, that’s how they want us to understand the process.

To understand Marx’s critique of capitalism, it is essential to understand capital dialectically. We see again and again in Capital itself that Marx breaks things down into their contradictory aspects. We’ve already seen this with value, which considers both use-value and exchange-value. Now, as we look at capital itself, we will see Marx’s dialectical method of analysis at work again, as Marx shows how capital is divided into constant and variable capital.

In our previous article we looked at what a commodity is and examined use-value and exchange-value. This discussion of value is a cornerstone of Marx’s critique of political economy. The value of any commodity is equal to the socially necessary labor time required to produce that commodity. This is the Law of Value, and it is essential to understand if we are to really grasp what is revolutionary about Marx’s critique of capitalism.

Karl Marx begins his critique of political economy in the great work, Capital, with an analysis of commodities. He writes, “The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as ‘an immense accumulation of commodities,’ its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.” So, what is a commodity, and why is it that Marx begins here?

As we have seen in our previous article, capitalism’s origins are largely based upon “primitive accumulation” – the theft of land and resources during the colonial period. This theft helped to jumpstart the original accumulation of capital. In the U.S. this began with settler colonialism, whereby colonizers from Europe settled in the Americas, bringing with them terrible violence and oppression of indigenous and other oppressed peoples.