ABSTRACT
Marxist theories of imperialism are usually traced from the writings of Rudolf Hilferding, Rosa Luxemburg and V. I. Lenin in the early years of the twentieth century. Hilferding (1981[1910]) argued that the dominance of fi nance capital in the form of monopolies and cartels was a new and necessary stage of capitalism. Finance capital was opposed to free trade and demanded a strong national state to protect its home market and aggressively seek colonial markets for the export of capital and monopoly trade. Luxemburg (1951[1913]), on the other hand, argued that it was inherent in Marx’s scheme of reproduction of capital that the ‘unrealized surplus value’ in the hands of capitalists could only be turned into productive investment by continually bringing the means of production available in the non-capitalist parts of the world under the sway of capital. Hence, capital needed to penetrate non-capitalist sectors of production not only in its so-called primary stage of accumulation but even more so in its mature stage. The competitive acquisition of colonial territories represented the process of the continuing accumulation of capital.
