ABSTRACT
Controversy in history and the social sciences continues about the nature and meaning of the term ‘imperialism’. Attitudes to this question have of course undergone considerable changes since the end of the last war and few writers, even the most orthodox, would wish to deny that the term has a definite scientific content. This obliges him from the start to reject, albeit implicitly, any analysis of imperialism based upon the existence of capitalism as an international force, including V. I. Lenin’s conception of imperialism as a stage in the development of capitalism dominated by ‘finance capital’. In connection with the investigation of imperialism, Karl Marx’s method demands that every feature of world economy must be taken in its organic relation with the development of capital, not as a separate sphere, the development of which can be abstracted, to be treated in isolation from the rest.
