Basic economic law of monopoly capitalism - Transition to Imperialism

Book excerpt: The definition of “imperialism” used in order to determine if a country is imperialist or not generally is limited to its economic aspect, disregarding the “political” aspect. Lenin in his forward to Imperialism stated that “pamphlet was written with an eye to the tsarist censorship. Hence,” he said, ”I was not only forced to confine myself strictly to an exclusively theoretical, specifically economic analysis of facts, but to formulate the few necessary observations on politics with extreme caution… I trust that this pamphlet will help the reader to understand the fundamental economic question, that of the economic essence of imperialism.”