Imperialism, the Last Stage of Capitalism/Chapter 1

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
←
Imperialism, the Last Stage of Capitalism (1926)
by N. Lenin
→
​

CHAPTER I.
Concentration of Production and Monopoly

The enormous development of industry and the extremely rapid concentration of production in ever larger enterprises constitute one of the most characteristic peculiarities of capitalism. Modern industrial statistics give us complete and exact information on this evolution.

In Germany, for example, for each 1,000 industrial enterprises, the important ones, employing ing more than 50 salaried officials, numbered three in 1882; five in 1895; nine in 1907: and out of every 100 workmen there fell to their share at these same dates, 22, 30 and 37 respectively. Concentration of production, however, is much more intense than that of manual labour, since the work of the great enterprises is much more productive. This is shown to us by the figures available about steam engines and electric motors. If we consider what is called in Germany industry "in the wide meaning of the term," that is, including commerce, transport, etc., we get the following picture.

Big enterprises:—30,588 out of a total of 3,265,623, that is to say, 9 per cent. These big enterprises employ 5,700,000 workmen out of a total of 14,400,000, that is, 39.5 per cent.; they use 6,600,000 horse power out of a total of 8,800,000, that is, 75 per cent., and 1,200,000 kilowatts of electricity out of a total of 1,500,000, that is, 80 per cent.

Less than a hundredth of the enterprises possess three-fourths of the steam and electric power of German industry. 2,197,000 small enterprises (employing up to five workmen) constituting 91 ​per cent. of the total number, receive only 7 per cent. of the driving power, electric and steam. A few tens of thousands of big enterprises are everything; millions of small ones are nothing.

In 1907, there were in Germany 586 establishments employing over a hundred workers. They held a tenth (1,380,000) of the manual labour, and almost a third (32 per cent.) of the driving power.[1] Finance-capital and the banks make this superiority of the biggest enterprises, as we shall see, still more crushing, in the most literal sense of the word, since millions of employers, small, average, and even great are in reality attached completely to some hundreds of millionaire financiers.

In another advanced country of modern capitalism, the United States, concentration of production is still greater. Here statistics deal with industry in the narrow sense of the word, and group enterprises according to the size of their annual output. In 1904 there were in the United States, 1,900 enterprises (out of 216,180, that is 0.9 per cent.) with an annual output valued at more than a million dollars. They employed 1,400,000 workers (out of 5,500,000, i.e., 25.6 per cent.)), and their annual output was valued at $5,600,000,000 (out of $14,800,000,000, i.e., 38 per cent.). Five years later, in 1909, the corresponding figures were:

Big enterprises: 3,060 out of 268,491, i.e., 1.1 per cent.;

Employing: 2,000,000 workers out of 6,610,000, i.e., 30.5 per cent.;

Producing: $9,000,000,000 out of $20,700,000,000 i.e., 43.8 per cent.[2]

​Almost half of all the production of all the enterprises of the country was carried on by one-hundredth of those enterprises. Also, these 3,000 giant enterprises include 258 branches of industry. From this it can be seen that concentration of production, at a certain stage, approaches very nearly to monopoly. For some tens of enterprises can easily act in concert, whilst on the other hand, the difficulty of competition and the tendency to monopoly arise precisely from the importance of enterprises. This transformation of competition into monopoly is one of the most important—if not the most important—phenomena of modern capitalist economy, and we must pause a moment to consider it. But first we must clear up one possible misunderstanding.

American statistics say: 3,000 giant enterprises and 250 branches of industry, as if there were only a dozen of the biggest enterprises for each branch of industry. But it is not so. There are not big enterprises in every branch of industry and, moreover, a very important characteristic of capitalism in its highest stage of development is the "combine," that is to say, the grouping in a single enterprise of different branches of industry, which represent either the different stages in the working of the raw material (for example, the melting of iron ore, the making of steel, the manufacture of different steel articles), or which are auxiliary to one another (for example, the utilisation of waste, or of secondary products, the manufacture of packing, etc.).

"Combination" writes Hilferding, "levels out the fluctuations of trade and assures the combined enterprise of a more stable rate of profit. In the ​second place, it does away with trading. Thirdly, it gives opportunity for technical improvements, and consequently for new profits, which other enterprises have not got. Finally, it strengthens the productive power of the combined enterprise compared with that of others, it increases its capacity for competition in periods of depression when the fall in prices of raw materials does not keep pace with the fall in price of manufactured articles."[3]

The German bourgeois economist, Heymann, who has devoted a work to the description of mixed, that is, combined, enterprises in the German iron industry, says: "Single enterprises perish, crushed by the high price of raw material and the cheapness of manufactured articles." We see the following spectacle: "There remain, on the one hand, the great coal companies, producing some millions of tons yearly, strongly bound together in their syndicates, and on the other the great combined steel works, narrowly allied to the coal mines, and with their own steel syndicate. These great enterprises, producing 400,000 tons of steel per year, fabulous quantities of ore and of coal, enormous quantities of steel articles, employing 10,000 workers quartered near the factories, sometimes owning their own ports and railroads, are typical of the German iron industry. And concentration continues. Enterprises are becoming larger and larger. An ever-increasing number of enterprises, belonging to one or to several industries, are joining together in giant combines, to which half-a-dozen Berlin banks serve as supports and guides. In the German mining industry, the truth of the teaching of Karl Marx on the ​concentration of capital is plainly shown. It is true that this concerns a country the industry of which is protected by tariffs and transport duties. The German mining industry is ripe for expropriation."[4] Such is the conclusion to which a conscientious bourgeois economist has been led. Let us remark that he seems to consider Germany to be an exceptional case, in view of her system of protective tariffs. But this system has only hastened the concentration of industry and the formation of monopolies, combines, cartels and industrial syndicates. It is extremely important to realise that in a free trade country, in England, concentration also leads to monopoly, although a little later and perhaps in another form. The following is what Professor Herman Levy writes, in his work on Monopolies, Trusts and Combines, in which the latest data on British economic development are taken into account:

"In Great Britain a tendency to monopoly is contained in the very size of undertakings and in their high technical development. On the one hand, concentration makes necessary the investment in an enterprise of enormous capital. And so new enterprises, having to conform to very considerable financial requirements, are very difficult to launch. On the other hand—and this seems to be more important—every new enterprise which aims at reaching the level of the giants of industry, which are created by concentration, must produce such a tremendous quantity of goods that their profitable sale is only possible if there is a great increase in demand. If this is not the case, the super-abundance of products will lower prices to a level which is unprofitable for the new ​factory, and also for the old manufacturing syndicates."

In England, monopolist factory syndicates, combines and trusts are established most frequently—unlike countries in which protective tariffs facilitate their appearance—when the number of competing enterprises is reduced "to some two dozen or so." "The influence of concentration on the birth of monopolies in big industry here appears to us as clear as crystal."[5]

Fifty years ago, when Marx was writing Capital, free competition appeared to most economists to be a natural law. The official economists tried to kill, by a conspiracy of silence, the works of Marx which showed, by means of a theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism, that free competition gives rise to the concentration of production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to monopoly. Nowadays, monopoly has become a fact. The economists are piling up volumes to describe the diverse manifestations of monopoly, and are continuing to declare in chorus that "Marxism is refuted." But facts are obstinate things, as the proverb says, and, whether it suits or not, they must be reckoned with. The facts show that differences between capitalist countries, e.g., in the matter of protection or free trade, only give rise to insignificant variations in the form of monopolies or in the moment of their appearance; and that the birth of monopolies, as the result of the concentration of production, is a general and fundamental law of contemporary capitalist development.

For Europe, the time when the new capitalism was definitely substituted for the old can be ​lished fairly precisely: it is the beginning of the twentieth century. In one of the most recent publications on the formation of monopolies, we read "Until 1860 a few isolated examples of capitalist monopoly could be cited: in these could be discovered the beginnings of conditions that have now become customary: but they all undoubtedly represent the prehistoric age of cartels. The real beginning of the monopoly system of the present day goes back at the earliest to 1860. The first important period of development of monopoly commenced with the international decline of industry from 1870 and lasted until just after 1890." "If we examine the question from a European point of view, the end of the development of free competition occurred in the decade 1860-1870. Then it was that England completed the construction of its capitalist edifice in the old style. In Germany, this organisation had entered on a decisive struggle with craftsmanship and with domestic industry, and had commenced to make for itself its own forms of existence."

"The great change commenced with the financial crash of 1873, or more exactly, with the ensuing depression, which—after an interruption scarcely noticeable, in 1880 and the following years, and with a re-awakening, remarkably vigorous, but short-lived about 1889—filled twenty-two years of the economic history of Europe. During the short period of boom from 1880-1890, the system of cartels was widely used to take advantage of the favourable conditions. But this short-sighted policy raised prices even quicker and higher than if there had been no cartels, and nearly all these cartels perished ingloriously in the financial ​smash. Five years of bad trade and low prices followed, but a new spirit reigned in industry: the depression was not considered as something to be taken for granted: in it was seen no more than a phase before a new era of prosperity.

"The movement of 'cartels' entered into its second phase: they have no longer transitory appearances. Cartels have become one of the basic principles of economic activity. One after another they win the realms of production, and first and foremost the working up of raw materials. At the beginning of 1890, the system of cartels had already acquired in the constitution of the coke syndicate—on the pattern of which was created the coal syndicate—a technique which it never surpassed. The remarkable development of industry at the close of the nineteenth century and the crisis of 1900-1903, followed each other—in the mining and iron industries at least—entirely under the ægis of cartels. And if then it appeared something novel, it has now become evident to the social consciousness that important parts of economic activity are, as a general rule, no longer in the domain of free competition."[6]

Thus, the principal stages in the history of monopolies are the following:

1. 1860-1870, the highest, final stage of development of free competition: the beginnings of monopoly may just be discerned.

2. After the crisis of 1873, a period of wide development of cartels, still unusual and transitory: they constitute a transient phenomenon.

3. The boom at the end of the nineteenth century and the crisis of 1900-1903. Cartels become ​one of the basic features of economic activity. Capitalism has become imperialist.

Cartels come to agreement on the conditions of sale, terms of payment, etc. They divide the markets amongst themselves. They fix the quantity of products. They fix the prices. They divide the profits, etc. The number of cartels in Germany was estimated at about 250 in 1896: at 385 in 1905, about 12,000 firms participating.[7] But it is generally recognised that these figures are under-estimations. The data of German 1907 statistics, which we have cited above, show that even 12,000 of the most important firms most certainly comprise more than a half of the mechanical power (steam and electricity) of the country.

In the United States, the number of trusts grew in 1900 to 185, in 1907 to 250. American statistics divide all enterprises into three categories, according to whether they belong to individuals, to firms, or to corporations. These last possessed in 1904, 23.6 per cent., and in 1909, 25.9 per cent. (i.e., more than a quarter) of the sum total of industrial concerns. They employed in 1904, 70.6 per cent. and in 1909, 75.6 per cent. (i.e., more than three-quarters) of the total of wage-earners. Their production amounted at these two dates, respectively to 10,900,000,000, and to 16,300,000,000 dollars, i.e., to 73.7 per cent. and to 79 per cent. of the total amount of American production.

Cartels and trusts comprise fairly often seven or eight-tenths of the total production of one branch of industry. The Rhine-Westphalian Coal Syndicate at its foundation in 1893, had the disposal of 86.7 per cent. of the whole coal production of the area. In 1910, it already held 95.4 per cent.

​The monopoly so created assures enormous profits, and leads to the formation of combined units of production of a formidable magnitude. The famous American petrol trust, the Standard Oil Company, was founded in 1900: "Its capital amounted to 150 million dollars. It issued 100,000,000 ordinary shares and 106,000,000 preference shares. These latter earned successively from 1900 to 1907, the following dividends: 48, 48, 45, 44, 36, 40, 40, 40 per cent., i..e, in all 341,000,000 dollars. From 1900 to 1907, the Standard Oil Company realised 889,000,000 dollars profits, of which 606,000,000 dollars were distributed in dividends, and the rest went to swell the reserve capital."[8] "In all the different enterprises of the steel trust (the United States Steel Corporation) of the United States, in 1907, there were employed no less than 210,180 workmen and other employees. The most important firm of the German mining industry, the Mining Federation of Gelsenkirchen (Gelsenkirchner Bergwerksgesellschaft) employed, in 1908, 46,000 wage earners."[9] In 1902, the American steel trust produced 9,000,000 tons of steel in one year.[10] Its production constituted in 1901, 66.3 per cent., and in 1903, 56.1 per cent. of that of the whole of the United States.[11] Its extraction of mineral ore grew from 43.3 per cent. to 46.3 per cent. in the course of the same years.

The report of the American government commission on trusts said: "Their superiority over their competitors finds its cause in the enormous dimensions of their enterprises and in their remarkable technical efficiency. Since its inception, the tobacco trust has devoted all its efforts to the substitution ​of mechanical for manual labour. With this end in view, it bought all the patents bearing on the preparation of tobacco and spent enormous sums. There were many patents of no use as they stood, which the engineers of the trust had to study and modify. At the end of 1906, two subsidiary companies were constituted solely to acquire patents. With the same object in view, the trust built its machine shops, casting shops and repair shops. One of these establishments, that at Brooklyn, employs 300 workmen; there experiments are carried out on machines for making cigarettes, cheroots, smoking tobacco, tin sheets for packing, boxes, etc. Inventions are perfected there."[12]

"Other trusts employ engineers specially charged with the continued development of technique ("developing engineers"). They invent and experiment with technical improvements and new methods of production. The steel trust grants to its workmen and engineers high bonuses on all inventions suitable for improving machinery or for lessening waste in production."[13]

The improvement of machinery in big German industry, e.g., in the chemical industry, which has enormously developed during these last few decades, has been assured by the same means. In 1908, the concentration of production had caused to emerge in this industry two groups which tended to monopoly. First, there were the "dual alliances" of two pairs of big factories, each having a capital of from 20 to 21 million marks: on the one hand, the former Meister factory at Holst and the Kassele factory at Frankfort-on-Main; and on the other hand the aniline and soda factory at Ludwigshafen and the former Bayer factory at ​Elberfeld. In 1905, one of these groups, and in 1908 the other one, each concluded a separate agreement with yet another factory; the result being two big industrial "triple alliances," each provided with a capital of from 40 to 50 million marks. And these two triple groups are beginning to come close to one another, to make arrangements about prices, etc. (In June, 1916, the newspapers announced the establishment of a big trust embracing the whole of the German chemical industry.)

Competition turns into monopoly. The result is an immense process of socialisation of production. More especially does the process of technical invention and improvement become socialised.

There is no longer the old type of free competition between factory managers, scattered and out of touch with one another, and producing for an unknown market. Concentration has arrived at such a point that it is becoming possible to make an approximate inventory of all sources of raw material (such as all the mineral deposits of a country, and even, as we shall see, of several countries or of the whole world). Not only is such an inventory made, but the sources are seized by gigantic monopolist alliances. An approximate inventory of markets is also made, and the trusts divide them up amongst themselves by contract. Skilled labour is monopolised, the best engineers are engaged; monopoly seizes the means of transport—railways in America, shipping companies in Europe and America. Capitalism, in its imperialist phase, arrives at the threshold of the complete socialisation of production. To some extent it causes the capitalists, whether they like it or no, to enter a new social order, which marks ​the transition from free competition to the socialisation of production. Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few. The framework of nominally free competition remains, and the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, burdensome and intolerable.

The German economist, Kestner, has devoted a work to the struggle between the cartels and the "private firms," i.e., between the cartels and the enterprises outside the cartels. He entitled his work: The Constraint to Organisation, although what he should have said was "constraint to submission to associations of monopolists." It is edifying to glance over this book, even if only for the list of the most modern and cultivated means used by the monopolies to constrain the "organisation" of recalcitrant enterprises.

They are as follows:

(1) Depriving of raw materials ("one of the most important means of compelling adhesion to the cartel");

(2) Depriving of labour by the method of "alliances" (i.e., by agreements between the employers and workers to the effect that the latter will only accept work in trustified enterprises);

(3) Depriving of local means of transport;

(4) Closing of trade outlets;

(5) Agreements wit the buyers, to the effect that these latter will enter into commercial relations with the cartels only.

(6) The systematic lowering of prices to ruin ​competing enterprises not amalgamated with the monopolies. Millions are spent in order to sell all products for a certain time below their cost price (the price of benzine was thus lowered from 40 to 22 marks);

(7) Suppression of credits.

(8) Boycott.

We are now dealing no longer with competition between small and big industry, or between technically developed and backward enterprises. We see here the monopolies throttling those which do not submit to their yoke, to their dictation. The following is the way in which this process is reflected in the intelligence of a bourgeois economist:

"Even in the purely economic sphere," writes Kestner, "a certain displacement is being produced from commercial activity in the old sense of the word towards organisation and speculation. The greatest success no longer goes to the merchant whose technical and commercial experience enables him to best estimate the needs of the buyer, and to discover, to some extent, latent demand, but it goes to the speculative genius (?!) who knows how to estimate in advance or even only to sense the development of organisation and the possibilities of a linking-up between individual enterprises and the banks."[14]

Let us translate into ordinary human language. This means that the development of capitalism has arrived at such a stage that, although the production of goods continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality fallen away, and the big profits go to the "genius" of financial manœuvres. Behind these ​combinations and these clever manipulators we see the socialisation of production; but the immense progress thus attained by humanity only profits a small minority of speculators. We shall see later on how the reactionary, petty bourgeois critique of capitalist imperialism dreams "on this basis" of taking a step to the rear, of a return to "free," "peaceful" and "honest" competition.

"The continued raising of prices," says Kestner, "which results from the formation of combines, has hitherto only been observed in relation to the most important means of production, such as coal, iron and potassium, and has never been remarked in relation to manufactured products. The consequent increase in profits has similarly only applied to the industries which produce means of production. This observation yet has to be completed in the sense that industry operating with raw materials (not semi-finished goods) does not confine itself to obtaining big profits through the trusts to the detriment of industry using semi-manufactured materials, but into the bargain it has acquired, with regard to this latter, a dominating position, which did not exist in the age of free competition."[15]

The words which we have italicised show the essential feature; that which the bourgeois economists recognise so rarely and so unwillingly, that which the modern defenders of opportunism especially Kautsky, will not see, and will by no means mention.

The dominating position of big capital and amount of pressure which it can bring to bear—this is the most typical fact in the "modern phase of capitalist development"; this is what must in​evitably result, and does result, from the formation of all-powerful economic monopolies.

Let us give one more example of the power of monopolies. It is particularly easy to form cartels and monopolies when it is possible to seize all the sources of raw materials, or at least the most important. It would be wrong, however, to think that monopolies do not arise in other industries in which it is impossible to conquer the sources of raw materials.

The cement industry, for instance, can find its raw materials everywhere. Yet in Germany it is strongly trustified. The factories have formed regional syndicates: Southern Rhine-Westphalian, etc. Prices are those of monopoly: 230 to 280 marks a truckload (on a cost price of 180 marks). The enterprises give a dividend of from 12 per cent. to 16 per cent.—and let us not forget that the "geniuses" of modern speculation know how to pocket big profits besides those that they draw by way of dividends. Now, in order to drive away competition from such a profitable industry, the monopolists have recourse to sundry stratagems. For example, they spread disquieting rumours about the situation of their industry. They publish in their newspapers unsigned notices such as the following: "Investors, don't place your capital in the cement industry!" They buy up private factories (those outside the trusts) and pay them indemnities of 60, 80 to 150 thousand marks.[16]

Everywhere monopoly clears its path without scruple as to the means used; beginning by the payment of a modest indemnity, and even going so far as to use dynamite—in the American fashion—against a competitor.

​The statement that combines do away with crises is only a tale for the marines, used by bourgeois economists who set out to justify capitalism at all costs. On the contrary, when monopoly appears in certain branches of industry, it increases and intensifies the chaos proper to capitalist production as a whole. The disparity between the development of agriculture and that of industry, which is already a characteristic of capitalism, becomes increased. The privileged position of the most highly trustified industry (i.e., heavy industry, especially coal and iron) has the effect of bringing about, in other branches of production, "a still greater lack of concerted organisation"—as it is called by Jeidels, who is the author of one of the best works on The Attitude of the Great German Banks to Industry.[17]

"The more the economic system is developed," writes Liefmann, one of the most vigorous defenders of capitalism, "the more attention is given to risky enterprises or enterprises abroad, to those which need a great deal of time to develop, or finally to those which are only of local importance."[18]

The increase of risk is connected in the long run with the prodigious increase of capital, which, as it were, overflows, flows abroad, etc. in one way or another. At the same time the extremely rapid rate of technical progress gives rise more and more to disturbances of equilibrium, to disproportion, crisis and chaos in the various spheres of economic life.

Liefmann is obliged to admit: "Very probably humanity may expect important technical revolutions in the near future. They will not fail to in​fluence the national economic organisation." Such are electricity and aviation. "As a general rule, speculation becomes greatly developed during times of radical economic change."[19]

Crises of every kind—economic crises most frequently, but not only these—in turn increase very considerably the tendency to concentration of capital and to the formation of monopolies. In this connection the following reflections are quite edifying. They are those of M. Jeidels on the crisis of 1900, which was, as we have already seen, the turning-point in the history of the monopolies:—

"The crisis of 1900 found, side by side with giant enterprises in the principal branches of production, also many enterprises with an organisation which was out of date, according to prevailing ideas: they were 'pure,' that is to say, not combined: enterprises that the wave of a favourable set of economic circumstances had brought to the surface. The fall in prices and the lessening of demand drove these uncombined enterprises into a precarious position which did not affect the big enterprises at all, or only affected them for a very short time. This is why the crisis of 1900 called, much more than that of 1873 had done, for the concentration of production. The crisis of 1873 also had operated as a kind of selection of the soundest enterprises; but, given the level of technical development at that time, this selection could not lead the firms which came out of the crisis victorious, into a position of monopoly. It is just such a lasting monopoly, and in a very high degree, which belongs to the gigantic enterprises in the iron and electrical industries to-day; and this is due to their extremely complicated technical ​processes, to the completeness of their organisation and the power of their capital. To a lesser extent, the machine-building industry and certain branches of engineering and transport are in the same position."[20]

Monopoly: this is the last word in the "most recent phase of capitalist development." But we shall only have a very insufficient, incomplete, and poor notion of the real power and the role of present-day monopolies, if we do not take into consideration the part played by the banks.

  1. ↑ 1.—According to the "Annalen des Deutschen Reichs," 1911.
  2. ↑ 2.—"Statistical Abstract of the United States," 1912; p. 202
  3. ↑ 3.—R. Hilferding: "Finance Capital," Russian translation, pp. 286-7.
  4. ↑ 4.—Heymann: "Die Gemischten Werke im Deutschen Grosseisengewerbe," Stuttgart, 1904, pp. 256-278.
  5. ↑ 5.—Herman Levy: "Monopole, Kartelle und Trusts," Jena, 1909, pp. 286, 290, 298.
  6. ↑ 6.—Th. Vogelstein: "Die Finanzielle Organisation der kapitalistischen Industrie und die Monopolbildung," in "Grundriss der Sozialökonomik," vi., Tübingen, 1914. Cf. the same author: "Organisationsformen der Eisenindustrie und Textilindustrie in England und Amerika," vol. 1, Leipzig, 1910.
  7. ↑ 7.—Dr. Riesser: "Die Deutschen Grossbanken u. ihre Konzentration im Zusammenhange mit der Entwickelung der Gesammtwirtschaft in Deutschland," 4th ed., 1912, p. 149.

    R. Liefmann: "Kartelle und Trusts und die Weiterbildung der volkswirtschaftlichen Organisation," 2nd ed., 1910, p. 25.
  8. ↑ 8.—Dr. Fritz Kestner: "Der Organisationszwang. Eine Untersuchung über die Kämpfe zwischen Kartelle u. Aussenseitern," Berlin, 1912, p. 11.
  9. ↑ 9.—R. Liefmann: "Beteiligungs und Finanzierungsgesellschaften. Eine Studie über den modernen Kapitalismus und das Effektenwesen," Jena, 1909, p. 212.
  10. ↑ 10.—Idem, p. 218.
  11. ↑ 11.—Dr. S. Tschierschky: "Kartell und Trust," Göttingen, 1903, p. 13.
  12. ↑ 12.—Th. Vogelstein: "Organisationsformen," p. 275.
  13. ↑ 13.—"Report of the Commission of Corporation on the Tobacco Industry," Washington, 1909, p. 266, quoted in Dr. Tafel's book: "Die Nordamerikanischen Trusts und ihre Wirkungen auf den Fortschritt der Technik," Stuttgart, 1913, p. 48.
  14. ↑ 14.—Idem, p. 49.
  15. ↑ 15.—Riesser, op. cit., 3rd ed., pp. 547 et seq.
  16. ↑ 16.—Kestner, p. 254.
  17. ↑ 17.—"Zement," by L. Eschwege.
    Die Bank, 1909, pp. 115, et seq.
  18. ↑ 18.—Jeidels: "Das Verhältniss der deutschen Grossbanken zur Industrie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Eisenindustrie," Leipzig, 1905.
  19. ↑ 19.—Liefmann: "Beteiligungs, etc.," p. 434.
  20. ↑ 20.—Idem, p. 466.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Imperialism,_the_Last_Stage_of_Capitalism/Chapter_1&oldid=12106774"