industrial capitalist nation to annex or to bring under its control all the big agrarian regions (Kautsky's italics) irrespective of what nations inhabit those regions."75
This definition is entirely wrong, because it is one-sided, i.e., it selects the national question (admittedly of the greatest importance, by itself, and in its relation to imperialism) and it relates this question arbitrarily and inaccurately to industrial capital alone, in the countries which annex other nations, while at the same time it emphasises, in an equally arbitrary and inaccurate manner, the annexation of agrarian regions.
Imperialism is a tendency to annexations—this is what the political part of Kautsky's definition amounts to. It is true, but very incomplete, for politically imperialism is a tendency to violence and reaction in general. But here we interest ourselves in the economic aspect of the question, as introduced by Kautsky in his definition. On this point he commits crying errors. Imperialism is characterised not by industrial capital, but by finance-capital. It is not by accident that the particularly rapid development of finance-capital in France, coinciding with the weakening of industrial capital, provoked, from 1880 and onwards, an extreme extension of annexationist (colonial) policy.
And it is characteristic of imperialism to strive to annex not only agricultural regions, but even highly-industrialised regions (German appetites about Belgium, French appetites for Lorraine), because (1) the fact that the world is already partitioned obliges those contemplating a new partition to stretch out their hands to every territory, and (2) because the
