is very highly-developed, but there is a tremendous disproportion between the immense colonies of the one and the insignificant colonies of the other. In the colonies, capitalism is only beginning to develop. The struggle for South America becomes more and more bitter.
There are two areas of weak capitalist development: Russia and Eastern Asia. In the former the density of population is not great, in the latter it is very high; in the former—political concentration is very high, in the latter it does not exist. The partition of China is only beginning, and the competition between Japan and the U.S.A. in connection therewith is continually gaining in intensity.
Compare the ideas of Kautsky about "peaceful" ultra-imperialism with this stern reality, with the vast diversity of economic and political conditions, with the extreme disproportion of the rate of development of different countries, with the violent struggles of the imperialist States. As for the international cartels in which Kautsky sees the embryo of ultra-imperialism, do they not provide us with an example of the partition of the world and of its re-partition—of the transition from peaceful sharing out to warlike sharing out, and vice versa? American and other finance-capital which has peacefully shared-out the world with the participation of Germany—in the international railway combine, for example, or in the international merchant marine—is it not now re-dividing the world on the basis of new alignments of forces resulting from changes which are by no means of a peaceful nature?
