We have emphasised the word "linked-up" as applied to certain banks, for it has relation to one of the most important characteristics of modern capitalist concentration. Big enterprises, especially the banks, not only absorb small ones, but they attach or subordinate them to themselves. They cause them to enter into their groups, or their concerns (to use the technical term) by "participating" in their capital, by purchasing or exchanging shares, by controlling them through a system of credits. Professor Liefmann has devoted an important work of about 500 pages to a description of modern companies of financial "participation." He has, unfortunately, added to these data theoretical reflections of a very poor quality We obtain a better idea of the results, from the point of view of the concentration of capital, which issue from the system of participation, in a book by the financier, Riesser, on the big German banks. But before examining these data, let us quote an example of the system of "participation."
The Deutsche Bank group is one of the most important, if not the most important, of such groups. In order to see at a glance the principal ties which bind together all the banks in this group, it is necessary to distinguish between participations of the first, second and third degree, or what amounts to the same thing, between dependence (of the lesser establishments on the Deutsche Bank) in the first, second and third degree. We then obtain the following table:
