NRWITBD 2026: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism [Selections]Welcome back to *No, Really: What Is to be Done?*, our deep-dive series on Lenin, Leninism, and the theory of the revolutionary party.
You may be wondering when and if we're ever actually going to read WITBD itself, the actual text. Rest assured we will. For now, we're going to keep on psyching ourselves up with another one of the foundational documents of Leninism, one which feels grimly relevant right now: *Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.*
Find the text here: [https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/)
Feel free to read as much as you like, but we'll focus on the **Preface and Chapters 1, 3, 6, 7 and 8. These are:**
[I. CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION AND MONOPOLIES](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch01.htm)
[III. FINANCE CAPITAL AND THE FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch03.htm)
[VI. DIVISION OF THE WORLD AMONG THE GREAT POWERS](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch06.htm)
[VII. IMPERIALISM AS A SPECIAL STAGE OF CAPITALISM](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch07.htm)
[VIII. PARASITISM AND DECAY OF CAPITALISM](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch08.htm)
It's often claimed that Lenin's identification of imperialism as capitalism's "highest stage" is a textbook example of Marxist hubris. How can capitalism have reached its highest stage in the year 1916, when Lenin was writing? Surely technofeudalism, or neocolonialism, or monopoly corporatism - take your pick - represents a higher stage?
Without giving too much away, let's say this much, at least by way of starting a debate: the confronting truth is that capitalism did indeed reach its highest stage with the exact kind of monopolist, oligarchic, feudalistic (when *Imperialism* was published, literal crowned heads still ruled much of Europe by decree), militarised imperialism Lenin describes in this work. If that suggests that nothing has really changed in the 100+ years since, except perhaps to get worse, it's because nothing has. A century of "progress" and we haven't progressed at all. Still wage slaves, still debt peons, still cattle for a rapist ruling class. And it all still runs on the blood and oil of the Global South.
So let's not kid ourselves: *Imperialism* is as relevant today as when it was written. Don't believe me? Join us and see for yourself! We'll discuss Lenin's framework of analysis, his concrete conclusions and strategic recommendations and break down whether we think these insights are applicable to our times in all their brutality.
Take care and happy reading!
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A bit about the *NRWITBD* series:
[Fade in] The year is 2026. Picture this: industrial-scale war on multiple continents. Cities in ruins, millions dead and millions more made refugees - starvation, disease, mutilations, deportations, pogroms, genocides, dispossessions. Across every land, a working class on its knees before an ever-shrinking class of oligarchs with an ever-growing pile of treasure, weapons and slaves - determined to pit brother against brother in endless wars for resources that can only end when the whole earth is a toxic wasteland. And what they call "peace" is not much better.
This is the brutal present, a [Second Gilded Age,](https://fortune.com/article/gilded-age-coming-back-layoffs-pay-inequality-labor-unions-ceos-billionaires-worker-pay/) but we could travel back a hundred years and describe more or less the exact same scene. In the century since Lenin lived and walked the earth, less has changed than the eternal optimists - Panglossian techno-liberals like Steven Pinker and the other intellectuals of the Epstein class - would like us to think. Really, we're back where it all began in the *First* Gilded Age of the late 19th and early 20th century: on the outside looking in, asking the age-old question: what is to be done? Things are really getting quite bad. No, really - what is to be done!!?
In our gatherings of late, we've been tinkering around the edges of a few answers. Prior Lenin readings as well as our exploration of the Yan'an Forum and our whistle-stop tour through the last twenty years of street protests with Vincent Bevins have given us some things to chew on. Now there's been a clamour from plenty of regulars, as well as a few newcomers, that we continue to pull at the vital thread that seems to be running through all our discussions and see where it might lead us: namely, the revolutionary theories of Lenin.
This will be a series of readings running every other Thursday night in Whitechapel. With *No, Really: What is to be done?,* we'll be taking a deep dive into revolutionary Marxism with a read-through of texts like Lars Lih's *Lenin rediscovered: what is to be done? in Context,* non-standard biographies like Carter Ellwood's *Non-Geometric Lenin: Essays on the Development of the Bolshevik Party 1910-1914* as well as some articles, essays and discussion prompts which most readers likely won't have encountered before.