Imperialism: the historic debate in full daylight
Between 1898 and World War One, Marxists keenly debated imperialism. For decades almost the only living legacy of that debate was in various interpretations of Lenin's pamphlet of 1916, "Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism". Whatever the large merits of Lenin's text, to read it in abstraction from the debates of the time and of the previous two decades, which Lenin knew and assumed many readers would know, must impair understanding. Moreover, Lenin's text was mostly read "through" Stalinist renderings, and the Trotskyists of the day had urgent calls on their slight resources which...