Lenin, Imperialism, and the First World War

The highest level of development of theory, Georg Lukacs had argued, is when theory breaks into practice. Lenin’s theory of imperialism represented in this sense the highest level of development of theory: starting from the ‘immanent tendencies’ of capitalism analysed by Marx, he developed theory to a point where not only did the entire conjuncture surrounding the First World War become intelligible, but the direction of praxis too became extremely clear. The fact that the specific Leninist analysis appears dated today is because the conjuncture underlying his analysis has itself changed, which therefore requires a further development of analysis; it is not because the specific analysis was inapposite for that conjuncture. In fact one can say that the entire period from 1914 to 1945 constituted an era which, notwithstanding the immense changes that occurred within it, did not move beyond the Leninist frame (characterised inter alia by a recognition of the prevalence of intense inter-imperialist rivalry).