Finance Capital and Contemporary Imperialism

Writing over a century ago, Lenin had talked of finance capital as the ‘coalescence of bank and industrial capital’, and of a financial oligarchy presiding over this capital that sat on the Boards of Directors of both banks and industrial establishments. But Lenin’s concepts were located in the context of an inter-imperialist rivalry, where the finance capitals and financial oligarchies of different advanced capitalist countries were both country-based and engaged in conflict with their counterparts in other advanced capitalist countries over the acquisition of ‘economic territory’.