Parl Friederich were able to deduce from carly in the .19th the extent to which capitalist production despoils the natural world, and how a minority of capitalists in pursuit of profits could ride roughshod over the needs and interests of the world's oppressed and exploited peoples.
But writing at a later stage of the development of capitalism Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revoluwon, was able to co cven further in making the inextricable link between environmental destruction and the rise of a new form of capitalism - imperialism.
Although it is clearly linked to political control, and often to mil. itary repression of dominated countries. the essential feature of modern imperialism is as a system of economic domination of even apparently "independent" countries by the banks and rations. These are still based in the imperialist nations - including Britain, France, Germany. and the USA, which between them in 1917 owned nearly 80 percent of the world's finance capital.
Imperialism is described by Lenin as the stage of capiwhich competition between capitalist enterprises is replaced by the growth of cartels and monopolies, which combine forces to areas of markets and to fix prices. In the age of imperialism, the of profits through the export of manufactured commodities (which was the dominant factor in the carly development of capitalism) is eclipsed by those flowing from the export of capital. Capital investment enables the the imperialist HOODOOS countries to exploit cheap labour and raw materials in the less developed economies. Writing in 1917, Lenin insisted that: rise of monopolies, as the result of