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Author: Lenin
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Date: April 1916
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Location: Russia
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Link: http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/SRSD16.html
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PDF: see attachment at the bottom of this page.
Imperialism is the highest stage in the development of capitalism. In the foremost countries capital has outgrown the bounds of national states, has replaced competition by monopoly and has created all the objective conditions for the achievement of socialism. In Western Europe and in the United States, therefore, the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat for the overthrow of capitalist governments and the expropriation of the bourgeoisie is on the order of the day. Imperialism forces the masses into this struggle by sharpening class contradictions on a tremendous scale, by worsening the conditions of the masses both economically — trusts, high cost of living — and politically — the growth of militarism, more frequent wars, more powerful reaction, the intensification and expansion of national oppression and colonial plunder….