Five Features and Specific Character of Neo-imperialism — An Analysis Based on Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism

Capitalism has historically evolved into several different concrete stages. In the early 20th century, capitalism developed from the stage of free competition to the stage of private monopoly, which Lenin called the stage of imperialism. In the epoch of imperialism, the law of imbalance of economic and political development took effect. For territorial re-division of the world and outward expansion, different alliances of the powers struggled fiercely, resulting in the two world wars. The first half of the 20th century witnessed wars in the whole Eurasia, and tides of the national and democratic revolutions and the Communist movement. After the Second World War, some economically backward countries embarked on the socialist path one after another, forming a confrontation between the two camps of capitalism and socialism in the world. Although Marx and Engels declared in the Manifesto of the Communist Party that capitalism would inevitably be replaced by socialism, and it did be realized in a handful of countries, the whole system of capitalism and imperialism, moribund but not dead for a long time, especially from the 1980s to the early 1990s, has developed into a new stage, the stage of neo-imperialism after experiencing the neo-liberal reconstruction and post-Cold War imperialism.