“We must now try to sum up, to draw together the threads of what has been said above on the subject of imperialism. Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly.”

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Seven
Context: We must now try to sum up, to draw together the threads of what has been said above on the subject of imperialism. Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly.

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Seven

5.4, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

"Resolution on the Antiwar Congress of the London Bureau" (July 1936)

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 253

Message to the Tricontinental (1967)

2.2, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Four, "The Export of Capital"

2011