Imperialism is a term that was first popularised by bourgeois economists and then taken over by Marxist theoreticians. Drawing on works like Imperialism (1902) by JA Hobson, a bourgeois social reformist and pacifist, Austrian Marxist Rudolf Hilferding’s Finance Capital (1910) and Russian Marxist NI Bukharin’s Imperialism and the World Economy (1915), Lenin produced the celebrated Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (April 1917). “... Imperialism is the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat”, he observed, on the basis of a thorough study of “the economic essence of imperialism”. The world’s first proletarian socialist revolution took place within six months after the pamphlet was published.

So far as basics are concerned Lenin's Imperialism remains the best aid to understanding the original or defining features of imperialism. Let us now take note of the most important characteristics, which continue from Lenin's time into our own (the following quotes are from this pamphlet, unless otherwise mentioned).