Towards the end of the nineteenth century the situation underwent a marked change. Britain held the leading place in world industrial production and an undivided monopoly of the world market.
At the beginning of the 1870's the oldest bourgeois country, Britain, still produced more cloth, smelted more pig-iron and mined more coal than the U.S.A., Germany, France, Italy, Russia and Japan taken together. Maritime routes came to be served by large vessels driven by steam-operated machinery and internal combustion engines.ĭuring the nineteenth century the capitalist mode of production spread rapidly throughout the world. In 1835, ten years after the construction of the first railway, there were 1,500 miles of railway track in the world in 1870 there were over 125,000, and in 1900 500,000. The growth of industrial production was closely connected with the development of railway transport. The development of power engineering, metallurgy and chemistry led to a growth in the world output of coal (from 218 million tons in 1870 to 769 million in 1900) and of petroleum (from 0,8 million tons to 20 million tons).
World smelting of steel grew from 0.5 million tons in 1870 to 28 million tons in 1900, and world smelting of pig-iron from 12.2 million tons to 40.7 million. The volume of world industrial production grew threefold between 18. The spread of joint-stock companies on a wide scale still further increased the centralisation of capital. The predominant role in the industry of the main capitalist countries now began to be played by heavy industry-above all, metallurgy and engineering, and also the mining industry, for the development of which enormous amount of capital were needed. The economic crisis of 1873 brought about the collapse of many businesses of this kind and gave a strong fillip to the concentration and centralisation of capital.
Numerous enterprises of comparatively small size belonged to individual owners and the relative importance of joint-stock companies was comparatively slight. In the middle of the nineteenth century the predominant place in the industry of the capitalist countries was still occupied, by light industry. Improvements in the internal combustion engine made possible the appearance and spread of motor transport and later of aviation. The use of chemical methods was extended in a number of branches and processes of production. The use of electric power led to the creation of a number of new branches of the chemical industry and of metallurgy. The progress made in science and technique made possible the production of electric power on a mass scale in fuel-burning power stations and later in large hydro-electric stations. A rapid spread of new types of prime mover-the dynamo, the internal combustion engine, the steam turbine, the electric motor-accelerated the development of industry and transport. In metallurgy, new methods of smelting steel were introduced widely (Bessemer, Thomas Martin). The last third of the nineteenth century was marked by large-scale technical advances and by the growth and concentration of industry. The transition from pre-monopoly capitalism to monopoly capitalism (imperialism) was prepared by the entire process of development of the productive forces and relations of production in bourgeois society.
#CAPITALISM II MERGER FREE#
Monopoly capitalism, or imperialism, is the highest and last stage of capitalism, with the replacement of free competition by the dominance of monopolies as its fundamental distinguishing feature. Monopoly capitalism finally took shape towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. During the last third of the nineteenth century there took place the transition from pre-monopoly to monopoly capitalism. Pre-monopoly capitalism, with free competition predominating, attained the apex of its development in the 1860's and 1870's. THE BASIC ECONOMIC LAW OF MONOPOLY CAPITALISM MONOPOLY CAPITALISM-IMPERIALISM CHAPTER XVIII : IMPERIALISM-THE HIGHEST STAGE OF CAPITALISM. Part II : CAPITALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION B. POLITICAL ECONOMY A Textbook issued by the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R