individual sections of the working class and sometimes a fairly considerable minority, attracting them on to the side of the capitalists of a given industry or nation, against all the others. The deepening of antagonisms between imperialist nations for the partition of the world, increases the importance of this fact. And so there is created the bond between imperialism and opportunism, which has revealed itself first and most clearly in England, thanks to the fact that certain characteristics of imperialist development have been observable much sooner than in other countries.
From all that has been said in this book on the economic nature of imperialism, it follows that we must define it as capitalism in transition, or, more precisely, as dying capitalism. It is very instructive in this respect to note that the bourgeois economists, describing modern capitalism, employ with great fluency such terms as "interlacing," "absence of isolation," etc.; the banks are "enterprises which by their objective and their course of development have a character not purely economic, but are departing more and more from the sphere of private economic management." And the same Riesser, to whom these last words belong, declares with the greatest seriousness that the "prophecy" of the Marxists concerning "socialisation" has not been realised!
What then is the meaning of this word "interlacing"? It embraces only the most striking aspect of the process being accomplished before our eyes. It shows that the observer cannot see the wood for the trees. It slavishly follows the obvious, the fortuitous, the chaotic. It reveals him as a man overwhelmed by raw materials and entirely incap-
