It’s been awhile since I read Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, but doesn’t Lenin even address the use of “empire”/“imperialism” as used to describe past societies early on in the work?
Colonial policy and imperialism existed before the latest stage of capitalism, and even before capitalism. Rome, founded on slavery, pursued a colonial policy and practised imperialism. But “general” disquisitions on imperialism, which ignore, or put into the background, the fundamental difference between socio-economic formations, inevitably turn into the most vapid banality or bragging, like the comparison: “Greater Rome and Greater Britain.” Even the capitalist colonial policy of previous stages of capitalism is essentially different from the colonial policy of finance capital.
The principal feature of the latest stage of capitalism is the domination of monopolist associations of big employers.
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It’s been awhile since I read Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, but doesn’t Lenin even address the use of “empire”/“imperialism” as used to describe past societies early on in the work?
Not that early on, but yes, he makes clear distinctions of modern capitalist imperialism and previous/other imperialisms.
This is from chapter 6:
About a third of the book is about just that.