Imperialism is the political expression of the process of the accumulation of capital in its competitive struggle over the unspoiled remainder of the non-capitalist world environment. Geographically, this still comprises huge areas of the earth’s surface. However, this remaining field for the expansion of capital appears as an ever-diminishing residue taking into account both the enormous mass of already accumulated capital in the old capitalist countries, which is vying for markets for its surplus product as well as for opportunities to capitalize its surplus value, and the rate at which areas of precapitalist civilization are transformed into capitalist ones – in other words, given the high level of development of the productive forces of capital that has already been achieved. The international behavior of capital on the world stage is shaped accordingly. Imperialism’s force and the violence exerted by it – both in its aggressive action toward the noncapitalist world and in the sharpening antagonisms between the competing capitalist countries – are heightened in tandem with the development of the capitalist countries and the increasingly fierce competition between them to acquire noncapitalist areas. Yet the more violently, forcefully, and thoroughly imperialism brings about the decline of noncapitalist civilizations, the more rapidly it removes the very basis for the accumulation of capital. As much as imperialism is a historical method to prolong the existence of capital, objectively it is at the same time the surest way to bring this existence to the swiftest conclusion. This does not mean that this endpoint has literally to be reached. The tendency toward this terminal point of capitalist development manifests itself in forms that configure the final phase of capitalism as a period of catastrophes.