Though primarily associated with the most prominent figures in the history of European Marxism—Lenin, Luxemburg, Hilferding, and Bukharin—the theory of imperialism was actually developed through lively and engaged debates within the Second International from 1898–1916. This volume assembles and translates for the first time the main documents from this debate, and features contributions from Karl Kautsky, Parvus, Otto Bauer, Karl Radek, Anton Pannekoek, and Trotsky, among numerous others.

Richard B. Day's profile page

Daniel F. Gaido's profile page

Richard B. Day: Ph. D. (1970), University of London, is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Toronto, Canada. He has published extensively on Soviet economic and political history, including Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Economic Isolation (Cambridge, 1973).

Daniel F. Gaido: Ph.D. (2000), University of Haifa (Israel), is a researcher at the National Research Council (Conicet), Argentina. He is the author of The Formative Period of American Capitalism (Routledge, 2006) and is currently working on the history of German Social Democracy.

“[T]his is a really excellent book, which is deeply informative about the development of Marxist ideas about imperialism before Lenin’s famous text … [It] should be as widely read on the left as possible. It opens up a vista of a much more complex debate and development than our ‘traditional’ left narratives of the issue allow us to see.”
—Mike Macnair, The Weekly Worker

"Richard B. Day and Daniel Gaido have performed a tremendous service by making available for the first time in english fifty-five articles documenting the debates among socialists (primarily, but not exclusively, within the German socialist movement) with respect to imperialism in the decade and a half leading up to World War I."
—International Socialist Review

“[T]his is a really excellent book, which is deeply informative about the development of Marxist ideas about imperialism before Lenin’s famous text … [It] should be as widely read on the left as possible. It opens up a vista of a much more complex debate and development than our ‘traditional’ left narratives of the issue allow us to see.”
—Mike Macnair, The Weekly Worker

"Richard B. Day and Daniel Gaido have performed a tremendous service by making available for the first time in english fifty-five articles documenting the debates among socialists (primarily, but not exclusively, within the German socialist movement) with respect to imperialism in the decade and a half leading up to World War I."
—International Socialist Review