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Few political works have shaped anti-colonial and revolutionary movements more profoundly than Vladimir Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). Written amid the collapse of the Second International and the support of many socialist parties for World War I, it condemned both monopoly capital and the social-democratic movements that accommodated it.

More than a century later, the world has changed dramatically. Yet the work’s concepts of monopoly capital, colonial exploitation, labor aristocracies, and the parasitic tendencies of advanced capitalism remain a cornerstone of Marxist critique of empire and liberation.

Did Lenin’s work anticipate the changing forms of imperialism across the eras of decolonization, American hegemony, the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the emergence of a multipolar order? Can his theory still explain today’s dynamics of global capitalism and imperial rivalry?

This presentation examines both the enduring insights and some shortcomings of Lenin’s theory, assessing how best to apply those concepts to understanding capitalism today.

Peter Fay is a public historian writing on slavery and early labor movements from a Marxist perspective. He also teaches Marx’s Capital using insights from his earlier experience as a United Steelworkers local officer, and an organizer with UE and District 1199.

To Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/87388824824?pwd=QTWNvr8cGeGo1ZDW7x9Y8W0sDaNxRc.1

To join on the phone:

Meeting ID: 873 8882 4824
Passcode:  042428

Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com a few days beforehand for the online invite.  All are welcome!

For our June, 2026 meeting we will be reading and discussing the first four chapters of Here Comes the Sun, by Bill McKinnen (Amazon) (Norton).  For our July meeting we will finish the book.

Our climate, and our democracy, are melting down. But Bill McKibben, one of the first to sound the alarm about the climate crisis, insists the moment is also full of possibility. Energy from the sun and wind is suddenly the cheapest power on the planet and growing faster than any energy source in history―if we can keep accelerating the pace, we have a chance.

Here Comes the Sun tells the story of the sudden spike in power from the sun and wind―and the desperate fight of the fossil fuel industry and their politicians to hold this new power at bay. From the everyday citizens who installed solar panels equal to a third of Pakistan’s electric grid in a year to the world’s sixth-largest economy―California―nearly halving its use of natural gas in the last two years, Bill McKibben traces the arrival of plentiful, inexpensive solar energy. And he shows how solar power is more than just a path out of the climate crisis: it is a chance to reorder the world on saner and more humane grounds. You can’t hoard solar energy or hold it in reserves―it’s available to all.

There’s no guarantee we can make this change in time, but there is a hope―in McKibben’s eyes, our best hope for a new civilization: one that looks up to the sun, every day, as the star that fuels our world.

Strike Debt Bay Area hosts this non-technical book group discussion monthly on new and radical economic thinking. Our first book was  Doughnut Economics, and our most recent books were Pacific Circuit, A Paradise Built in Hell, What’s Left – 3 Paths Through the Planetary Crisis, The Age of Insecurity and Elinor Ostrom’s Rules for Radicals. For the rest of our reading list see here.