There is a profound contradiction in this process. The globalisation of the productive forces, while it is being carried forward by capital in its relentless drive for profit, is at the same time intensifying the historic crisis of the capitalist mode of production. I am afraid that your invocation of Lenin's name is yet another demonstration of the fact that the various schools of middle class radicalism, in particular the self-styled Leninists, have either not read what Lenin actually wrote, or have failed completely to assimilate its meaning. Its purpose was to establish the fact that the end of the epoch of free competition and the development of monopoly capitalism, or imperialism, had laid the objective foundations for the establishment of socialism and that the task of the revolutionary party was to politically prepare the working class for the achievement of this goal. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialised.
Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private.
The social means of production remain the private property of a few. By removal of the opportunist abscess, Lenin meant the defeat of the opportunist and nationalist leaderships of the working class, which had become the central prop for the maintenance of capitalism. That cure has certainly taken far longer than Lenin anticipated. But now the globalisation of production, a continuation and deepening of the socialisation of production which Lenin outlined at the beginning of the 20th century, poses this task with renewed urgency. This socialisation is at such an advanced stage that Lenin's description of the activities of the oil industry now applies across the board, establishing at an even higher level, both the objective possibility and necessity for the socialist transformation of society.