Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
Rudolf Hilferding is credited with first bringing the term finance capitalism into prominence through "Finance Capital", his 1910 study of the links between German trusts, banks and monopolies—a study subsumed by Vladimir Lenin into "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" (1917), his analysis of the imperialist relations of the great world powers. Lenin concluded that the banks at that time operated as "the chief nerve centres of the whole capitalist system of national economy". For the Comintern (founded in 1919), the phrase "dictatorship of finance capitalism" became a regular one.