6 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Fifthly, this fluidity of finance represents globalization in the double sense, not only in the sense that finance flows everywhere, but also in the sense that it is sucked out of everywhere, be it from Gorbachev's Soviet Union, or from Latin America, or from India and other third world countries. In other words, it is not just finance from the advanced capitalist countries flowing everywhere, largely in the form of 'hot money5, for quick and speculative gains, but finance all over the globe looking for opportunities all over the globe. II The question which arises in this context is: if these are the 'stylised facts', then is the use of the world 'imperialism5 to describe this new conjuncture justified any longer? Imperialism necessarily entails an unequal relationship between two parts of the globe, the domination of one part by another. To be sure, this domination is a fact of life, this unequal relationship is there for all to see. But, to what extent is that not a legacy of the past which is out of step with this new, and currently unfolding conjuncture? This question deserves to be taken seriously. When Karl Kautsky had visualized a state of 'ultra-imperialism' where there would be 'joint exploitation of the globe^by internationally-united finance capital', this international unity still referred to that between the advanced capitalist nations. But if we are talking about 'internationally-united finance capital' in the sense of financial interests belonging to the entire committee of nations moving around and acting in unison, not necessarily with the consciousness of . belonging to particular riations, then there is no longer any question of a dichotomy among nations within the world. True, these internationally-united financial interests are responsible for stagnation and high unemployment, but this affects everybody, not just one part of the globe; if to placate these interests welfare expenditures and social wages have to be cut, then this is so everywhere, not just for workers in the backward economies but for workers in the advanced economies as well, and the fact that the former have a higher level of wages to start with is irrelevant in this context. The fact that national economies become the plaything of speculative forces with nation-States being reduced to the role of helpless spectators, where the concept of sovereignty is necessarily abridged, can be observed not just in some 'banana republics' but in Britain as well. In short, what we are witnessing is the coming into being with a vengeance of the 'age of global finance'; but by the same token are we not seeing the eclipse of the 'age of imperialism'? This question itself may appear strange to anyone brought up in the Leninist tradition where imperialism was the era of domination of finance capital; but essential to Lenin's conception of finance capital was the domination of the globe by a handful of rich nations and intense rivalry among them, a conception which, no matter what its relevance in the future (and I would argue that it is relevant), does not appear plausible today. What I discuss in this paper is this question, and I would argue that the age