Modern imperialism differs from all earlier imperialisms in so far as it is associated with capitalism and hence attempts coercively to refashion distant economies to serve the needs of capital. Rosa Luxemburg saw imperialism as essential for encroaching on pre-capitalist markets to keep the accumulation process going within the capitalist sector, while Lenin confined the term only to the monopoly phase of capitalism and associated it with rivalry between different monopoly combines; each of these theories contained valuable insights. Serious differences arise however about whether the term imperialism remains relevant in the post-war period which has witnessed a process of decolonization. Some see the recent tendency of capital from the Global North to relocate itself to the Global South as a diffusion of capitalism to the latter region, analogous to the diffusion of capitalism in the nineteenth century within the Global North; hence they deny the existence any longer of an unequal relationship between the two regions. Others however still see the North-South relationship as being essentially unequal. Among the latter, some emphasize unequal exchange; but though relevant as a phenomenon, unequal exchange is inadequately theorized: existing theories, to be logically tenable, must assume monopoly control of some kind by the North over the South which they typically do not. There is however a simple and abiding reason for the North to have coercive control over the South, and that is because a whole range of primary commodities which the North cannot do without are simply not producible within it, and can never be, at least in sufficient quantities; but they are available in the Global South from which they must be acquired by the North and this can be done only with the application of (implicit) coercion on the mass of workers, peasants, and petty producers.