Concentration of Capital, expansion of capital through the accumulation and capitalisation of surplus value. The concentration of capital is determined primarily by its owners’ drive to continuously increase the originally advanced value used for exploiting the proletariat. In its insatiable crave for appropriation of the unpaid labour of wage workers the bourgeoisie systematically turns a part of surplus value into additional capital, thereby intensifying the exploitation of wage labour. The concentration of capital allows the more efficient functioning of capitalist production by utilising advanced machinery and technology, as well as by improving the methods of exploiting the workers. The ongoing concentration of capital is also a consequence of fierce capitalist competition, during which bigger enterprises with modern technology and better organisation of production gain the upper hand. The concentration of capital is the economic foundation of the concentration of production, i. e., the expansion of huge enterprises which acquire an increasingly important role. The growing concentration of production, in turn, stimulates the concentration of capital and multiplies its sources. The concentration of capital and of production reached a high degree of development at the turn of this century, and objectively was a necessary condition for the emergence of monopolies (see Monopolies, Capitalist) and the transition to imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. Within the framework of the capitalist monopolies the concentration of capital has grown enormously, which, on the one hand, has increased the economic power of the monopoly bourgeoisie, and on the other, has stimulated the process of socialisation of production, which is the material condition of the transition to socialism.