Inter-national Monopolies, large monopolies of the imperialist countries, multinational in capital and sphere of operation. The formation of inter-national companies is linked with the international interlocking of the interests of capital of different countries in the epoch of imperialism on the basis of export of capital, and is a form of the economic division of the world. One of today’s biggest inter-national oil monopolies, Royal Dutch-Shell, controlled by British and Dutch capital, appeared at the beginning of the century. Subsequently another inter- national monopoly, Unilever, was formed, also controlled by the British and Dutch capital. The biggest nickel company in the capitalist world, The International Nickel Company of Canada, nearly half of whose shares are held by American capital and the rest by British and Canadian capital, is inter-national in its national origins of capital. New inter-national companies appeared in the mid-1960s. Most were formed by big West European monopolies, of approximately equal size, which associated their capital in an attempt to oppose the big American transnationals. This explains the origin of the BritishItalian technical-rubber industry giant Dunlop-Pirelli, one of the biggest and most extensively internationalised corporations in the capitalist world, and of several other corporations. The growth of inter-national companies is one of the most vivid manifestations of the internationalisation of capital—a process intensifying with the extension of the capitalist international division of labour. In turn, inter-national companies, like the transnationals, while developing specialisation and cooperation between their enterprises, promote the growth of the international capitalist division of labour (see Division of Labour, Capitalist International). Spreading throughout the capitalist world, inter-national monopolies, alongside the transnationals, exploit hundreds of thousands of working people in the capitalist and economically less 177 developed countries. Often the interests of the inter-national monopolies clash with those of the state even in the industrially developed capitalist countries, which gives rise to acute contradictions in the world capitalist economic system.