Sovinform

While the mercantile bourgeoisie could operate as the class behind national imperial and colonial expansion, they could also have an alternative role: that of the comprador bourgeoisie. Rather than help their own country conquer other countries, the mercantile bourgeoisie could lead their own country to be colonized by other countries. It is quite simple: the mercantile bourgeoisie could literally sell their own country.
What factor, then, determines whether the mercantile bourgeoisie of a specific country would be predominantly made up of comprador elements vs. predominantly made up of elements loyal to national imperial and colonial expansion? The key factor shaping the strategic orientation of the mercantile bourgeoisie is the level of the development of the productive forces. If the country to which the mercantile bourgeoisie belong has had a high level of development of the productive forces, then the mercantile bourgeoisie of that country would naturally seek to invest in their own country’s industries in order to (1) have great influence over their own country’s industries, and (2) to expand the military-industrial backbone of their own country so that they can use it to conquer other territories. In this process, therefore, the mercantile bourgeoisie base themselves in their own country, thereby strategically aligning themselves with the national imperial expansion of their own country, and in fact generate the national imperial tendencies of their own country. As a result of this alliance of the mercantile bourgeoisie with the military-industrial backbone of their own country, the imperialist mercantile bourgeoisie can generate enough funds to out-maneuver any comprador mercantile bourgeois elements that exist in their country, and thus ensure that imperialist, rather than comprador, merchants dominate. Furthermore, the imperialist mercantile bourgeoisie can make overtures to the merchants of much weaker countries, countries with much lower development in productive forces, and offer those merchants in much weaker countries deals through which the merchants of the weaker countries would generate high profits while selling their own respective countries to the imperialists for cheap. As a result of this process, the comprador elements among the mercantile bourgeoisie of the weaker countries would be strengthened and the national or even anti-imperialist elements of the mercantile bourgeoisie of the weaker country would be largely cast aside. In the era of pre-modern imperialism, the mercantile bourgeoisie served as the key class base of imperialism. The merchants of the economically backwards countries could be bought off and be rendered into comprador mercantile bourgeois tools of the imperialist mercantile bourgeoisie. Hence there existed the comprador mercantile bourgeoisie.

The History of the USSR & the Peoples' Democracies
Chapter 1
Saed Teymuri
p. 12

Unlike industrial capitalism, which profits from the expansion of commodity production, mercantile capitalism generates profits from the exchange of commodities produced. The mercantile bourgeoisie – i.e. the merchant class – operate as middlemen for exchange operations. The middleman sector in the economy, the sector responsible for the exchange, is of critical significance for other sectors for it eases transfers and transactions. It therefore receives high demand from the rest of the economy, generating high revenue for those in control of the middleman sector. On the other hand, the middleman sector does not engage in as much material production as other sectors and is less labour-intensive. The result for middleman sectors is that, relative to the rest of the economic sectors, high revenues are generated at low labour costs, and hence high profits, but with relatively little production. The high profits without much production create a serious imbalance in the economy, for they allow the middlemen to 'suck' the wealth of the economy, which is precisely what makes mercantile capitalism parasitic. This is to be contrasted with industrial capitalism which, while exploiting the workers, nonetheless does expand production. It is therefore not difficult to understand how mercantile capitalist middlemen can become a parasitic class that ‘bites’ into production without producing as much. It is this parasitic middleman nature of mercantile capitalism that formed the class basis for pre-modern imperialism.

The History of the USSR & the Peoples' Democracies
Chapter 1
Saed Teymuri
pp. 11-12