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