Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

NOTEBOOK “κ”

(“KAPPA”)


J. A. HOBSON, IMPERIALISM

Imperialism. A Study by J. A. Hobson (London, 1902).[17]

p. 4. Real colonisation consists in people of the metropolis emigrating to an empty uncolonised country and bringing their civilisation to it, but the forced subjection of other peoples is already a “debasement of this genuine nationalism” (“spurious colonialism”); it is already a phenomenon of an imperialist order. A model example of a real colony is seen in Canada and the self-governing islands of Australasia.

p. 6. The novelty of the recent Imperialism
regarded as a policy consists chiefly in its adoption
by several nations. The notion of a number of
competing empires is essentially modern.”
N.B.

p. 9. “Nationalism is a plain highway to internation-
alism
, and if it manifests divergence we may well
suspect a perversion of its nature and its purpose.
Such a perversion is Imperialism, in which
nations trespassing beyond the limits of facile assim-
ilation transform the wholesome stimulative rivalry
of varied national types into the cut-throat struggle
of competing empires.”
!!

pp. 17-18. The nucleus of the British Empire is a population of 40 million, living in an area of 120,000 square miles. During the last generation alone, the increase in the possessions of the British Empire = 4,754,000 sq. miles with 88,000,000 people.

p. 19. The British colonies and dependencies in 1900 == 13,142,708 sq. miles with a population of 306,793,919 (*).



N. B. Hobson includes the “protectorates”
(Egypt, Sudan, etc), which Morris does not!!

(*) Hobson here quotes Morris, II, 87 and R. Giffen: “The Relative Growth of the Component Parts of Our Empire”, a paper read before the Colonial Institute, January 1898.
(Further, The Statesman’s Year-Book for 1900.)



p. 20. Between 1884 and 1900, 3,711,957 square miles (counting Sudan, etc.) with a population of 57,436,000 were added to the British Empire.[1]

pp. 21-22. In Germany, literature on the necessity for her to have colonial possessions arose in the seventies. The first official aid to the German Commercial and Plantation Association of the Southern Seas was given in 1880. The “German connection with Samoa” belongs to the same period, but real imperialist policy in Germany began from 1884, when the African protectorates arose and the islands of Oceania were acquired. During the next fifteen years, a million square miles, with a population of 14,000,000, in the colonies was brought under the influence of Germany. Most of the territory was in the tropics, with only a few thousand whites.

In France, the old colonial spirit began to revive at the very beginning of the eighties. The most influential economist conducting colonial propaganda was Leroy-Beaulieu. In 1880, French possessions in Senegal and Sahara were extended, a few years later Tunisia was acquired, in 1884 France took an active part in the struggle for Africa and at the same time strengthened her rule in Tonkin and Laos in Asia. Since 1880, France acquired 3 ½ million square miles with a population of 37,000,000 almost wholly in tropical and subtropical countries, inhabited by lower races and unsuitable for French colonisation.

In 1880, Italy’s Abyssinian expedition came to grief and her imperialist ambitions suffered defeat. Her possessions in East Africa were limited to Eritrea and a protector ate in Somali.

The African agreement of 1884-86 gave Portugal the extensive region of Angola and the Congo Coast, and in 1891 a considerable part of East Africa came under her political control.

The Congo Free State, which became the property of the King of Belgium in 1883 and which has been considerably enlarged since then, must be regarded as a morsel seized by Belgium in the struggle for Africa.

Spain has been kept away from the arena of the struggle for the world.

Holland does not take part in the modern imperialist struggle; her considerable possessions in the East and West Indies are of older origin.

Russia, the only one of the northern countries pursuing an imperialist policy, directs her efforts chiefly to the seizure of Asia, and, although her colonisation of Asia is more natural, since she proceeds by extending her state frontiers, she will soon come into conflict with other powers in regard to the division of Asia.

p. 23. Altogether the European states + Turkey + China + the United States of America, embracing an area of 15,813,201 square miles with a population of 850,103,317, possess 136 colonies with an area of 22,273,858 square miles and a population of 521,108,791. (Taken wholly from Morris, II, 318, as Hobson himself pointed out.)

pp. 26-27. “Expansion of Chief European
Powers since 1884
[2]:
population
Great Britain (see p. 20) 3,711,957 sq. miles 57,436,000
France 3,583,580  ” 36,553,000
Germany 1,026,220  ” 16,687,100

Russia (?) 114,320 sq. miles (?)   3,300,000 (population)
(this is Khiva + Bukhara)    (this = Khiva + Bukhara)
Russia ((Khiva (1873), Bukhara (1873[3]), Kwantung (1898)
Manchuria (1900))
Although under a heading “since 1884”, Hobson has
included both Khiva and Bukhara

Belgium (Congo) 900,000 30,000,000
Portugal(Angola, 1886;
East Africa, 1891, and
others).
800,760  9,111,757

N.B. N.B. (Hobson adds, pp. 28-29, two maps of Africa, 1873 and 1902, clearly showing the increase in its partition).

p. 34: Percentages of Total Values:

Imports into
Great Britain
from
Exports from
Great Britain
to
p. 37 Percentages of
imports
into
exports
from
Annual
averages
for
Foreign
coun-
tries
British
posses-
sions
Foreign
coun-
tries
British
posses-
sions
‘Four-
yearly’
averages
colonies
from
Great
etc
into
Britain
1856-59 46.5 57.1
1855-59 76.5 23.5 68.5 31.5 60-63 41.0 65.4
60-64 71.2 66.6 64-67 38.9 57.6
65-69 76.0 72.4 68-71 39.8 53.5
70-74 78.0 74.4 72-75 43.6 54.0
75-79 77.9 66.9 76-79 41.7 50.3
80-84 76.5 65.5 80-83 42.8 48.1
85-89 77.1 65.0 84-87 38.5 43.0
90-94 77.1 67.6 88-91 36.3 39.7
95-99 78.6 66.0 92-95 32.4 36.6
96-99 32.5 34.9

p. 38. Year ending December 1901:
(£000, 000) Imports from Exports to
% %
Foreign countries 417.615= 80 178.450= 63.5
British India 38.001= 7 39.753= 14  
Australasia 34.682= 7 26.932= 9.5
Canada 19.775= 4 7.797= 3  
British South Africa 5.155= 1 17.006= 6  
Other British possessions 7.082= 1 10.561= 4  
522.310= 100 280.499= 100 

p. 39. Trade of the Empire with Great Britain: (£000)
Annual average Total
imports
Imports
from
Britain
% of
British
imports
Total
exports
Exports
to
Britain
% of
exports
to
Britain
1867-
71




India 45,818 31,707 69.2 56,532 29,738 52.6
Self-govern-
 ing colo-
 nies
42,612 24,502 57.5 42,386 23,476 55.4
Other colo-
 nies
23,161  7,955 34.3 23,051 10,698 46.4
1892-
96




India 52,577 37,811 71.9 68,250 22,656 33.2
Self-govern-
 ing colo-
 nies
74,572 44,133 59.2 83,528 58,714 70.3
Other colo-
 nies
39,835 10,443 26.2 36,626 10,987 29.3

From “The Flag and Trade” by Professor Flux, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, September 1899, Vol. LXII, pp. 496-98.


p. 48. “The total emigration of Britons represents no large proportion of the population; that proportion during the recent years of imperial expansion has perceptibly diminished: of the emigrants a small proportion settles in British possessions, and an infinitesimally small fraction settles in the countries acquired under the new Imperialism”....

Since 1884, the emigration figures have been falling[4]:
1884 ... 242,179 (including 155,280 to the United States)
and immigration must also be taken into account!!
1900 ... 168,825 (including 102,797 to the United States (p. 49)) (author gives annual and more detailed figures).

p. 58. (According to Mr. Mulhall) the size and growth of British foreign and colonial investments since 1862 were:

Year Amount Annual
increase
(thousand million francs)
£ per cent Great
Britain
France Germany
1862  144,000,000   3.6
1872  600,000,000 45.6 15 10 (1869)
1882  875,000,000 27.5 22 (1880) 15 ?
1893 1,698,000,000 74.8 42 (1890) 20
27 (1902) 12.5 (1902)
40 (1910) 35 (1910) 
1914 4,000,000,000 (75-100(1914)) 60 (1914) 44 (1914)[5]

p. 59. “In 1893 the British capital invested abroad
represented about 15 per cent of the total wealth
of the United Kingdom: nearly one-half of this
capital (£770 mill.) was in the form of loans to foreign
and colonial governments; of the rest a large pro-
portion was invested in railways, banks, telegraphs
and other public services, owned, controlled, or
vitally affected by governments, while most of the
remainder was placed in lands and mines, or in
industries directly dependent on land values.”[6]
15%
(*)

The figure £1,698,000,000, according to Sir R. Giffen’s calculations, should be considered less than the actual one.




(*)    p. 59.  Investments: Loans foreign—
£525,000,000, colonial—£225,000,000, municipal—
£20,000,000, total of loans =£770,000,000. Railways:
U.S.A.—£120,000,000; colonial—£140,000,000, and
various—£128,000,000;  total  of  railways—
£388,000,000. Sundries: Banks=£50,000,000; lands =
£100,000,000; mines, etc.=£390,000,000.
Σ = 770



1,698
 
388
540

p. 60. “It is not too much to say that the modern
foreign policy of Great Britain is primarily a struggle
for
profitable markets of investment.”
N.B.

pp. 62-63. “Much, if not most, of the debts are ‘public’, the credit is nearly always private....

 “Aggressive Imperialism, which costs the
tax-payer so dear, which is of so little value
to the manufacturer and trader ... is a
source of great gain to the
investor
....

 “The annual income Great Britain derives
from commissions on her whole foreign and
colonial trade, import and export, is estimat-
ed by Sir R. Giffen1) at £18,000,000 for
1899, taken at 2 ½ per cent, upon a turnover
of £800,000,000.” Great as this sum is, it
cannot explain the aggressive imperialism
of Great Britain, which is explained by the
income of “£90,000,000 or £100,000 000,
representing pure profit upon investments”.[7]
18 mill.
versus
90 mill.

1)Journal of the Royal Statistical So-
ciety
, Vol. LXII, p. 9.

 Investors are interested in lessening the risks
connected with the political conditions in the
countries where they invest their capital.
The investing and specula-
tive classes
in general also desire that
Great Britain should take other foreign areas
under her flag in order to secure new areas
for profitable investment and speculation.”
p. 63. “If the special interest of the investor
is liable to clash with the public interest
and to induce a wrecking policy, still more
dangerous is the SPECIAL INTEREST
OF THE FINANCIER, THE GENERAL
DEALER IN INVESTMENTS
. In large
measure the rank and file of the investors
are, both for business and for politics, the
cat’s-paw of the great financial houses,
who use stocks and shares not so much
as investments to yield them interest, but
as material for speculation in the money
market.”
N.B.
N.B.

p. 68. “Such is the array of distinctively economic
forces making for Imperialism, a large loose group of
trades and professions seeking profitable business and
lucrative employment from the expansion of military
and civil services, from the expenditure on military
operations, the opening up of new tracts of territory
and trade with the same, and the provision of new capital
which these operations require, all these finding their
central guiding and directing force in the power of the
general financier”. (Finance capital.)

p. 72. The consequence of markets seized by France and Germany being closed to Great Britain has been that the latter has closed her markets to them. “Imperialism, when it has shaken off the ‘old gang’ of politicians who had swallowed Free Trade doctrine when they were young, will openly adopt the Protectionism required to round off this policy” (72-73)....

p. 78. The manufacturer and trader are satisfied
by trading with other nations; the investors of capital,
however, exert every effort “towards the political annex-
ation of countries which contain their more speculative
investments”.

 Capital investment is advantageous for a country,
opening new markets for its trade “and employment for
British enterprise”. To refrain from “imperial expansion”
means to hand over the world to other nations. “Imperial-
ism is thus seen to be, not a choice, but a necessity”
(= the view of the imperialists)....

pp. 80-81 (trusts). Free competition has always been accompanied by “over-production”, which led to prices falling to such a level as to remove weaker competitors from the arena of competition. The first step in the formation of a trust is the closing down of the worst-equipped and worst-situated factories, and the cutting of production costs by using only the most up-to-date machines.

 “This concentration of industry in ‘trusts’ ... at once
limits the quantity of capital which can be effectively
employed and increases the share of profits out of which
fresh savings and fresh capital will spring.” The trust
arises as an antidote to over-production, to excessive
investment of capital in the given industry; hence not
all the capital which the participants in the trust want
to put into circulation can be invested within the frame-
work of the trust. The trusts endeavour to invest the
surplus capital so as “to establish similar combinations
in other industries, economising capital still further,
and rendering it ever harder for ordinary saving men to
find investments for their savings”.

pp. 82-84. America’s home market is saturated, capital no longer finds investment.

 “It is this sudden demand for foreign markets for
manufactures and for investments which is avowedly
responsible for the adoption of Imperialism
as a political policy and practice by the Republican
Party to which the great industrial and financial
chiefs belong, and which belongs to them. The adven-
turous enthusiasm of President Roosevelt and his
‘manifest destiny’ and ‘mission of civilisation’
party must not deceive us. It is Messrs.
Rockefeller
, Pierpont Morgan, Hanna, Schwab,
and their associates who need Imperialism
and who are fastening it upon the shoulders of the
great Republic of the West. They need Imperialism
because they desire to use the public resources of
their country to find profitable employment for the
capital which otherwise would be superfluous.
N.B.

 “It is not indeed necessary to own a country in
order to do trade with it or to invest capital in it,
and doubtless the United States can find some vent
for its surplus goods and capital in European coun-
tries. But these countries are for the most part able
to make provision for themselves: most of them have
erected tariffs against manufacturing imports, and
even Great Britain is being urged to defend herself
by reverting to Protection. The big American manu-
facturers and financiers will be compelled to look
to China and the Pacific and to South America for
their most profitable chances. Protectionists by
principle and practice, they will insist upon getting
as close a monopoly of these markets as they can
secure, and the competition of Germany, England,
and other trading nations will drive them to the
establishment of special political relations with the
markets they most prize. Cuba, the Philippines,
and Hawaii are but the hors d’oeuvre to whet an
appetite for an ampler banquet. Moreover, the power-
ful hold upon politics which these industrial and
financial magnates possess forms a separate stimulus,
which, as we have shown, is operative in Great
Britain and elsewhere; the public expenditure in
pursuit of an imperial career will be a separate
immense source of profit to these men, as financiers
negotiating loans, shipbuilders and owners handling
subsidies, contractors and manufacturers of arma-
ments and other imperialist appliances.”
N.B.

p. 86. With the introduction of improved methods
of production, concentration of ownership and control,
the capitalists find it more and more difficult “to
dispose profitably of their economic resources, and
they are tempted more and more to use their govern-
ments in order to secure for their particular use
some distant undeveloped country by annexation and
protection”.
N.B.

At first sight it seems that the produc-
tive forces and capital have outgrown
consumption and cannot find application
in their own country. Therein, he says,
lies the root of imperialism. But... “if
the consuming public
in this
country raised its standard of consumption
to keep pace with every rise of produc-
tive powers, there could be no excess
of goods or capital clamorous to use
Imperialism in order to find markets”.
ha-ha!!
the essence
of philistine
criticism of
imperialism

p. 89. “The volume of production has been constantly rising owing to the development of modern machinery.” Wealth can be used by the population or by a handful of rich people. The level of wages puts a limit on use by the population. Personal consumption by the rich, owing to their small number, cannot absorb a very large quantity of products. “The rich will never be so ingenious as to spend enough to prevent over-production.” The chief part of production is devoted to “accumulation”. The stream bearing this huge mass of products “is not only suddenly found to be incapable of further enlargement, but actually seems to be in the process of being dammed up”.

p. 91. “Thus we reach the conclusion that Imperia-
lism is
the endeavour of the great controllers of industry
to broaden the channel for the flow of their surplus
wealth by seeking foreign markets and foreign
investments to take off the goods
and capital they cannot sell or use
at home.

 “The fallacy of the supposed
inevitability
  of  imperial
expansion as a necessary outlet for
progressive industry is now manifest.
It is not industrial prog-
ress
 that demands the opening
up of new markets and areas of
investment,  but  MALDISTRI-
BUTION
of consuming power which
prevents the absorption of commodi-
ties and capital within the country.”
p. 94. “There is no necessity to
open up new foreign markets; the
home markets are capable of indef-
inite expansion.”
inevita-
bility of
imperialism
cf. K. Kautsky
cf. K. Kautsky

p. 96. “Trade unionism and socialism are thus the natural enemies of imperialism, for they take away from the ‘imperialist’ classes the surplus incomes which form the economic stimulus of imperialism.”

p. 100. “Imperialism, as we see, implies the use of the machinery of government by private interests, mainly capitalist, to secure for them economic gains outside their country.”

“The average yearly value of our foreign trade for 1870-75, amounting to £636,000,000, increased in the period 1895-98 to £737,000,000, the average public expenditure advanced over the same period from £63,160,000 to £94,450,000. It is faster than the growth of the aggregate national income, which, according to the rough estimates of statisticians, advanced during the same period from about £1,200,000,000 to £1,700,000,000.”

pp. 101-02. “This growth of naval and military
expenditure from about 25 to 60 millions in a little
over a quarter of a century is the most significant
fact of imperialist finance. The financial, industrial,
and professional classes, who, we have shown, form
the economic core of Imperialism, have used their politi-
cal power to extract these sums from the nation in order
to improve their investments and open up new fields
for capital, and to find profitable markets for their
surplus goods, while out of the public sums expended
on these objects they reap other great private
gains
in the shape of profitable contracts,
and lucrative or honourable employment.”

p. 103. “While the directors of this definitely parasitic
policy are capitalists, the same motives appeal to
SPECIAL CLASSES OF THE WORKERS. In
many towns most important trades are dependent upon
government employment or contracts; the Imperialism
of the metal and shipbuilding centres is attributable
in no small degree to this fact.”[8]

p. 114. “In other nations committed to or entering
upon an imperialist career with the same ganglia of
economic interests masquerading as patriotism, civilisation,
and the like
, Protection has been the traditional finance,
and it has only been necessary to extend it and direct
it into the necessary channels.”

p. 115. “both (*)... will succumb more and more to the
money-lending classes dressed as Imperialists
and patriots.”


N.B. (*) i. e., Great Britain and the United States.

p. 120. “of the three hundred and sixty-seven
millions of British subjects outside these isles, not
more than ten millions, or one in thirty-seven, have
any real self-government for purposes
of legislation and administration.”
!!
1/37

p. 121. “In certain of our older Crown colonies there exists a representative element in the government. While the administration is entirely vested in a governor appointed by the Crown, assisted by a council nominated by him, the colonists elect a portion of the legislative assembly....

 “The representative element differs considerably in size
and influence, in these colonies, but nowhere does
it outnumber the non-elected element
.
It thus becomes an advisory rather than a really
legislative factor. Not merely is the elected always domi-
nated in numbers by the non-elected element, but in all
cases the veto of the Colonial Office is freely exercised upon
measures passed by the assemblies. To this it should
be added that in nearly all cases a fairly high
property qualification
is attached to the
franchise, precluding the coloured people from exercising
an elective power proportionate to their numbers
and their stake in the country.”

p. 131. “In a single word, the new Imperial-
ism has increased the area of Brit-
ish despotism
, far outbalancing the progress
in population and in practical freedom attained by our
few democratic colonies.

 “It has not made for the spread of British liberty and
for the propagation of our arts of government. The
lands and population which we have annexed we govern,
insofar as we govern these at all, by distinctively
autocratic methods, administered chiefly from Down-
ing Street, but partly from centres of colonial govern-
ment, in cases where self-governing colonies have been
permitted to annex.”

p. 133. “The pax Britannica, always an impudent
falsehood
, has become of recent years a grotesque monster
of hypocrisy; along our Indian frontiers, in West Africa,
in the Sudan, in Uganda, in Rhodesia, fighting
has been well-nigh incessant.”

p. 134. “Our economic analysis has disclosed the
fact that it is only the interests of competing cliques
of business men—investors, contractors, ex-
port
manufacturers, and certain professional classes—
that are antagonistic; that these cliques, usurping
the authority and voice of the people, use the public
resources to push their private businesses, and spend
the blood and money of the people in this vast and disas-
trous military game, feigning national antagonisms
which have no basis in reality.”

pp. 135-36. “If we are to hold all that we have
taken since 1870 and to compete with the new industrial
nations in the further partition of empires or spheres
of influence in Africa and Asia, we must be pre-
pared to fight
. The enmity of rival empires,
openly displayed throughout the South African war,
is admittedly due to the policy by which we have fore-
stalled, and are still seeking to forestall, these
rivals in the annexation of territory and of
markets throughout the world.”

pp. 143-44. “The organisation of vast native
forces, armed with ‘civilised’ weapons, drilled in
‘civilised’ methods, and commanded by ‘civilised’
officers, formed one of the most conspicuous features
of the latest stages of the great Eastern Empires, and
afterwards of the
Roman Empire. It has
proved one of the most perilous devices of parasitism,
by which a metropolitan population entrusts the
defence of its lives and possessions to the precarious
fidelity of ‘conquered races’, commanded by ambitious
pro-consuls.

!!  “One of the strangest symptoms of the blind-
ness
of Imperialism is the reckless indifference
with which Great Britain, France
and other imperial
nations are embark-
ing on this perilous dependence. Great Britain
has gone farthest. Most of the fighting by which
we have won our Indian Empire
has been done
by natives; in India, as more recently in Egypt,
great standing armies are placed under
British commanders; almost all the fighting associated
with our African dominions, except in the
southern
part, has been done for us by na-
tives.”[9]

p. 151. “In Germany, France, and Italy the
Liberal Party, as a factor in practical politics,
has either disappeared or is reduced
to impotence; in England it now stands convicted
of a gross palpable betrayal of the first conditions of
liberty, feebly fumbling after programmes as a sub-
stitute for principles.... This surrender to Imperial-
ism signifies that they have preferred the economic
interests of the possessing and speculative classes,
to which most of their leaders belong, to the cause
of Liberalism.”
!!
ha-
ha!!

p. 157. “Amid this general decline of
parliamentary government the ‘party system’ is visibly
collapsing, based as it was on plain cleavages
in domestic policy which have little significance when
confronted with the claims and powers of Imperialism.”

pp. 158-59. “Not merely is the reaction pos-
sible, it is inevitable. As the despotic portion of our
Empire has grown in area, a larger and larger number
of men, trained in the temper and methods
of autocracy
as soldiers and civil officials in our
Crown colonies, protectorates, and Indian Empire,
reinforced by numbers of merchants, planters,
engineers and overseers, whose lives have been those of
a superior caste living an artificial life removed
from all the healthy restraints of ordinary European
society, have returned to this country, bringing back the
characters, sentiments, and ideas imposed by this foreign
environment
.”

 Chapter II (162-206)—twaddle. It is headed “The
Scientific Defence of Imperialism” and devoted to a
“scientific” (in reality, commonplace-liberal) refutal
of Darwinist “biological”, etc., “scientific justifica-
tions” of imperialism.

pp. 204-05. “Suppose a federal govern-
ment of European
nations and their
colonial offspring to be possible in such
wise that internal conflicts were precluded,
this peace of Christendom would be con-
stantly imperilled by thelower races’,
black and yellow, who, adopting the arms
and military tactics now discarded by the
‘civilised races’, would overwhelm them
in barbarian incursions, even as the ruder
European and Asiatic races overwhelmed
the Roman Empire.”
peace
and
colonies

Two causes weakened the old empires: (1) “eco-
nomic parasitism”; (2) formation of armies recruited
from subject peoples.
[10]

p. 205. “There is first the habit of economic para-
sitism, by which the ruling State has used its prov-
inces, colonies, and dependencies in order to enrich
its ruling class and to bribe its tower classes into
acquiescence
.”
[11]
N.B.

pp. 205-06. “This fatal conjunction of folly and vice has always contributed to bring about the downfall of Empires in the past. Will it prove fatal to a federation of European States?

 “Obviously it will, if the strength of their
combination is used for the same parasitic
purposes
, and the white races, discarding
labour in its more arduous
forms, LIVE AS A SORT
OF WORLD ARISTOCRACY BY THE EXPLOITATION OF
‘LOWER RACES’
, while they hand over the policing
of the world more and more to members
of these
same races.”
N.B.



N.B.

!! p. 207. “Analysis of the actual course of modern
(N. B. concept)
Imperialism has laid bare the
combination of economic and political forces
which fashions it. These forces are traced to their
sources in the selfish interests of certain industrial,
financial, and professional classes, seeking private
advantages out of a policy of imperial expansion,
and using this same policy to protect them in their
economic, political, and social privileges against
the pressure of democracy.”

on the
question
of
self-
determina-
tion

 
pp. 210-11 (note 2). “How far the
mystification of motives can
carry a trained thinker upon politics
may be illustrated by the astonish-
ing
argument of Professor Giddings,
who, in discussing ‘the consent
of the governed
’ as a condition
of government, argues that ‘if a barbarous
people is compelled to accept the authority
of a State more advanced in civilisation,
the test of the rightfulness or wrongfulness
of this imposition of authority is to be
found, not at all in any assent or resistance
at the moment when the government begins,
but only in the degree of probability that,
after full experience of what the govern-
ment can do to raise the subject population
to a higher plane of life, a free and
rational consent will be
given
by those who have come to under-
stand all that has been done’ (Empire and
Democracy
, p. 265). Professor Giddings does
not seem to recognise that the entire weight
of the ethical validity of this curious
doctrine of retrospective consent is thrown
upon the act of judging the degree of prob-
ability that a free and rational consent
will be given
, that his doctrine furnishes
no sort of security for a competent, unbiassed
judgement, and that, in point of fact,
IT ENDOWS ANY NATION WITH THE RIGHT TO
SEIZE AND ADMINISTER THE TERRITORY OF ANY-
OTHER
nation on the ground of a self-
ascribed superiority and self-imputed quali-
fications for the work of civilisation.”
!!
!!
 
ethical
socialist

pp. 212-18 (a reply to those defending
imperialism on the ground of ‘Christian’
missionary activity):
“What is the mode
of equating the two groups of results? how
much Christianity and civilisation balance,
how much industry and trade
? are curious
questions which seem to need an answer.”
bien dit!!

p. 214. “He” (Lord Hugh Cecil in his
speech on May 4, 1900, in the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel (!!!))

“thought that by making prominent to our
own minds the importance of missionary
work we should to some extent sanctify
     the spirit of Imperialism.”
gem!

p. 224.The controlling and directing
agent
of the whole process,
as we have seen, is the pressure of finan-
cial and industrial motives
,
operated for the direct, short-range,
material interests of SMALL, ABLE, AND
WELL-ORGANISED
groups in a nation.”
finance
capital

 
⎛⎛
⎝⎝
from the side-lines, from afar, they
look on and whip up passions, as during
the Boer war.
[18]
 
⎞⎞
⎠⎠

pp. 227-28.Jingoism is merely the lust
of the spectator, unpurged by any person-
al effort, risk, or sacrifice, gloating in the
perils, pains, and slaughter of fellow-men
whom he does not know, but whose destruc-
tion he desires in a blind and artificially
stimulated passion of hatred and revenge.
In the Jingo all is concentrated on the
hazard and blind fury of the fray. The
arduous and weary monotony of the march,
the long periods of waiting, the hard priva-
tions, the terrible tedium of a prolonged
campaign, play no part in his imagination;
the redeeming factors of war, the fine sense
of comradeship which common personal
peril educates, the fruits of discipline and
self-restraint, the respect for the personal-
ity of enemies whose courage he must admit
and whom he comes to realise as fellow-
beings—all these moderating
elements in actual war are
eliminated from the passion

of the Jingo. It is precisely for these reasons
that some friends of peace maintain that
the two most potent checks of militarism
and of war are the obligation of the entire
body of citizens to undergo military service
and the experience of an invasion.
quaint!

 ...“It is quite evident that THE
SPECTATORIAL LUST OF JINGOISM

is a most serious factor in Imperialism.
The dramatic falsification both of war
and of the whole policy of im-
perial expansion
required to
feed this popular passion forms no small
portion of the art of the real organisers
of imperialist, exploits, the small groups
of businessmen and politicians who know
what they want and how to get it
.

 “Tricked out with the real or sham glories
of military heroism and the magnificent
claims of empire-making, J i n g o i s m
becomes a NUCLEUS OF A SORT OF PATRIOTISM
which can be moved to any folly
or to any crime.”
sic!

pp. 232-33. “The area of danger is, of
course, far wider than Imperialism,
covering the whole field of vested
interests
. But, if the analysis of pre-
vious chapters is correct, Imperialism
stands as a first defence of these interests
:
for the financial and speculative classes
it means a pushing of their private businesses
at the public expense, for the export
manufacturers and merchants a forcible
enlargement of foreign markets and a rela-
tedpolicy of Protection, for the offi-
cial
and professional classes
large openings of honourable and lucrative
employment
, for the Church it represents
the temper and practice of authority and
the assertion of spiritual control over vast
multitudes of lower people, for the politi-
cal oligarchy
it means the only
effective diversion of the forces
of democracy
and the opening of great
public careers in the showy work of em-
pire-making.”
“diversion”

p. 238. Mr. Kidd, Professor Giddings and the
Fabian” (N.B.) Imperialists ascribe the need for
“a control of the tropics by ‘civilised’ nations” to
material necessity. The natural riches of tropical
countries “are of vital importance to the maintenance
and progress of
Western civilisation.... Partly
from sheer growth of population in temperate zones,
partly from the rising standard of material life, this
dependence of the temperate on the tropical countries
must grow”. Ever larger areas of the tropical countries
have to be cultivated. At the same time, owing to the
characteristics which the hot climate develops in the
local inhabitants, the latter are incapable of progress:
they are feckless, their wants do not grow larger.
“The resources of the tropics will not be developed
voluntarily by the natives themselves” (239).
!!

pp. 239-40. “We cannot, it is held, leave these
lands barren
; it is our duty to see that they
are developed for the good of the world. White men
cannot ‘colonise’ these lands and, thus settling,
develop the natural resources by the labour of their
own hands; they can only organise and
superintend
the labour of the natives. By
doing this they can educate the natives in the arts
of industry and stimulate in them a desire for mate-
rial and moral progress, implanting new ‘wants’
which form in every society the roots of civilisation.”
!!!

(*)
 
p. 251. “In a word, until some genuine internation-
al council exists, which shall accredit a civilised
nation with the duty of educating a lower race, the
claim of a ‘trust’ is nothing else than an impu-
dent
act
of self-assertion.”

(*)!! trust (the colonies “trust” that they will be edu-
cated, they trust this “business” to the metropolises)!!

pp. 253-54. A trust of the chief European powers
would mean the exploitation of the non-European coun-
tries. The Europeans’ rule in China “sufficiently exposes
the hollowness in actual history of the claims that con-
siderations of a trust for civilisation animate and regulate
the foreign policy of Christendom, or of its component
nations.... When any common internation-
al policy
is adopted for dealing with lower
races it has partaken of the nature, not of a moral trust,
but
of a businessdeal’”.

(((On the question of a United States of Europe!!)))

pp. 259-60. “The widest and ultimately the most
important of the struggles in South Africa is that
between the policy of Basutoland and that of
Johannesburg and Rhodesia; for there, if anywhere,
we lay our finger on the difference between a ‘sane
Imperialism, devoted to the protection, educa-
tion and self-development of a ‘lower race’, and
an ‘insaneImperialism, which hands over
these races to the economic exploitation of white
colonists who will use them as ‘live tools’, and their
lands as repositories of mining or other profitable
treasure.”
>

p. 262 (note). “In the British Protectorate of
Zanzibar and Pemba, however, slavery still
exists ... and British courts of justice recognise the
status”.... Liberation proceeds too slowly, many being
interested persons. “Out of an estimated population
of 25,000 slaves in Pemba, less than 5,000 had been
liberated so far under the decree.”
!!

((1897-1902))
The sultan’s decree on liberation
of slaves was promulgated in 1897,
but this statement was made in
1902, on April 4, at a meeting of
the Anti-Slavery Society.

p. 264. “The real history of Imperialism as distinguished from Colonialism clearly illustrates this tendency” (the tendency to make the natives exploit their land for our benefit).

p. 265. “In most parts of the world a purely or distinc-
tively commercial motive and conduct have furnished
the nucleus out of which Imperialism has grown, the
early trading settlement becoming an industrial settle-
ment, with land and mineral concessions
growing round it, an industrial settlement involving
force for protection, for securing further concessions,
and for checking or punishing infringements of agreement
or breaches of order; other interests, political and
religious, enter in more largely, the original commercial
settlement assumes a stronger political and military
character
, the reins of government are commonly taken
over by the State from the company, and a vaguely
defined protectorate passes gradually into the form
of a colony.”

p. 270. The local inhabitants are forcibly com-
pelled to work for industrial companies; this is
sometimes done in the guise of organising a “militia”
from the local population, ostensibly for defence
of the country but in fact it has to work for the
European industrial companies.
 
N.B.

p. 272. A boat comes to the shore, the chiefs
are captivated by gifts of beads and trinkets, in
return for which they put their mark to a “treaty”,
the meaning of which they do not understand. The
treaty is signed by an interpreter and the adventurer
who has come to the country, which is thereafter
regarded as the ally (colony) of the country from
which he has come, France or Great Britain.
!!

p. 280. Where direct slavery has been abolished, taxation is the means by which the natives are forced to go to work. “These taxes are not infrequently applied so as to dispossess natives of their land, force them to work for wages, and even to drive them into insurrections which are followed by wholesale measures of confiscation.”

p. 293. “But so long as the private, short-sighted
business interests of white farmers or white mine-owners
are permitted, either by action taken on their own account
or through pressure on a Colonial or Imperial Govern-
ment, to invade the lands of ‘lower peoples’, and transfer
to their private profitable purposes the land or labour,
the first law of saneImperialism is violated, and the
phrases about teachingthe dignity of
labour
’ and raising races of ‘children’ to manhood,
whether used by directors of mining companies or by
statesmen in the House of Commons, are little better
than wanton
exhibitions of hypocrisy. They
are based on a FALSIFICATION OF THE FACTS, AND A PER-
VERSION OF THE MOTIVES
which actually direct the
policy.”

p. 295. “The stamp of ‘parasitism’ is upon
every white settlement among these lower races, that
is to say, nowhere are the relations between whites
and coloured people such as to preserve a wholesome
balance of mutual services. The best services which
white civilisation might be capable of rendering,
by examples of normal, healthy, white communities
practising the best arts of Western life, are precluded
by climatic and other physical conditions in almost
every case: the presence of a scattering of white
officials, missionaries, traders, mining or plantation

overseers, a dominant male caste with little
knowledge of or sympathy for the institutions of the
people, is ill-calculated to give to these lower races
even such gains as Western civilisation might be
capable of giving.”
N.B.

p. 301. “The Rev. J. M. Bovill, rector of the Cathedral Church”, is “the professional harmoniser of God and Mammon”. In his book Natives under the Transvaal Flag, he describes how the natives are allowed to erect tents near the mines, which enables them to “live more or less under the same conditions as they do in their native kraals”. All this is mere hypocritical phrase-mongering; the life of the natives “is entirely agricultural and pastoral”, but they are compelled to labour in the mines for a wage.

p. 304. “The natives upon their locations will be ascripti glebae, living in complete serfdom, with no vote or other political means of venting their grievances, and with no economic leverage for progress.”

pp. 309-10. “But millions of peasants in
India are struggling to live on half an
acre
. Their existence is a constant struggle
with starvation
, ending too often in defeat.
Their difficulty is not to live human lives—
lives up to the level of their poor standard
of comfort—but to live at all and not die....
We may truly say that in India, except in the
irrigated tracts, famine is chronic—endemic.”
 


size of
peasant
holdings
in India
 


N.B.

p. 323. “The delusion” (that “we are civilising
India”) “is only sustained by the sophistry of
Imperialism, which weaves these fallacies to cover its
nakedness and the advantages which certain interests
suck out of empire.”

p. 324. “The new Imperialism differs from the older, first, in substituting for the ambition of a single growing empire the theory and the practice of competing empires, each motived by similar lusts of political aggrandisement and commercial gain; secondly, in the dominance of financial or investing over mercantile interests.”[12]

N.B.: the difference between the new
imperialism and the old

pp. 329-30. “It is at least conceivable that China might so turn the tables upon the Western industrial nations, and, either by adopting their capital and organisers or, as is more probable, by substituting her own, might flood their markets with her cheaper manufactures, and refusing their imports in exchange might take her payment in liens upon their capital, reversing the earlier process of investment until she gradually obtained financial control over her quondam patrons and civilisers. This is no idle speculation.” (China may awaken)....

pp. 332-33. “Militarism may long survive, for that, as
has been shown, is serviceable in many ways to the
maintenance of a plutocracy. Its expenditure fur-
nishes a profitable support to certain strong vested in-
terests, it is a decorative element in social life, and
above all it is necessary to keep down
the pressure of the forces of internal
reform. Everywhere the power of capital in its
more concentrated forms is better organised
than the power of labour, and has reached a
further stage in its development; while labour
has talked of international co-operation,
capital has been achieving it
.
So far, there-
fore, as the greatest financial and commercial
interests are concerned, it seems quite pro-
bable that the coming generation may witness
so powerful an international union as to
render wars between the Western nations almost
impossible
. Notwithstanding the selfish jealous-
ies and the dog-in-the-manger policies which
at present weaken European action in the
Far East, the real drama will begin
when the forces of international capitalism,
claiming to represent the civilisation of united
Christendom, are brought to bear on the
peaceful opening up of
China.
It is then that the real ‘yellow peril’ will
begin. If it is unreasonable to expect that
China can develop a national patriotism
which will enable her to expel the Western
exploiters, she must then be subjected to a pro-
cess of disintegration, which is more aptly
described as ‘the break-up’ of China than
by the term ‘development’.
bien dit!!
 

“a United
States of
Europe”

 “Not until then shall we realise the full risks and folly
of the most stupendous revolutionary enter-
prise history has known. The Western nations may then
awaken to the fact that they have permitted certain
little cliques of private profit-mongers to engage
them in a piece of Imperialism
in
which every cost and peril of that hazardous policy is
multiplied a hundred-fold, and from
which there appears no possibility of
safe
withdrawal.”

p. 335. ((N.B.: the prospect of parasitism.)) “The
greater part of Western Europe might then
assume the appearance and character already exhibited
by tracts of country in the South of England,
in the Riviera, and in the tourist-ridden or residential
parts of Italy and Switzerland, little clus-
ters
of wealthy aristocrats drawing dividends and
pensions from the Far East, with a somewhat larger
group of professional retainers and tradesmen and a larger
body of personal servants and workers in the
transport trade
and in the final stages of pro-
duction of the more perishable goods: all the main arte-
rial industries would have disappeared, the staple foods
and manufactures flowing in as tribute from Asia and
Africa
.”[13]
p. 337. “But the economic raison d’êre
of Imperialism in the opening up of China
is, as we see, quite other than the maintenance
of ordinary commerce: it consists in
establishing a vast new market for Western
investors, the profits of which will repre-
sent the gains of an investing class and
not the gains of whole peoples. The normal
healthy processes of assimilation of increased
world-wealth by nations are inhibited by
the nature of this Imperialism, whose
essence consists in developing markets for
investment, not for trade
, and in using the
superior economies of cheap foreign produc-
tion to supersede the industries of their
own nation, and to maintain the political
and economic domination of a class.”
essence
of
imperialism

p. 346. “For Europe to rule Asia by force for purposes
of gain, and to justify that rule by the pretence that
she is civilising Asia and raising her to a higher level
of spiritual life, will be adjudged by history, perhaps,
to be the crowning wrong and folly of Imperialism.
What Asia has to give, her priceless stores of wisdom
garnered from her experience of ages, we refuse to take;
the much or little which we could give we spoil by the
brutal manner of our giving. This is what Imperia-
lism
has done, and is doing, for Asia.

p. 350. “Speaking on Mr. Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill in 1886, Mr. Chamberlain said: ‘I should look for the solution in the direction of the principle of federation. My right honourable friend has looked for his model to the relations between this country and her self-governing and practically independent colonies.’” But federation is better, for then Ireland would remain an integral part of Great Britain, whereas with self-governing colonies the connection is only a moral one. At the present time the development of democracy is towards federation, union, and not separation (all this is from Chamberlain’s speech).

Chamberlain is for federation against separation,
against “centrifugal” tendencies.
[19]

p. 351. “Christendom thus laid out in
a few great federal Empires, each with
a retinue of uncivilised dependencies,
seems to many the most legitimate develop-
ment of present tendencies, and one which
would offer the best hope of permanent
peace on an assured basis of inter-Impe-
rialism.”
[14]
N.B.
c f. Kautsky
on “ultra-
imperialism”

Suggests that the idea is growing of pan-Teutonism, pan-Slavism, pan-Latinism, pan-Britishism, etc., there appears a series of “Unions of States”.

The outcome of Kautsky’s “ultra-impe-
rialism” and of a United States of Europe
based on capitalism would be: “inter-im-
perialism”!!

pp. 355-56. The “United Kingdom”, with the present imperialist policy, “cannot bear the financial strain of the necessary increase of ships without substantial colonial assistance”. This can lead to the separation of the colonies, whose interests are not bound up with (Great Britain’s) imperialist policy, in deciding which (policy) they can have no voice. Each of them—as a federal country—would have only an insignificant minority, in view of the huge number of British colonies, which in most cases have very little in common. “Imperial federation” is advantageous to Great Britain and disadvantageous to the colonies.

p. 373. “The new Imperialism kills a federation of free self-governing States: the colonies may look at it, but they will go their way as before.”

pp. 378-79. “The recent habit of invest-
ing capital in a foreign country has now
grown to such an extent that the well-to-do
and politically powerful classes in Great
Britain today derive a large and
ever-larger proportion of their incomes from
capital invested outside the British Empire
.
This growing stake of our wealthy
classes in countries over which they have
no political control is a revolution-
ary
force in modern politics; it means
a constantly growing tendency to use their
political power as citizens of this state
to interfere with the political
condition of those States where they have
an industrial stake.
policy of
finance
capital

“The essentially illicit nature of this use of the public resources of the nation to safeguard and improve private investments should be clearly recognised.”

 
⎛⎛
⎝⎝
petty-
bourgeois
utopia!!
 
⎞⎞
⎠⎠
p. 380. “These forces are commonly
described as capitalistic, but the gravest
danger arises not from genuine
industrial investments in foreign lands,
but from the handling of stocks and
shares based upon
these invest-
ments by financiers
.”

pp. 381-82. “Analysis of Imperialism,
with its natural supports, militarism,
oligarchy, bureaucracy, protection,
concentration of capital and violent trade
fluctuations, has marked it out as the
supreme danger of modern national
States
. The power of the imperialist
forces within the nation to use the
national resources for their private gain,
by operating the instrument of the State,
can only be overthrown by the establish-
ment of a genuine democracy
, the direction
of public policy by the people for the
people
through representatives over whom
they exercise a real control. Whether
this or any other nation is yet competent
for such a democracy may well be a mat-
ter of grave doubt, but until and unless
the external policy of a nation
is ‘broad-based upon a people’s will’,
there appears little hope of remedy.”
petty-
bourgeois
democrat!!
democratisation
of
foreign
policy

pp. 382-83.Imperialism is only beginning to
realise its full resources, and to develop into a fine art the
management of nations: the broad bestowal of a franchise,
wielded by a people whose education has reached the stage
of an uncritical ability to read printed matter, favours
immensely the designs of keen business politicians, who,
by controlling the press, the schools, and where neces-
sary the churches, impose Imperialism upon the masses
under the attractive guise of sensational patriotism
.

“The chief economic source of Imperialism has been found in the inequality of industrial opportunities by which a favoured class accumulates superfluous elements of income which, in their search for profitable investments, press ever farther afield: the influence on State policy of these investors and their financial managers secures a national alliance of other vested interests which are threatened by movements of social reform: the adoption of Imperialism thus serves the double purpose of securing private material benefits for favoured classes of investors and traders at the public cost, while sustaining the general cause of conservatism by diverting public energy and interest from domestic agitation to external employment.”

p. 383. “To term Imperialism a na-
tional
policy is an impudent falsehood:
the interests of the nation are opposed to
every act of this expansive policy.
Every enlargement of Great Britain in the
tropics is a distinct enfeeblement of
true British nationalism.
Indeed, Imperialism is commended in some
quarters for this very reason, that by break-
ing the narrow bounds of nationalities it
facilitates and forwards internationalism.
There are even those who favour or condone
the forcible suppression of small nationalities
by larger ones
under the impulse of Impe-
rialism, because they imagine that this
is the natural approach to a world-feder-
ation and eternal peace.”
à la Cunow
and Co.!!

The defenders of imperialism favour
swallowing up small nations!!

p. 384. “The hope of a coming internation-
alism enjoins above all else the maintenance
and natural growth of independent
nationalities
, for without such there
could be no gradual evolution of international-
ism, but only a series of unsuccessful attempts
at a chaotic and unstable cosmopoli-
tanism
. As individualism is essential to any
sane form of national socialism, so nation-
alism is essential to interna-
tionalism
: no organic conception of
world-politics can be framed on any other
supposition.
hodge-
podge

pp. 384-85. Insofar as the possibility exists of true national governments representing the interests of the people and not of a handful of oligarchs, to that extent clashes between nations will be eliminated and peaceful internationalism (along the lines of postal conventions, etc.) based on common interests between nations will increasingly develop. “The economic bond is far stronger and more reliable as a basis of growing internationalism than the so-called racial bond” (pan-Teutonic, pan-Slav, pan-British, etc.) “or a political alliance constructed on some short-sighted computation of a balance of power.

pp. 385-86. “We have foreshadowed the
possibility of even a larger alliance of Western
States, a European federation of
Great Powers
which, so far from forward-
ing the cause of
world-civilisation, might
introduce the gigantic peril
of a Western parasitism
, a group
of advanced industrial nations, whose
upper classes drew vast tribute from Asia
and Africa, with which they supported
great tame masses of retainers, no longer engaged
in the staple industries of agriculture and manu-
facture, but kept in the performance of personal
or minor industrial services under the control
of a new financial aristocracy.
Let those who would scout such a theory[15] as
undeserving of consideration examine
the economic and social condition of districts
in Southern England today which
ARE ALREADY REDUCED TO THIS CONDITION, and
reflect upon the vast extension of such
a system which might be rendered feasible
by the subjection of China to
the economic control of similar groups of
financiers, investors, and political
and business officials, draining the greatest
potential reservoir of profit the world has ever
known, in order to consume it in
Europe
. The situation is far too complex, the
play of world forces far too incalculable, to rend-
er this or any other single interpretation of the
future very probable; but the influences
which govern the Imperialism of Western Europe
today are moving in this direc-
tion
, and, unless counteracted or
diverted, make towards some such consumma-
tion
.[16]
###
### N.B.
###
true

 “If the ruling classes of the Western nations could
realise their interests in such a combination (and each
year sees capitalism more obviously international),
and if China were unable to develop powers of forcible
resistance, the opportunity of a parasitic Impe-
rialism
which should reproduce upon a vaster scale
many of the main features of the later Roman Empire
visibly presents itself
.”

p. 389. “The new Imperialism differs in no vital point from this old example” (the Roman Empire). It is just as much a parasite. But the laws of nature, which doom parasites to destruction, apply not only to individuals, but to nations. The complexity of the process and disguising its substance can delay but not avert final collapse. “The claim that an imperial state forcibly subjugating other peoples and their lands does so for the purpose of rendering services to the conquered equal to those which she exacts is notoriously false: she neither intends equivalent services nor is capable of rendering them.”


End





Notes

[1] See present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 255-56.—Ed.

[2] Ibid., pp. 255-56.—Ed.

[3] So given in Hobson’s book. It should be 1868.—Ed.

[4] See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 282.—Ed.

[5] Ibid., p. 242.—Ed.

[6] See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 277.—Ed.

[7] Ibid., p. 277.—Ed.

[8] See present edition, Vol. 22. p. 279.—Ed.

[9] See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 279.—Ed.

[10] Ibid., p. 279.—Ed.

[11] See present edition. Vol. 22, p. 279.—Ed.

[12] See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 289.—Ed.

[13] See present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 279-80.—Ed.

[14] Ibid., pp. 293-94.—Ed.

[15] In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin inserts in brackets: “It would be better to say: prospect” (see present edition, Vol. 22, p. 280, and Vol. 23, p. 109).—Ed.

[16] See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 280.—Ed.

[17] The extracts and accounts of various passages from Hobson’s book were made by N. K. Krupskaya. In going though the extracts, Lenin underlined some passages, wrote comments and made notes in the margin. The pages of the notebook were numbered by Lenin. His underlining is shown by the following type variations: a single underlining—italics; a double underlining—spaced italics; three lines—small heavy italics; a single wavy line—CAPITAL LETTERS; a double wavy line—SPACED CAPITAL LETTERS. All Lenin’s additions have been set in a heavy face; where these were once underlined—heavy italics, where twice underlined—spaced heavy italics.

In the preface to Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin pointed out that he had made use of the book by I. A. Hobson with all the care it merited. John Atkinson Hobson (1858-1940) was a well-known British economist, whose point of view was that of a bourgeois reformist and pacifist. The best-known of his writings are Problems of Poverty, The Evolution of Modern Capitalism and Imperialism. Lenin described the last-named as the “principal English work on imperialism” and a typical example of the petty-bourgeois criticism of imperialism. Lenin points out that Hobson’s book “gives a very good and comprehensive description of the principal specific economic and political features of imperialism” (see present edition, Vol. 22, p. 195). In the Notebooks on Imperialism, Lenin writes that “Hobson’s book on imperialism is useful in general, and especially useful because it helps to reveal the basic falsity of Kautskyism on this subject” (see p. 116 of this volume). While making use of Hobson’s rich factual data, Lenin criticised his reformist conclusions and his attempts, albeit veiled, to defend imperialism. p. 405

[18] The Boer war (1899-1902)—a colonial, predatory war of Great Britain against the South African republics, the Transvaal and Orange Free State, as a result of which these became British colonies. p. 422

[19] Lenin inserted here in the manuscript: “see the addition above, p. 7 of this notebook”. And at the top of p. 7 he wrote: “(see p. 41 of this notebook)”. Following this indication, the extract from p. 7 of the notebook has been included in the volume according to the sequence of the extracts from Hobson’s book, and not according to the pagination of the notebook. p. 431


Works Index | Volume 39 | Collected Works | L.I.A. Index
< Backward Forward >