Lenin: 1916/ni-kappa: J. A. HOBSON, IMPERIALISM (original) (raw)
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 Imperialismregarded as a policy consists chiefly in its adoptionby several nations. The notion of a number ofcompeting empires is essentially modern.”
N.B.
p. 9. “Nationalism is a plain highway to internation-alism, and if it manifests divergence we may wellsuspect a perversion of its nature and its purpose. Sucha perversion isImperialism, in whichnations trespassing beyond the limits of facile assim-ilation transform the wholesome stimulative rivalryof varied national types into the cut-throat struggleof 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 hasincluded 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 intoGreat Britainfrom
Exports fromGreat Britainto
p. 37
Percentages of
importsinto
exportsfrom
Annual averages for
Foreign coun- tries
British posses- sions
Foreign coun- tries
British posses- sions
‘Four- yearly’ averages
coloniesfromGreat
etcintoBritain
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:
p. 59. “In 1893 the British capital invested abroadrepresented about 15 per cent of the total wealthof the United Kingdom: nearly one-half of thiscapital (£770 mill.) was in the form of loans to foreignand colonial governments; of the rest a large pro-portion was invested in railways, banks, telegraphsand other public services, owned, controlled, orvitally affected by governments, while most of theremainder was placed in lands and mines, or inindustries 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, andvarious—£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 modernforeign policy of Great Britain is primarily a struggleforprofitable marketsof 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 thetax-payer so dear, which is of so little valueto the manufacturer and trader ... is asource of great gain to theinvestor....
“The annual income Great Britain derivesfrom commissions on her whole foreign andcolonial trade, import and export, is estimat-ed by Sir R. Giffen1) at £18,000,000 for1899, taken at 2 ½ per cent, upon a turnoverof £800,000,000.” Great as this sum is, itcannot explain the aggressive imperialismof Great Britain, which is explained by theincome 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 risksconnected with the political conditions in thecountries where they invest their capital.“The investing and specula-tive classes in general also desire thatGreat Britain should take other foreign areasunder her flag in order to secure new areasfor profitable investment and speculation.” p. 63. “If the special interest of the investoris liable to clash with the public interestand to induce a wrecking policy, still moredangerous is the SPECIAL INTERESTOF THE FINANCIER, THE GENERALDEALER IN INVESTMENTS. In largemeasure the rank and file of the investorsare, both for business and for politics, thecat’s-paw of the great financial houses,who use stocks and shares not so muchas investments to yield them interest, butas material for _speculation in the money_market.”
N.B.
N.B.
p. 68. “Such is the array of distinctively economicforces making for Imperialism, a large loose group oftrades and professions seeking profitable business andlucrative employment from the expansion of militaryand civil services, from the expenditure on militaryoperations, the opening up of new tracts of territoryand trade with the same, and the provision of new capitalwhich these operations require, all these finding theircentral 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 satisfiedby trading with other nations; the investors of capital,however, exert every effort “towards the political annex-ation of countries which contain their more speculativeinvestments”.
Capital investment is advantageous for a country,opening new markets for its trade “and employment forBritish 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 oncelimits the quantity of capital which can be effectivelyemployed and increases the share of profits out of whichfresh savings and fresh capital will spring.” The trustarises as an antidote to over-production, to excessiveinvestment of capital in the given industry; hence notall the capital which the participants in the trust wantto put into circulation can be invested within the frame-work of the trust. The trusts endeavour to invest thesurplus capital so as “to establish similar combinationsin other industries, economising capital still further,and rendering it ever harder for ordinary saving men tofind 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 formanufactures and for investments which is avowedlyresponsible for the adoption of _Imperialism_as a political policy and practice by the RepublicanParty to which the great industrial and financialchiefs 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 thegreat Republic of the West. They need Imperialismbecause they desire to use the public resources oftheir country to find profitable employment for thecapital which otherwise would be superfluous.
N.B.
“It is not indeed necessary to own a country inorder to do trade with it or to invest capital in it,and doubtless the United States can find some ventfor its surplus goods and capital in European coun-tries. But these countries are for the most part ableto make provision for themselves: most of them haveerected tariffs against manufacturing imports, andeven Great Britain is being urged to defend herselfby reverting to Protection. The big American manu-facturers and financiers will be compelled to lookto China and the Pacific and to South America fortheir most profitable chances. Protectionists byprinciple and practice, they will insist upon gettingas close a monopoly of these markets as they cansecure, and the competition of Germany, England,and other trading nations will drive them to theestablishment of special political relations with themarkets they most prize. Cuba, the Philippines,and Hawaii are but the hors d’oeuvre to whet anappetite for an ampler banquet. Moreover, the power-ful hold upon politics which these industrial andfinancial magnates possess forms a separate stimulus,which, as we have shown, is operative in GreatBritain and elsewhere; the public expenditure inpursuit of an imperial career will be a separateimmense source of profit to these men, as financiersnegotiating loans, shipbuilders and owners handlingsubsidies, contractors and manufacturers of arma-ments and other imperialist appliances.”
N.B.
p. 86. With the introduction of improved methodsof production, concentration of ownership and control,the capitalists find it more and more difficult “todispose profitably of their economic resources, andthey are tempted more and more to use their govern-ments in order to secure for their particular usesome distant undeveloped country by annexation andprotection”.
N.B.
At first sight it seems that the produc-tive forces and capital have outgrownconsumption and cannot find applicationin their own country. Therein, he says,lies the root of imperialism. But... “ifthe consuming public in thiscountry raised its standard of consumptionto keep pace with every rise of produc-tive powers, there could be no excessof goods or capital clamorous to useImperialism in order to find markets”.
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 industryto broaden the channel for the flow of their surpluswealth by seeking foreign markets andforeign
investments to take off the goodsand capital they cannot sell or useat home.
“The fallacy of thesupposedinevitability of imperialexpansion as a necessary outlet forprogressive industry is now manifest. It is not industrial prog-ress that demands the openingup of new markets and areas ofinvestment, but MALDISTRI-BUTION of consuming power whichprevents the absorption of commodi-ties and capital within the country.” p. 94. “There is no necessity toopen up new foreign markets; thehome markets are capable of indef-inite expansion.”
inevita-bility ofimperialism
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 militaryexpenditure from about 25 to 60 millions in a littleover a quarter of a century is the most significantfact of imperialist finance. The financial, industrial,and professional classes, who, we have shown, formthe economic core of Imperialism, have used their politi-cal power to extract these sums from the nation in orderto improve their investments and open up new fieldsfor capital, and to find profitable markets for theirsurplus goods, while out of the public sums expendedon these objects they reap other great privategains in the shape of profitable contracts,and lucrative or honourable employment.”
p. 103. “While the directors of this definitely parasiticpolicy are capitalists, the same motives appeal to SPECIAL CLASSES OF THE WORKERS. Inmany towns most important trades are dependent upongovernment employment or contracts; the Imperialismof the metal and shipbuilding centres is attributablein no small degree to this fact.”[8]
p. 114. “In other nations committed to or enteringupon 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 directit into the necessary channels.”
p. 115. “both (*)... will succumb more and more to the money-lending classes dressed as Imperialistsand patriots.”
N.B.
(*) i. e., Great Britain and the United States.
p. 120. “of the three hundred and sixty-sevenmillions of British subjects outside these isles, notmore than ten millions, or one in thirty-seven, have any real self-government for purposesof 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 sizeand influence, in these colonies, but nowhere doesit outnumber the non-elected element.It thus becomes an advisory rather than a reallylegislative factor. Not merely is the elected always domi-nated in numbers by the non-elected element, but in allcases the veto of the Colonial Office is freely exercised uponmeasures passed by the assemblies. To this it shouldbe added that in nearly all cases a fairly highproperty qualification is attached to thefranchise, precluding the coloured people from exercisingan elective power proportionate to their numbersand 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 progressin population and in practical freedom attained by ourfew democratic colonies.
“It has not made for the spread of British liberty andfor the propagation of our arts of government. Thelands and population which we have annexed we govern,insofar as we govern these at all, by distinctivelyautocraticmethods, administered chiefly from Down-ing Street, but partly from centres of colonial govern-ment, in cases where self-governing colonies have beenpermitted to annex.”
p. 133. “The pax Britannica, always an impudentfalsehood, has become of recent years a grotesque monsterof hypocrisy; along our Indian frontiers, in West Africa,in the Sudan, in Uganda, in Rhodesia, fightinghas been well-nigh incessant.”
p. 134. “Our economic analysis has disclosed thefact 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 publicresources to push their private businesses, and spendthe blood and money of the people in this vast and disas-trous military game, feigning national antagonismswhich have no basis in reality.”
pp. 135-36. “If we are to hold all that we havetaken since 1870 and to compete with the new industrialnations in the further partition of empires or spheresof 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, theserivals in the annexation of territory and ofmarkets throughout the world.”
pp. 143-44. “The organisation of vast nativeforces, armed with ‘civilised’ weapons, drilled in‘civilised’ methods, and commanded by ‘civilised’officers, formed one of the most conspicuous featuresof the latest stages of the great Eastern Empires, andafterwards of theRoman Empire. It hasproved one of the most perilous devices of parasitism,by which a metropolitan population entrusts thedefence of its lives and possessions to the precariousfidelity of ‘conquered races’, commanded by ambitiouspro-consuls.
!!
“One of the strangest symptoms of the blind-ness of Imperialism is the reckless indifferencewith which Great Britain, Franceand other imperial nations are embark-ing on this perilous dependence. Great Britainhas gone farthest. Most of the fighting by whichwe have won our Indian Empire has been doneby natives; in India, as more recently in Egypt, great standing armies are placed underBritish commanders; almost all the fighting associatedwith our African dominions, except in thesouthern 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 reducedto impotence; in England it now stands convictedof a gross palpable betrayal of the first conditions ofliberty, feebly fumbling after programmes as a sub-stitute for principles.... This surrender to Imperial-ism signifies that they have preferred the economicinterests of the possessing and speculative classes,to which most of their leaders belong, to the causeof Liberalism.”
!!ha-ha!!
p. 157. “Amid this general decline ofparliamentary government the ‘party system’ is visibly collapsing, based as it was on plain cleavagesin domestic policy which have little significance whenconfronted with the claims andpowersofImperialism.”
pp. 158-59. “Not merely is the reaction pos-sible, it is inevitable. As the despotic portion of ourEmpire has grown in area, a larger and larger numberof men, trained in the temper and methodsof 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 ofa superior caste living an artificial life removedfrom all the healthy restraints of ordinary Europeansociety, have returned to this country, bringing back the characters, sentiments, and ideas imposed by this foreignenvironment.”
Chapter II (162-206)—twaddle. It is headed “TheScientific Defence of Imperialism” and devoted to a“scientific” (in reality, commonplace-liberal) refutalof Darwinist “biological”, etc., “scientific justifica-tions” of imperialism.
pp. 204-05. “Suppose a federal govern-ment of Europeannations and theircolonial offspring to be possible in suchwise that internal conflicts were precluded,this peace of Christendom would be con-stantly imperilled by the ‘lower _races_’,black and yellow, who, adopting the armsand military tactics now discarded by the‘civilised races’, would overwhelm themin barbarian incursions, even as the ruderEuropean and Asiatic races overwhelmedthe Roman Empire.”
peaceandcolonies
Two causes weakened the old empires: (1) “eco-nomic parasitism”; (2) formation of armies recruitedfrom 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 enrichits ruling class and to bribe its tower classes intoacquiescence.”[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 theircombination is used for the same parasiticpurposes, and the white races, discardinglabour in its more arduous forms, LIVE AS A SORTOF WORLD ARISTOCRACY BY THE EXPLOITATION OF‘LOWER RACES’, while they hand over the policingof the world more and more to membersof thesesame races.”
N.B.N.B.
!!
p. 207. “Analysis of the actual course of modern(N. B. concept) Imperialism has laid bare thecombination of economic and political forceswhich fashions it. These forces are traced to theirsources in the selfish interests of certain industrial, financial, and professional classes, seeking privateadvantages out of a policy of imperial expansion,and using this same policy to protect them in theireconomic, political, and social privileges againstthe pressure of democracy.”
on thequestionofself-determina-tion
pp. 210-11 (note 2). “How far the mystification of motives cancarry a trained thinker upon politicsmay be illustrated by the astonish-ing argument of Professor Giddings,who, in discussing ‘_the consentof the governed_’ as a conditionof government, argues that ‘if a barbarouspeople is compelled to accept the authorityof a State more advanced in civilisation,the test of the rightfulness or wrongfulnessof this imposition of authority is to befound, not at all in any assent or resistanceat 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 populationto a higher plane of life, a free andrational consent will begiven by those who have come to under-stand all that has been done’ (Empire andDemocracy, p. 265). Professor Giddings doesnot seem to recognise that the entire weightof the ethical validity of this _curious_doctrine of retrospective consent is thrownupon the act of judging the degree of prob-ability that a free and rational consentwill be given, that his doctrine furnishesno sort of security for a competent, unbiassedjudgement, and that, in point of fact, IT ENDOWS ANY NATION WITH THE RIGHT TOSEIZE 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.”
!!
!!
ethicalsocialist
pp. 212-18(a reply to those defendingimperialism on the ground of ‘Christian’missionary activity): “What is the modeof equating the two groups of results? howmuch Christianity and civilisation balance,how much industry and trade? are curiousquestions which seem to need an answer.”
bien dit!!
p. 214. “He” **(Lord Hugh Cecil in hisspeech on May 4, 1900, in the Society forthe Propagation of the Gospel (!!!))**“thought that by making prominent to ourown minds the importance of missionarywork we should to some extent sanctify the spirit of Imperialism.”
gem!
p. 224. “The controlling and directingagentof 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, ANDWELL-ORGANISED groups in a nation.”
financecapital
⎛⎛⎝⎝
from the side-lines, from afar, theylook on and whip up passions, as duringthe Boer war.[18]
⎞⎞⎠⎠
pp. 227-28. “_Jingoism_ is merely the lustof the spectator, unpurged by any person-al effort, risk, or sacrifice, gloating in theperils, pains, and slaughter of fellow-menwhom he does not know, but whose destruc-tion he desires in a blind and artificiallystimulated passion of hatred and revenge.In the Jingo all is concentrated on thehazard and blind fury of the fray. Thearduous and weary monotony of the march,the long periods of waiting, the hard priva-tions, the terrible tedium of a prolongedcampaign, play no part in his imagination;the redeeming factors of war, the fine senseof comradeship which common personalperil educates, the fruits of discipline andself-restraint, the respect for the personal-ity of enemies whose courage he must admitand whom he comes to realise as fellow-beings—all _these moderatingelements in actual war areeliminated from the passion_of the Jingo. It is precisely for these reasonsthat some friends of peace maintain thatthe two most potent checks of militarismand of war are the obligation of the entirebody of citizens to undergo military serviceand the experience of an invasion.
quaint!
...“It is quite evident that THESPECTATORIAL LUST OF JINGOISMis a most serious factor in Imperialism.The dramatic falsification both of warand of the whole policy ofim-perial expansion required tofeed this popular passion forms no smallportion of the art of the _real organisers_of imperialist, exploits, the small groupsof businessmen and politicians who knowwhat they want and how to get it.
“Tricked out with the real or sham gloriesof military heroism and the magnificentclaims of empire-making, _J i n g o i s m_becomes a NUCLEUS OF A SORT OF PATRIOTISMwhich can be moved _to any folly_or to any crime.”
sic!
pp. 232-33. “The area of danger is, ofcourse, far wider than Imperialism,covering the whole field of vestedinterests. But, if the analysis of pre-vious chapters is correct, Imperialismstands as a first defence of these interests:for the financial and speculative classesit means a pushing of their private businessesat the public expense, for the _export_manufacturers and merchants a forcibleenlargement of foreign markets and a rela-tedpolicy of Protection, for the offi-cial and professional classeslarge openings of honourable and lucrativeemployment, for the Church it representsthe temper and practice of authority andthe assertion of spiritual control over vastmultitudes of lower people, for the politi-cal oligarchy it means the onlyeffective diversionof the forcesof democracy and the opening of greatpublic 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 tropicalcountries “are of vital importance to the maintenanceand progress ofWesterncivilisation.... Partlyfrom sheer growth of population in temperate zones,partly from the rising standard of material life, thisdependence of the temperate on the tropical countriesmust grow”. Ever larger areas of the tropical countrieshave to be cultivated. At the same time, owing to thecharacteristics which the hot climate develops in thelocal inhabitants, the latter are incapable of progress:they are feckless, their wants do not grow larger.“The resources of the tropics will not be developedvoluntarily by the natives themselves” (239).
!!
pp. 239-40. “We cannot, it is held, leave theselands barren; it is our duty to see that theyare developed for the good of the world. White mencannot ‘colonise’ these lands and, thus settling,develop the natural resources by the labour of theirown hands; they can only organise andsuperintend the labour of the natives. Bydoing this they can educate the natives in the artsof 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 civilisednation with the duty of educating a lower race, theclaim of a ‘trust’ is nothing else than an impu-dent actof 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 powerswould mean the exploitation of the non-European coun-tries. The Europeans’ rule in China “sufficiently exposesthe hollowness in actual history of the claims that con-siderations of a trust for civilisation animate and regulatethe foreign policy of Christendom, or of its componentnations.... Whenany common internation-al policy is adopted for dealing with _lower_races it has partaken of the nature, not of a moral trust,butof a business ‘_deal_’”.
(((On the question of a United States of Europe!!)))
pp. 259-60. “The widest and ultimately the mostimportant of the struggles in South Africa is thatbetween the policy of Basutoland and that ofJohannesburg 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’, andan ‘_insane_’ Imperialism, which hands overthese races to the economic exploitation of whitecolonists who will use them as ‘live tools’, and theirlands as repositories of mining or other profitabletreasure.”
>
p. 262 (note). “In the British Protectorate ofZanzibar and Pemba, however, slaverystillexists ... and British courts of justice recognise thestatus”.... Liberation proceeds too slowly, many beinginterested persons. “Out of an estimated populationof 25,000 slaves in Pemba, less than 5,000 had beenliberated so far under the decree.”
!!
((1897-1902))
The sultan’s decree on liberationof slaves was promulgated in 1897,but this statement was made in1902, on April 4, at a meeting ofthe 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 furnishedthe nucleus out of which Imperialism has grown, theearly 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 agreementor breaches of order; other interests, political andreligious, enter in more largely, the original commercialsettlement assumes a stronger political and militarycharacter, the reins of government are commonly takenover by the Statefromthe company, and a vaguelydefined protectorate passes gradually into the formof a colony.”
p. 270. The local inhabitants are forcibly com-pelled to work for industrial companies; this issometimes done in the guise of organising a “militia”from the local population, ostensibly for defenceof the country but in fact it has to work for theEuropean industrial companies.
N.B.
p. 272. A boat comes to the shore, the chiefsare captivated by gifts of beads and trinkets, inreturn for which they put their mark to a “treaty”,the meaning of which they do not understand. Thetreaty is signed by an interpreter and the adventurerwho has come to the country, which is thereafterregarded as the ally (colony) of the country fromwhich 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-sightedbusiness interests of white farmers or white mine-ownersare permitted, either by action taken on their own accountor through pressure on a Colonial or Imperial Govern-ment, to invade the lands of ‘lower peoples’, and transferto their private profitable purposes the land or labour,the first law of ‘_sane_’ Imperialism is violated, and thephrases about teaching ‘_the dignity oflabour_’ and raising races of ‘children’ to manhood,whether used by directors of mining companies or bystatesmen in the House of Commons, are little betterthan wantonexhibitions of hypocrisy. Theyare based on a FALSIFICATION OF THE FACTS, AND A PER-VERSION OF THE MOTIVES which actually direct thepolicy.”
p. 295. “The stamp of ‘_parasitism_’ is uponevery white settlement among these lower races, thatis to say, nowhere are the relations between whitesand coloured people such as to preserve a wholesomebalance of mutual services. The best services whichwhite civilisation might be capable of rendering,by examples of normal, healthy, white communitiespractising the best arts of Western life, are precludedby climatic and other physical conditions in almostevery case: the presence of a scattering of whiteofficials, missionaries, traders, mining or plantationoverseers, a dominant male caste with littleknowledge of or sympathy for the institutions of thepeople, is ill-calculated to give to these lower raceseven such gains as Western civilisation might becapable 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 inIndia are struggling to live on half anacre. Their existence is a constant strugglewith starvation, ending too often in defeat.Their difficulty is not to live human lives—lives up to the level of their poor standardof comfort—but to live at all and not die....We may truly say that in India, except in theirrigated tracts, famine is chronic—endemic.”
⎛⎝
size ofpeasantholdingsin India
⎞⎠
N.B.
p. 323. “The delusion” (that “we are civilisingIndia”) “is only sustained by the sophistry ofImperialism, which weaves these fallacies to cover itsnakedness and the advantages which certain interestssuck 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, ashas been shown, is serviceable in many ways to themaintenance 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 internalreform. Everywhere the power of capital in itsmore concentrated forms is better organisedthan the power of labour, and has reached afurther stage in its development; while labourhas talked of international co-operation,capital has been achieving it. So far, there-fore, as the greatest financial and commercialinterests are concerned, it seems quite pro-bable that the coming generation may witnessso powerful an international union as torender wars between the Western nations almostimpossible. Notwithstanding the selfish jealous-ies and the dog-in-the-manger policies whichat present weaken European action in theFar East, the real drama will beginwhen the forces of international capitalism,claiming to represent the civilisation of unitedChristendom, are brought tobear on thepeaceful opening up of **China.**It is then that the real ‘yellow peril’ willbegin. If it is unreasonable to expect thatChina can develop a national **patriotism**which will enable her to expel the Westernexploiters, she must then be subjected to a pro-cess of disintegration, which is more aptlydescribed as ‘the break-up’ of China thanby the term ‘development’.
bien dit!!
⎛⎝
“a UnitedStates ofEurope”
“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 thenawaken to the fact that they have permitted certainlittle cliques of private profit-mongers to engagethem in a piece of Imperialism inwhich every cost and peril of that hazardous policy is multiplied a hundred-fold, and fromwhich there appears no possibility ofsafe withdrawal.”
p. 335.((N.B.: the prospect of parasitism.)) “The greater part of Western Europe might **then**assume the appearance and character already exhibitedby tracts of country in the South of England,in the Riviera, and in the tourist-ridden or residentialparts of Italy and Switzerland,little clus-ters of wealthy aristocrats drawing dividends andpensions from the Far East, with a somewhat largergroup of professional retainers and tradesmen and a largerbody of personal servants andworkers in thetransport 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 foodsand manufactures flowing in as tribute from Asia andAfrica.”[13]
p. 337. “But the economic _raison d’êre_of Imperialism in the opening up of Chinais, as we see, quite other than the maintenanceof ordinary commerce: it consists inestablishing a vast new market for Westerninvestors, the profits of which will repre-sent the gains of an investing class andnot the gains of whole peoples. The normalhealthy processes of assimilation of increasedworld-wealth by nations are inhibited bythe nature of this Imperialism, whoseessence consists in developing markets forinvestment, not for trade, and in using thesuperior economies of cheap foreign produc-tion to supersede the industries of theirown nation, and to maintain the politicaland economic domination of a class.”
_essence_ofimperialism
p. 346. “For Europe to rule Asia by force for purposesof gain, and to justify that rule by the pretence thatshe is civilising Asia and raising her to a higher levelof spiritual life, will be adjudged by history, perhaps, to be the crowning wrong and folly ofImperialism.What Asia has to give, her priceless stores of wisdomgarnered from her experience of ages, we refuse to take;the much or little which we could give we spoil by thebrutal 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 principleof 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 ina few great federal Empires, each witha retinue of uncivilised dependencies,seems to many the most legitimate develop-ment of present tendencies, and one whichwould offer the best hope of permanentpeace on an assured basis of inter-Impe-rialism.”[14]
N.B.c f. Kautskyon “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 offree 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 nowgrown to such an extent that the well-to-doand politically powerful classes in GreatBritain today derivea large andever-larger proportion of their incomes fromcapital invested outside the British Empire.This growing stake of our wealthyclasses in countries over which they have no political control is a revolution-ary force in modern politics; it meansa constantly growing tendency to use theirpolitical power as citizens of this stateto interfere with the politicalcondition of those States where they havean industrial stake.
policy offinancecapital
“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-bourgeoisutopia!!
⎞⎞⎠⎠
p. 380. “These forces are commonlydescribed as capitalistic, but the gravestdanger arises not from **genuine**industrial investments in foreign lands,but from the handling of stocks andshares based uponthese invest-ments by financiers.”
pp. 381-82. “Analysis of Imperialism,with its natural supports, militarism,oligarchy, bureaucracy, protection,concentration of capital and violent tradefluctuations, has marked it out as the supreme danger of modern nationalStates. The power of the imperialistforces within the nation to use thenational 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 directionof public policy by the people for thepeople through representatives over whomthey exercise a real control. Whetherthis or any other nation is yet competentfor such a democracy may well be a mat-ter of grave doubt, but until and unlessthe external policy of a nationis ‘broad-based upon a people’s will’,there appears little hope of remedy.”
petty-bourgeoisdemocrat!!
democratisationof_foreign_policy
pp. 382-83. “Imperialism is only beginning torealise its full resources, and to develop into a fine art themanagement of nations: the broad bestowal of a franchise,wielded by a people whose education has reached the stageof an uncritical ability to read printed matter, favoursimmensely the designs of keen business politicians, who,
by controlling the press, the schools, and where neces-sary the churches, impose Imperialism upon the massesunder 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 toevery act of this expansive policy.Every enlargement of Great Britain in thetropics is a distinct enfeeblement of true British nationalism.Indeed, Imperialism is commended in somequarters for this very reason, that by break-ing the narrow bounds of nationalities itfacilitates and forwards internationalism.There are even those who favour or condonethe forcible suppression of small nationalitiesby larger ones under the impulse of Impe-rialism, because they imagine that thisis the natural approach to a world-feder-ation and eternal peace.”
à la Cunowand Co.!!
The defenders of imperialism favourswallowing up small nations!!
p. 384. “The hope of a coming internation-alism enjoins above all else the maintenanceand natural growth of independentnationalities, for without such therecould 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 anysane form of national socialism, so nation-alism is essential to interna-tionalism: no organic conception ofworld-politics can be framed on any othersupposition.
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 thepossibility of even a larger alliance of WesternStates, a European federation ofGreat Powers which, so far from forward-ing the cause of world-civilisation, mightintroduce the gigantic perilof a Western parasitism, a groupof advancedindustrial nations, whose upper classes drew vast tribute from _Asia_and Africa, with which they supportedgreat tame masses of retainers, no longer engagedin the staple industries of agriculture and manu-facture, but kept in the performance of personalor minor industrial services under the control of a new financial aristocracy.Let those who would scout such a theory[15]asundeserving of consideration examinethe economic and social condition of _districts_in Southern England today which ARE ALREADY REDUCED TO THIS CONDITION, andreflect upon the vast extension of sucha system which might be rendered feasibleby the subjection of China tothe economic control of similar groups of financiers, investors, and politicaland business officials, draining the _greatest_potential reservoir of profit the world has everknown, in order to consume it inEurope. The situation is far too complex, theplay of world forces far too incalculable, to rend-er this or any other single interpretation of thefuture very probable; but the influenceswhich govern the Imperialism of Western Europetoday are moving in this direc-tion, and, unless counteracted ordiverted, make towards some such consumma-tion.[16]
###### N.B.###
true
“If the ruling classes of the Western nations couldrealise their interests in such a combination (and eachyear sees capitalism more obviously international),and if China were unable to develop powers of forcibleresistance, the opportunity of a parasiticImpe-rialism which should reproduce upon a vaster scale many of the main features of the later Roman Empirevisibly 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.”
[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.
[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