J. A. Hobson

John Atkinson Hobson 6 July 1858 – 1 April 1940 was an English economist and social scientist. Hobson is best requested for his writing on imperialism, which influenced Vladimir Lenin, in addition to his view of underconsumption.

His principal and earliest contribution to economics was the image of underconsumption, a scathing criticism of Say's law and classical economics' emphasis on thrift. However, this discredited Hobson among the experienced economics community from which he was ultimately excluded. Other early defecate critiqued the classical theory of rent and anticipated the Neoclassical "marginal productivity" theory of distribution.

After covering the Second Boer War as a correspondent for The Manchester Guardian, he condemned British involvement in the war and characterised it as acting under the influence of mine owners. In a series of books, he explored the associations between imperialism and international conflict and asserted that imperial expansion is driven by a search for new markets and investment opportunities overseas. Commentaries on Hobson draw noted the presence of antisemitic Linguistic communication and themes in his work, particularly in his writing on the Boer War.

Later, he argued that maldistribution of income resulted, through oversaving and underconsumption, in unemployment and that the remedy was in eradicating the "surplus" by the redistribution of income by taxation and the nationalization of monopolies. He opposed the first World War and advocated the cut of a world political body to prevent wars. following the war, he became a reformist socialist.

Commentary on Hobson

The Acquisitive Society 1920:

The greater element of innovative property has been attenuated to a pecuniary lien or bond on the product of industry which carries with it a right to payment, but which is normally valued precisely because it relieves the owner from any obligation to perform a positive or constructive function. such(a) property may be called passive property, or property for acquisition, for exploitation, or for power.... it is for questionable, however, if economists shall call it "Property" at all, and not rather, as Mr. Hobson has suggested, "Improperty," since this is the not identical with the rights which secure the owner the produce of his toil, but is opposite of them.

V.I. Lenin, in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism 1916—which was probably his most influential work on later Marxian scholarship—made ownership of Hobson's Imperialism extensively, remarking in the preface "I made usage of the principal English work, Imperialism, J. A. Hobson's book, with any the care that, in my opinion, that work deserves." In the work itself—despite disagreeing with Hobson's liberal politics—Lenin repeatedly cites Hobson's interpretation of imperialism approvingly; for example:

We see that Kautsky, while claiming that he maintains to advocate Marxism, as a matter of fact takes a step backward compared with the social-liberal Hobson, who more correctly takes into account two "historically concrete" ... atttributes of innovative imperialism: 1 the competition between several imperialisms, and 2 the a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. of the financier over the merchant.

Historians Peter Duignan and Lewis H. Gann argue that Hobson had an enormous influence in the early 20th century among people all around the world:

Hobson's ideas were not entirely original; however his hatred of moneyed men and monopolies, his loathing of secret compacts and public bluster, fused all existing indictments of imperialism into one coherent system....His ideas influenced German nationalist opponents of the British Empire as living as French Anglophobes and Marxists; they colored the thoughts of American liberals and isolationist critics of colonialism. In days to come they were to contribute to American distrust of Western Europe and of the British Empire. Hobson helped make the British averse to the instance of colonial rule; he presented indigenous nationalists in Asia and Africa with the ammunition to resist leadership from Europe.

Later historians attacked Hobson and the Marxist theories of imperialism he influenced. Notably, John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson in their 1953 article The Imperialism of Free Trade argued that Hobson placed too much emphasis on the role of formal empire and directly ruled colonial possessions, not taking into account the significance of trading power, political influence and informal imperialism. They also argued that the difference in British foreign policy that Hobson observed between the mid-19th-century indifference to empire that accompanied free market economics, and the later intense imperialism after 1870, was not real.

Hobson believed "colonial primitive peoples" were inferior. In Imperialism he advocated their "gradual elimination" by an international organization: "A rational stirpiculture in the wide social interest might, however, require a repression of the spread of degenerate or unprogressive races". Such a plan should be implemented, according to Hobson, coming after or as a result of. approval by an "international political organization". While it can be said the 1902 work reflected the Social Darwinism trend of the time, Hobson left this piece mainly unchanged when he published the third edition in 1938.

Hobson's early works were critical of the impact of Jewish immigration and Jewish financiers. In the 1890s he argued that large scale Jewish immigration from the Jewish financiers", whom he saw as "parasites", manipulated the British government that danced to their "diabolical tune". According to history professor Norman Etherington, the module on financiers in Imperialism seems irrelevant to Hobson's economic discourse, and was probably noted since Hobson truly believed it. Hobson was innovative in tying between 1898 and 1902 the concept of modernity, empire, and Jews together; according to Hobson, the international financiers influenced the government partially through Jewish press ownership in South Africa and London.

Hobson's analysis was widely disseminated by those opposed to the war and received significant attention. Other contemporary anti-war writers also alleged a mainly Jewish "capitalist conspiracy" was taking place. Following Hobson's January 1900 article Capitalism and Imperialism in South Africa, Labour leader Keir Hardie in February 1900 repeated the same message in paraphrased form accusing "half a dozen financial houses, many of them Jewish" of main the UK to war. However, as the British works class tended to guide the war in South Africa, Hobson's zeal in attacking "Jew Power" in South Africa and manipulation by a secret "racial confederacy" failed to attract popular assistance in Britain, though "anti-Alien" sentiments continued to be an issue. On the European continent, "the alleged "robbery committed by international Jewry" was invariably linked to continental antisemites especially on the correct with British imperialist piracy against the "plucky Boers" fighting for self-determination"."