Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Hobson, Lenin, and Schumpeter on Imperialism

1955; University of Pennsylvania Press; Volume: 16; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2707667

1086-3222

Daniel H. Kruger,

Australian History and Society

In recent years the charge that capitalism is imperialistic has taken on new meaning. In the ideological being fought between the free world and Communism, this charge has become an important weapon in the Communist propaganda arsenal. As the cold war developed and lines were clearly drawn, the Communists have been beating the propaganda drums incessantly: Capitalism is imperialistic! Capitalism feeds on and aggression! capitalist countries are warmongers! Variations on this theme have been used doggedly by Communist writers and speakers. Whenever the Soviet delegate arises to speak in the United Nations, some variant of this theme appears. In numerous articles in Pravda, as reported in The New York Times in the last few years, the same charges have reappeared in one form or another. There is a determined attempt on their part to portray capitalism as imperialisticespecially to the countries of Asia and Africa. In view of this official position of the Communists, a study of has a modem flavor. The bases for such declarations need to be examined in an effort to place them in their proper perspective. The intellectual roots for these charges are found in the writings of Nicolai Lenin, who in turn borrowed heavily from John A. Hobson. In this paper the writings of Hobson and Lenin on will be examined, as well as those of Joseph A. Schumpeter, who has advanced, in the writer's opinion, the best counter-declaration to the Communist claim that capitalism is inherently imperialistic. It must be stated at the outset that this study does not purport to exhaust the subject, even as to the writers covered. Adequate research on a single item in the vast complex that constitutes would require more than a single lifetime. This should not discourage endeavors to relate the present phenomenon to its intellectual foundation in an effort to understand better one of the dominant issues in today's ideological battle. One difficulty in the study of has been to ascribe a meaningful definition to this term.1 It is certainly misleading to describe by the same word imperialism both the European statesman who plans ruthlessly to overrun a country in Asia or Africa and the American company building an automobile assembly plant in Israel. Because the term is so elusive and covers practices and procedures of such varying and ofttimes contradictory character, no attempt will be made to contribute to the confusion by spelling out another definition. The definitions used by the writers under consideration will be presented.