Santayana's Law is inexorable.
Guess when these quotes originate, and regarding which batch of expansionist conquests: (I've edited a couple of identifying words, but left 99% of it intact)
• Seeing that the Imperialism of the last three decades is clearly condemned as a business policy, in that at enormous expense it has procured a small, bad, unsafe increase of markets, and has jeopardized the entire wealth of the nation in rousing the strong resentment of other nations, we may ask, "How is the nation induced to embark upon such unsound business?" The only possible answer is that the business interests of the nation as a whole are subordinated to those of certain sectional interests that usurp control of the national resources and use them for their private gain. This is no strange or monstrous charge to bring; it is the commonest disease of all forms of government. The famous words of Sir Thomas More are as true now as when he wrote them: "Everywhere do I perceive a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their own advantage under the name and pretext of the commonwealth."
• Although the new Imperialism has been bad business for the nation, it has been good business for certain classes and certain trades within the nation. The vast expenditure on armaments, the costly wars, the grave risks and embarrassments of foreign policy, the stoppage of political and social reforms within, though fraught with great injury to the nation, have served well the present business interests of certain industries and professions.
• It is idle to meddle with politics unless we clearly recognize this central fact and understand what these sectional interests are which are the enemies of national safety and the commonwealth. We must put aside the merely sentimental diagnosis which explains wars or other national blunders by outbursts of patriotic animosity or errors of statecraft. Doubtless at every outbreak of war not only the man in the street but the man at the helm is often duped by the cunning with which aggressive motives and greedy purposes dress themselves in defensive clothing. There is, it may be safely asserted, no war within memory, however nakedly aggressive it may seem to the dispassionate historian, which has not been presented to the people who were called upon to fight as a necessary defensive policy, in which the honor, perhaps the very existence, of the State was involved.
• The disastrous folly of these wars, the material and moral damage inflicted even on the victor, appear so plain to the disinterested spectator that he is apt to despair of any State attaining years of discretion, and inclines to regard these natural cataclysms as implying some ultimate irrationalism in politics. But careful analysis of the existing relations between business and politics shows that the aggressive Imperialism which we seek to understand is not in the main the product of blind passions of races or of the mixed folly and ambition of politicians. It is far more rational than at first sight appears. Irrational from the standpoint of the whole nation, it is rational enough from the standpoint of certain classes in the nation. A completely socialist State which kept good books and presented regular balance-sheets of expenditure and assets would soon discard Imperialism; an intelligent laissez-faire democracy which gave duly proportionate weight in its policy to all economic interests alike would do the same. But a State in which certain well-organized business interests are able to outweigh the weak, diffused interest of the community is bound to pursue a policy which accords with the pressure of the former interests.
No, it isn't from the Anti-Imperialist Society in rx to the decades of armed occupation and interference in Latin America, the Caribbean, and East Asia, though it certainly could be. This was a British economist writing in 1902 about the Raj, but the "follow the money" message - and the crucial point that it can't all be dismissed as "craziness" but rather is a perfectly rational if exceedingly-narrow self-interested policy, cupidity rather than "stupidity" - is timeless. (via Craig Murray.)
Now, make no mistake, Hobson is " No True Liberal" - which is to say, he is as typical of modern liberals like Billmon and Belle at Crooked Timber and so many others who believed, and far too many still believe in general while conceding that this expenditure of Blood For Oil was ill-advised, that "we" of the US/UK being Superior Moral Sorts had the right to go take other people's stuff that they're not using, and kill enough of them to gain their cooperation because We Are The Good Guys and it's for the Greater Good of the Whole World. Just read chapter IV of Part II, "Imperialism and the Lower Races" and you'll find plenty of the sort of blood-pressure escalating stuff that shows up in posts and comments on purportedly liberal blogs. (Ironically, you also find him quoting "Necessity knows no law" and allowing if relutctantly, the "we NEED our cheap bananas/tea/sugar/rubber!" cry as the justifying necessity for national Western survival. But another August was still 12 years in the offing, then. Karma's a bitch and then you die...)
But that doesn't negate the correctness of his observations regarding cui bono from Forever Wars and foreign exploitation, in our so-civilized Western society these past several hundred years, or why the problem of it isn't going away:
A people limited in number and energy and in the land they occupy have the choice of improving to the utmost the political and economic management of their own land, confining themselves to such accessions of territory as are justified by the most economical disposition of a growing population; or they may proceed, like the slovenly farmer, to spread their power and energy over the whole earth, tempted by the speculative value or the quick profits of some new market, or else by mere greed of territorial acquisition, and ignoring the political and economic wastes and risks involved by this imperial career. It must be clearly understood that this is essentially a choice of alternatives; a full simultaneous application of intensive and extensive cultivation is impossible. A nation may either, following the example of Denmark or Switzerland, put brains into agriculture, develop a finely varied system of public education, general and technical, apply the ripest science to its special manufacturing industries, and so support in progressive comfort and character a considerable population upon a strictly limited area; or it may, like Great r Britain, neglect its agriculture, allowing its lands to go out of cultivation and its population to grow up in towns, fall behind other nations in its methods of education and in the capacity of adapting to its uses the latest scientific knowledge, in order that it may squander its pecuniary and military resources in forcing bad markets and finding speculative fields of investment in distant corners of the earth...
• Seeing that the Imperialism of the last three decades is clearly condemned as a business policy, in that at enormous expense it has procured a small, bad, unsafe increase of markets, and has jeopardized the entire wealth of the nation in rousing the strong resentment of other nations, we may ask, "How is the nation induced to embark upon such unsound business?" The only possible answer is that the business interests of the nation as a whole are subordinated to those of certain sectional interests that usurp control of the national resources and use them for their private gain. This is no strange or monstrous charge to bring; it is the commonest disease of all forms of government. The famous words of Sir Thomas More are as true now as when he wrote them: "Everywhere do I perceive a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their own advantage under the name and pretext of the commonwealth."
• Although the new Imperialism has been bad business for the nation, it has been good business for certain classes and certain trades within the nation. The vast expenditure on armaments, the costly wars, the grave risks and embarrassments of foreign policy, the stoppage of political and social reforms within, though fraught with great injury to the nation, have served well the present business interests of certain industries and professions.
• It is idle to meddle with politics unless we clearly recognize this central fact and understand what these sectional interests are which are the enemies of national safety and the commonwealth. We must put aside the merely sentimental diagnosis which explains wars or other national blunders by outbursts of patriotic animosity or errors of statecraft. Doubtless at every outbreak of war not only the man in the street but the man at the helm is often duped by the cunning with which aggressive motives and greedy purposes dress themselves in defensive clothing. There is, it may be safely asserted, no war within memory, however nakedly aggressive it may seem to the dispassionate historian, which has not been presented to the people who were called upon to fight as a necessary defensive policy, in which the honor, perhaps the very existence, of the State was involved.
• The disastrous folly of these wars, the material and moral damage inflicted even on the victor, appear so plain to the disinterested spectator that he is apt to despair of any State attaining years of discretion, and inclines to regard these natural cataclysms as implying some ultimate irrationalism in politics. But careful analysis of the existing relations between business and politics shows that the aggressive Imperialism which we seek to understand is not in the main the product of blind passions of races or of the mixed folly and ambition of politicians. It is far more rational than at first sight appears. Irrational from the standpoint of the whole nation, it is rational enough from the standpoint of certain classes in the nation. A completely socialist State which kept good books and presented regular balance-sheets of expenditure and assets would soon discard Imperialism; an intelligent laissez-faire democracy which gave duly proportionate weight in its policy to all economic interests alike would do the same. But a State in which certain well-organized business interests are able to outweigh the weak, diffused interest of the community is bound to pursue a policy which accords with the pressure of the former interests.
No, it isn't from the Anti-Imperialist Society in rx to the decades of armed occupation and interference in Latin America, the Caribbean, and East Asia, though it certainly could be. This was a British economist writing in 1902 about the Raj, but the "follow the money" message - and the crucial point that it can't all be dismissed as "craziness" but rather is a perfectly rational if exceedingly-narrow self-interested policy, cupidity rather than "stupidity" - is timeless. (via Craig Murray.)
Now, make no mistake, Hobson is " No True Liberal" - which is to say, he is as typical of modern liberals like Billmon and Belle at Crooked Timber and so many others who believed, and far too many still believe in general while conceding that this expenditure of Blood For Oil was ill-advised, that "we" of the US/UK being Superior Moral Sorts had the right to go take other people's stuff that they're not using, and kill enough of them to gain their cooperation because We Are The Good Guys and it's for the Greater Good of the Whole World. Just read chapter IV of Part II, "Imperialism and the Lower Races" and you'll find plenty of the sort of blood-pressure escalating stuff that shows up in posts and comments on purportedly liberal blogs. (Ironically, you also find him quoting "Necessity knows no law" and allowing if relutctantly, the "we NEED our cheap bananas/tea/sugar/rubber!" cry as the justifying necessity for national Western survival. But another August was still 12 years in the offing, then. Karma's a bitch and then you die...)
But that doesn't negate the correctness of his observations regarding cui bono from Forever Wars and foreign exploitation, in our so-civilized Western society these past several hundred years, or why the problem of it isn't going away:
A people limited in number and energy and in the land they occupy have the choice of improving to the utmost the political and economic management of their own land, confining themselves to such accessions of territory as are justified by the most economical disposition of a growing population; or they may proceed, like the slovenly farmer, to spread their power and energy over the whole earth, tempted by the speculative value or the quick profits of some new market, or else by mere greed of territorial acquisition, and ignoring the political and economic wastes and risks involved by this imperial career. It must be clearly understood that this is essentially a choice of alternatives; a full simultaneous application of intensive and extensive cultivation is impossible. A nation may either, following the example of Denmark or Switzerland, put brains into agriculture, develop a finely varied system of public education, general and technical, apply the ripest science to its special manufacturing industries, and so support in progressive comfort and character a considerable population upon a strictly limited area; or it may, like Great r Britain, neglect its agriculture, allowing its lands to go out of cultivation and its population to grow up in towns, fall behind other nations in its methods of education and in the capacity of adapting to its uses the latest scientific knowledge, in order that it may squander its pecuniary and military resources in forcing bad markets and finding speculative fields of investment in distant corners of the earth...