John Atkinson Hobson

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John Atkinson Hobson (born July 6, 1858 in Derby , † April 1, 1940 in Hampstead - London ) was an English publicist and economist .

Life

Born in the English Derby, Hobson studied at Lincoln College , Oxford and, after graduating in 1880, worked as a teacher of classical and English literature. After moving to London in 1887 , he accepted a position at the London School of Economics .

In 1899 he was sent to South Africa as a correspondent by the Manchester Guardian to cover the Second Boer War . During his stay, his idea that imperialism was a consequence of modern capitalism and its system-immanent striving for expansion took on concrete forms. When he returned to England, he began to write about and against the hurray patriotism widespread in England and criticized the war in Africa. In 1902 he published his most famous work Imperialism - A Study , in which he linked imperialism with its economic views.

The declared opponent of the First World War was during the same, among other things, a member of the Union of Democratic Control , which spoke out against the influence of the military on the government, criticized censorship and the introduction of conscription and called for a more liberal and peaceful foreign policy.

In 1919 he became a member of the Independent Labor Party and subsequently wrote several socialist publications. In 1938 he published an autobiography.

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Hobson became known, among other things, for his criticism of neoclassical economists. In his under-consumption theory , he took the view that in the industrialized countries of the western world production was growing faster than mass purchasing power. The colonial expansion therefore represents an attempt to open up or to create sales markets for overproduction as well as raw material sources and cheap production locations. He already foresaw the main features of a globalized economy (“The increasing cosmopolitanism of capital is the most significant new phenomenon in the economic field in the last generation.” In: Imperialism - A Study ).

However, Hobson warned that the special interests of the capital owners dominated state affairs. Their radical capitalism and expansionism necessarily resulted in conflicts with rival nations, which the powers could possibly drive into armed conflict. He assumed that, in the worst case, capitalism would destroy the earth through its urge to expand. Hobson went further than Marx, who derived the self-destruction of the capitalist system from the contradictions of the mode of production.

In his early writings, but especially in his reflections on South Africa and the Boer War, anti-Semitic tones can also be found, according to which British politics are supposedly in the grip of Jews and are determined and directed by their (financial) interests (the South African city of Johannesburg he called "New Jerusalem").

Imperialism - A Study was taken up by Lenin for his work Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism .

Fonts (selection)

  • The Law of the Three Rents (1891)
  • The Physiology of Industry (1889, with Albert Mummery )
  • The Psychology of Jingoism (1901)
  • Imperialism - A Study (1902; online )
  • Work and Wealth: A human valuation (1914)
  • 1920: Dips into the Near Future (under the pseudonym Lucian , 1917/1918; online )
  • Le sens de la responsabilité dans la vie sociale (= Enquêtes Sociologiques. Vol. 2). With Herman Finer and Hanna Meuter . Institut de sociologie Solvay, Brussels 1938 (multilingual).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard S. Levy : Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution. Volume 1, Santa Barbara 2005, pp. 311 f.
personal data
SURNAME Hobson, John Atkinson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English publicist and economist
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Derby
DATE OF DEATH April 1, 1940
Place of death Hampstead -London