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J. A. Hobson

31 quotes

“If imperial expansion were really nothing other than a phase of the natural history of a nation it would be as idle to protest against it as to argue with an earthquake. But the policy of civilised States differs from that of uncivilised States in resting more largely upon deliberate conscious choice, partaking more definitely of the character of conduct.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he tendency of growing civilisation on the national scale has been more and more to divert the struggle for life from a struggle with other nations to a struggle with environment, and so to utilise the fruits of reason as to divert a larger and larger proportion of energy to struggles for intellectual, moral, and aesthetic goods rather than for goods which tax the powers of the earth, and which, conforming to the law of diminishing returns, are apt to bring them into conflict with other nations.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As nations advance towards civilisation it becomes less needful for them to contend with one another for land and food to support their increasing numbers, because their increased control of the industrial arts enables them to gain what they want by conquering nature instead of conquering their fellow-men.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he instinct for control of land, drives back to the earliest times when a wide range of land was necessary for a food supply for men or cattle, and is linked on to the "trek" habit, which survives more powerfully than is commonly supposed in civilised peoples. ... The animal lust of struggle, once a necessity, survives in the blood.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This new and enlarged edition of The Evolution of Modern Capitalism contains additions and alterations so great as to constitute it in effect a new book.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface to the Revised Edition (October, 1906)
“We now stand face to face with the main objection so often raised against all endeavours to remedy industrial and social diseases by the expansion of public control. ...The strife, danger, and waste of industrial competition are necessary conditions to industrial vitality.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Much individual enterprise in industry does not make for industrial progress. A larger and larger proportion of the energy given out in trade competition is consumed in violent warfare between trade rivals and is not represented either in advancement of industrial arts or in increase of material wealth.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“History does not show greed of gain as the motive of the great steps in industrial progress. The love of science, the pure delight of mechanical invention, the attainment of some slight personal convenience in labour, and mere chance, play the largest part in the history of industrial improvements. These motives would be as equally operative under state-control as under private enterprise.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The substitution of industrialism for warfare is not... understood to imply a diminution of individual enterprise, but an alteration in its application.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All progress, from primitive savagedom to modern civilisation, will... appear as consisting in the progressive socialisation of the lower functions, the stoppage of lower forms of competition and of the education of the more brutal qualities, in order that a larger and larger proportion of individual activity may be engaged in the exercise of higher functions, the practice of competition upon higher planes, and the education of higher forms of fitness.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is, in fact, the philosophical defence of progressive socialism, that human progress requires that one after another the lower material animal functions shall be reduced to routine, in order that a larger amount of individual effort may be devoted to the exercise of higher functions and the cultivation by strife of higher qualities.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Under socialized industry progress in the industrial arts would be slower and would absorb a smaller proportion of individual interest, in order that progress in the finer intellectual and moral arts might be faster, and might engage a larger share of life.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Higher progress can only be purchased by an economy of the work of lower progress, the free, conscious expression of higher individuality by the routine subordination of lower individuality.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Industrial progress would undoubtedly be slower under state-control, because the very object of such control is to divert a larger proportion of human genius and effort from these occupations in order to apply them in producing higher forms of wealth. It is not, however, right to assume that progress in the industrial arts would cease under state-industry; such progress would be slower, and would itself partake of a routine character—a slow, continuous adjustment of the mechanism of production and distribution to the slowly-changing needs of the community.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Corporations are in a sense moral monsters; we say they behave as such and we are disposed to treat them as such. The standard of international morality, particularly in matters of commercial intercourse, is on a still lower level.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On what a slippery slope ...international morality reposes.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nations are represented not merely as self-centered, independent moral systems, but as, in some degree, mutually repellent systems. This notion is partly the product of the false patriotic teaching of our schools and press, which seek to feed our sense of national unity more upon exclusive than inclusive sentiments. Nations are represented as rivals and competitors in some struggle for power, or greatness, or prestige, instead of as coöperators in the general advance of civilization.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The generally accepted image of international trade is one in which a number of trading communities... are engaged in striving each to win for itself, and at the expense of the others, the largest possible share of a strictly limited objective—the world market. ... So far as world or international trade is rightly presented as a competitive process, that competition takes place not between America, Britain, Germany, but between a number of separate American, British, German, firms. The immediate interests of these firms is not directed along political lines.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The imputation of political significance to... statistics, taken either in aggregate or in relation to separate countries, as if they were themselves indices of public gain or public loss, has most injurious reactions upon the intelligent understanding of commerce.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is untrue that the world market is strictly limited, with the consequence that every advance of one group of traders is at the expense of another group. The world market is indefinitely expansible and is always expanding...”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Envisaging the whole range of foreign commerce... the image of it as a prize which governments can, and ought to win for their traders at the expense of the traders supported by other governments, has been a most fertile source of international misunderstanding.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps the worst of the three fallacies, and in a sense the deepest-rooted, is the concept of export trade as of more value than import trade.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The money received for sales has no other significance or value than its power to buy, and trade can only be imaged truly as an exchange of goods for goods in which the processes of selling and of buying are complementary.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the interests of consumers and the interests of producers weighed equally in the eyes of governments, as they should, the strongest of all obstacles to a peaceful harmonious society of nations would be overcome. For the suspicions, jealousies, and hostilities of nations are inspired more by the tendency of groups of producers to misrepresent their private interests as the good of their respective countries than by any other single circumstance.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The richly nourished patriotism of war breeds divisions and antagonisms which are easily exploited afterwards by political, racial, religious, and cultural passions, but most of all by economic interests.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Economic nationalism means protective and discriminative tariffs, and a conservation of national, imperial or allied resources within a circle of favored beneficiaries.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is it not the larger and the longer hope and interest of America to live as a great partner in... a society of nations, rather than to live a life of isolated prosperity... ?”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There can, we are told, be no real "rights" of nations because there exists no "sanction," no recognised tribunal to define and enforce rights. ... It may here suffice to say that the maintenance under ordinary conditions of treaty relations, international credit and exchange, a common postal, and within narrower limits, a common railway system, not to mention the actual machinery of conventions and conferences for concerted international action, and the whole unwritten law of war and international courtesies, embassies, consulates, and the like—all these things rest upon a basis of recognition of certain reciprocal duties, the neglect or violation of which would be punished by forfeiture of most favoured nations' treatment in the future, and by the reprobation and the possibly combined intervention of other States.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The present class government means the severance or antagonism of nations, because each ruling class can only keep and use its rule by forcing the antagonisms of foreign policy: intelligent democracies would perceive their identity of interest, and would ensure it by their amicable policy. The genuine forces of internationalism, thus liberated, would first display themselves as economic forces, securing more effective international co-operation for postal, telegraphic, railway, and other transport services, for monetary exchange and for common standards of measurement of various kinds, and for the improved intercommunication of persons, goods, and information. Related and subsidiary to these purposes would come a growth of machinery of courts and congresses, at first informal and private, but gradually taking shape in more definite and more public machinery: the common interests of the arts and sciences would everywhere be weaving an elaborate network of intellectual internationalism, and both economic and intellectual community of needs and interests would contribute to the natural growth of such political solidarity as was required to maintain this real community.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Industrial history shows that in modern competitive industry the motive of personal gain is most wastefully applied. On the one hand, the great mass of intelligent workers have no opportunity of securing an adequate reward for any special application of intelligence in mechanical invention or other improvement of industrial arts. Few great modern inventors have made money out of their inventions. On the other hand, the entrepreneur, with just enough business cunning to recognise the market value of an improvement, reaps a material reward which is often enormously in excess of what is economically required to induce him to apply his "business" qualities to the undertaking.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The case is a simple one. A mere increase in the variety of our material consumption relieves the strain imposed upon man by the limits of the material universe, for such variety enables him to utilise a larger proportion of the aggregate of matter. But in proportion as we add to mere variety a higher appreciation of those adaptations of matter which are due to human skill, and which we call Art, we pass outside the limits of matter and are no longer the slaves of roods and acres and a law of diminishing returns. So long as we continue to raise more men who demand more food and clothes and fuel, we are subject to the limitations of the material universe, and what we get ever costs us more and benefits us less. But when we cease to demand more, and begin to demand better, commodities, more delicate, highly finished and harmonious, we can increase the enjoyment without adding to the cost or exhausting the store. What artist would not laugh at the suggestion that the materials of his art, his colours, clay, marble, or what else he wrought in, might fail and his art come to an end? When we are dealing with qualitative, i.e. artistic, goods, we see at once how an infinite expenditure of labour may be given, an infinite satisfaction taken, from the meagrest quantity of matter and space. In proportion as a community comes to substitute a qualitative for a quantitative standard of living, it escapes the limitations imposed by matter upon man. Art knows no restrictions of space or size, and in proportion as we attain the art of living we shall be likewise free.”
J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source