Remember a while ago there was furore about Jeremy Corbyn writing a foreword to a new edition of J.A. Hobson's "imperialism"? How could he do such a thing, the Tory media howled, when it was well known that Hobson was an anti-Semite, who influence other anti-Semites , and radical leftists such as Vladimir Lenin. In fact, of course, the Tory media, who ae marked by their laziness, matched only by their willingness to grab an easy headline, had no idea who Hobson was. Most of them had never heard of him. But dropped the titbit that Lenin's Imperialism was based largely on Hobson's earlier work, that was enough for them to assume he must have been some other raving lefty, rather than what he actually was, a liberal, whose ideas presaged those of John Maynard Keynes, particularly in relation to underconsumption as the cause of unemployment.
Hobson's offending statements followed him covering the Boer War for the Guardian. It was following his experiences there that he concluded that the British government's war had been driven by the interests of British mine owners in South Africa. He connected the idea about underconsumption, and the problem of realising profits, causing unemployment, with his ideas on the pernicious effects of monopoly, a belief held by all liberals, with the drive of imperialism to carve up the world into colonies where monopoly power could be exercised, and the surplus product of the imperialist powers could be sold. The idea is bunk, and goes back to the under-consumption theories of Sismondi and Malthus, and was taken up by the Narodniks in Russia.
Hobson, was one of the British bourgeois economists, in the late 19th century, who helped develop the neoclassical school of liberal economics based upon the concept of marginalism. Extending his ideas about the causes of war, Hobson talked about,
"Jewish financiers", whom he saw as
"parasites", manipulating the British government that danced to their
"diabolical tune".
"The greater part of modern 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 property may be called passive property, or property for acquisition, for exploitation, or for power.... It is questionable, however, whether economists shall call it "Property" at all, and not rather, as Mr. Hobson has suggested, "Improperty," since it is not identical with the rights which secure the owner the produce of his toil, but is opposite of them."
Hobson's ideas were taken up by liberals in the United States, already critical of European colonialism, and monopoly capitalism, leading them to have introduced their anti-monopoly laws, at the end of the 19th century against the big oil companies and so on.
Hobson was a liberal, and like other radical liberals found his way towards the Fabian Society, and then to the ILP. Moreover, unlike Corbyn who can be accused only of having an elderly person's eyesight, in not having determined the detail of a picture seen on the small screen of a smart phone, as against his detractors who have plastered the same picture of a mural onto giant TV screens, some of Hobson's contemporaries were more explicit in sharing his ideas in relation to the role of financiers, and Jewish financiers.
Keir Hardie, repeated Hobson's statement, accusing "half a dozen financial houses, many of them Jewish" of leading the UK to war. Corbyn has never made any such anti-Semitic statement. There would be no place in today's Labour Party for one of its founders, after whom its present leader is named. If his namesake were alive today, Keir Starmer would have to expel Keir Hardie.
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