Practice question · Match the pairs
Match each writer to the mechanism of imperialism they proposed.
- Hobson
- Lenin
- Schumpeter
- Robinson and Gallagher
- Monopoly finance capital at capitalism’s highest stage
- An atavistic warrior disposition among old elites
- Peripheral crises drawing in reluctant governments
- Under-consumption at home and surplus capital abroad
Hints
- Two of the four are economic theories, one is sociological and one is diplomatic.
- One explanation says imperialism is a survival of something pre-capitalist rather than a product of capitalism.
Show the answer
- Hobson → Under-consumption at home and surplus capital abroad
- Lenin → Monopoly finance capital at capitalism’s highest stage
- Schumpeter → An atavistic warrior disposition among old elites
- Robinson and Gallagher → Peripheral crises drawing in reluctant governments
Why
Schumpeter is the odd one out and the most easily forgotten: his claim is that imperialism is not capitalist at all but a hangover from aristocratic and military castes that capitalism had not yet dissolved. It predicts that a fully commercial society would be pacific, a prediction 1914 did not treat kindly.
Practise Capitalist Crisis, Colonialism and Imperialism
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