John Atkinson Hobson (1858-1940)

British political thinker, economist, social reformer. Born into a wealthy family in England, graduated from Oxford University, was engaged in teaching and research all through his life, and actively participated in the British social reform movement. Major works include Problems of Poverty (1891), The Social Problem: Life and Work (1901), Imperialism: A Study (1902, revised in 1938), The Crisis of Liberalism (1909), Work and Wealth A Human Valuation (1914), Democracy after the War (1917), From Capitalism to Socialism (1932), Democracy and a Changing Civilization (1934), and others.

Hobson agrees with the political principles of neo -liberalism and pays attention to the social reality. In Work and Wealth A Human Valuation, published in 1914, he comprehensively explained his theory of “social organism”. Its basic idea is that society should not be regarded as merely an “aggregate” of individuals; instead society is an organic society which had an existence beyond and above that of individuals composing it. Every society possesses “a group-life, with a collective body, a collective consciousness and will, and is capable of realizing a collective vital objective”. The whole life of society is carried out through the cooperation of social units that constitute the society. Based on the theory of social organism, Hobson pursues reformism in politics, advocates strengthening of the intervention of the state, and taking social welfare as the center of his reform policy, he argued that comprehensive welfare policies, setting up various welfare undertakings, implementing unemployment relief, free medical care, old-age pension and public education, etc. would change the unreasonable possession of wealth and unequal distribution of income, and ease social tensions and problems and political contradictions, his such thoughts had made a certain impact on the British “welfare state” policy.

Hobson was one of the early thinkers who studied imperialism. He conducted theoretical research and criticism on imperialism from both economic and political aspects. In his book Imperialism: A Study, he pointed out that imperialism is the domination over the system and life of other countries for its own purposes; the reason for the formation of imperialism lies in economy rather than political and military affairs; the expansion of imperialism is caused by “underconsumption” and “over-saving” due to irrational income distribution structure among the population; modern imperialism had two historical characteristics: The first is the competition among several imperialists; the second is the businesses and economy coming under the yoke of financiers. Modern imperialism is an alliance of politicians, adventurers, agents of large companies, investors, etc. who pursue self-interest; imperialism pursues militarism and bureaucratic politics, which is predatory and parasitic, destroys democracy and tramples on freedom, which is the most prominent danger of modern nation-state. He hoped to cure imperialism through social reforms. He fancied that imperialism would adopt the principle of unity and establish an “international imperialism” so as to eliminate the contradictions between imperialism and achieve lasting peace. Hobson’s imperialism theory only regards imperialism as a kind of policy that industrial giants try to increase their wealth by looking for foreign markets and foreign investment. In economy, it separates imperialism from monopoly and hides the basic contradiction of capitalism. The “super imperialism” advocated by Kautsky is exactly a copy of this “international imperialism”.