J. A. Hobson - The Morals of Economic Internationalism: With an Excerpt From Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by v. I. Lenin

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AN EXCERPT FROM
Imperialism,
The Highest Stage Of Capitalism
BY V. I. LENIN

During the past fifteen or twenty years, especially after the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), the economic and also the political literature of the old and new world has more and more often adopted the term imperialism in order to characterise the epoch in which we live. In 1902, Imperialism, a work by English economist, J. A. Hobson, was published in London and New York. The author, who adopts the point of view of bourgeois social reformism and pacifism, which in essence is identical with the present position of the ex-Marxist, K. Kautsky, gives a very good and detailed description of the principal economic and political characteristics of imperia lism....
Hobson, in his work on imperialism, marks the years 1884-1900 as being the period of intensified expansion of the chief European states. According to his estimate, England during these years acquired 3.7 million square miles of territory with a population of 57 million ; France acquired 3.6 million ; Germany one million square miles with 16.7 million inhabitants ; Belgium 900,000 square miles with 30 million inhabitants ; Portugal 800,000 square miles with 9 million inhabitants. The quest for colonies by all capitalist states at the end of the nineteenth century, and particularly since the 1880's, is a well-known fact in the history of diplomacy and of foreig n policy.

IT ought not to be the case that there is one standard of morality for individuals in their relations with one another, a different and a slighter standard for corporations, and a third and still slighter standard for nations. For, after all, what are corporations but groupings of individuals for ends which in the last resort are personal ends? And what are nations but wider, closer, and more lasting unions of persons for the attainment of the end they have in common, i.e., the commonwealth. Yet we are well aware that the accepted and operative standards of morality differ widely in the three spheres of conduct. If a soul is imputed at all to a corporation, it is a leather soul, not easily penetrable to the probings of pity or compunction, and emitting much less of the milk of human kindness than do the separate souls of its directors and stockholders in their ordinary human relations. There is a sharp recognition of this inferior moral make-up of a corporation in the attitude of ordinary men and women, who, scrupulously honest in their dealings with one another, slide almost unconsciously to an altogether lower level in dealing with a railroad or insurance company. This attitude is due, no doubt, partly to a resentment of the oppressive power which great corporations are believed to exercise, evoking a desire "to get a bit of your own back"; partly to a feeling that any slight injury to, or even fraud perpetrated on, a corporation will be so distributed as to inflict no appreciable harm on any individual stockholder. But largely it is the result of a failure to envisage a corporation as a moral being at all, to whom one owes obligations. 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. If, indeed, one were to press the theoretic issue, whether a state or a nation is a morally independent being, or whether it is in some sense or degree a member of what may be called an incipient society of states or nations, nearly every one would sustain the latter view. We should be reminded that there was such a thing as international law, however imperfect its sanctions might be, and that treaties, alliances, and other agreements between nations implied the recognition of some moral obligation. How weak this interstate morality is appears not merely from the fact that under strong temptation governments repudiate their most express and solemn agreementsto that temptation individuals sometimes yield in their dealings with one anotherbut also from the nature of the defence which they make of such repudiation. The plea of state necessity, which Germany made for the violation of the neutrality of Belgium, and which was stretched to cover the brutal mishandling of the Belgian people, is unfortunately but an extreme instance of conduct to which every state has had recourse at times, andstill more significantwhich every state defends by adducing the same maxim, "salus reipublic suprema lex ".

Here is the sharpest distinction between individual and national morality. There are certain deeds which a good and honorable man would not do even to save his life; there are no deeds, which it is admitted that a statesman, acting on behalf of his country, may not do to save that country. It is foolish to try to shirk this disconcerting admission. The Machiavellian doctrine of "reason of state" is, in the last resort, the accepted standard of national conduct. This does not signify that a nation and its government admit no obligation to fulfil their promises, or even voluntarily to perform good offices for other nations, but that there is always implied the reservation that the necessity, or, shall we say, the vital interests, of the nation override, cancel, and nullify all such obligations. And when "necessity" is stretched to cover any vital interest or urgent need, it is easy to recognize on what a slippery slope such international morality reposes.

International morality is impaired, however, not only by this feeble sense of mutual obligation, but by the still more injurious assumption of conflicting interests between nations. 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 coperators in the general advance of civilization. This presumption of opposing interests is, of course, more strongly marked in the presentation of commercial relations than in any other. Putting the issue roughly, but with substantial truth, the generally accepted image of international trade is one in which a number of trading communities, as, for instance, the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Japan, etc., are engaged in striving, each to win for itself, and at the expense of the others, the largest possible share of a strictly limited objectivethe worl d market.

Now there are three fatal flaws in this image. First comes the false presentation of the United States, Britain, Germany, and other political beings in the capacity of trading firms. 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 are not directed along political lines. Generally speaking, the closer rivalry is between firms belonging to the same nation and conducting their business upon closely similar conditions. One Lancashire cotton exporter competes much more closely with other Lancashire exporters than he does with German, American, or Japanese exporters of similar goods. So it is everywhere, save in the exceptional times and circumstances in which governments themselves take over the regulation and conduct of forei gn trade.