J. A. Hobson

“ A very few great empires and nations today control the whole available supplies of many of the foods, fabrics, and metals, the shipping and finance, that are essential to the livelihood and progress of every civilized people. Are Britain, America, France, and Japan—and especially the two greatest of these powers—going to absorb or monopolize for their exclusive purposes of trade or consumption these supplies which every country needs, or are they going to let the rest of the world have fair access to them? ”

“ Is it not the larger and the longer hope and interest of America to live as a great partner in such a society of nations, rather than to live a life of isolated prosperity, perhaps the sole survivor in the collapse of western civilized states? ”

“ Here, as in other ways, America stands in a place of unique vantage by reason of the magnitude and variety of her national resources, and the vigor and enterprise of her people.
It is evident that, if any country can afford to stand alone in full economic self-sufficiency, that country is America. It is feasible for America to contract within very narrow limits her commercial and political relations with the rest of the world, or, if she chooses, to confine her commercial and financial relations to this continent, leaving the old world to get on by itself as well as it can. ”

“ There were, indeed, those who thought that already the web of commerce and finance had been woven strong enough to save nations from the calamity of war. Their miscalculation arose from underestimating the power over the mind and the passions of that false image of trade. But because the modern internationalism of commerce and finance did not prove strong enough to stem the full and sudden tide of war passions fed from the barbarous traditions of a dateless past, we ought not to disparage the potentiality of this internationalism as the foundation of a new and better world order. ”

“ The weak nations cannot buy, because they are not producing goods to sell; they cannot produce, because they cannot buy. What are the strong nations, those with surplus goods, the transport, and the credit, going to do about it? It is a question of emergency finance based on an emergency morality. The nations which have surpluses to sell abroad must not only send the goods but provide the credit to pay for them if they are to reach the peoples that need them most. But how, it is said, can you expect the business man in America or any other country to perform such an act of charity? ”

“ For in each great nation of the world the same great choice, the same great struggle of contending principles and policies, is taking place. National self-dependence or internationalism—that is everywhere the issue. It is true that in no European country can that issue be so sharply presented as in America. For economic self-sufficiency in a full sense and, therefore, political isolation, is not possible for any European state. Even a peaceful and reviving Russia must lean upon her more advanced neighbors for the economic essentials of capital and organizing skill. ”

“ Fear, greed, and suspicion prompt the victorious nations to guard their gains by reverting to a close nationalism or a ringed alliance; humiliation, without humility, the bitter pain of thwarted ambitions, resentment at their punishment, dispose the vanquished nations to keep their own company and form if possible, an economic system of their own. ”

“ If these countries in close concerted action were prepared to place at the service of the new world order their exclusive or superior resources of foods, materials, transport and finance—the economic pillars of civilization—the stronger pooling their resources with the weaker for the rescue work in this dire emergency, this political coöperation would supply that mutual confidence and goodwill without which no governmental machinery of a League of Nations, however skilfully contrived, can begin to work. ”

“ The supreme challenge is, therefore, not to the continental European nations, not even to Britain, but to America. For her alone the choice has the full quality of moral freedom. For she alone is able to refuse. Other great western nations might seek to stand alone for economic life and for defence. ”

“ The refusal of America not only shuts the gate of hope for millions of war-broken, famine-ridden people in Central and Eastern Europe, it removes the keystone for the edifice of a society of nations. For effective international coöperation in economic resources and opportunities is the indispensable condition of such a society. No League of Nations can survive its infancy without this economic nourishment. ”

“ The smaller and the poorer nations, however free in the political sense, become their economic bond slaves, at the mercy of the master states for their foods and other necessaries of life. Take the case of Austria under the new conditions, with a thick population concentrated in a great political capital suddenly deprived of all free access to its former sources of supply and the markets it used to serve. For her it is a sentence of economic strangulation. Here is an extreme instance of the effect of economic isolation on a weak country. ”

“ It is impossible for the other nations of the earth to leave the essential supplies of metals, foods, and oils, and the control of transport in the exclusive possession of one or a few close national corporations or a permanent "Big Four." Under such conditions the sacrifices of the great war would have been made in vain. Nothing would have been done to end war, or to rescue the world from the burden of militarism. The pre-war policy of contending alliances and of competing armaments, draining more deeply than ever the surplus incomes of each people, would be resumed. ”

“ I am merely maintaining the utilitarian ethics which insist that morality, the performance of human obligations, is the best policy, that policy which in the long run will yield the fullest satisfaction to social beings. If I were an American exporter in control of large amounts of food, it would doubtless pay me better personally at the present time to sell it to firms in European countries which have good credit, for consumption by people who are in no great want. ”

“ The services which countries near or distant rendered to one another were becoming constantly more numerous, more complex, and more urgent. The obstructions and stoppages of war has driven home the lesson painfully to the inhabitants of every European country, belligerent or neutral. What lesson? That we have erred in permitting ourselves to grow dependent on the industry, goodwill, and intercourse of other nations, and that we should endeavor to hark back to an earlier economic state of national independence? ”

“ Remove from a nation the economic supports it formerly received from other nations, markets wherein to buy and sell, and you starve that nation; and starvation breeds class war and anarchy. Can any one doubt this with the terrible examples of Russia and Hungary before their eyes? ”

“ It is true that there remained a very few great backward countries, such as Russia and China, where a life of economic isolation was possible had they been willing to dispense with the higher products of civilized industry and with the fertilizing streams of capital without which progress is impossible. No civilized European country was self-sufficing in the vital factors of a productive and progressive civilization—food, raw materials, machinery, fuel, transport, finance, and adequate supplies of skilled labor. ”

“ For, if close nationalism or imperialism should prevail, the weaker placed nations could not acquiesce. Close economic nationalism is not for them a possibility. They must win access to the world's supplies, peacefully if possible, or else by force.
The fatality of the great choice is thus evident. Nations must and will fight for the means of life. Close economic nationalism or imperialism on the part of the great empires must, therefore, compel the restricted countries to organize force for their economic liberation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the surplus of economic supplies is to be distributed according to needs, on an emergency credit basis adjusted to that end, it is evident that this can be done only by international coöperation. This shifts the moral problem from the individual to the nation. Rich nations, or their governments, are asked to assist poor nations by making an apportionment of goods and credit which the individual members of the rich nations, the owners of the surplus, would not make upon their own account. ”

“ The issue arises in the highest economic sphere, that of finance. Are the nations and governments of the world sufficiently alive to the urgency of the situation to enter into an organization of credit for the emergency use of transport and for the distribution of foods and materials on a basis of proved needs? The richer nations, in proportion to their resources, would appear to be called upon to make a present sacrifice for the benefit of the poorer nations in any such pooling of credit facilities. ”

“ The reckless mismanagement of European governments, the wild unsettlement of peoples, the badness of the peace, are, indeed, strong arguments for America cleaving to her old ways.
Europe has no rightful claim upon America, either for the urgent work of economic rescue, or for participation in the permanent project of a society of nations. America not only has the right to refuse ”

“ Well, there are even in Britain rhetorical politicians who speak of the necessity of retaining all "key" or "essential" industries within their national control—who propose to reverse the tide of social evolution by some flimsy apparatus of tariffs and subsidies. This is impossible. The war has left the European peoples, one and all, more than ever dependent for their economic livelihood upon one another, and upon the material resources and labor of other continents. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This analysis has seemed necessary in order to clear away the intellectual and moral fogs which prevent a true realization of the economic, and therefore the moral, interdependence of nations. For every bond of economic interest involves moral obligation also. If it is true that the fabric of commercial relations is all the time being knit closer between the different peoples of the earth, then the moral isolation and the antagonism which earlier statecraft inculcated, and which still obsess so many minds, must be dissipated and give place to active sentiments of human coöperation. ”

“ 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 agreements—to that temptation individuals sometimes yield in their dealings with one another—but also from the nature of the defence which they make of such repudiation. ”

“ I prefer the former term as indicative of the new truth which is dawning on the world, the conviction that just as an individual can only fully realize his personality in a society of other individuals, that is, a nation, so nations cannot rise to the full stature of nationalism save in a society of nations. ”

“ America's economic status in Europe is not such as to preclude her taking this course. I may be reminded that the indebtedness of Europe to America is a solid economic bond, for it cannot be presumed that America would pursue the policy of liberalism so far as to cancel this debt. But, large as is this credit, it need not constitute a strong or a lasting bond of commerce, compelling America to receive such large imports of goods from Europe as materially to impair her self-sufficiency. ”

“ 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. ”