J.A. Hobson has not always received the attention he deserves. This collection of essays, drawn from the conference to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his death, will go a considerable way in rectifying this situation. This volume contains contributions from many of the leading scholars on Hobson. They are writing on a wide range of subjects from political theory, moral philosophy, imperialism, international relations to economics.

The year 2002 sees the centenary of J. A. Hobson's Imperialism: A Study, the most influential critique of British imperial expansion ever written. P. J. Cain marks the occasion by evaluating, for the first time, Hobson's writings on imperialism from his days as a journalist in London to his death in 1940. The early chapters chart Hobson's progress from complacent imperialist in the 1880s to radical critic of empire by 1898. This is followed by an account of the origins of Imperialism and a close analysis of the text in the context of contemporary debates. Two chapters cover Hobson's later writings, showing their richness and variety, and analysing his decision to republish Imperialism in 1938. The author discusses the reception of Imperialism and its emergence as a 'classic' by the late 1930s and ends with a detailed discussion of the relevance of the arguments of Imperialism to present-day historians.

The economic theories of the English economist and social scientist J.A. Hobson (1858-1940) were pioneering for their time. This book critically analyses his theories and shows that many of them have contemporary relevance. Hobson is best known by today's economists for his underconsumption theory, which was recognised by Keynes as an important forerunner of The General Theory. Hobson's underconsumption theory is modelled and compared with the economic growth theories of Harrod and Domar. Also included are accounts of Hobson's theories in the areas of welfare economics, income distribution and prices, money and credit, and international economics. The book also outlines Hobson's theory of imperialism, which was addressed to an audience far wider than that of economists, and gained him international fame.

John A. Hobson is widely recognised as the most important British New Liberal thinker of politics and political economy of the twentieth century. The Selected Writings of John A. Hobson showcases an exciting and previously unpublished collection of Hobson's writings and lectures from 1932-1938 that Hobson presented at the South Place Ethical Society in the last decade of his life. The lectures and the introduction produce a fresh reading of Hobson’s thinking and theorization of International Relations, thereby revealing a much more complex thinker than has conventionally been understood. Edited by Colin Tyler, a framing introduction written by the author’s great grandson, John M. Hobson situates these lectures in the context of his life-work on International Relations between 1897 and 1940. Selected Writings of John A. Hobson 1932-1938 is an essential read for all Hobson scholars and students and scholars of globalization and political economy.

English economist John Hobson’s 1902 Imperialism: A Study was an epoch-making study of the politics and economics of imperialism that shook imperialist beliefs to their core. A committed liberal, Hobson was deeply sceptical about the aims and claims of imperialistic thought at a time when Britain’s empire held sway over a vast portion of the globe. In order to critique what he saw as a falsely reasoned and immoral political view, Hobson’s book took a cuttingly analytical approach to the idea of imperialism – setting out to dissect and understand the arguments for empire before subjecting them to withering evaluation – a process that led him to the key insight that the then widely-accepted claim that imperialism was essentially a question of nationalism was, in fact, quite weak. Instead, Hobson’s close analysis of the implicit and hidden reasons for imperialist projects demonstrated that, at root, they were all products of capitalism. It became increasingly clear to him that imperialism was less a political ideology, and more the product of the urgent need to open up new markets and remedy economic stagnation at home. Deeply provocative at the time, Hobson’s book shows just how powerful the critical thinking skills of analysis and evaluation can be when applied to deconstruction of even the most widely accepted of ideas.

Publisher Description

British liberalism in the period between 1870 and 1930 was a product of an era known for its intellectual crisis. During the late nineteenth century, the cohesion of reason and enlightenment was questioned in fields ranging from psychology, sociology, philosophy, biology, philology, and archaeology. In Margins of Disorder Gal Gerson considers the ways in which progressive Edwardian liberals such as Leonard Hobhouse, John Hobson, and Graham Wallas attempted to address the shift in their period's culture. New liberalism advocated government planning and expanded state services from liberal, rather than socialist, premises, and saw the sense of belonging to a community as a distinct, right-constituting human good. Gerson examines the concepts of mind, society, nature, and culture devised by new liberals over the course of several decades, and argues in favor of viewing them as a coherent stance, relevant to today's debates about the relations between market and welfare, justice and community.

In 1883 the radical journalist W. E. Adams described community self-government as 'the essence of all political liberalism that is worthy of the name'. This collaborative volume of essays enlarges upon Adams' thesis, applying it to the study of various 'currents of radicalism' in Britain and Ireland, and ranging from Victorian advanced liberals to Irish and Welsh socialists in the 1920s. Citizenship and Community explores the links between liberalism, social democracy and nationalism within the framework of classical republican ideals of 'civic virtue' and active citizenship. Its strong comparative emphasis breaks down conventional views of the state, and focuses attention on the regions of Britain, revealing how different forms of collective identity interacted in popular attitudes to political and social debates at a national level.

Exploring the theoretical roots of the evolutionary approach, this book demonstrates how it fits squarely into the theoretical mainstream. Focusing on the institutions of evolutionary change and the processes - such as competition - that generate change, it takes account of important European contributions to the discipline, hitherto overshadowed by the American paradigm. As such, the book serves to broaden the current discourse. Whilst evolutionary economics itself is a well researched and widely documented field, this book should be credited with establishing a history of evolutionary economic thought.