THE main objects which should be served by international relations may be taken to be two: First, the avoidance of wars, and, second, the prevention of the oppression of weak nations by strong ones.These two objects do not by any means necessarily lead in the same direction, since one of the easiest ways of securing the world's peace would be by a combination of the most powerful States for the exploitation andoppression of the remainder.This method, however, is not one which the lover of liberty can favor.We must keep account of both aims and not be content with either alone.
One of the commonplaces of both Socialism and Anarchism is that all modern wars are due to capitalism, and would cease if capitalism were abolished.This view, to my mind, is only a half-truth; the half that is true is important, but the half that is untrue is perhaps equally important when a fundamental reconstruction of society is being considered.
Socialist and Anarchist critics of existing society point, with perfect truth, to certain capitalistic factors which promote war.The first of these is the desire of finance to find new fields of investment in undeveloped countries.Mr.J.A.Hobson, an author who is by no means extreme in his views, has well stated this point in his book on ``The Evolution of Modern Capitalism.''[55] He says:
[55] Walter Scott Publishing Company, 1906, p.262.
The economic tap-root, the chief directing motive of all the modern imperialistic expansion, is the pressure of capitalist industries for markets, primarily markets for investment, secondarily markets for surplus products of home industry.Where the concentration of capital has gone furthest, and where a rigorous protective system prevails, this pressure is necessarily strongest.Not merely do the trusts and other manufacturing trades that restrict their output for the home market more urgently require foreign markets, but they are also more anxious to secure protected markets, and this can only be achieved by extending the area of political rule.This is the essential significance of the recent change in American foreign policy as illustrated by the Spanish War, the Philippine annexation, the Panama policy, and the new application of the Monroe doctrine to the South American States.South America is needed as a preferential market for investment of trust ``profits'' and surplus trust products: if in time these states can be brought within a Zollverein under the suzerainty of the United States, the financial area of operations receives a notable accession.China as a field of railway enterprise and general industrial development already begins to loom large in the eyes of foresighted American business men; the growing trade in American cotton and other goods in that countrywill be a subordinate consideration to the expansion of the area for American investments.Diplomatic pressure, armed force, and, where desirable, seizure of territory for political control, will be engineered by the financial magnates who control the political destiny of America.The strong and expensive American navy now beginning to be built incidentally serves the purpose of affording profitable contracts to the shipbuilding and metal industries: its real meaning and use is to forward the aggressive political policy imposed upon the nation by the economic needs of the financial capitalists.
It should be clearly understood that this constant pressure to extend the area of markets is not a necessary implication of all forms of organized industry.If competition was displaced by combinations of a genuinely cooperative character in which the whole gain of improved economies passed, either to the workers in wages, or to large bodies of investors in dividends, the expansion of demand in the home markets would be so great as to give full employment to the productive powers of concentrated capital, and there would be no self-accumulating masses of profit expressing themselves in new credit and demanding external employment.It is the ``monopoly'' profits of trusts and combines, taken either in construction, financial operation, or industrial working, that form a gathering fund of self-accumulating credit whose possession by the financial class implies a contracted demand for commodities and a correspondingly restricted employment for capital in American industries.Within certain limits relief can be found by stimulation of the export trade under cover of a high protective tariff which forbids all interference with monopoly of the home markets.But it is extremely difficult for trusts adapted to the requirements of a profitable tied market at home to adjust their methods of free competition in the world markets upon a profitable basis of steady trading.Moreover, such a mode of expansion is only appropriate to certain manufacturing trusts: the owners of railroad, financial and other trusts must look always more to foreign investments for their surplus profits.This ever-growing need for fresh fields of investment for their profits is the great crux of the financial system, and threatens to dominate the future economics and the politics of the greatRepublic.
