J. A. Hobson (1858 1940) was an English economist and early socialist, whose writings on capitalism and industrialism influenced Lenin and Trotsky, and were highly regarded by John Maynard Keynes. Imperialism, published in 1902, is considered his most important work. Employed as a war correspondent by the Manchester Guardian to report on the Second Boer War, he became convinced that imperial expansion was driven by the desire to find new markets and investment opportunities, resulting in capitalistic exploitation of the colonies. He argued that imperial policies were a fundamental cause of...