of markets and other interferences. with the natural forces of free exchange. In fact we are confronted with three. sorts of foolishness, the political illusions of which Sir Norman Angell gives such an able exposition, the financial fears and mistrusts which prevent sane monetary arrangements for internal and external marketing, and the tragic absurdity summarised as “poverty in plenty,” the refusal to make full use of existing or attainable productive resources. It is the contest for priority in these three fields of causation that here concerns us. For each of them evidently figures in the process of imperialism. It may well be admitted that each disturbing factor has its own illusions and its own sentimental urges. The distinctively political passion for greatness of territory acquired by a strong right hand is a manifestly potent driving force in all imperialisms, though it is not always openly avowed. To extend the area of national ownership by seizure of neighbouring land or of distant colonies has a sentimental appeal which cannot be dispelled by citing the human or financial costs and risks of such virile procedure. The sort of patriotism that can be evoked in Italy, Germany or Japan for such aggression does not really proceed from the economic necessities cited in its defence. It is rooted in some ineradicable pugnacity and predacity of the animal man, intensified by herd appeals that repress any doubts or qualms of reason and humanity. But, though this patriotism has its own basic instinctive origins, it is fed and directed in its activities by economic motives. Are these economic motives equally irrational and based on miscalculations of business interests?
My contention is that the system prevailing in all developed countries for the production and distribution of wealth has reached a stage in which its productive powers are held in leash by its inequalities of distribution; the excessive share that goes to profits, rents and other surpluses
