try; then they landed troops and annexed it.) They quoted the words of Lincoln: "It is self-government when the white man governs himself; but when he governs himself and also governs others, it is no longer self-government, it is despotism."94
But while all this criticism shrank from recognising the indissoluble bond between imperialism and the trusts, and, therefore, between imperialism and the very foundations of capitalism, while it shrank from joining up with the mighty forces engendered by large-scale capitalism as it develops—it remained a "pious hope."
This is also the attitude of Hobson in his critique of imperialism. Hobson anticipated Kautsky in revolting against the "inevitability of imperialism," and in calling for the need to "raise the consuming capacity of the people" (under capitalism!!).
The petty bourgeois point of view in the critique of imperialism, the domination of the banks, the financial oligarchy, etc., is that adopted by authors often quoted by us, such as Agahd, Lansburg, L. Eschwege; and, amongst French writers, Victor Bérard, author of a superficial book called British Imperialism, which appeared in 1900. All these authors, who make no claim to be Marxians, contrast imperialism with free competition and democracy; they condemn the Bagdad railway "scheme" as leading to disputes and war, and they utter "pious hopes" of peace in every circumstance. This even applies to the compiler of international stock and share issues statistics, M. Neymarck, who, after calculating the hundreds of milliards of francs representing "international" values, exclaimed in 1912: "Can we admit that there is any danger of peace being
