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Imperialism

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War in Economic Theories over Time

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought ((PHET))

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Abstract

This chapter deals with the reflections made in the period of the return to colonialism from the end of the 1800s to the First World War. With the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Boer War at the beginning of the 1900s, the heterodox free trade economist Hobson denounced the monopolistic and imperialist tendencies of certain British entrepreneurial groups who succeeded in imposing their interests on politicians, using national resources for their own private profit, pushing for colonial conquest and war at a cost to the taxpayer and society in general. Marxists took up the considerations of Hobson on imperialism and those of Marx on war and, with different interpretations, saw that capitalism, in its monopolistic and imperialist version, caused the continuance of armed conflict. The text examines the interpretations of Hilferding, Rosa Luxemburg, Kautsky, Bukharin and Lenin.

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Correspondence to Renata Allio .

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Allio, R. (2020). Imperialism. In: War in Economic Theories over Time. Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39617-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39617-6_4

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-39616-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-39617-6

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