Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/68

 mixture of national arrogance and folly at the disposal of the imperialists and business men who were the working partners in the preparation and production of modern wars. A larger volume, Imperialism, published in 1902, contained a fuller and more formal discussion of the same theme, dwelling in more detail upon the economic causation and linking the rising struggle for empire with the pressure for investment of surplus profits in the development of backward countries.

During those years I was drawn away from my studies of the history and theory of capitalist economy into controversial causes and movements, which, though not unrelated to my earlier positions, were evidently removed from the calm, dispassionate atmosphere which economic scientists professed and sometimes practised. I cannot pretend that this latter process was favourable to a disinterested and purely objective view of economic science. On the contrary, by enlisting my combative instincts in defence of my heretical views of capitalism as the source of unjust distribution, over-saving, and an economic impulsion to adventurous imperialism, it led me for a time to an excessive and too simple advocacy of the economic determination of history. When I wrote my volume on Imperialism I had not yet gathered into clear perspective the nature of the interaction between economics, politics, and ethics, needed for anyone