¹ Popper, K.R., The Open Society and Its Enemies, London, 1945, II, 246–48.Google Scholar

² In a subsequent book, Schumpeter states unequivocally that Soviet Russia is an imperialist country (Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 2nd ed., New York, 1947, pp. 398 ff.). Yet this identification does not help to answer the above question, for Schumpeter does not believe that the imperialism of the Soviet rulers is motivated by their feelings of insecurity and fear.

³ The element of opportunism inherent in imperialist expansion springs to the eye in the record of Soviet imperialism and is, indeed, expressed in the planning of the Politburo. To do all that increases the external power of the U.S.S.R. is part of the Bolshevik ethics. No opportunity must be missed and no relaxation of effort is permitted. The actual advance and, if temporarily advisable, the retreat of Soviet domination is dictated entirely by the expediential calculus of power. Leites, Nathan, The Operational Code of the Politburo, New York, 1951Google Scholar, passim.

⁴ The term “imperialism” is rendered meaningless when it is claimed to cover the uncertain influence held by private foreign investors and businessmen. Of course, an imperialist state may use such private interest-positions in order to prepare the way for a forcible expansion of its power.

⁵ The relationship between the Marxian and Schumpeterian interpretations is discussed brilliantly and at great length in Taylor, O. H., “Schumpeter and Marx: Imperialism and Social Classes in the Schumpeterian System,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, LXV, No. 4 (November 1951), 538–45.Google Scholar

⁶ Faithful to his definition, Schumpeter does not regard the other Teutonic tribes as imperialist because they settled down to farming as soon as they had found new land and remained undisturbed in its possession. Their warlike expansion had a definite objective and ceased once the object was attained (p. 57). Similarly, he views the Roman empire as imperialist only during the period from the Punic wars to the accession of Augustus. Thereafter, Roman wars were usually intended only to pre-serve the established empire and had thus a limited objective (pp. 65–66).

⁷ Among the reasons he adduces for rejecting religion as the driving force in Arab imperialism, the most significant and subtle is the following: “It is only necessary to visualize what might have happened if the jihad had been preached to the unmilitary 'fishermen' of Galilee, the ‘little people’ in Palestine. Is it really far-fetched to assume that they would not have followed the call, that they could not have followed it, that, had they tried any such thing, they would have failed wretchedly and destroyed their own community? And if, conversely, Mohammed had preached humility and submission to his Bedouin horsemen, would they not have turned their backs on him? And if they had followed him, would not their community have perished? A prophet does more than merely formulate a message acceptable to his early adherents; he is successful and comprehensible only when he also formulates a policy that is valid at the moment. This is precisely what distinguishes the successful—the ‘true’—prophet from his unsuccessful fellow—the ‘false’ prophet. The ‘true’ prophet recognizes the necessities of the existing situation—a situation that exists quite independently of him—and when these necessities subsequently change, he manages to adopt a new policy without letting the faithful feel that this transition is treachery” (p. 52). To clinch his argument, Schumpeter points out that the Arabs neither annihilated the infidels nor proselytized. When conquered peoples adopted the Islamic creed, this was a process of adaptation not planned by the conquerors (p. 54).

⁸ Robbins, Lionel, The Economic Causes of War, London, 1939Google Scholar; Staley, Eugene, War and the Private Investor, New York, 1935Google Scholar; Viner, Jacob, “Political Aspects of International Finance,” Journal of Business of the University of Chicago, I, Nos. 2–3 (1928)Google Scholar, 141“73,324–63; Viner, Jacob, “International Finance and Balance of Power Diplomacy, 1880–1914,” Southwestern Political and Social Science Quarterly, IX, No. 4 (March 1929). 407–51.Google Scholar

⁹ Behrendt, R., Die Schweiz und der Imperialismus, Zurich, 1932.Google Scholar This is also the line taken by Röpke who in general embraces the Schumpeterian thesis. Röpke, Wilhelm, “Kapitalismus und Imperialismus,” Zeitschrift für Schweizerische Statistik und Volkswirtschaft, LXX (1934), 373.Google Scholar

¹⁰ In an otherwise excellent translation, “relations of production” does not correctly render the German Produktionsverhältnisse. “Conditions of production” or the “mode of production,” employed in the translation of Marx's writings, would have come closer to indicating the meaning of the original.

¹¹ Thus Sulzbach, Walter, Nationales Gemeinschaftsgefühl und wirtschaftliches Interesse, Leipzig, 1929Google Scholar; Salz, Arthur, Das Wesen des Imperialismus, Leipzig, 1930.Google Scholar

¹² Hobson, J. A., Imperialism: A Study, London, 1902, pp. 52–68.Google Scholar See also Seillière, Ernest, La Philosophie de l'Impérialisme, 3 vols., Paris, 1903–1908.Google Scholar

¹³ Like the early Marxists, Hobson sees modern imperialism caused in part by the underconsumption, oversaving, and overproduction of contemporary capitalism. It is because of this situation that the exploitative calculations of some special-interest groups became directed toward securing exclusive markets and investment opportunities. Unlike the Marxists, and like Schumpeter, Hobson does not view this situation as a necessary part of capitalism. He is certain that a redistribution of income will remedy the disequilibrium between production and consumption, saving and investment opportunities while leaving capitalism essentially intact.

¹⁴ Unfortunately, Weber's discussion of imperialism is brief and extremely sketchy. Weber, Max, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Tübingen, 1923, pp. 620–23.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Marx, of course, held the imbalance between production and consumption to be the essence of the capitalist system.

¹⁶ The appropriate fiscal and monetary policies may not be pursued. Communist propaganda, in fact, predicts that such policies—and, with them, capitalism—are doomed to failure. More interestingly, a recent article in the left-wing New Statesman and Nation subjects the American economy to an analysis very similar to Marxist reasoning. This article points out that the tremendous and prolonged postwar boom of the American economy rests essentially on the demands of a costly foreign and defense policy—which may be true; that a sudden and sharp cut in defense and foreign-aid expenditures could be prevented from throwing the American economy into depression only by a compensatory fiscal and monetary policy—which is probably true; and that the Congress will fail to initiate or approve of such a policy—which may be true. The article infers that the United States faces the dilemma of having to choose between a depressed and stagnant economy, on the one hand, and the perpetuation of its current foreign and military policy which, the article lets the reader infer, makes American imperialism inevitable. “Guns and Butter?” New Statesman and Nation, XLII, NO. 1082 (Dec. 1, 1951), 611–12.

There is, of course, nothing convincing in this prognostication. It is noteworthy, however, that it connects a failure of the capitalist system to create markets adequate to absorb its increasing production with an aggressive foreign policy which, in relation to the outside world, is essentially objectless because it is propelled by domestic maladjustment.

¹⁷ Thus he points out that the cultural data of a given period cannot always be reduced to the mode of production of that same period. “For example, the constitutional and political order of the Normans in southern Italy becomes comprehensible only by reference to their capacity and wishes. But this does not actually refute the economic interpretation, for the mentality of the Normans was not something that existed outside the economic sphere. Its sources are found in the economic background from which the Normans came to southern Italy” (pp. 84–85 n.).

¹⁸ Schumpeter, , Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, p. II.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Ibid. The allusion is to Weber's famous study which, historically, sees the “spirit of capitalism” develop from certain qualities of Protestant ethics.

²⁰ This is also the view of Rüstow, Alexander, Ortsbestimmung der gegenwart. Eine universalgeschichtliche KulturKritik, Vol. I, Erlenbach-Zurich, 1950, p. 198.Google Scholar Schum-peter' atavistic forces, to which Rüstow refers as ibiddominandi (p. 199), can and will not be allowed to vanish as long as the need for military defense persists.

²¹ Lasswell, Harold D., “'Inevitable' War: A Problem in the Control of Long-Range Expectations,” World Politics, II, No. 1 (October 1949), 22–24.Google Scholar

²² For instance, Burke is introduced as the father of “racism” in Britain (pp. 175–76), and Hobbes as “the only great philosopher to whom the bourgeoisie can rightly and exclusively lay claim” (p. 139). Hobbes had “an unmatched insight into the political needs of the new social body of the bourgeoisie, whose fundamental belief in an unending process of property accumulation was about to eliminate all individual safety” (p. 142). Again: “Today no single science is left into whose categorical system race-thinking has not deeply penetrated” (p. 160).

²³ “Imperialism is not empire building and expansion is not conquest” (p. 130). “In contrast to true imperial structures, where the institutions of the mother country are in various ways integrated into the empire, it is characteristic of imperialism that national institutions remain separate from the colonial administration although they are allowed to exercise control” (p. 131). There are no references to historical data on which this finding might be based. Dr. Arendt adds the comment: “The wild confusion of modern historical terminology is only a by-product of these disparities” (ibid.).

²⁴ When she remarks (p. 138) that “imperialism must be considered the first stage in political rule of the bourgeoisie rather than the last stage of capitalism,” this is word play rather than criticism of the Marxist thesis. It is unfortunate, incidentally, that—although Dr. Arendt is writing some forty years after Bauer and Hilferding, not to speak of Marx and Engels—there is no indication of what the second stage in the political rule of the bourgeoisie might be. This sort of omission is practiced in other observations. For example, when addressing herself to the overseas imperialism of the late nineteenth century, Miss Arendt makes the interesting point that nationalism and imperialism, while they become fused “in practice” (p. 153), are incompatible “in theory,” and predicts that imperialism “could only destroy the political body of the nation-state” and “degenerate into tyranny” (p. 125). It would also have been interesting to the reader to have this forecast related to the subsequent history of Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.

²⁵ Germany partook of both kinds of imperialism. But this difficulty can presumably be resolved by distinguishing the German imperialism of before the First World War from the imperialism of Hitler's Reich.

²⁶ Dr. Arendt writes at great length on the evolution, structure, and policies of the totalitarian state. The bulk of this discussion is not germane to the issue of imperialism with which this review is concerned. This reviewer wishes to emphasize, however, that he regards this discussion as the most profound he has seen. It is not that the elements of her presentation are original. But to get these elements, she goes almost unfailingly to the best sources, displaying a rare sensitivity to nuances, and draws them together in an admirable fashion. Her chapters on the sources of anti-Semitism are particularly penetrating.

²⁷ The author emphasizes that totalitarian rulers treat their own country and its population like any other conquered country, that is, strictly as a means toward achieving world domination (pp. 391, 395, 396–97).

²⁸ There is, incidentally, a particular point of inconsistency in Miss Arendt's reasoning. She asserts repeatedly that totalitarianism, including totalitarian imperialism, is anti-utilitarian because the totalitarian ruler does not care about the welfare of the populations under his sway. The existing evidence, however, is ambiguous on this point and hence does not exclude the possibility that the totalitarian ruler cares in some ways and to some extent for the welfare of the ruled. Furthermore, to the extent that the totalitarian ruler has succeeded in refashioning man, that is, in altering his previous structure of goals and preferences, to that extent successful totalitarian rule becomes a major goal of the ruled. Above all, totalitarian rule must be presumed to be in the subjective interest of the rulers and hence cannot be anti-utilitarian in that sense. One cannot deny that totalitarian rulers can be highly rational in the choice of means to given ends. What Miss Arendt can maintain is that totalitarian rule is anti-utilitarian from the viewpoint of non-totalitarian standards.

²⁹ Thus, Leites, Nathan, “The Politburo Through Western Eyes,” World Politics, TV, No. 2 (January 1952), 160.Google Scholar

³⁰ Operational Code of the Politburo, passim.

³¹ Schumpeter, , Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, p. 404.Google Scholar A similar view was presented in a recent article in World Politics: Roy Macridis, “Stalinism and the Meaning of Titoism,” iv, No. 2 (January 1952), 222–23. Like Schumpeter, Macridis argues that Soviet imperialism is Russian imperialism and that the Marxian ideology has great propaganda value; and he adds that the Marxian system continues to provide the Politburo with analytical tools for planning their imperialist strategy.