Hobson argued imperialism flowed from underconsumption by working classes at home

Evidence

Their aim was to refute the contention, made popular by J. A. Hobson’s influential 1902 text Imperialism: A Study, that imperialism was a product of market capitalism. Hobson had attributed imperialism, which he distinguished from the establishment of settler-colonies, to manufacturers, investors and financiers engaged in a ‘cut-throat struggle’ for new markets and investments. … Hobson attributed the imbalance between production and consumption that drove the imperialist competition for new markets to the weak consuming power of the working classes of the imperialist countries. Imperialism, in this picture, was the fruit of unequal economic distribution at home, and would only be overcome by domestic social reform to lift the living standards of the poor. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 252

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Hobson’s underconsumption theory of imperialism inverts the whole framework the reader works in — imperialism as the external expression of domestic inequality, not of surplus capital seeking foreign outlets per se. Dense enough to sit with.
• XREF: Direct precursor to Lenin’s theory of imperialism and to modern debates about whether colonial exploitation funded Western welfare states. Also relevant to Luxemburg and the underconsumption controversy.