Imperialism abandoned egalitarian capitalist tendencies once specific investments were safe.

Evidence

It took the Boers several decades to understand that imperialism was nothing to be afraid of, since it would neither develop the country as Australia and Canada had been developed, nor draw profits from the country at large, being quite content with a high turnover of investments in one specific field. Imperialism therefore was willing to abandon the so-called laws of capitalist production and their egalitarian tendencies, so long as profits from specific investments were safe. This led eventually to the abolition of the law of mere profitableness and South Africa became the first example of a phenomenon that occurs whenever the mob becomes the dominant factor in the alliance between mob and capital. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 525

Categorization

• XREF: Introduces ‘the alliance between mob and capital’ — a concept the reader will meet again in the mob/elite alliance themes of later totalitarianism analysis.