Functional Integration in the early history of Social Liberalism.

I have been (recall here; here; and here) re-reading and teaching J.A. Hobson’s (1902) Imperialism: A Study. (My page-numbers are to the American edition.) Near the end of the book Hobson reflects on possible solutions to combat imperialism. As is somewhat well known his main aim is to promote a new form of internationalism, which is federal in character. He is especially intrigued by the possibility of developing a global federation out of re-thinking the relationship between England and its independent, settler-colonial dominions. (This has been emphasized (here) by Duncan Bell.) And this presupposes, what he calls ‘genuine democracy.’ As he puts it:

The power of the imperialist forces within the nation to use the national resources for their private gain, by operating the instrument of the State, can only be overthrown by the establishment of a genuine democracy, the direction of public policy by the people for the people through representatives over whom they exercise a real control. (p. 382)

And interestingly enough, Hobson is very aware that the franchise itself is not sufficient to get to what he calls ‘genuine democracy.’ In fact, he is quite clear that (say since, say, Disraeli) expanding the franchise is itself a mechanism in the art of government by which imperialist forces within the nation advance their agenda:

Imperialism is only beginning to realise its full resources, and to develop into a fine art the management of nations: the broad bestowal of a franchise, wielded by a people whose education has reached the stage of an uncritical ability to read printed matter, favours immensely the designs of keen business politicians, who, by controlling the press, the schools, and where necessary the churches, impose Imperialism upon the masses under the attractive guise of sensational patriotism. (p. 382)

One may think then that Hobson’s solution to modern imperialism is better education. And this, indeed, what he suggests: “'The ability of a nation to shake off this dangerous usurpation of its power, and to employ the national resources in the national interest, depends upon the education of a national intelligence and a national will, which shall make democracy a political and economic reality.” (P. 383) So, genuine democracy is the effect of an educated populace which can resist the parasitic classes that try to wrest democracy from the people for their own militarist ends by appealing to a kind of false patriotism. Instead, what’s needed is a true nationalism (we might say a ‘civic patriotism’) which overcomes narrow class differences (see below for some textual evidence).

For Hobson, a genuine democracy can invest in the growth and consumption of the working poor, so that there is no need to engage in foreign expansion. It’s pretty clear that by Hobson’s own lights a better informed, enfranchised public is not much of a safeguard against the parasitic cabal that drives imperialism. One can easily imagine, given what Hobson claims, that part of the program of genuine democracy is a serious antitrust policy because trusts and combines cause domestica underconsumption on his view (pp. 85-90). But in a way that presupposes precisely what one cannot expect: a political process that can resist the material and ideological temptations that make imperialism so attractive.

So, it looks as if Hobson’s diagnosis of the problem of the processes that generate imperialism is far more compelling than his proposed solutions. But there is also quite another strain of argument in Hobson, and this is connected to what has come to be known as ‘functional integration.’*

Now, ‘functional integration’ has a long history going back to at least Robert Molesworth’s An Account of Denmark (1694). Molesworth advocated for the use of Most Favored Nations (MFN) Status in free trade agreements and so create an ever-widening circle of pacific relations (see here for more details). During the eighteenth century, Molesworth’s idea got incorporated into various federal and imperial peace plans and it becomes an integral part of Adam Smith’s and Bentham’s art of government (see here for my more scholarly account). As I learned from Chris Brooke, and saw re-affirmed in Hobson’s very own rather entertaining book, Richard Cobden: The International Man (1919), functional integration is central to Cobden’s ‘Manchester’ liberalism. (Functional integration as I use it anticipates what came to be known as ‘functionalism’ in international relations theory.)

But it is pretty clear that Hobson himself is enamored of functional integration in his own voice. And this is significant because from a distance one may well suspect that or wonder whether Hobson’s social liberalism is at odds with Cobden’s more laissez-fare Manchesterism. Without underplaying their differences — unlike his friend John Bright, Cobden was genuinely lukewarm about democracy — there is also some continuity. In the passage that I am about to quote, in which Hobson advocates for functional integration, he also strongly implies that Cobden’s timing was off because the growth of true democracy helps secure the proper working of functional integration through free trade:

Just in proportion as the substitution of true national governments for the existing oligarchies or sham democracies becomes possible will the apparent conflicts of national interests disappear, and the fundamental cooperation upon which nineteenth-century Free Trade prematurely relied manifest itself. The present class government means the severance or antagonism of nations, because each ruling class can only keep and use its rule by forcing the antagonisms of foreign policy: intelligent democracies would perceive their identity of interest, and would ensure it by their amicable policy. The genuine forces of internationalism, thus liberated, would first display themselves as economic forces, securing more effective international co-operation for postal, telegraphic, railway, and other transport services, for monetary exchange and for common standards of measurement of various kinds, and for the improved intercommunication of persons, goods, and information. Related and subsidiary to these purposes would come a growth of machinery of courts and congresses, at first informal and private, but gradually taking shape in more definite and more public machinery: the common interests of the arts and sciences would everywhere be weaving an elaborate network of intellectual internationalism, and both economic and intellectual community of needs and interests would contribute to the natural growth of such political solidarity as was required to maintain this real community.

It is thus, and only thus, that the existing false antagonisms of nations, with their wastes and perils and their retardation of the general course of civilisation, can be resolved. (p. 384-385)

Lurking here is the now familiar thought that patriotic, national liberal democracies with educated publics whose economies are embedded in much larger and wider cooperative frameworks will become intrinsically pacific toward each other and others. (Part of Hobson’s argument is that imperial rule in the tropics is an immoral and uneconomic project.) And these frameworks would generate a genuine international community that facilitates solidarity among its members which would allow an informal machinery of government to become formalized among them.

Such narratives of every wider and more intense circles of cooperation in federal projects through complex overlapping functional integration are familiar from Kant’s Perpetual Peace, EU propaganda, and recent work (say by Slobodian) on neoliberal Globalism. But Hobson was an important contributor to this stream of thought not just by alerting his readers to the significance of it in his presentation of Cobden’s life and words, but also in his incredibly widely read and influential critique of imperialism.

---

*My initial interest in the role of functional integration was prompted by an unpublished manuscript by Chris Brooke (Cambridge).