Leftover Colonies
MR. STRACHEY believes that empires are no longer necessary, and that with a little luck we have seen the last of them. A Socialist but, by now, a care- fully undogmatic Socialist, he admits that empires are still possible through indulgence of the ancient human motive of simple political lust for conquest, but considers that the economic motive for empire no longer applies and that therefore political psychology will no longer be formed by it. The desire for empire is traced back to the desire to enslave in order to live upon the surplus of unpaid or cheap labour, and in a world abounding with nationalisms, with deadly weapons which discour- age the conqueror as much as his contemplated victim, and above all with new techniques which allow that surplus to be produced without the bother of acquiring slaves, the process of conquest is hardly worth the candle. Russia still holds Eastern Europe and to some extent the United States holds Latin America, but the grip on both these areas is slackening in irregular waves of weakness. Neither can afford more Budapests or Guatemalas, politically, and the profits of the United Fruit Company and of Hungarian industry are hardly profits when weighed against the mili- tary and diplomatic expenditures which are neces- sary to produce them from year to year.
One of the most delicate types of question for the non-Marxist Socialist is that which asks how far and how directly the profit motive governs psychology. Mr. Strachey writes the most interest- ing parts of his book around this problem as applied to the British Empire, and tries to find out whether empire did indeed pay us or not. The conclusion is that broadly it didn't, although there were exceptional situations in which it did, like the bullion exploitation of India in the late eighteenth century which made a significant surplus of capital to assist in the launching of the Industrial Revolu- tion. Often empire was undertaken for economic motives, Egypt occupied for the bondholders on the national debt or the South African republics to protect the British hold on the Rand, but only very rarely has it paid the nation as a whole. Balance of trade figures since the Eighties have roughly improved in inverse ratio to loss of empire. Private investment has made money, but it will make less and less in future, and Mr. Strachey invokes his favourite Professor Myrdal to suggest that foreign investment in undeveloped countries tends actually to make the poor poorer and the rich richer. Logically, Mr. Strachey adds to the discussion a chapter on the thought of Hobson and Lenin on colonialism, both of whom in different ways adhered to the theory that over- seas investment was a necessary feature of the growth of capitalism, as it overflowed its home markets and impoverished the proletariat. On Lenin, he comments briefly : 'He overlooked the economic consequences of democracy.'
Believing these things, Mr. Strachey cannot be satisfied with a Commonwealth which relies so piously and unquestioningly on the investing powers of the City of London as it does at the moment. A trickle of civilised investments, which in another industrialised country would suffice to feed existing industry and return a nice profit, can achieve nothing in an underdeveloped land which needs the great capital surplus necessary for a full industrial revolution, for breaking up a peasantry and absorbing its masses gradually into urban industry and manufacture. For that, the Western world must in a sense allow itself to be looted as generously as India allowed itself to be looted, by the provision of massive, non-profitmaking,
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