“The generally accepted image of international trade is one in which a number of trading communities… are engaged in striving each to win for itself, and at the expense of the others, the largest possible share of a strictly limited objective—the world market. … So far as world or international trade is rightly presented as a competitive process, that competition takes place not between America, Britain, Germany, but between a number of separate American, British, German, firms. The immediate interests of these firms is not directed along political lines.”

—  J.A. Hobson

The Morals of Economic Irrationalism (1920)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The generally accepted image of international trade is one in which a number of trading communities… are engaged in str…" by J.A. Hobson?
J.A. Hobson photo
J.A. Hobson 26
English economist, social scientist and critic of imperiali… 1858–1940

Related quotes

Ramsay MacDonald photo

“The channels of world trade are so obstructed by the pursuit of nationalist economic policy that steps should be taken at once to make it possible to arrive at an international economic agreement which would revive international trade. A return to free trade pure and simple would only increase unemployment.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the National Labour conference at Caxton Hall, London (28 October 1935), quoted in The Times (29 October 1935), p. 9
1930s

Liam Fox photo

“The social structures of markets and the internal organisation of firms are best viewed as attempts to mitigate the effects of competition with other firms.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: Markets as politics: A political-cultural approach to market institutions, 1996, p. 657

“Many critics see international trade as a form of cultural imperialism that must be strictly controlled.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Five, The Politics Of International Trade, p. 172

Jan Tinbergen photo
Ken Clarke photo

“When we negotiate trade agreements in the future, we will be pressing other countries to open up their public procurement processes to genuine, fair, international competition. It would be totally ridiculous to abandon that principle now to give into not only constituency pressures, which I understand, but otherwise nationalist nonsense that ought to be ignored.”

Ken Clarke (1940) British Conservative politician

Speech https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-03-26/debates/C8342F96-62B1-40CC-AB4A-03AFBC46ACBB/UKPassportContract#contribution-8F9BEBCD-C76E-4950-A915-40D5123A853E in the House of Commons (26 March 2018) on the awarding of the contract for the production of new UK passports to Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto
2018

Wilbur Ross photo

“I am not anti-trade. I am pro-trade, but I am pro-sensible trade, not trade that is to the disadvantage of the American worker and to the American manufacturing community.”

Wilbur Ross (1937) 39th and current United States Secretary of Commerce

U.S. Commerce nominee Ross says NAFTA is Trump's first trade priority https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/r-us-commerce-nominee-ross-says-nafta-is-trumps-first-trade-priority-2017-1-1001675930 (January 18, 2017)

“Much individual enterprise in industry does not make for industrial progress. A larger and larger proportion of the energy given out in trade competition is consumed in violent warfare between trade rivals and is not represented either in advancement of industrial arts or in increase of material wealth.”

J.A. Hobson (1858–1940) English economist, social scientist and critic of imperialism

Section 11, p. 418-419
The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production (1906), Ch. XVII Civilisation and Industrial Development

Walter Raleigh photo

“For whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

A Discourse of the Invention of Ships, Anchors, Compass, &c

Related topics