John A. Hobson

About John A. Hobson

John Atkinson Hobson (6 July 1858 – 1 April 1940) was an English economist and social scientist. Hobson is best known for his writing on imperialism, which influenced Vladimir Lenin, and his theory of underconsumption. His principal and earliest contribution to economics was the theory of underconsumption, a scathing criticism of Say's law and classical economics' emphasis on thrift. Other early work critiqued the classical theory of rent and anticipated the Neoclassical "marginal productivity" theory of distribution. After covering the Second Boer War as a correspondent for The Manchester Guardian, he condemned British involvement in the war and characterised it as acting under the influence of mine owners. In a series of books, he explored the associations between imperialism and international conflict and asserted that imperial expansion is driven by a search for new markets and investment opportunities overseas. Later, he argued that maldistribution of income resulted, through oversaving and underconsumption, in unemployment (thus he rejected the position that structural unemployment was caused by "Collective Bargaining" encouraged by the 1875 and 1906 Acts of Parliament) and that