Rafael Galvão de Almeida
Journal of Economics, Theology and Religion, vol. 4 (2024): 78-94
Abstract
This article explores J. A. Hobson’s writings on religion. Hobson had an economic methodology focused on an organic view of society, treating it like a living being. Imperialism, promoted by the government, the press, and religion acts like a parasitic ideology, infecting all parts of society, including the intersection between economic and religious discourse. Hobson argued that economic factors played an important role in the decline of religion. For Hobson, there is a struggle between “God” and “Mammon,” in which economic concerns outpace religious ones, leading to the latter’s decline. His status as a lecturer in the South Place Ethical Society makes his rhetoric somewhat that of a “secular preacher.” His writings on religion demonstrate how he understood imperialism as a worldview with religious undertones that influences all spheres of society. “Imperialism as religion” would not be an incorrect way to characterize his work.
Keywords
Hobson, imperialism, economics and religion, secularism, New Liberalism
Publication history
Received: 15 July 2024
Accepted: 25 November 2024
First view: 13 December 2024
Published: 18 December 2024
1. Introduction
The English political economist, political activist and journalist John Atkinson Hobson (1858-1940) is nowadays mostly known for his work on economic imperialism (Hobson 1902a). His writings, however, are not limited to just that. He wrote prolifically on many issues, including social reform, minimum wage (called “living wage”), economic method, and international cooperation. He also wrote biographies of personalities such as John Ruskin and L. T. Hobhouse. His coverage of the Boer War earned him fame at the turn of the century, becoming one of the foundations of his works on imperialism. One of these issues was the relationship between economics and religion. Hobson, an agnostic, wrote critically on religion—focusing especially on the role of religion in legitimizing imperialism—and regarded its decline in British society to be a consequence of capitalist development. His comments on religion are scattered throughout his work and were partially compiled in a booklet entitled God and Mammon: The Relations Between Religion and Economics (Hobson 1931) This article aims to analyze his writings on religion and discuss the way in which they contribute to the study of economics and religion.
Relationships between economics and religion are studied from mostly two perspectives. One of these is “economics of religion,” which encompasses the study of how economics influences religious choice (Iannacone 1998; Iyer 2016), and what role religious choice played in the historical process of economic growth (McCleary and Barro 2019; Friedman 2021). The other perspective is “economics as religion,” in which economics might be part of, or might even replace, the current religious and theological systems; Iyer (2016, 397) also called it “religious economics,” which provides “social commentary on economic systems or behaviors.” The origin of this perspective is usually associated with Walter Benjamin’s unfinished essay, “Capitalism as religion” (Benjamin [1921] 2004), in which he claimed capitalism replaces the religious apparatus of society. Among economists, Nelson (1991; 2002) popularized the idea of “economics as religion,” or “economics as theology,” in order to highlight the influences of Christian theology on economics. This article shows how Hobson’s contribution belongs to the “economics as religion / religious economics” perspective.
Hobson was an economist who had still more in common with the classical, pre-marginalist political economy of the 19th century. He adopted an “organic” view of economics, maintaining that both the economic and the religious spheres belong to the social organism, and that what happens in one can influence the other. While economics could help explain religious ascension and decline based on its results, it could also colonize religion, distorting it and even destroying it. Despite being an avowed secularist, he was concerned with how the submission of the religious sphere (“God”) to the economic one (“Mammon”) promoted dangerous interests, such as imperialism. Hobson’s contribution to the study of economics and religion, therefore, belongs to the “economics as religion” perspective. This article’s argument is twofold: first, that Hobson portrayed the decline of religion as an important ethical question and, second, that imperialism inherits and replaces many religious concerns, even acquiring religious tones. Ultimately, it would not be incorrect to frame his ideas on imperialism as similar to Benjamin’s “imperialism as religion.”
2. Hobson’s organic view of economics: a new religion?
Hobson titled his autobiography Confessions of an Economic Heretic (Hobson 1938). The use of the religiously charged terms “confession” and “heretic” to refer to his own reflections on his career might indicate that religion had more than a small degree of influence. This influence was present already in his early life. He described his family as a religious one—his father was a churchwarden “in a dull little church under a minister of dubious character,” before joining the Derby Cathedral, led by the Rev. Sholto Douglas Campbell Douglas, one of the largest congregations of the time (Hobson 1938, 20-1).[1] In his fifth year at Derby Public School, Hobson won a prize for “divinity,” bestowed upon him by the Prince of Wales (Allett 1981, 5). He came to abandon the faith, however, after considering that the Christian doctrine failed to satisfy his intellectual demands (Hobson 1938, 20). His first published works were also critical of religion: Hobson (1885) criticized Frederick Temple’s attempts to synthetize science and religion,[2] arguing that, in spite of Dr. Temple’s “considerable dialectical skill” and “knowledge of the systems of various thinkers” (Hobson 1885, 385), he failed to show that faith can be rational. Hobson (1886) was aimed at the four-time prime-minister William Ewart Gladstone, who penned a treaty on Genesis, which according to Hobson, revealed his amateurism in both science and religion. In both articles, Hobson criticized religion as a means by which to provide useful solutions to the world, a sentiment shared by other economists, such as Frank Knight (Emmett 1994). Hobson’s hostility towards organized religion continued throughout his career, even if he claimed to “never become a full rationalist” (Hobson 1938, 49).
After he became a religious heretic, he proceeded to become an economic heretic as well. He was raised in an environment in which laissez-faire was “taken for granted,” but there were indications he was a “heretic” ever since his first extension courses taken in his teenage years (Cain 2002, 16): his teacher, William Moore Ede, was a moderate reformist, introducing him to the standard economic literature and its issues (Kadish 1990). “[I] gave my first open step in my heretical career,” Hobson (1938, 30) wrote, co-writing with the heterodox industrialist A. F. Mummery The Physiology of the Industry (Mummery & Hobson, 1889). This book advocated against the idea that capitalism was a harmonious system that would be best left to its own devices; depressions were a feature of capitalism due to oversaving from the rich. The book was hostilely reviewed by “professional economists who seemed especially peeved at being told by two amateurs … that the teachings of classical economics were a hindrance to understanding the problem of unemployment” (Allett 1981, 10). Hobson claimed that “an economics Professor who had read my book and considered it as an equivalent in rationality to an attempt to prove the flatness of the earth” barred him from giving extension lectures on political economy at the University of London (Hobson 1938, 30).[3] His contact with the literature of social reformers and other radical groups writing on the terrible living conditions of lower classes (Hobson [1891] 1906; Allett 1981, 7; Townshend, 1990, 10) also convinced him further of the failure of laissez-faire. During that time, many liberals concluded that liberalism had failed in promoting its ideals of equality between all men and contested the capacity of the market in solving social problems. Thus, a New Liberalism formed—one that still defended liberal principles of equality of all people, but also accepted progressive ideas of social reform and greater government intervention (Freeden 1990a). Hobson was among them, accepting that, different from classical liberals, “social relations had a transformative effect on individual character” (Allett 1981, 17; Freeden 1990a). The classical neglect of the whole was not something Hobson could accept, as he developed his organic ethic.
Hobson’s organic view of society as a reform of religion
Hobson rejected orthodoxy both in religion and economics. This rejection raised issues for him, especially regarding religion. Despite what his most hostile statements against religion might indicate, he was concerned that the decline of religion might leave an ethical vacuum in society (Hobson 1922, 40-1; 1926, 229). Religion had always been a “powerful, though commonly a misdirected agent of social reform” for its capacity to command collective action (Hobson 1901a, 133); without a secular alternative, Hobson saw a crisis forming. His proposal was reforming the religious sphere into a new ethical ssystem; gods would be replaced by a “rationalist religion” (Hobson 1931, 58).[4] In his words, “the salvation of the world lies in the […] supremacy of reason” (Hobson 1922, 272). His concern in creating an organic and disinterested ethic was in response to the decay of religion, both in his personal life (Hobson 1938, 20-21) and in the British nation.[5] If “the greatest moral discovery of the nineteenth century [was] that man belonged body and soul to the natural world,” humanity needed a better ethical foundation to reflect this discovery (Hobson 1901a, 3; 1922, 5, 41).
To build a new ethical and moral philosophy, Hobson recurred to biological metaphors, influenced especially by Herbert Spencer and John Ruskin.[6] There is constant reference to the terms “organic” and “organism” in his writings, as early as Physiology of Industry: the economic circulation diagram is titled “organism of commercial life” (Mummery & Hobson, 1889, 23).[7] Each individual agent or productive unit is similar to a cell, capable of performing conscious acts to foster their sustenance, having different incentives, but still intending to fulfill a purpose (Hobson 1909, 71-4; 1911, 43-6). “Society is rightly regarded as a moral rational organism in the sense that it has a common psychic life, character, and purpose, which are not to be resolved into the life, character, and purpose of the individual member.” (Hobson 1909, 72). The evolution of capitalism itself is the evolution of the industrial organism (Hobson 1917, 31). Thus, the search for values should not begin “in the high abstractions of philosophic thought but in the lower levels of human nature—the instincts, appetites, and behavior of the animal man” (Hobson 1929, 13).
If the human person is part of a social whole and, yet, still an individual, a proper organic ethic must include two traits: 1) it should treat its objects in an organic and not a mechanic way and 2) it should be disinterested—and both are related to his critique of classical and neoclassical economics. For the exact sciences, it is commonsensical to separate, to break down a mechanism in order to study the role of each sub-mechanism in the whole; you cannot do that to a living organism without killing it (Hobson 1901a, 59-62). And, for Hobson, this is what economists were doing: John Neville Keynes’s distinction between positive (“is”) and normative economics (“ought to be”) hurt economic analysis, because one cannot exist without the other: “ethics do not ‘intrude’ into economic facts; the same facts are ethical and economic.” (Hobson 1901a, 69; Allett 1981, 47).
In order for these facts to be properly analyzed, the analysis also needs to be “disinterested.” “Disinterest” means an intellectual impulse that is “devoted directly and exclusively to the attainment of knowledge, and operating free from the mandates of the special instincts that are its indirect and strictly unintended beneficiaries” (Hobson 1926, 13). While the disinterested state is achieved more easily in the physical sciences, “the idols of the cave and the market” (Hobson 1926, 6) infect the social sciences. Hobson argued that no truly religious person would submit their doctrines to intellectual scrutiny. Economics also had the same issue: despite its claims of neutrality and the fact that classical economists did produce useful economic analysis, Hobson believed it was impossible for classical and neoclassical economics to be disinterested, because they served moneyed interests and dominant-class prejudices (Hobson 1901a, 25; 1926, 72-3). For Hobson, the greatest sin of classical political economy was framing welfare only in economic terms (as if acquisition of goods was the only objective of a person), instead of in also “organic” and humanitarian terms (Hobson 1901a, 38; 1926, 73).
Hobson emphasized that cooperation was much more important in driving human evolution, not the greed and selfishness promoted by unreformed capitalism (Hobson 1906, 18; Freeden 1990b). The individualistic conception of industry, defended by so many capitalists, was an obstacle to proper collective action, as it socialized losses and privatized profits (Hobson 1917, 404-6). Without proper collective action, the recognition of a “general will” of society (Townshend 1990, 34), the Social Question cannot be properly addressed. The Social Question was related to the diseases that afflicted the social body, such as poverty, a “painful social disease” (Hobson [1891] 1906; 1929, xi) and social parasitism—where the dispossessed lower classes and a pseudo-cosmopolitan elite (that was more interested in extracting monopolistic rents from their imperial investments) were “parasitic” because they only took from the organic system, not giving anything in return (Hobson [1891] 1906; 1902a; Cain 2002, 40-4). Against this, Hobson promoted social reform to improve the population’s welfare (with better access to food and health), creation of a universal educational system, to break the monopoly of the elites over high quality education, and a press free from the control of Capital and the State (Hobson 1926, 210; Mariutti 2021, 8).
Hobson also struggled to put his ideas into practice and be part of the public discourse (see Backhouse 2008; Lutgendorff, 2018). In fact, several of his books (e.g. Hobson 1901a; 1911; 1922) were aimed not at scholars, but at the common reader. He was also an activist, joining various reformist, secular and New Liberal networks, such as the Ethical Movement and the Rainbow Circle. They defended secular alternatives to British politics, with Hobson using them to lever his brief political career (Lutgendorff 2018).[8] Among the organizations to which Hobson belonged, he was particularly active at the South Place Ethical Society, lecturing there until nearly his death (see Hobson and Tyler, 2011). The South Place Ethical Society used to be a Unitarian church, the South Place Chapel, until Reverend Mercure Conway turned it into a place for a “pure and universal religion,” aiming for the “moral welfare of mankind”; thus, by becoming a lecturer in 1902, Hobson became essentially a “[secular] preacher” (Backhouse 2008, 226). In contrast to his support for rationalism, as mentioned before, he was not a “full rationalist”; one possible reason is the influence of John Ruskin, who was something of a religious mysti,[9] though “considered a heretic” by his peers; Hobson considered him an “art prophet” who believed in “an organic harmony” of mind that could be translated into social analysis (Hobson 1898, 29, 35). Hobson adopted Ruskin’s motto “there is no wealth but life” in all of his writings (Hobson 1938, 39). Following Ruskin, he understood that materialism, too, had its limits—and should not be the “sole method of attaining truth” (Hobson 1938, 49). With enough reform and education, a more harmonious society could be achieved, pushing against the idea that some races were predisposed to violence; human nature was not immutable and intractable and could be reformed (Hobson 1926, 262). And Hobson regarded imperialism as one of the greatest obstacles to this objective.
South Africa as a turning point: Imperialism as religion
As mentioned in the introduction, Hobson is mostly associated with his writings on imperialism. These writings also are part of his organic view,[10] understanding imperialism as the expression of “two dominant human instincts: self-assertion and acquisitiveness” (Hobson 1902b; 1926, 210). Hobson’s writings on imperialism intended to criticize eugenicists, who believed that the international order followed a “might (and efficiency) makes right” rule, in which powerful nations had a “natural right” to subjugate weaker nations. In Hobson’s view, religion had a role to play in serving their project.
His ideas on imperialism come from his journalistic trip to South Africa, to cover the Boer War (Cain 2002)[11]. As a reporter of the Manchester Guardian, a pro-Boer source, he spent months sending dispatches to London on developments in the war. Hobson himself admitted that his contact with the Boer leadership fueled his anti-imperialism, in addition to his talks with Indian activist Gopal Krishna Gokhale (Hobson 1938, 85). His collection of reports (Hobson 1900) did attempt to portray British interests as in the wrong, but, aside from a few occasional remarks, he made only a few references to religion, mostly presenting reports from ministers and how both Dutch and British rejected treating the natives Africans as equals (Hobson 1900, 283). His critique of imperial religion became more prominent in Psychology of Jingoism (Hobson 1901b).
While The War in South Africa aimed to be a journalistic investigation, Psychology of Jingoism was a study in the psychology of the masses, and a psychological companion to the political economy analysis of Imperialism. A jingoistic country was one in which “the love of one’s nation is transformed into hatred of another” (Hobson 1901b, 1). Influenced by Gustave Le Bon, Hobson argued that the jingoistic spirit possessed the British during the Boer War. It predisposed the average British citizen to condone atrocities against the Boer enemies in South Africa. Helped by the “bad conditions of town life” (Hobson 1901, 7), the jingoistic spirit is a manifestation of the darkest aspect of the “savage nature” in the “‘civilized’ community” (Hobson 1901b, 12). Hobson emphasized the role of social institutions in insufflating jingoism, especially “a biased and enslaved press” (Hobson 1901b, 125)[12] and religion.
“Where have the priests ever failed to bless a war supported by authorities and popular passion? … When has a Christian nation ever entered on a war which has not been regarded by the official priesthood a sacred war?” Hobson (1901b, 27, 41) asked. Chapter 3 is even titled “Christianity in khaki,” in reference to the British army uniforms used in the Boer War. While the Dutch churches were “equally unanimous in denouncing the war” (Hobson 1901b, 26), their British counterparts legitimized it. Citing Canon Carmichael, an Irish Anglican priest, “The Bible hardly seems to see any evil in war at all” (Hobson 1901b, 41). Nonconformist churches also struggled with this question, with Hobson (1901b, 42) noting that the wealthier members of these churches tended to support the war more. One of the main arguments of Hobson (1931) started to be developed here, that the “ethics of the Hebrew Scriptures has never really taken root in the soul of the British nation” and that the Christian commandment of ‘love your enemies’ was never really observed in England—Jesus becomes the “Prince of War” (Hobson 1901b, 43-4, 59). For Hobson, the official Christian doctrine was irremediably infected by imperial interests, one reason why Christianity suffered a long-term decline; if war is based on “primitive needs of biological struggle” (Hobson 1922, 95), then Christianity failed to keep them in check. For this reason, Hobson (1922, 137) did not think it was worth calling Christians ‘hypocrites,’ because they were just obeying natural and unchecked biological impulses. As a result, the Boers were denounced as ‘infidels,’ ignoring that, in his opinion, they were themselves even more faithful to God than the British were (Hobson 1901b, 56).[13]
Although Hobson is more known for his political economy analysis of Imperialism, ignoring Psychology of Jingoism might give us an incomplete assessment of his thought. Along with the South African reports, they are part of the same project (Hobson 1938, 62-3). His organic view gave equal importance to economic, political and psychological explanations (Magnusson, 1994, 147; Cain, 2002, 99-103). Thus, in Imperialism, Hobson gave examples of how religion served imperial interests. The third chapter of the second part (“Moral and sentimental factors”) exposed and refuted moral justifications of imperialism, and the subservience of British Christianity to British imperial politics (Hobson 1902a, 166, 320). Hobson (1902a, 208) claimed that Christians had little understanding of the peoples they aimed to help, letting imperialist interests use Christian altruism to shield their abhorrent practices in name of holiness, when they are not complicit and guilty of them. Citing Wen Ching, pseudonym of the Singaporean Chinese physician and educator Lim Boon Keng, the Christian church “is an imperium in imperio, propagating a strange faith and alienating people from that of their ancestors.” He accused foreign missionaries of abusing the privileges enforced by Western colonial powers to coerce vulnerable natives into their doctrines (Wen 1901, 13-6; Hobson 1902a, 215). One of his targets was the Archbishop of Canterbury, incidentally the same Frederick Temple he had criticized in Hobson (1885), whose imperialistic desire of “going out to all the world to preach the gospel” blinded him and his people to the costs of imperialism to both colonizer and colonized.
Recently, there has been criticism to Hobson’s ideas on imperialism: they could be seen as antisemitic, by assigning inherent parasitic tendencies to the Jews (Bolton 2023) or they could promote a racial capitalism, in which the Whites refuse their call to industry and cooperative internationalism in order to engage in parasitism (Tan 2024). Nevertheless, his writings on imperialism are relevant not just because of their pioneering character, but also because Hobson presented imperialism as a worldview. “Patriotism,” Hobson (1922, 107) wrote, displaces the “old piety” and institutes the “ritual worship of the flag” and “mystical sentiments” towards the State. Hobson was merely inches from saying that imperialism becomes a religion. Imperialism also created a world where nations would struggle in a social-Darwinist way, setting up barbarity among them, if they refused to observe principles of social cooperation (Magnusson 1994, 157). Nations belong to a greater worldly body, similar to the way in which individuals belong to the social organism; therefore, the Social Question was not just a national question, but an international one as well (Hobson 1929, xxvii). Imperialism is one of the most important obstacles to a planetary cooperative order, because of its power to penetrate all spheres of human action, including the religious one. A religion made irrelevant could only become an empty shell, to be filled with barbarity and imperialism, such as British Christianity, and, in the worse cases, the Aryan-Christianity, in Germany (Hobson 1938, 157).
3. Hobson’s four sermons against Mammon
For those who were following Hobson’s work, God and Mammon provided a repetition of some of his previous ideas, such as the irrelevance of biblical morality and the incapacity of established religion to fulfill its own commandments (Hobson 1931, 15). Hobson, however, wanted to understand what exactly made religion irrelevant in the new capitalist order. He saw the origin of religious decline in economic factors. As mentioned before, what makes imperialism so destructive to the health of a society is its elevation to worldview, even a religion. An imperialistic worldview turns the financial parasitism of the elites into something respectable—or something that could be excused through charity. This, in turn, increased the parasitic condition of the lower classes, to keep them ignorant, in order to maintain the system; a state of “love for war” is maintained by both the parasitic press and churches, which forgo their ideals of peace and love, bending their own rules to justify wars that benefit only the parasitical elite.
God and Mammon is, then, an “economic interpretation of history” (Hobson 1931, 3)—and, considering his method, it was not just an economic interpretation, but an organic one. It is a short book (58 pages) and the literature on the history of economic thought has largely ignored it—one of the few exceptions being Backhouse (2008), who situated it in British debates surrounding welfare economics. Lutgendorff (2018, 113) considered it a critique to the Anglican Church’s timid, and sometimes even hostile, attitude towards alleviation of poverty. The booklet, therefore, can be seen as provocation towards religious authorities.
He divided the booklet into four chapters. The first dealt with the origins of religion. Influenced by James Frazer’s The Golden Bough,[14] he understood the evolution of organized religion out of magical thinking of modern mankind’s ancestors. Hobson saw in these beginnings, “the opposition and the cooperation of economics and religion, God and Mammon” as “latent in man’s life” (Hobson 1931, 1). In this process, the tribe’s wizard would control the knowledge of the elements, how to bargain with the “entities” presiding over them. The idea that each natural entity had an “anima,” a soul and, therefore, a personality that could be fear-inducing and yet open to bargain with; the “expert” wizards were responsible for the bargain. This led to the development of animism and the emergence of a priesthood. Although this book did not mention the “organic” frequently, Hobson called attention to the fact that early religion had its origin in the feelings and instincts of mankind; even disinterested exploration might have had a role in the first religious ideas, which were attempts to establish causal relationships and discover how to exploit them for the betterment of mankind.
With priests emerged a “formal” religion, with “sacred groves, shrines, temples, and the proper trappings of a deity” (Hobson 1931, 4). Although the priest enjoyed benefits, he was also under constant scrutiny, since his social standing depended on results; if the priest did not produce results (if the sacrifices for rain did not bring rain), he could be shunned or killed. Hobson (1931, 4) sarcastically commented: “in some ways, primitive religion was more sincere than ours. We still pray for rain and for good harvests, but we do not kill our parsons when their prayer fails.”
If this religion was essentially economic (in the sense that it aided people in following their economic purposes—production, distribution and consumption), it also provided conventions on how to deal with surpluses, as they accumulated in the temples. The wealth accumulated by the priests allowed them to forgo hard work and to dedicate themselves to develop the “higher crafts and industries that spread in secular life” (Hobson 1931, 7). They could be considered the original parasitic class. This also allowed them to become either skeptics or reformers. Hobson cynically suggested that they probably did not believe in their own rituals, and that if they were allowed to speak freely, they would be no different than modern-day agnostics and atheists.
Chapter 2 continues the development of religion and how it let economic concerns dictate its actions: “worldly power and riches began to subjugate the more spiritual or intellectual aspects of the creed” (Hobson 1931, 10). It must be considered, however, that prophets such as the Hebrew prophets and Jesus rose up against the invasion of Mammon and exhorted piety. That did not last long because, as soon as Roman emperors were recognized as instruments of God by the Church Fathers, Christianity came to terms with Mammon, allowing the Church to become powerful and rich in the Middle Ages. The Church, then, “came to easily acquiesce in all major inequalities, injustices, and oppressions of the economic system, when the beneficiaries of such system were the rich, the great, the powerful, or itself” (Hobson 1931, 14). For that reason, Hobson (1931, 15) claimed that “the Church never seriously attempted to apply the plain principles of the teaching of the Gospels to the economic life of the people.” Mammon conducted a “guerrilla warfare,” until the Church legitimized “acquisition of wealth, and for the subordination of spiritual to worldly goods” (Hobson 1931, 21).
The effects of the Protestant Reformation are analyzed in chapter 3. In earlier works, Hobson wrote on the rise of capitalism (e.g. Hobson 1917) and did mention Max Weber and Richard Tawney’s ideas on the role of puritanism. Calvinism fused qualities for “business success in the new economic order” and “godly life” (Hobson 1931, 28). It turned the results-based economic religion of primitive man into a systematic theology. And, by combining “honest industry” and “abstemious living” with an “ethic of calling” (Hobson 1931, 28), it avoided fatalism and gave the Calvinist businessman psychological tools to accumulate and invest his surpluses.
The financier (who had been shunned in the past) experienced a full “redemption” thanks to Reformed theology. “Capital and credit are indispensable; the financier is not a parasite, but a useful member of society; and lending at interest, provided that the rate is reasonable, and that loans are made freely to the poor, is not per se more extortionate than any other of the economic transactions without which human affairs cannot be carried on.” (Hobson 1931, 29). Perusing Puritan literature, one can see exhortations alongside approval of financial activities. But the influence of the “preposterous and powerful middle-class” ensured that the Puritan Revolution did not question the actions of the propertied class or scrutinize the sources of their wealth (Hobson 1931, 30).
Just like medieval monastic orders, groups such as Wesleyan Methodists emerged demanding better observation of the biblical doctrine, but, as they grew in numbers and wealth, as well as the recognition of their usefulness to society, ensured a victory of Mammon in the long run. Hobson did praise the Quakers for their less strict theology, allowing them to resist Mammon better and to pay attention to matters of welfare, but they lacked the drive to reform. For Hobson, the greatest problem with Protestant theology was its incapacity to understand that “‘value,’ and therefore ‘wages,’ are for the most part socially and not individually determined” (Hobson 1931, 35). In other words, it failed to understand the economy as an organic entity.
The last chapter summarized Hobson’s arguments and contains his most incisive critiques against organized religion. Even if religion does not start with material concerns, it eventually evolves to please Mammon more than its gods. Material success becomes a proxy for spiritual success. In England, Hobson (1931, 47) noted how most ministers’ income is from the landed interests, thus making them bulwarks of conservatism. The reality becomes one in which a “morally respectable Mammon and a kindlier laxer Deity” share the religious discourse (Hobson 1931, 47).
The prophets are present, but ineffectual. Hobson (1931, 47) classified the actions of the Christian socialist movement as “pathetic,” especially in a time of obsolescence of theology. The Christian ethic of “hard work” is secularized in economic teachings, by promoting laissez-faire and lower taxes; capitalists and entrepreneurs become instruments of God; their success is therefore a sign of divine blessing, no matter the cost to others (such as workers). Meanwhile, Christian doctrine becomes “unreal” and irrelevant, leading to the decline of Christianity (Hobson 1931, 49). Churches have only three options: to submit to the interests of Mammon (alignment with conservatism and imperialism against working classes), to engage in quixotic crusades (Christian socialism) or to “confine themselves to purifying the soul and will of man,” accepting their irrelevance (Hobson 1931, 52).
Religion cannot guide humanity because it is results-based and context-specific. Hobson’s work on organic ethics intended to reform the place of religion in society, so that moral behavior could be an end in itself, instead of conditioned to results. For that reason, Hobson repeated his discourse on the benefits of social reform and international cooperation, but the tone, this time, resembled an appeal at the end of a sermon: humanity must develop “a religion stripped of all theology and magic,” that can be a “support of our industrial and other institutions the principles and ideals of a rational ethic,” based on “the enthusiasm of humanity for a common and a worthy cause” (Hobson 1931, 56). Through the power of enlightenment and reform, humanity can establish a proper “rationalist religion,” to end the “bickering of God and Mammon” to keep “body and soul together” (Hobson 1931, 58).
4. Repercussion and relevance
God and Mammon did not have a warm reception. The booklet was virtually ignored among economists. Among scholars of religion and theologians, it received two reviews at its publication. One was written by Miles Krumbine (1932), then pastor of the historic Plymouth Church of Shaker Heights, calling it a “racy little book,” but skeptical of Hobson’s (and Tawney’s) thesis on the religious origins of the middle-classes; in his view, Hobson fancied himself a prophet who identified with the interests of the lower classes, but was in reality ignorant of their actual needs. The other review is from J. B. Weatherspoon (1932), for the Baptist journal Review & Expositor, which summarized Hobson’s argument and concluded that while the bargain with Mammon is real, Hobson’s “rational religion” was just as unsatisfactory. No reviews from secular outlets could be located. It is also not mentioned in his autobiography, though he did write an entire chapter on Christianity, repeating his arguments (Hobson 1938, ch. 13). In the end, there is an irony in which the people who paid attention to his book were the objects of his disdain: churchmen and theologians. After all, an attentive reading can argue that Hobson had more in common with them than with anyone else.
In the Christian tradition in which Hobson was raised, warnings against Mammon appear as early as the New Testament: “But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?” (James 2:6-7). The text interprets itself: even at the beginning of Christianity, they were conscious that sermons and doctrine could change to accommodate to the preferences of moneyed interests. These concerns have continued throughout the history of Christianity: the industrialist Presbyterian layman Stephen Colwell wrote, in the 1830s, that churches were mistaking financial contribution for devotion (Pointer 2002, 183). The Salvation Army, for example, was a denomination that emerged in the late 19th-century, whose founder, William Booth, nurtured a deep desire to integrate evangelism and alleviation of poverty. They earned a reference from Hobson himself, emphasizing their importance in calling attention to poverty (Hobson 1938, 28), while criticizing their “Salvation colonies” strategy to tackle unemployment (Hobson [1891] 1906). Their early missionary movement “showed that Christianity was neither inherently imperialist nor intrinsically Western,” but the more they associated themselves with the British government to fuel their objective of social reform, the more they lost sympathy for non-British peoples, forcing them to conform to British ideas and customs in their missions (Eason 2021, 106, 111). Even in the 21st century, influential religious leaders support war, such as Evangelical support of the US-American invasion of Iraq in 2003[15] and the explicit support of the Russian Orthodox Church to the openly imperialistic Russian World doctrine[16] of the Putin government, which led to the war in Ukraine (Harned 2022). These events show that Hobson underestimated the rate at which religion declines in human society, especially from a global point of view: if God and Mammon coevolve, it is because they are part of the social organism, being able to adapt and find new strategies of expanding their influence; even religion could become a way to resist imperialism.[17] Hobson’s view on religion, therefore, acquires deterministic contours. On the other hand, these events also seem to confirm his view on how organized religion can still become an instrument of an imperial State, raising doubts on whether they worship God or Mammon.
5. Conclusion
In analyses of Hobson’s thought, his work on imperialism is usually overrepresented. This article attempted to reconsider his ideas on religion, and how closely related they are to his economic ideas. Although religion was not Hobson’s main concern, we can see, upon perusing his writings, that both the economic and the religious spheres are intimately related. This is related to his view of society as an organism and his rejection of orthodox economics. That is why, in spite of his outright disdain and even casual hostility to religion, Hobson also understood religion as part of society that also suffered from Mammon’s invasion.
Due to his critiques to neoclassical economics, there is little that Hobson could have contributed to the economics of religion, besides an informal model of the dynamics of The golden bough; Hobson relied on thought experiments to demonstrate how religious decisions (trust in the priests) depend on economic factors (economic surplus). But, at the same time, he used it to argue that religion is results-based, instead of its claims that is virtue-based (moral actions depend on results and future rewards—and are not ends in themselves); this is why religion could bend its own rules to support imperialism. His organic ethic hoped to create a world in which moral actions would be ends in themselves: for the progress of mankind, instead of the promotion of interests.
His insistence on the links between economics and religion is shared by both perspectives, however. His concern with how the influence of Mammon/The Market/Capital in society acquires implicit and even explicit religious tones places him in the perspective of economics as religion. This is why “imperialism as religion” would not be an incorrect way to refer to his work, especially when dealing with the religious aspect of imperialism.
In the end, he admitted that the energy that once was directed toward religious issues just shifted to political ones (Hobson 1938, 13, 97). There is a priestly quality in his writings and lectures, something that might make students of religion, be they believers or skeptics, attracted to his ideas. Krumbine (1932, 305) noted that “wistfully, [Hobson] reminds us that the saints will never be forgotten.” Hobson’s concerns are present in many of his writings; his organic view of society, both at national and international level, guided his research; his work on imperialism aimed to show how it becomes a worldview that has the capacity to guide entire nations, from their lowest classes to their more educated elites. Recovering his writings on religion may therefore help us beyond merely obtaining a better understanding his thought; his writings may also add to the literature on economics and religion, since many of his concerns are still shared by some scholars and members of the public.
References
Allett, John. 1981. New Liberalism: The Political Economy of J. A. Hobson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Backhouse, Roger E. 1994. “Mummery and Hobson’s The Physiology of Industry.” In J. A. Hobson after Fifty Years: Freethinker of the Social Sciences, edited by John Pheby, 78-99. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Backhouse, Roger E. 2008. “Faith, Morality, and Welfare: The English school of Welfare Economics, 1901–29.” History of Political Economy 40, no. 5: 212-36.
Bailey, Lee W. 2020. “Golden Bough, The.” In Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, edited by David A. Leeming, 976-85. Berlin: Springer.
Benjamin, Walter. [1921] 2004. “Capitalism as Religion.” Translated by Chad Kautzer. In The Frankfurt School on Religion, edited by Eduardo Mendieta, 259-62. London: Routledge.
Bolton, Matthew. 2023. “Antisemitism in the British ‘New Liberalism’ Movement: J. A. Hobson on Capitalism and Imperialism.” In Critical Theory and the Critique of Antisemitism, edited by Marcel Stoetzler, 51-74. London: Bloomsbury.
Cain, Peter. 2002. Hobson and Imperialism: Radicalism, New Liberalism, and Finance 1887-1938. London: Routledge.
Eason, Andrew M. 2021. “Religion in an Age of Empire: The Salvation Army and British Imperialism, 1878-1914.” Journal of Religious History 45, no. 1: 91-111.
Emmett, Ross B. 1994. “Frank Knight: Economics versus Religion.” In Economics and Religion: Are They Distinct?, edited by H. Geoffrey Brennan & A. M. C. Waterman, 103-20. New York: Springer.
Freeden, Michael. 1990a. “The New Liberalism and its Aftermath.” In Victorian Liberalism: Nineteenth-century Political Thought and Practice, edited by Richard Bellamy, 175-92. London: Routledge.
Freeden, Michael. 1990b. “Hobson’s Evolving Conceptions of Human Nature.” In Reappraising J. A. Hobson: Humanism and Welfare, edited by Michael Freeden. London: Unwin Hyman.
Friedman, Benjamin. 2021. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Harned, Lena Surzhko. 2022. “Russian World and Ukrainian Autocephaly: Religious Narratives in Anti-Colonial Nationalism of Ukraine.” Religions 13, no. 4: 349.
Hinchliff, Peter Bingham. 1998. Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hobson, J. A. 1885. “Dr. Temple on Religion and Science.” Westminster Review 123: 366-85.
Hobson, J. A. 1886. “Dr. Mr. Gladstone and Genesis.” Westminster Review 125: 119-35.
Hobson, J. A. [1891] 1906. Problems of Poverty: An Inquiry into the Industrial Condition of the Poor. London: Methuen.
Hobson, J. A. 1898. John Ruskin, Social Reformer. London: James Nisbet.
Hobson, J. A. 1900. The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Effects. London: James Nisbet.
Hobson, J. A. 1901a. The Social Problem. London: James Nisbet.
Hobson, J. A. 1901b. Psychology of Jingoism. London: Grant Richards, 1901.
Hobson, J. A. 1902a. Imperialism: A Study. New York: James Pott.
Hobson, J. A. 1902b. “The Scientific Basis of Imperialism.” Political Science Quarterly 17, no. 3: 460-89.
Hobson, J. A. 1906. “The Ethics of Internationalism.” International Journal of Ethics 17, no. 1: 16-28.
Hobson, J. A. 1909. The Crisis of Liberalism: New Issues of Democracy. London: P. S. King & Son.
Hobson, J. A. 1911. The Science of Wealth. London: Williams and Norgate.
Hobson, J. A. 1917. The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production. London: Walter Scott.
Hobson, J. A. 1922. Problems of a New World. New York: Macmillan.
Hobson, J. A. 1926. Free-thought in the Social Sciences. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Hobson, J. A. 1929. Economics and Ethics. Boston: D. C. Heath.
Hobson, J. A. 1931. God and Mammon: The Relations of Religion and Economics. New York: Macmillan.
Hobson, J. A. 1938. Confessions of an Economic Heretic. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Hobson, J. A., and Morris Ginsberg. 1931. L. T. Hobhouse: His Life and Work. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Hobson, J. M., and Colin Tyler, eds. 2011. Selected Writings of J. A. Hobson, 1932-1938. London: Routledge.
Iannacone, Laurence R. 1998. “Introduction to the Economics of Religion.” Journal of Economic Literature 36: 1465-96.
Iyer, Sriya. 2016. “The New Economics of Religion.” Journal of Economic Literature 54, no. 2: 395-441.
Kadish, Alon. 1990. “Rewriting the Confessions: Hobson and the Extension movement.” In Reappraising J. A. Hobson: Humanism and Welfare, edited by Michael Freeden. London: Unwin Hyman. Ebook.
Krumbine, Miles H. 1932. “Review: God and Mammon by J. A. Hobson.” The Journal of Religion 12, no. 2: 304-6.
Lutgendorff, Elizabeth Ann. 2018. Slaughtering Sacred Cows: Rebutting the Narrative of Decline in the British Secular Movement from 1890s to 1930s. Oxford: Oxford Brooks University.
Magnusson, Lars. 1994. “Hobson and Imperialism: An Appraisal.” In J. A. Hobson after Fifty Years: Freethinker of the Social Sciences, edited by John Pheby, 142-62. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Mariutti, Eduardo Barros. 2021. “John Hobson: liberalismo, imperialismo e reforma social.” Texto para Discussão Unicamp, no. 408. Campinas: Unicamp.
Matthew, H. C. G. 1990. “Hobson, Ruskin and Cobden.” In Reappraising J. A. Hobson: Humanism and Welfare, edited by Michael Freeden. London: Unwin Hyman.
McCarraher, Eugene. 2019. The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism became the Religion of Modernity. Cambridge: Belknapp.
McCleary, Rachel M., and Robert J. Barro. 2019. The Political Economy of Believing and Belonging. New Haven: Princeton University Press.
Moore, James R. 1990. “Theodicy and Society: The Crisis of the Intelligentsia.” In Victorian Faith in Crisis: Essays on Continuity and Change in Nineteenth-Century Religious Belief, edited by Richard J. Helmstadter, and Bernard Lightman, 153-86. London: Palgrave.
Mummery, A. F., and J. A. Hobson. 1889. Physiology of Industry. London: John Murray.
Nelson, Robert H. 1991. Reaching for Heaven on Earth: The Theological Meaning of Economics. Savage: Rowman & Littlefield.
Nelson, Robert H. 2001. Economics as Religion: From Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond. University Park: Pennsylvania University Press.
Newman, Peter. 1990. “Francis Ysidro Edgeworth.” In The New Palgrave: Utility and Probability, edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman, 38-69. Berlin: Springer.
Pointer, Richard W. 2002. “Philadelphia Presbyterians, Capitalism and the Morality of Economic Success.” In God and Mammon: Protestants, Money, and the Market, 1790-1860, edited by Mark A. Noll, 171-92. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rosario, Jeffrey. 2022. “Protestant Anti-Imperialism and the Vindication of the Boxer Rebellion, 1899–1901” Diplomatic History 46, no. 2: 349-74.
Shin, Wonchul. 2020. “From Demonic Faith to Redemptive Faith: The Ambiguity of Faith in the Intersection of Religion and State Violence.” Religions 11: 268.
Tan, Benjamin R. Y. 2024. “Hobson on White Parasitism and its Solution.” Political Theory 52, no. 1: 120-45.
Townshend, Jules. 1990. J. A. Hobson. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Weatherspoon, J. B. 1932. “Review: God and Mammon. By J. A. Hobson.” Review & Expositor 29, no. 2: 265-6.
Wen Ching. 1901. The Chinese Crisis from Within. London: Grant Richards
Notes
[1] The Derby Cathedral became a diocese in 1927, and is still active (derbycathedral.org).
[2] Temple would later become the Archbishop of Canterbury (1896-1902), the highest position in the Anglican Church. His lectures The Relations between Religion and Science, criticized by Hobson, were a popular work of public theology, which accepted the theory of evolution as compatible with the Christian doctrine. For his biography, see Hinchliff (1998).
[3] The literature identified this professor as Francis Edgeworth (Allett 1981, 11; Townshend 1990, 4). Newman (1990, 48) argued that there is no conclusive evidence to tell whether Edgeworth was the one who did it. Kadish (1990) argued that Hobson distorted the events surrounding the episode to make himself look like he reached independent conclusions on his own; later, he was still allowed to give extension courses at other universities.
[4] Readers might be reminded of Auguste Comte’s positivistic religion. Both Townshend (1990, 42) and Matthew (1990, note 19) identify that Hobson was influenced by Comte, but the extent of his influence is still an open question. Comte’s “religious humanitarianism” was an important for his friend L. T. Hobhouse (Hobson & Ginsberg 1931, 100-101).
[5] See Moore (1990) on the secularization of the British intelligentsia, and the “secular awakening” that, in Nelson’s (2001) view, helped to promote economics as an alternative to theology.
[6] Although he rejected Herbert Spencer’s individualism, determinism and laissez-faire, he accepted his idea that society was much like an organism. Spencer’s Study of Sociology, “exercised a profound influence” on him (Hobson 1938, 23). Spencer’s idea that “laws of evolution could be discovered in the history of human institutions” (Hobson 1926, 5) guided his research. Other important influences were William McDougal and Thorstein Veblen, who also had a similar organic view of society. Some authors (e.g. Cain 2022, 31) claim that Ruskin’s influence was greater than Spencer’s.
[7] As Backhouse (1994, 78) remarked, it is unclear which ideas in Physiology of Industry belong to Mummery and which to Hobson. Even if we cannot ascertain whether Hobson was the one who pushed for biological metaphors in the book, we note that they did become more relevant in his later writings.
[8] Note that not all subscribed to antitheism, since they also worked with religious groups, especially nonconformist churches, for a secular state and greater freedom of religion (Lutgendorff 2018, 48).
[9] Ruskin was involved with the arts and crafts movement, which was a movement of valorization of the artisan’s work against the alienating industrial production; the ends of production must respect its means. For its rise and fall, as well as its place in the discussions on late 19th century capitalism, see chapter 14 of McCarraher (2019).
[10] References to the “organic” are sparse in Imperialism (e.g. Hobson 1902a, 363). In the same year he published Imperialism, he also published an article entitled “The Scientific Basis of Imperialism” (Hobson 1902b), where he wrote in more detail on the biological origins of imperialism.
[11] Cain (2002, 59-63) mentioned that his ideas on imperialism started taking shaping in 1895, after a negative review of social-Darwinist book Social Evolution, by Benjamin Kidd, and the botched Jameson Raid, conducted by the British Cape Colony in South Africa against the Afrikaner Transvaal, misguided by purely financial interests (to secure mines for the British administration).
[12] Hobson (1906, 18) warned that the press becomes a “providence,” because of how it can present world events as if they belonged to one narrative, that might promote imperial interests.
[13] In fact, the Apartheid State, formed after the independence, was a deeply religious one, where the brutal segregation had support from the Afrikaner churches, and the Bible was interpreted to foster racist doctrines. Some indications of this can be seen in Hobson’s (1900, 28-9) portrayal of the Afrikaner president Paul Kruger as a deeply religious man, but ignorant of other faiths. Shin (2020) analyzed the politico-theological origins of the Apartheid State at the Boer War, as an attempt by the Afrikaners to protect themselves against future aggression. The faith they created, however, was far removed from Biblical precepts.
[14] Frazer’s The Golden Bough was one of the most important works in comparative religion before the Second World War. It followed the naturalist tradition initiated by David Hume, treating religion in a scientific, positivistic way, as a deluded form of analyzing the world; it followed a scheme of cultural development of magic, religion and then science, which was the highest method to understand reality and would surpass the other two (Bailey 2020). Being written by a fellow secularist and one of the most popular books of its time, Hobson took advantage of it to his argument.
[15] See the Land Letter (web.archive.org/web/20190705081813/https://waynenorthey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/The-Land-Letter.pdf), signed by influential US-American Evangelical leaders advocating for a “just war” in Iraq.
[16] The Russian World doctrine is denounced as heretical by other Orthodox churches. See <publicorthodoxy.org/2022/03/13/a-declaration-on-the-russian-world-russkii-mir-teaching/>.
[17] See Rosario (2022) on religious anti-imperialism during the Boxer Rebellion. Religious anti-imperialism, however, is an underexplored topic in the literature.
