Their aim was to refute the contention, made popular by J. A. Hobson's influential 1902 text Imperialism: A Study, that imperialism was a product of market capitalism. Hobson had attributed imperialism, which he distinguished from the establishment of settler-colonies, to manufacturers, investors and financiers engaged in a 'cut-throat struggle' for new markets and investments. … Hobson attributed the imbalance between production and consumption that drove the imperialist competition for new markets to the weak consuming power of the working classes of the imperialist countries. Imperialism, in this picture, was the fruit of unequal economic distribution at home, and would only be overcome by domestic social reform to lift the living standards of the poor.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 252