J. A. Hobson

J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) was an English economist and journalist, born in Derby. His early book The Physiology of Industry, written with A. F. Mummery, argued that excessive saving and insufficient consumption cause unemployment, a heresy that closed the universities to him and that Keynes later acknowledged as a forerunner of his own theory. He lived by lecturing and journalism. His Imperialism of 1902, which traced the scramble for colonies to the search for outlets for surplus capital, influenced Lenin, and The Evolution of Modern Capitalism, The Industrial System and Work and Wealth set out his humanist economics. He was a founder of the Union of Democratic Control.