1.6 to 1.8

Russia, Italy, Germany, the United States, and Japan were added as newcomers among the imperialistic states and indirect, especially financial, control became a preferred form of imperialism. For a decade after World War I the great expectations for a better world inspired by the League of Nations put the problem of imperialism once more in abeyance. Then Japan renewed its empire building with an attack in 1931 upon China, and under the leadership of the totalitarian states, Japan, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, a new period of imperialism was inaugurated in the 1930s and 1940s. In their modern form, arguments about the causes and value of imperialism can be classified into four main groups. The first group contains economic arguments and often turns around the question of whether or not imperialism pays. Those who argue that it does point to the human and material resources and the outlets for goods, investment capital, and surplus population provided by an empire. Their opponents, among them Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and J. A. Hobson, often admit that imperialism may benefit a small, favoured group but never the nation as a whole. Marxist theoreticians interpret imperialism as a late stage of capitalism when the national capitalist economy has become monopolistic and is forced to conquer outlets for its overproduction and surplus capital in competition with other capitalist states. This is the view held, for instance, by Vladimir Lenin and N.I. Bukharin, to whom capitalism and imperialism are identical. The weakness in that view is that historical evidence does not support it and that it fails to explain precapitalist imperialism and Communist imperialism. A second group of arguments relates imperialism to the nature of human beings and human groups, such as the state. Such different personalities as Machiavelli, Sir Francis Bacon, Ludwig Gumplowicz, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini, reasoning on different grounds, nevertheless arrived at similar conclusions. Imperialism to them is part of the natural struggle for survival. Those endowed with superior qualities are destined to rule all others.