The repeal of import duties and the establishment of Free Trade marked the political triumph of the new manufacturing and commercial plutocracy over the landowning aristocracy. Free Trade was so profitable to the former classes in securing cheap importation of raw materials and in cheapening the subsistence of labour at a time when England's priority in new industrial methods offered an indefinitely rapid expansion of trade that they were willing to support the reimposition of the income-tax which Peel proposed in 1842 in order to enable him to repeal or reduce the import duties. (I.vii. "Imperialist Finance")

Had the great mass of economics faculties, especially in England and France (where liberal orthodoxy reigned) advertised the clash between open market principles and imperialism, certainly the venture would have fallen into disrepute. In the 1880's, when the sphere of direct political by Britain increased by nearly a quarter, the luminaries of economics—Marshall, Mill, Jevons, and many others—either remained silent regarding the elephant in the bedroom, or else actively praised the elephant. Niall Ferguson, obviously an apologist for what he regards as a market economy, furnishes a compelling explanation:

In theory, globalization may be possible in an international system of multilateral cooperation, spontaneously arising as Cobden envisaged. But it may equally well be possible as a result of coercion if the dominant power in the world favours economic liberalism. Empire—and specifically the British empire—is the instance that springs to mind....

Today, the principal barriers to an optimal allocation of labour, capital and goods in the world are, on the one hand, civil wars and lawless, corrupt governments—which together have condemned so many countries in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia to decades of impoverishment—and, on the other, the reluctance of the United States and her allies to practise as well as preach free trade...

By contrast, for much... of its history, the British empire acted as an agency for imposing free markets, the rule of law, investor protection and relatively incorrupt government on a roughly a quarter of the world. The empire also did a good deal to encourage those things in countries which were outside its formal imperial domain but under its economic influence through the 'imperialism of free trade'. Prima facie, there therefore seems a plausible case that empire enhanced global welfare—was, in other words, a Good Thing.

In principal, I cannot argue with this because it would force me to speculate a parallel earth without a British, or any other, empire. Such a speculation requires too many counterfactuals: ultimately, an entirely different visualization of the human personality. What I can do, though, is argue that there seems little likelihood that an imperial campaign of conquest would spread clean government, democracy, rule of law, respect for any kind of property, or international security—all urgent elements of a market economy. Nor am I carping about less-than-perfect results in an imperfect world. I am looking at rates of change.

One sees this in the conquest of Iraq and our pursuit of a strongman to impose order at gunpoint—on the cheap. One sees it in the administration's plans to limit contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq to Coalition partners. One sees it in the no-bid contracts and staggering profits of administration-friendly firms. (I am not opposed to profits, or even economic profits; but if a conservative should be opposed to anything, it is huge profits in the undertaking of government work). One sees it in the persistent absence of order in Iraq and utter failure to provide for same. We may concede that restoring order in Afghanistan—formerly a rather nice place, at least pre-1978 or so—would be difficult even under optimal circumstances—but the utterly feeble, indifferent efforts of the administration in that direction suggest that a liberal empire would be better served by keen diplomacy.

As I mentioned earlier, I have resisted the reflex to resort to counterfactuals. If we think Iraq holds the potential to be a quagmire, consider by how much it would be surpassed trying to visualize a parallel world where raw evil has never assumed the port of Mars. Worse, this site would turn from the business of the most urgent to the business of the least urgent. The imperialist implications of the existing world trade regime need to be spelled out, not in some recondite theoretical fashion, but calmly and in the realm of consensual reality.

Whatever Ferguson might have supposed, imposing "free trade" does necessarily not mean a leap from one level of freedom to a new, higher level. One has no need of any leftist ideology to observe that "freedom" can easily mean freedom to plunder. It means that plunder and alienated land or water have more value to warlords or absentee landlords than before. It means that a state can become far more regimented than ever before, as leaders such as Suharto scramble their whole people to face a global market. Unsurprisingly, whenever I point this out, my interlocutors point out that Suharto, Pinochet, or Sadat are horrible examples of liberalization because they implemented a powerful and repressive state. If so, why, one asks, did they appear to think such a powerful and repressive state was necessary in order to execute their brief from the IMF?

Free trade, in the sense that all participants are free to refuse the prices offered for their goods, free to organize and associate as they wish, free to scrutinize the aims of their state—that sort of thing is almost tautologically a Good Thing. I have never met an "anti-globalization" activist who was against that. And if a convinced Maoist were to present himself as a counterexample, I could only point out that he was no more against "globalization" than the World Bank Group is—his animus toward the society in which he lives is far too deep, and far too sweeping, to be captured by the discontent with "globalization." How can a movement whose members travel the world and approach audiences of every nationality as natural allies, be opposed to globalization (minus the scare quotes)? The short answer is that they are not. In as much as this phony "globalization" that is being pushed upon us violates the natural brotherhood of men and sisterhood of women, it affronts people who perceive themselves as citizens of a world.

Another problem with the project of [neo]liberal empire we are undertaking these days is that, while the 19th-century empires were the work of nations against tribes, or zamindars—modern states against ancient empires like the Mugal's, the Q'ing's, the Nguyen's, or the Alawayt's—now we are launching a nation against nations. We are proposing to shatter civil order in much of the world, while still lacking anything that could be truthfully described as a plan for a new one. Whatever may have been the truth of the British Empire, this American one has so far been so far remote from the creation of a global market economy, as to be risible. The war of the future shall be terrorism, and the war against it shall be perpetual—terrorism is, after all, a tactic, not a side. It's like declaring war on infantry.

What that means, of course, is that a campaign of state-obliteration and nation-building (how very anarcho-syndicalist that sounds!) is a path to unprecedented state-socialism. The USA is probably treading The Road to Wigan Pier this very minute, with a dismal educational system and our industry tottering under a mountain of stranded cost.¹ Dispatching hundreds of thousands of Americans to every corner of the globe to rebuild states we have bombed into capitulation certainly might change the outlook of those sent, but can hardly be defended as a move towards economic rationalism.

(Social Imperialism)