and dependent people pay with their liberty for their incorporation into the empire that holds dominion over them. On any other basis, empire is unthinkable. Indeed the terms "dependencies," "domination," and "subject" carry with them only one possible implication—the subordination or extinction of the liberties of the peoples in question.
The imperial class—a minority—depends for its continued supremacy upon the ownership of some form of property, whether this property be slaves, or land, or industrial capital. As Veblen puts it: "The emergence of the leisure class coincides with the beginning of ownership." ("Theory of the Leisure Class," T. Veblen, New York. B. W. Huebsch, 1899, p. 22.) Necessarily, therefore, the imperial class will sacrifice the so-called human or personal rights of the home population to the protection of its property rights. Indeed the property rights come to be regarded as the essential human rights, although there is but a small minority of the community that can boast of the possession of property.
The superiority of ruling class property rights over the personal rights and liberties of the inhabitants in a subject territory is taken as a matter of course. Even in the home country, where the issue is clearly made, the imperial class will sacrifice the happiness, the health, the longevity, and the lives of the propertyless class in the interest of "law and order" and "the protection of property." The stories of the Roman populace; of the French peasants under Louis XIV; of the English factory workers (men, women and children) during the past hundred years, and of the low skilled workers in the United States since the Civil War, furnish ample proof of the correctness of this contention. The life, liberty and happiness of the individual citizen is a matter of small importance so long as the empire is saved.
A crisis in imperial affairs is always regarded, by the ruling class, as a legitimate reason for curtailing the rights of the people. Under ordinary circumstances, the imperial class will gain rather than lose from the exercise of "popular liberties." Indeed, the exercise of these liberties is of the greatest assistance in convincing the people that they are enjoying freedom and thus keeping them satisfied with their lot. But in a period of turmoil, with men's hearts stirred, and their souls aflamed with conviction and idealism, there is always danger that the people may exercise their "unalienable right" to "alter or abolish" their form of government. Consequently, during a crisis, the imperial class takes temporary charge of popular liberties. Every great empire engaged in the recent war passed through such an experience. In each country the ruling class announced that the war was a matter of life and death. Papers were suppressed or censored; free speech was denied; men were conscripted against will and conscience; constitutions were thrust aside; laws "slumbered"; writers and thinkers were jailed for their opinions; food was rationed; industries were controlled—all in the interest of "winning the war." After the war was won, the victors practiced an even more rigorous suppression while they were "making the peace." Then followed months and years of protests and demands, until, one by one, the liberties were retaken by the people or else the war-tyranny, once firmly established, became a part of "the heritage of empire." In such cases, where liberties were not regained, the plain people learned to do without them.
Liberty is the price of empire. Imperialism presupposes that the people will be willing, at any time, to surrender their "rights" at the call of the rulers.
5. The Universality of Empire
Imperialism is not new, nor is it confined to one nation or to one race. On the contrary it is as old as history and as wide as the world.
Before Rome, there was Carthage. Before Carthage, there were Greece, Macedonia, Egypt, Assyria, China. Where history has a record, it is a record of empire.
During modern times, international affairs have been dominated by empires. The great war was a war between empires. During the first three years, the two chief contestants were the British Empire on the one hand and the German Empire on the other. Behind these leaders were the Russian Empire, the Italian Empire, the French Empire, and the Japanese Empire.
The Peace of Versailles was a peace between empires. Five empires dominated the peace table—Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the United States. The avowedly anti-imperial nations of Europe—Russia and Hungary—were not only excluded from the deliberations of the Peace Table, but were made the object of constant diplomatic, military and economic aggression by the leading imperialist nations.
6. The Evolution of Empire
Empires do not spring, full grown, from the surroundings of some great historic crisis. Rather they, like all other social institutions, are the result of a long series of changes that lead by degrees from the pre-imperial to the imperial stage. Many of the great empires of the past two thousand years have begun as republics, or, as they are sometimes called, "democracies," and the processes of transformation from the republican to the imperial stage have been so gradual that the great mass of the people were not aware that any change had occurred until the emperor ascended the throne.
The development of empire is of necessity a slow process. There are the dependent people to be subjected; the territory to conquered; the imperial class to be built up. This last process takes, perhaps, more time than either of the other two. Class consciousness is not created in a day. It requires long experience with the exercise of imperial power before the time has come to proclaim an emperor, and forcibly to take possession of the machinery of public affairs.
7. The United States and the Stages of Empire
Any one who is familiar with its history will realize at once that the United States is passing through some of the more advanced stages in the development of empire. The name "Republic" still remains; the traditions of the Republic are cherished by millions; the republican forms are almost intact, but the relations of the United States to its conquered territory and its subject peoples; the rapid maturation of the plutocracy as a governing class or caste; the shamelessness of the exploitation in which the rulers have indulged; and the character of the forces that are now shaping public policy, proclaim to all the world the fact of empire.
The chief characteristics of empire exist in the United States. Here are conquered territory; subject peoples; an imperial, ruling class, and the exploitation by that class of the people at home and abroad. During generations the processes of empire have been working, unobserved, in the United States. Through more than two centuries the American people have been busily laying the foundations and erecting the imperial structure. For the most part, they have been unconscious of the work that they were doing, as the dock laborer, is ordinarily unconscious of his part in the mechanism of industry. Consciously or unconsciously, the American people have reared the imperial structure, until it stands, to-day, imposing in its grandeur, upon the spot where many of the founders of the American government hoped to see a republic.
The entrance of the United States into the war did not greatly alter the character of the forces at work, nor did it in any large degree change the direction in which the country was moving. Rather, it brought to the surface of public attention factors of American life that had been evolving unnoticed, for generations.
The world situation created by the war compelled the American imperial class to come out in the open and to occupy a position that, while wholly inconsistent with the traditions of American life,
