Imperialism

Neither fame nor honor nor wealth nor happiness was to be found on this path.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 75

The welfare of a people lies not in casting other peoples down but in peaceful collaboration.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 75

The imperialistic people’s state scarcely differs from the old principle state in its interpretation of sovereignty and its boundaries. Like the latter, it knows no other limits to the expansion of its rule than those drawn by the opposition of an equally strong power. Even its lust for conquest is unlimited. It wants to hear nothing of the right of peoples. If it “needs” a territory, then it simply takes it and, where possible, demands further from the subjugated peoples that they find this just and reasonable. Foreign peoples are in its eyes not subjects but objects of policy.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 79

Nothing is more stupid than efforts to justify today’s imperialism, with all of its brutalities, by reference to atrocities of generations long since gone.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 76

For fully developed imperialism, the individual no longer has value. He is valuable to it only as a member of the whole, as a soldier of an army.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 78

Marxian socialism, as a fundamentally revolutionary movement, is inwardly inclined toward imperialism. No one will dispute that, least of all the Marxists themselves, who straightforwardly proclaim the cult of revolution. It is less noted, however, that modern socialism of necessity must be imperialistic outwardly also.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 206

Modern imperialism is distinguished from the expansionist tendencies of the absolute principalities by the fact that its moving spirits are not the members of the ruling dynasty, nor even of the nobility, the Bureaucracy, or the officers’ corps of the army bent on personal enrichment and aggrandizement by plundering the resources of conquered territories, but the mass of the people, who look upon it as the most appropriate means for the preservation of national independence.

Liberalism, p. 122