A way to handle the excess

Imperialism was as much a push phenomenon as a pull. The capitalist system regularly produced superfluous capital and labor. The society needed a way to handle the excess. Rather than employing the superfluity by declaring a sabbatical year, so as to deepen the national economic experience and to narrow the gap in income distribution, the imperialists elected instead to export the excess capital and excess labor to colonial outposts as a way of preserving the political status quo, of keeping the society from having to engage in self-reflection, and of maintaining and perhaps even widening the income disparities within the home countries.