CHAPTER ONE. THE CAUSE AND PURPOSE OF WAR IN PRIMITIVE TIMES. HUNTING AND WAR↩

The natural laws of the economy of forces and of competition. — How they combined to produce the phenomenon of war. — Difference between hunting and war. — The profits of war for competing species of the animal kingdom. — Determining cause of hunting men. — Human sacrifices. — Determining cause of war between competing varieties of the human species. — Profit it yielded to the victor. — That it met the general and long-term interests of the species, in other words, that it was useful.

It is in the nature of man and in the conditions necessary for existence which were assigned to him from the moment of his appearance on the earth that we must seek the causes of the phenomenon of war. Man is, like all other creatures, made up of matter and [4] forces. Like them as well, he is obliged to continually renew the material things necessary for life. He renews them through the consumption of material things and forces that can be digested. But these things necessary for life are not obtained for free. He must discover them and appropriate them for his consumption. This discovery and appropriation require a preliminary expenditure of the forces necessary for life. [3] Now, every expenditure of the forces that make life possible causes suffering and hardship, while every acquisition of these same forces brings enjoyment. If the sum of the forces necessary for life expended exceeds the sum acquired, the difference constitutes a loss, and in the opposite case, a profit. It is with a view to the excess of pleasure over pain, represented by profit, that man sets the forces necessary for his life in motion, that he labors and strives to obtain, in exchange for a minimum of expenditure, that is of hardship, a maximum of life-sustaining material, that is of pleasure. This is the natural law of "the economy of forces" or of the least effort, which governs the activity of man just as it governs that of all other creatures. [4]

But to this law, which comes from man’s nature, is added another, which comes from the state of the environment in which he draws his means of existence: it is the law of life-giving competition. [5] The phenomenon of war is the [5] product of the combined operation of these two natural laws. And its reason for being becomes plainly visible when one examines the conditions under which the human species could survive.

Our globe is populated by an immense multitude of living creatures, some forming the kingdom of plant species, others that of animal species. Plants are the food of herbivorous animals, and these in turn feed the carnivores. Man, who occupies the summit of the animal hierarchy, feeds on both: he is omnivorous. As a result, from the beginning he was in competition for his food with the herbivorous species, who like him sought the natural fruits of the soil, and with the carnivorous species, who like him lived by hunting the weaker species of the animal kingdom. But while he was a competitor for the latter, he was also prey for those who were stronger and better equipped with natural weapons. He therefore had either to elude their pursuit or to engage in a mortal struggle with them.

Driven by the necessity of defending himself against individually stronger animals, man formed associations with his fellow men; he formed societies, [6] in its primitive form of herds, [6] clans, or tribes. In this, he behaved no differently than most other species, but what raised him above the rest of the animal kingdom was the invention of artificial weapons which, by compensating for the inadequacy of his natural weapons, enabled him both to fight without disadvantage against the species for whom he was prey, and to reach with less effort those on which he fed.

Here we can see the difference between hunting and war. Man hunts the animals he eats. He wages war on those for whom he is food. But it is not only in order to guarantee his security [7] that he strives to eliminate [8] them; it is also to rid himself of the competition they pose as hunters.

To be sure, the elimination of competitors for food implied a struggle, and hence a cost in his forces and a risk. Men found it worthwhile to engage in this struggle only to the extent that they had, or believed they had, sufficient chances of emerging victorious. These chances depended on the strength, intelligence, and above all the courage with which they were endowed, as well as on the effectiveness of the artificial weapons they could use against the natural weapons of their competitors. In all likelihood, it was only after having invented the first machines [9] [7] for hunting and waging war that they undertook a struggle which, until then, had remained too unequal. This struggle, between the strongest and bravest men and their competitors from the great species of the animal kingdom, continued throughout the long period of primitive times, and the annals of all people have recorded these events. It is Hercules, armed with his club, who triumphs over the Nemean lion and the Hydra of Lerna; it is Theseus who pierces with his arrows the Minotaur of Crete. The profit that this war against monsters brings man is twofold: it is, first, the security it guarantees him; it is, second, the economizing onlabor and effort he achieves in acquiring game that he is no longer obliged to share with his starving competitors. This double profit compensates for—and beyond—the sum of life-sustaining forces which are expended, the risk which is incurred, in a word, the hardship the struggle has cost him.

This is the cause that shaped the first war, the one man waged against the animals for whom he was prey and who competed with him in acquiring his food.

But the same need that gave birth to the industry of hunting and the same motive that incited man to wage war on his competitors [8] in the animal kingdom, had to arouse the desire to hunt and wage war against men themselves.

First of all, there is hunting. Human flesh is a food, and in regions where edible animals were scarce, it could be obtained with less effort than that of other species. However, hunting humans would not have offered sufficient profit if all men had been equal in strength and the skills of combat; but the varieties within the human species are in this respect essentially unequal. Some resemble carnivorous animals; they possess the combative faculties of the lion, the tiger, the wolf, the fox; others reproduce the types and peaceful aptitudes of herbivores. Lacking skills in combat, the latter were easy prey for the carnivorous varieties of the species.

Human sacrifices, which persist among people who are on the path to civilization until the era when raising livestock provides them with a cheaper, and probably also healthier, source of food, bear witness; not to mention the other evidence offered by the traditions of primitive times, to the existence of a period when hunting other men was the principal if not the sole food industry of the superior varieties of the species. A portion of the products of this hunt was offered to the [9] divinities who protected the tribes and was used to feed their priests. This was the first form of the tithe. When this kind of food was abandoned in favor of the nourishment which was made more abundant and obtained with less effort through the raising of livestock, human victims were gradually replaced by the livestock that had taken their place in the people's diet. However, in certain circumstances—for example, when seeking the cooperation of the Divinities for some important undertaking—people continued to offer human sacrifices, which were thought to be more pleasing to them, given the superior value of this kind of food compared to that of livestock.

Meanwhile, the tribes that lived by hunting animals and men found themselves in competition for the acquisition of food. As their populations increased, they felt more strongly the need to enlarge their hunting grounds, and they could only do so at each other’s expense. Hence, there were inevitable and continual struggles. According to the testimony of missionaries who traveled through North America in the 16th and 17th centuries, the hunting tribes that occupied this vast continent were perpetually at war, and their conflicts always had the same objective: the conquest or defense of lands rich in game [10] which were necessary for their subsistence. The victors exterminated the vanquished and took their place.

This shows the distinction between hunting and waging war. Hunting consisted of the pursuit of game for the immediate satisfaction of the need for food. War had as its purpose the suppression of competitors, to make that satisfaction easier to attain. The profit in hunting was direct; the profit in waging war was indirect, and ultimately it amounted to an increase in the yield of the food industry. A tribe of hunters that could scarcely obtain, within the now too narrow limits of its domain, the quantity of food necessary for its growing population, could, by seizing a game-rich territory occupied by another tribe, obtain the same quantity in exchange for a lesser sum of labor and hardship. To be sure, this conquest implied a struggle in which it had to expend a certain amount of force and run a certain risk. If it were defeated, it ran the risk of being stripped of the territory that provided its means of existence, and even of being eliminated. On the other hand, if it achieved victory, it realized a gain equal to the difference between the sum of life-sustaining force expended in the struggle and that which the enlargement of its food-supply territory [11] allowed it to acquire or to save. It could increase its population in proportion to the growth of its means of subsistence and, by thus becoming more powerful, extend its hunting grounds still further through subsequent conquests. However, when one considers that the loss resulting from defeat far exceeded the gain that victory could procure, it becomes clear that war ought not to be undertaken except after mature deliberation and as accurate a knowledge as possible of the enemy’s strength. If a tribe, whose means of existence became insufficient due to the growth of its population or the diminishing of its food resources, found itself too weak to undertake a war of conquest with a reasonable chance of success, the instinct of self-preservation compelled it to slow the growth of its population through infanticide, or again to limit the number of mouths to feed through the sacrifice of the elderly. This was the origin of customs that rightly seem barbaric to us, but which were dictated by an imperious necessity.

In sum, during this first period of humanity’s existence, when man depended entirely for his subsistence on the food resources which nature offered him, war alone provided the means of increasing those resources. It had to be [12] so until he succeeded in multiplying them by means of industry. In the meantime, war was useful in that it gave victory to the strongest—that is, to those best able to ensure the survival of the human species, in its struggle against those species for whom man was both a competitor and a prey. But is it even necessary to add that this character of general usefulness was not perceived by the strong and courageous men who fought to enlarge their food-supply territory at one another’s expense? They simply obeyed the natural law of the economy of forces, striving to obtain a greater quantity of things which provided pleasure in exchange for a lesser sum of labor and pain.

[13]

CHAPTER II. THE REASON THERE IS WAR IN SOCIETIES ON THE ROAD TO CIVILIZATION↩

The productive capacity unique to the human species. — Saving and the progress it stimulated in the acquisition of the means of subsistence. — Increase in the productivity of the food industry and its consequences. — How it led to the founding of political States. — That competition imposed itself upon them in its destructive form, war. — The two kinds of struggles they had to sustain. — Objective of these struggles. — That they implied the necessity of developing the destructive power of the State, under the most effective of penalties: elimination or enslavement.

From the economic point of view what distinguishes the human species from the lower species is that man possesses the capacity to produce, whereas plants and animals possess only that of destroying. He can, consequently, increase the quantity of goods necessary to his subsistence and to the satisfaction of his other needs, whereas the lower species are forced to content themselves with what nature places at their disposal.

However, this capacity to produce, stemming from a [14] way of thinking which was superior to that of the animal kingdom, only appeared and developed through a slow and steady increase. In the beginning, men, like animals, drew their supply of food from purely destructive industries: hunting, fishing, and gathering the natural fruits of the earth. But they gradually increased the yield of these industries—industries they shared with the animal kingdom—by inventing weapons and methods of destruction or capture which enabled them both to eliminate their competitors from other species and to obtain a greater quantity of food in exchange for a smaller sum of labor and hardship.

Yet it is important to note that while these devices and methods made it easier to get game and other foods, they did not multiply them. On the contrary, they made their destruction more rapid. This was, in all likelihood, what led the most intelligent individuals to multiply them artificially. They retained a certain number of edible animals for reproduction and set aside a portion of the grains they gathered in the wild to sow, instead of consuming both in their entirety. It is from this “saving” that the industries of livestock breeding and plant cultivation were born, and from which the phenomenon of civilization emerged.

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As soon as this progress had been accomplished in acquiring his means of subsistence, a complete change took place in the conditions of existence of the human species. Until then, human societies had not significantly differed from animal societies. They provided for the same needs of mutual assistance and material cooperation. Their activity was entirely absorbed by looking after their security and the ever-precarious search for food. Like most animal societies, they were still strictly limited in number, for it took, in even the most game-rich regions, an area of a thousand square kilometers to feed a tribe of a hundred individuals. [10]

When agriculture replaced hunting as the food industry, societies were able to become incomparably more numerous within a [16] much smaller territory. The same area of land that barely sufficed to feed a single hunter could nourish several hundred farmers; and at the same time, the amount of labor each individual needed to obtain his food was reduced by nearly the same proportion. By spending his entire day in pursuit of game, the hunter could scarcely provide food for three or four people. A farmer, by expending the same amount of labor on land of average fertility, could produce enough wheat to feed ten times that number. Consequently, he could devote part of his time to the satisfaction of other needs—or provide for them more economically still by exchanging his surplus wheat for the products or services of others. Thus, the tribes of a few hundred hunters scattered over vast territories, there followed—once agriculture was invented—by nations of several million men, concentrated in much smaller regions.

This progress in the food industry of primitive societies not only increased their number and the goods necessary for their well-being; it led to further progress in the forms of property and family, and in [17] political and economic organization. Agricultural and industrial enterprises necessitated the individualization of property along with that of the family, and led to the organization of society into corporations or castes, [11] some sovereign, others subordinate, among whom were divided, according to their aptitudes, various functions and industries.

However, those societies—herds, clans or tribes of hunters of men, animals, or plants—that abandoned these primitive food industries for agriculture, and thereby acquired an extraordinary abundance of the means of subsistance—in a word, that grew rich—while others, having made no such progress, remained poor, became an increasingly tempting prey for the latter as their wealth grew. They were also an easy prey, for populations devoted to the peaceful labors of production could not withstand societies whose special industry was the hunting of animals and men. They were bound to succumb in the struggle. Civilization would therefore have perished at its birth had another form of progress not intervened to save it: instead of massacring the defeated populations and seizing the movable riches they had accumulated, the more intelligent societies of hunters and pillagers [18] understood that they would get more profit in permanently occupying the territories where they conducted their raids and in compelling the defeated to share regularly with them the products of their industry. Thus were founded, through the transformation of primitive brigands into policemen, most of the establishments or political States. [12] However, the conquering firm [13] could only maintain its State on the condition of remaining organized like an army, always ready to repel external aggression and suppress internal revolts. To this firm, corporation or caste of warriors—was joined, to fulfill the equally necessary functions of government and administration of the conquered domain, a caste that shared power with it, whether it was recruited from within its own ranks or from the intelligent elite of the conquered nation. These two corporations or castes, sometimes of the same origin, sometimes of different origins, shared the ownership and management of the State.

But their ownership always remained precarious. According to time and place, the firms which owned and governed States have had to maintain more or less frequent struggles—most often unavoidable—against two types of competitors.

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First, against societies less advanced in the techniques of production but in possession of the particular aptitudes that warfare demands. These often emerged from unknown regions—their origin and number were unknown. Those that still bordered on the animal kingdom would descend, unexpectedly and like a swarm of locusts, upon a populous and wealthy region and would not retreat until they had turned it into a devastated wasteland. Those with the beginnings of civilization—and such were, for example, the Hyksos who invaded Egypt—massacred or enslaved the owners of the States that fell into their hands and took their place.

Until recent times, civilized people remained exposed to these invasions by barbarian people. It was a peril they could not escape, against which they had to defend themselves on pain of destruction or enslavement, and which would continue to threaten them until the day when their power of resistance became strong enough to deprive the invaders of all hope of success and profit—and thus compel them to abandon an industry that had become unproductive.

These struggles against the barbarians had a defensive character. Even when civilized people resorted to offensive action, it was to prevent [20] incursions, always to be feared, and to guarantee their security. Nevertheless, it was rare for them to push foresight so far, for wars against poor barbarians seldom paid for themselves.

It was otherwise with the wars fought between the firms which each owneda territorial domain which was cultivated by a subject population.

In such cases, the usual objective of the struggle was territorial expansion, in the expectation of the profit that such expansion was capable of yielding—in the form of taxes and dues in kind, labor, or money, which was furnished by the subject population—not to mention the accumulated wealth of the vanquished, upon which the victors seized by virtue of the right of war. Sometimes the struggle would break out between the firms which owned the States who were competing to expand their domains at the expense of other States coveted by them. This was the cause of the struggle between Rome and Carthage, a struggle whose objective was none other than the monopoly of domination and exploitation over the Mediterranean world.

But to prevail in these struggles—some burdensome but unavoidable, others profitable—what was necessary? It was necessary to develop the power of the State to the highest point possible. This was a sine qua non condition [21] for the preservation, the life or death, of its owners. And the more exposed they were to the pressure of military competition, the more they were driven to increase that power, upon which depended not only their well-being, but their liberty and very existence.

[22]

CHAPTER III. THE FORMATION OF A BODY ORGANISED FOR FIGHTING [14] OR AN ARMY↩

Vital necessity that led to the creation of a body organised for fighting. — The constituent elements of this body. — Personnel. — How military value is produced and maintained. — Materiel. — Command, hierarchy, and discipline. — The capital advance necessary for the formation and operation of a body organised for fighting. — That this advance can occur only with the aid of security and requires the institution of a government.

The existence of a firm which owns a political domain—whether that domain had been acquired by conquest or otherwise—depended, as we have just seen, on the power it could deploy in the struggles of competition in its destructive form, [15] that is of war. The strongest firms prevailed over the others, conquered territorial domains, or enlarged their own by replacing their previous owners, whom they exterminated or reduced to slavery or subjection. It was therefore essential that every firm which owned a State [23] should possess—under penalty of being dispossessed, eliminated, or subjugated—a body organised for fighting in which the greatest possible amount of destructive power was invested.

The formation and operation of this body required the assembling and cooperation of personnel suited to the work of war, and of matériel equally suited to the work of destruction it involved. The qualities that constitute aptitude for war are partly physical, partly moral: the strength to endure fatigue, combativeness, contempt for danger, etc.—and these qualities combine to produce military value. Like any other value, this one is measured by its utility. It is therefore understandable that it should have been held, in universal estimation, in the highest regard, since it corresponded to the most urgent need of societies—the need to guard against dispossession and elimination. But the production of military value required, in addition to a stock of natural qualities, an artificial training. The natural qualities were a matter of race: they abounded in certain races—those that resembled predatory animals—they were absent or less developed in others; they were transmitted by heredity, and were lost or weakened through interbreeding with races that lacked them. It was therefore necessary for the [24] conquering firm which owned the State, [16] from which the army was recruited, to forbid its members from entering into unions with the inferior elements of the population that would have altered the purity of the blood. As for training, it consisted of an education intended to develop, through exercise, the physical and moral qualities that make up military value, and to teach the use of machines of destruction, and the procedures or methods of combat.

A body of personnel possessing military value to the highest degree—that was the most important factor in the production of destructive power. But it was also necessary that this personnel be equipped with artificial weapons to make up for the inadequacy of their natural weapons. The role of tools is no less important in war than in industry. However great the value of an army’s personnel, if it possesses only inferior weaponry in destructive power, it will have little chance of prevailing in the struggle.

However, the value of the personnel and the power of the matériel are still not sufficient to ensure victory. These factors and tools of destruction must be organized and operated in such a way as to produce the greatest possible amount of destructive power. The organization of an army [25] implies the establishment of a command structure, a hierarchy, and a discipline that coordinates the forces and makes them act with the least waste and the greatest useful effect. The aim pursued in combat is the destruction or repulsion of the opposing force, and this aim can only be achieved by coordinated movements that bring to each point of the conflict a contingent of forces superior to those of the enemy. Command must detect the weak points of both armies and direct movements that reinforce its own and break through those of the enemy. Finally, for command to possess all necessary effectiveness, it must be exercised by a leader with the required aptitude; his orders must be quickly communicated to an intelligent hierarchy and passively executed bydisciplined troops. These are the conditions for the success of a military operation.

That is not all. Like all other enterprises, war requires a capital advance. What does this advance consist of? First, in the sum necessary to train the personnel and create the matériel; then in the upkeep of both until the war yields a return that covers these two categories of costs. Now, military ventures are inherently uncertain. When they [26] end in defeat, the defeated State suffers a more or less considerable loss. On the other hand, victory brings a profit, which must be proportional to the risks of loss in order for the enterprise to be truly profitable.

But while awaiting the realization of this profit—in one form or another: spoils, tributes, acquisition and exploitation of additional “subjects,” etc.—the formation and operation of the instrument of warrequired a capital advance. This advance must be covered by the resources of the firm which owns the State. [17] These resources are created by productive industries, [18] and such industries can arise and survive only if a certain degree of security already exists. Hence the necessity of a government whose purpose is to provide it.

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CHAPTER IV. THE GOVERNMENT OF A POLITICAL STATE↩

Why security cannot establish itself spontaneously within human societies. — Necessity of a government charged with producing it. — How and for what purpose governments were instituted following conquest and the founding of political States. — Analogy of conquest with other enterprises. The sharing of its fruits. The necessities of preservation imposed on conquerors and founders of States. — That governments originally had no other purpose than to ensure the security of possession for conquering societies. — The three periods in the formation of political States. — That their transformation led to the enlargement of the sphere of security.

The abuses of governmentalism, [19] the excessive charges that governments impose on the consumers of their services, have in our day given rise to a sect of anarchists who claim they should be abolished. But the anarchists take no account of the imperfect nature of man, nor of the requirements of social life. If individuals knew the natural limits of their sphere of activity, and if they possessed the moral strength necessary to resist the impulses that [28] drive them to overstep it—if, as a result, an order founded on justice were to establish itself spontaneously—then one might dispense with government. But as long as the individuals who make up a society do not freely fulfill these necessary conditions of sociability, a superior power will be needed to compel them to do so. [20] Now, if after so many centuries of living in society, man still has not acquired a just idea of what he ought and ought not to do—nor the capacity to force himself to stay within the bounds of his rights and fulfill his duties—how much more must this have been true in humanity’s infancy? From the day that several individuals gathered together under the impulse of the need for mutual assistance, when a society was formed, a power became necessary to oblige its members to cooperate in its preservation and to use their liberty and property without infringing upon those of their associates. Such a power existed in embryonic societies like clans and tribes, where it was held by the strongest and most capable individuals. When clans or tribes—comprised of a small number of individuals of common origin and living off nature’s meager offerings—gave way to political States, almost always formed by a conquering race [29] and a subject multitude, and within which industry multiplied the means of subsistence, the necessity for a government charged with ensuring both the internal and external security of the State became even more pressing.

If we wish to understand how governments of political States were constituted and to grasp the transformations they underwent, we must return to an analysis of the phenomenon that gave birth to the State—namely, conquest.

The conquest of a territorial domain and the founding of a political State are no different from any other enterprise. Like industrial and commercial enterprises, they are carried out by the cooperation of labor and capital and have as their goal the making of a profit. Here one can make the distinction between the labor of management, assigned to the enterprise’s leader and his officers, and the labor of execution, performed by the soldiers, who act as the workmen in industrial enterprises. One can also make the distinction between fixed capital—arms and other machines of war—and circulating capital, made up of the provisions and maintenance needed to sustain the conquering army until the product of the enterprise is acquired and realized. These two kinds of capital are usually supplied by the leader of the enterprise and his financial backers, who have acquired them through [30] saving or borrowing. But once the conquest is achieved, the question arises of how to divide its fruits. As in an industrial enterprise, this division occurs more or less in proportion to the value of each participant’s contribution or cooperation. If the goal of the enterprise is mere pillage, the army divides the spoils of movable goods upon returning from the expedition. But, as happened when the pillaging armies realized that the appropriation and exploitation of a territory and its population would be more profitable than a raid for movable goods, the division then extended to immovable property. The history of the conquest of England by the Normans shows that this division differs in only one respect from that of industrial enterprises: in the latter, the laborers receive their share in the anticipatory and guaranteed form of a wage. [21] And the analogy becomes complete when conquest is undertaken on behalf of the firms or “houses” owning the political States, [22] by paid armies. In such cases, the share of the conquering army consisted only of its pay, to which was often added an officer’s bonus and, frequently as well, permission [31] for soldiers to plunder the countryside and sack cities. Finally, in our own day, under the regime of compulsory and unpaid service, soldiers have virtually no share in the proceeds of conquest; officers alone share in them, through campaign pay, promotions, and honorary or other rewards. [23]

However, once the division was made, the problem arose of how to preserve the conquered territory—against both external aggression and internal revolt by the subject population. How did the conquerors address this dual necessity? By establishing a government specifically tasked with doing so. As far as the insufficiency of historical records allows us to judge, the constitution of States has everywhere and always passed through three stages: an initial period of fragmentation and seignorial independence; a period of feudal insurance; [24] and a period of the unification of the government of the State.

To guard against the ever-threatening risk of dispossession, the conquering army remained organized and always ready to regroup to defend the conquered domain. Each of its members retained his functions and rank, and passed them on to his descendants by way of heredity and primogeniture. But until necessity [32] compelled them to confront a common danger, many constant causes of dissension arose among them: personal enmities resulting from unequal division of the spoils, disputes over domain boundaries, ambition to expand at the expense of neighbors, etc., etc. Hence local wars, in which the weaker fell victim to the stronger; hence, too, the need for the smaller landholders to seek protection from the more powerful. It was to meet this need that the system of political insurance known as feudalism was established. Yet feudalism, while providing some degree of security to the weak, did not put an end to struggles among the strong. It was bound to result—and in fact did result everywhere—in the absorption of feudal sovereignties by the leader who, having received the largest portion of the conquered domain as compensation for his services, also retained, as hereditary leader of the conquering army, the supreme command should it ever need to be reassembled—whether to repel foreign aggression, conquer new territory, or suppress a revolt by the subject population. This process of absorption and unification was accelerated in States particularly threatened by external competition, [33] or in which the need for expansion of the common domain was especially acute—where, consequently, subordination to a single leader appeared indispensable, along with the durable establishment of internal peace to avoid the waste of their forces.

Now, internal peace could only be established on condition that attacks on life and property, as well as all other offenses provoking internal struggles within the partnership of the owners of the State, [25] were prevented or repressed. That was the purpose and result of unifying the apparatus of justice and police, [26] the creation of which had been spurred by the need for security in each seigneury. The jurisdiction of the leader—duke, king, or emperor—after being confined to his own domain, gradually encroached on that of the lords; he first claimed judgment and punishment of the most serious crimes, and eventually of all offenses—beginning with those that harmed his own authority. The sphere of peace thus expanded gradually within States, at the expense of that of war—now confined, except in cases of revolt and civil war, to struggles between the States which were on the path towards civilisation, or with barbarian people.

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These struggles continued to have as their principal—if not exclusive—objective the defense or enlargement of the territory that provided the conquering association, theowner of the State, with its means of existence. Let us now see in what those means consisted.

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CHAPTER V. THE PRODUCTS OF THE EXPLOITATION OF A POLITICAL STATE↩

That the co-sharers of a political domain derived their means of subsistence from the product of labor and the dues they imposed on the subject population. — That their well-understood interest obliged them to moderate their demands and improve their regime of exploitation. — Gradual transformation of this regime. — That the policy of the owners of States aimed at increasing their power and their wealth.

Once the division of a conquered domain had taken place, each of the co-sharers [27] settled on the lot assigned to him, accompanied by a number of companions who preferred to attach themselves to his wealth and live under his roof, rather than undertake the exploitation of one of the small plots allotted to the simple laborers who participated in the conquest. The population of each of these plots had to provide food for its lord and proprietor, either because he reduced them to slavery and set them to work in the trades and professions whose products or services he required—undertaking to provide them in return with the necessities of life— [36] or because he left them the use of their land and trades, while imposing fees to be paid in labor, in the products of their industry, or in money. As the seigneurial proprietors were the stronger, they dictated the terms, and the most greedy did not fail to abuse their power. Nevertheless, experience showed them that by increasing their levies too much on labor and its fruits, they weakened the productive capacity of the subject population and thereby, over time, diminished the income they derived from them. [28] The more intelligent sought to make these levies proportional to the ability to pay of their subjects—whether slaves, serfs, or tenant farmers—and to improve the system for exploiting their productive faculties: the slaves were put to the kinds of labor for which they were best suited, and those who practiced trades or professions whose products or services exceeded the needs of the master and his household were authorized, in return for dues, to establish an external clientele; they formed guilds and generally obtained their freedom through purchase. The lord also reserved to himself monopolies over certain goods or services, such as the minting of coins and the milling of grain; he set customs duties or tolls at the entry and exit points of his domain, and so on. At the same time, the necessity for [37] order—and above all for obedience to the master's authority—led in each domain to the establishment of a code—most often borrowed from the customs of the subject population—of justice and police, with the sanction of penalties ranked according to the seriousness of the offenses or crimes, and especially harsh for those that threatened the security of the lord and his “State.” In short, it was a natural organization responding to the needs of the preservation and the management of the seigneurial domain. The revenue from this domain was higher to the extent that the soil was more fertile, the population more diligent and industrious, the seigneurial administration more intelligent, and the taxes better proportioned to the capacity of the taxpayers to pay. Alongside the wealthiest seigneuries, others, less favored by nature and more poorly administered, remained poor; but the conquering class, [29] as proprietor of the land, nonetheless retained for a long time, along with its superiority of rank, a superiority of income compared to the other classes of the population.

It was from the product of their domains that all members of the army who had received an allotment of land in the division lived, starting with the leader himself. There existed only local dues, taxes, and monopolies. [38] When a war arose—whether the sharedestablishment or firm, that is the State, was threatened withaggression, or a conquest appeared that might be advantageous—all the landowners participated by contributing their contingents of forces and resources. They bore their share of the campaign’s costs and, in case of victory, received a portion of the booty in proportion to their contribution.

So it went until the strongest had brought under his authority the majority of the seigneurial proprietors, and the feudal fragmentation gave way to a single form of political domination. Then, to the revenues of his personal domain, which had previously constituted his only means of subsistence, the leader or the king added a portion of the taxes collected by the lords who now helped to pay for the services which henceforth would be unified. [30] He assumed, notably in France, the monopoly on minting and issuing currency, the salt tax, the customs duties established at the frontiers of the State. However, he could only strip the lords of this portion of their income on condition that he reduced the taxes required for their common security. Thus he exempted the seigneuries from providing contingents of men and resources by instituting [39] a permanent army, the maintenance of which was funded by a general tax—the aides.

But whether the State was fragmented into a multitude of independent seigneuries, or loosely united by feudal bonds, or whether it had entered its period of political unification, those who held it obeyed, like other owners of industrial or other enterprises, the motive of self-interest and the lure of profit. They continually strove to increase the importance of their establishments or firms, and thus their power and their wealth. That was the goal of their policy and the foundation of that peculiar morality which has been called raison d’État.

[40]

CHAPTER VI. THE POLITICS AND MORALITY OF THE STATE OF WAR↩

The risks that the firms which owned political States [31] had to confront. — The natural antagonism of these firms and the practices it required. — Political alliances. — Why they were precarious. — Matrimonial alliances and the motives for concluding or preventing them. — Political morality, founded on raison d’État. — How it differs from ordinary morality. — That the difference, or even opposition, between its practices and those of ordinary morality is determined by the state of war. — That it is justified only insofar as war is useful—that is, conforms to the general and long-term interest of the species.

As we have already noted, the founding and running of a political establishment, [32] a “State,” following a conquest—and such was the origin of most States—was an enterprise like any other. It was, to be sure, a naturally uncertain enterprise, but one that yielded, precisely for that reason, benefits to the conquering firm surpassing those of any other industry. A State was a vast farm from which the owners harvested [41] the crop—after deducting the bare minimum of subsistence they were obliged to provide to their labor force—and this net product, in countries favored by nature, such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, or India, could be very high and offer ample means of subsistence to the firm which owns the State. However, it was not enough to conquer a territorial domain—it had to be preserved and, if necessary, enlarged when the firm had grown to the point that it exceeded the number of senior positions which made up its market. Now, every firm in possession of a political establishment, that is a State, was continually exposed to two kinds of risks. Externally, it was subject to the aggression of other warrior firms [33] in search of the profits of pillage or exploitation. Internally, the conquering firm might have to suppress revolts by those it had defeated and dispossessed—if it had not taken the precaution of eliminating them—as well as by the multitude of slaves and serfs tied to the land; and finally, it might be weakened by divisions and ambition among its own members, their quarrels and attempts to usurp the supreme management of the State. The principal aim of politics was to guard against these internal and external risks; it also consisted in devising the best means of increasing the [42] strength and resources of the State for its defense and its expansion.

Among the firms either seeking or in possession of States, there existed a natural antagonism, since they could only acquire or enlarge a domain at one another’s expense. Each one’s policy was therefore necessarily aimed at weakening its rivals—either by fomenting internal conflicts within them, or by limiting or closing the markets for their industries, thereby reducing the resources they could allocate to war, which was always imminent or at least likely. Nevertheless, there were circumstances in which the interests of two firms which own States might temporarily align—for example, when both were threatened by a third stronger than either alone, or when they aimed to enlarge themselves at its expense. They would then conclude a temporary association or alliance until they achieved their objective. Finally, in countries where the ownership of seigneuries and of the State was hereditary in the same house [34] —and sometimes divisible among heirs like any other property—matrimonial alliances acquired considerable importance. To the primitive mode of expansion by war there was added expansion by inheritance. [43] Thus, in particular, were formed the vast domains of the House of Austria. Hence the saying:

Tu felix Austria nube. [35]

This method of expansion was, however, peaceful only in appearance. State successions, owing to their significance, became a fertile source of disputes. Among private individuals, such disputes were settled in the courts. Among Houses which owned States, they were settled by war. In addition to the benefit of expansion, matrimonial alliances could also secure the support of the allied house in the event of war—though experience often showed that ties of blood were weaker than those of self-interest. Until recent times, the ability to arrange or block matrimonial alliances figured among the principal merits of professional politicians. Today, as sovereignty has passed—nominally at least—from most royal houses to nations, and as political domains can no longer be inherited, although they are still sometimes sold or exchanged, matrimonial alliances have lost most, if not all, of their political importance. Is it even necessary to say [44] that for as long as they did retain this importance, the personal inclinations of the betrothed were subordinated to political interests—or rather, counted for nothing at all? In our time, political alliances are determined solely by the real or supposed interests of national defense or the expansion of domination; but at no time have such alliances ever had the character of persistence, or even of duration. No owner of a State has ever hesitated to abandon one alliance to make another he judged more advantageous, or to treat yesterday’s ally as today’s enemy. Moreover, it is rare that the public or secret commitments stipulated in an alliance are faithfully carried out. They are typically honored only so long as each party considers them consistent with its interest.

This leads us to examine what constitutes political morality and how it differs from ordinary morality. Both have the same objective, namely the general and long-term interest of the human species; but under the regime of a state of war, they entail different, even opposing, sets of rules. Political morality is that which is held by the firm which owns the State and of the government that exercises power in its name and in its [45] interest. Now, that interest entails, first and foremost, the adoption and enforcement of the rules best suited to ensure the security of ownership of the political domain and, if necessary, its expansion. Secondly, the interest of the firm or house also requires maintaining the subjugated population of the domain in obedience—and doing so with the greater severity the more the security of ownership of the State is threatened by external competition. These rules of conduct, imposed by the necessity of preserving this form of property and applied by governments, have their rationale in the requirements of the state of war; their aim is to cater for this possibility. By contrast, the morality that governments prescribe for individuals has for its aim the maintenance of peace within their domain. It is thus understandable that the rules of raison d’État and those of ordinary morality often conflict, even though both ultimately aim at the same thing: the preservation and prosperity of the State. Thus, the maintenance of peace among men commands respect for the life and property of others, whereas war involves the destruction of life and the confiscation of enemy property by means of pillage or conquest. Likewise, the preservation and enlargement of a [46] political domain may necessitate measures and rules that raison d’État approves and ordinary morality condemns. The security of ownership of this domain may, for instance, require various restrictions on the exercise of liberty and property, or even formal violations of ordinary moral principles, such as espionage and denunciation, in order to forestall conspiracies or revolts among subjects or to guard against hostility from competing firms or houses.

Yet morality does not have as its objective the general and long-term interest of a single State or nation alone, but of the entire human species. The practices required by war can therefore only be morally justified to the extent that war itself is moral—that is, in conformity with the interest of the species. From the moment war ceases to be useful, raison d’État and the practices it authorizes must and will be condemned as immoral. This is, moreover, what has happened with a great many practices once considered and even commanded as moral, such as cannibalism, infanticide, abduction, slavery, etc., until the progress made in the conditions of social existence stripped them of their utility.

Thus, the question becomes whether war has continued to conform to the general and long-term interest of the species, [47] and therefore whether the morality of raison d’État has retained its justification. The examination of the progress that societies have accomplished under the pressure of this primitive form of competition will provide the answer to that question.

[48]

CHAPTER VII. THE CAUSES OF WAR AFTER THE FORMATION OF POLITICAL STATES↩

Cause of the invasions of Asian hordes into Europe. — Why they ceased. — Motives behind the Crusades. — Wars of the European people up to the modern era. — Wars of internal and external conquest. — Wars of succession. — Wars of religion. — The struggle between Paganism and Christianity. — The Reformation. — Role of economic motive in the wars of religion. — That these different wars brought about progress which stripped war of its rationale.

The driving force behind politics and that particular morality called raison d’État is the interest of the associations that own and run firms [36] —in other words, “political States.” This same motive, that is the lure of profit, appears in all the wars that broke out between such States or which they had to wage against barbarian invaders. To not go back any further, it was the lure of profit that drew the successive invasions of [49] Asian hordes to Europe. These invasions ceased only because the power of the European States reached the point where attempts to invade their territories for plunder or conquest eventually resulted in losses rather than profits. If the firms which own the States of the Middle Ages in turn invaded the territories of Asian people, if they banded together to undertake the Crusades, it was with a view to profit—both moral, that is, the satisfaction of their religious feeling, and material, that is, the acquisition of the fabulous riches which they imagined existed in the lands from which commerce brought its most precious goods. Once experience had shown that the Crusades “did not pay,” as the American phrase goes, they were abandoned, and the expansionary wars of the people of Europe did not resume until the discovery of America and the new route to India. We find the same motive in all the wars waged or supported by the castes or “houses” that owned the States, [37] down to the modern era: wars of internal conquest or unification, wars of external conquest, wars of religion, wars of succession, colonial and commercial wars. We will see, in briefly reviewing them, that they had no other objective than the acquisition or preservation [50] of the means of subsistence—or at least that this objective, however much it might be disguised, was always predominant.

This motive is plainly visible in the internal wars that preceded and brought about the establishment of the feudal system, and in those that ended feudalism by absorbing the seigneuries into the unified State. When the Franks, Burgundians, and other barbarian tribes had divided among themselves the greater part of the Roman State, and when, on the other hand, the invasions having ceased, the bonds linking the conquering armies to their leaders had weakened, each co-sharer of the conquered domains sought to enlarge his lot at the expense of his neighbors. Hence the local wars that multiplied under the weak successors of Charlemagne and led to the establishment of the system of protection of the weak by the strong that came to be known as feudalism. But while this system had the effect of reducing the number of competitors struggling to enlarge their States and revenues, it left the strongest still in conflict, and it necessarily led to the absorption of their political domains—and thus of the revenues derived from taxes, monopolies, etc.—into the domain of the strongest of them all, that is, the hereditary leader of the conquering army. In France, [51] this work of absorption was the principal, if not the sole, preoccupation of the “house” that owned the political domain of the Île-de-France, which it gradually enlarged to the limits of modern France by the internal conquest of feudal seigneuries, by external conquests, and by inheritances.

The owners of political domains could, of course, increase their power and wealth by means other than territorial annexation—by adopting a more economical system for exploiting populations, by lightening the tax burden, by better protecting their subjects against theft and brigandage, not to mention corruption by their own functionaries. The most intelligent owners of the State did not neglect this means, certainly the most effective one, of securing their domination and increasing their revenues. Thus, over time—and not without frequent reversals—slavery was transformed into serfdom, the bonds of serfdom loosened once experience showed that this regime of exploitation was less advantageous than simple subjection, tax collection by direct management was replaced by tax farming, only to be later reinstated as a reform when tax farming became corrupted by bribery; but, following the example of owners of industrial or commercial establishments, it was still to the expansion of their operations that [52] the owners of political establishments primarily looked for increased power and wealth. In vain did experience convince them that, by expanding their State beyond what might be called the economic limits of this kind of enterprise, [38] they made its administration more difficult and less productive, while increasing the costs of its defense—they placed their pride in surpassing their competitors by the extent of their domains. And such was the goal they invariably pursued, both through war and through the method of matrimonial alliances. These contributed greatly to the formation of the States we see today, though not without provoking the long series of wars known as the wars of succession.

To the wars of internal and external conquest and the wars of succession were added—especially beginning with the Reformation—the wars of religion. But it is a mistake to think that these wars were the exclusive product of religious passion. Like the others, they were determined mainly by an interest in domination, which ended up becoming the search for a purely material profit. One need only consider what, until recently, and still today in some backward countries, the relationship between Church and State has been.

[53]

We have studied elsewhere the role religion has played in the formation of societies and States. [39] It was thanks to the intervention of Divinities—whose concept was suggested by the religious sentiment, more or less elevated and pure depending on the intellectual and moral development of a people, but whose presence in the human heart attested to a higher power to which man was bound to submit—that men were made to fulfill the duties required by social life and to accept the sacrifices it demanded, beginning with the sacrifice of life itself. Religion has thus always been the necessary factor in the government of societies. At times, religious and political power were in the same hands; at others, they were in separate but closely allied hands, due to the mutual support they offered each other. Until recent times, this intimate union of the two powers, which together maintained social order, was regarded as indispensable. One could no more conceive of two or more religious governments coexisting in the same [54] State than of two or more political governments. [40] What followed from this? That a new religion could only be established in a State by way of conquest and dispossession. The clergy, which formed the army of the new faith, took over the functions and properties of the clergy of the old faith—and hence their means of existence. It was a struggle for life, and that struggle implied the elimination or at least the expulsion and dispossession of the defeated. It is reasonable to suppose that this temporal interest in preserving their means of existence outweighed, among the pagan priests, concern for the spiritual welfare of their flocks, or even love of their gods. As for the emperors, their conduct in the struggle between the old and new cults was certainly guided byself-interest: they defended paganism so long as they thought it stronger, but did not hesitate to abandon it and claim their share of its spoils once the victory of Christianity appeared assured. Christianity then became the religion of the State in turn, and it waged the same war of elimination on its persecutors as they had waged on it. It did the same in the States that arose from the ruins of the Roman Empire, and up to the sixteenth century it succeeded—thanks to the cooperation of its partner, temporal power, [55] to which it gave, in tight reciprocity, the support of its spiritual authority—in preserving itself from all attempts at dispossession by schismatic sects. But while political government underwent the salutary pressure of competition in the form of war, religious government, lacking that indispensable stimulus for preservation and progress, grew lax and corrupt. Among its subjects, those in whom the religious sentiment was deepest and most enlightened eventually rose against it: a demand for reform emerged, especially among the upper classes in France, Germany, and England—and like all demands, this one gave rise to an enterprise to meet it. [41] The promoters and leaders of this enterprise—Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Melanchthon—established religious governments that entered into conflict with the government of the Catholic Church. In countries where the reform movement attracted only a small number of adherents, such as Italy and Spain, the political government had no hesitation in lending its power to the ecclesiastical government, providing it with the support of the secular arm to eliminate the heretics. In France, where heresy spread more widely, it provoked a civil war in which the established religion [56] ultimately triumphed—but only after enduring, for nearly a century and up to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the competition of heresy. In Germany, England, and Sweden, on the contrary, where the reform movement had won the majority, and especially the most influential part of the nation, the temporal government early lent its support to the new spiritual government—and was even more inclined to do so since it took a share of the spoils of the old. While allowing the Protestant clergy to take over churches, tithes, etc., it confiscated the property of the monasteries for its own benefit; and one may reasonably suppose that the lure of the immense wealth of the regular clergy contributed at least as much as religious passion to Henry VIII’s decision to join the Reformation.

No doubt the orthodox clergy were concerned with the salvation of souls when they provoked the elimination of heretics, but the preservation of their means of existence—of which heresy would have deprived them—must naturally have sharpened their zeal. For the soldiers, if not for the leaders, of the Reformation, the material goods that made up the victor’s booty could not have been wholly indifferent either. Finally, if heads of State were to some degree caught up in religious passion, they were guided above all by their [57] self-interest: Henry IV converted to the stronger religion, declaring with naïve cynicism that Paris was well worth a Mass, and the most Catholic Cardinal Richelieu allied himself with the Protestants of Germany, subordinating religious interest without the slightest scruple concerning political interest.

In sum, just as with the wars of the earliest age, the wars of this phase in the life of States—wars of conquest, unification, succession, and religion—have invariably had as their main, if not sole, motive the lure of profit. But whatever their motive, they led to a series of advances—in both destructive and productive industries [42] —that ultimately deprived war of its justification.

[58]

CHAPTER VIII. THE PROGRESS OF THE INDUSTRY OF DESTRUCTION AND ITS RESULTS↩

The growing role of intelligence in the art of war. — Causes that gave victory to the hordes of hunters and warriors in their struggles with people on the path to civilization. — Why these conquering hordes later lost their warrior qualities. — The wars of the Greeks and Persians. — Causes of the expansion, decline, and fall of the Roman State. — The origin of the invention of gunpowder. — Why this invention secured the predominance of civilized people in the art of war. — That this predominance became decisive with recent advances in weaponry. — Transformation these advances produced in the things which constitute military value. — That these advances have secured civilized people against the risk of barbarian invasions and allowed them, in turn, to invade the territories of barbarian or backward people. — That with the security of civilization thus guaranteed, war has lost its reason for being.

In primitive times, when the art of war was still in its infancy, it was the physical vigor and courage of the combatants that appeared as the decisive factors of victory; but soon intelligence acquired a [59] predominant influence by organizing and disciplining forces, combining and directing their movements under a single sovereign command. Then, disciplined, hierarchical, and well commanded troops triumphed over a confused and anarchic mob—even when the latter surpassed it in number, strength, and courage.

The superiority of weapons, likewise due to the intervention of intelligence, also exerted an influence on the outcome of battle—but it was only with the invention of firearms that this influence increased and acquired, all other factors being equal, a decisive importance. As for the capital advances necessary for creating the personnel who are suited to war, for creating matériel, for maintaining and operating the army, they were, in the beginning, relatively modest. It is thus easy to understand how hordes of hunters or herdsmen could defeat the much larger armies of empires established in the fertile river basins of India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. These barbarians prevailed over their adversaries by superiority in physical strength and skill in combat and were not significantly inferior to them in terms of discipline and weapons; finally, the abundance of food resources in the regions they invaded [60] compensated for the inadequacy of their own food reserves. It is also easy to understand how, after having conquered a flourishing State and divided it among themselves, these barbarians later proved powerless to resist the invasions of other barbarians, accustomed, as they themselves once were, to a harsh life. The abundance of goods they enjoyed and abused—by exploiting a fertile region and a hardworking population—gradually caused them to lose the skills most necessary for fighting. The wars between the Greeks and the Persians furnish us, in this respect, with a characteristic example. Thanks to their superior physical strength and skill in combat —enhanced by training and sustained through internal strife—the Greeks repelled Persian armies which were ten times more numerous. Encouraged by this success, the Greeks of Macedonia, in turn, invaded the territories of the Great King and conquered them with astonishing ease, despite the enormous disparity in numbers.

If we likewise examine the causes of the successive expansion of the small State founded by a band of brigands in Latium into the largest empire of antiquity, and then consider how this empire—despite the numerous armies it could raise and the immense resources it possessed—was able to be invaded and carved up [61] by barbarian troops inferior in number and in all kinds of resources, we again find the explanation in the comparison of the elements of power that determine victory. The Romans possessed to a high degree the qualities that constitute military value: strength, combativeness, endurance, and obedience among the soldiers; leadership ability and, frequently, military genius among the commanders. The political constitution of Rome, by concentrating governing power in the hands of a patriciate particularly apt for rule, further contributed to victory in Rome’s conflicts with less solidly organized and less ably led States. Finally, up to the time of Augustus, Rome was continually at war, and during that long period the native combat skills of its citizens were preserved and developed through constant exercise. It was otherwise once the temple of Janus had been closed. Then, for more than three centuries, the Pax Romana was disturbed only by partial wars. The martial qualities that centuries of near-continuous conflict had developed in the Roman armies weakened under the enervating influence of the peace to which they were confined, while the barbarians they had once defeated were learning [62] from them. If Marius could destroy the undisciplined hordes of the Teutons and Cimbri, and Caesar defeat the still imperfectly organized armies of the Gauls, the Franks and other barbarians, who later supplied recruits to the imperial armies, learned to overcome them by adopting their organization and tactics. To these causes which weakened the instrument of war was added the precarious condition of the ruling power in an empire whose borders had become excessively extended, and the diminishing resources caused by over-taxation and the excessive concentration of property in the hands of an idle and degenerate aristocracy. Under the influence of these weakening factors, the Roman Empire succumbed to the assault of the barbarians just as earlier empires had fallen. But it was too vast and attacked by too many diverse people to continue as a single State. The barbarians carved it up into many States, which competed with each other, and from their struggles emerged the military, political, and economic advances that changed the conditions of society’s existence and prepared the coming of a new era in the life of humanity.

The Germanic and Slavic people who divided most of the domains of the Roman Empire had, in the early centuries [63] of the founding of their States, to defend them against other invaders—the Huns, then the Saracens. After repelling these invasions, they in turn united, under the double impulse of religious passion and the lure of profit, to conquer the regions occupied by the enemies of their faith and which were celebrated for their wealth. It is to these attempts at conquest, renewed over two centuries, that we must trace the origins of the advances that transformed the art of destruction and secured for civilized people preeminence in that art, as in other branches of human activity. Apparently, the invention of gunpowder descends from that of Greek fire—but whatever its origin, it profoundly altered the conditions of warfare. Before this invention, the least industrially advanced people could manufacture weapons which were nearly as effective as those machines of destruction made by civilized people, such as spears, bows, arrows, javelins, etc. The making of firearms, by contrast, required specialized knowledge and industrial tools that barbarian or backward people did not possess. At the same time, creating this advanced matériel entailed a considerable capital investment. Not only were rifles and cannons more costly than spears, bows, arrows, and javelins, but gunpowder and projectiles [64] increased the cost of their use. On the other hand, while firearms made cuirasses and shields obsolete, they required more expensive fortifications; simple walls had to be replaced by thick ramparts able to resist artillery.

In our own time, an even more decisive advance has been achieved through the invention of explosives and long-range weapons. Not only does this new matériel—whose destructive power increases daily—require more science and capital, it has also brought about, to the advantage of civilized people, a radical shift in the relative importance of the elements that constitute military value. Physical strength and courage—which are common to man and predatory animals and which decide victory in hand-to-hand combat or at distances that can be closed by a short charge—now play only a secondary role, since the danger zone that must be crossed to drive back the enemy and hold the battlefield has tripled or quadrupled in extent. It is moral strength, drawn from a sense of duty, that alone can master the instinct for self-preservation in this prolonged ordeal. [43] Now science, capital, and moral strength [65] are the benefits of a superior civilization.

The effects of these successive advances in the tools of the industry of destruction have developed and intensified over the past few centuries. After being confined to the narrow domains they occupied in Europe, the people of our civilization have invaded the vast regions occupied by inferior or backward people; they have brought under their dominion the Americas, Oceania, most of Asia, and are now seizing Africa. The time is not far off when they will be the undisputed masters of the globe. The ease with which they expand their conquests and overcome resistance from the most warlike people attests that the danger of invasions has completely vanished—in short, that civilization is now fully secured against barbarism. War has completed this work of guaranteeing the security that it alone could accomplish—or at least it has only a few final tasks remaining to complete it—and, in ceasing to be useful, it has lost its reason for being.

It nevertheless continues to exist and seems even to threaten more than ever the prosperity of civilized people. But we will now see that, after transforming the industry of destruction, it has prompted progress in the productive industries that work to make it impossible.

[66]

CHAPTER IX. THE PROGRESS OF PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRIES — THE ORIGIN OF INDUSTRIAL COMPETITION↩

Recapitulation of the causes that gave rise to war and of the advances that have deprived it of its purpose. — That it would nevertheless have continued to be necessary if it had not been replaced by a higher form of life-giving competition: productive competition. — Origin of productive competition. — The division of labor and exchange. Natural obstacles to the extension of exchange. — How these obstacles were successively overcome. — How the expansion of markets where exchange takes place developed and made productive competition general. — That it replaced war as the vehicle of preservation and progress.

Birth of the idea of peace and the decline of war.

Before examining why war is destined to disappear after having played a necessary role, let us recapitulate the causes that brought it into being and those that have worked to strip it of its reason for existing.

The natural laws that govern plant and animal life—the laws of the economy of forces and of life-giving competition—have as their goal the preservation and progress of the species (albeit progress which is limited by the purpose assigned to each). This goal [67] is reached by granting victory to the strongest—in other words, to those most capable of preserving the species and causing it to progress.

Under the pressure of life-giving competition, men, like most other species, form associations of mutual assistance. [44] These associations come into conflict with each other in the acquisition of food. The strongest, those who have acquired the greatest amount of power by conforming more precisely than others to the law of the economy of forces in the way they go about their activity, prevail and survive for the benefit of the species. But by making them necessary the struggle has generated advances that modify the constituent elements of power. At first, superiority in strength and physical courage secures victory. But intelligence intervenes: it invents artificial weaponry that progressively increases the destructive capacity of combatants, and it creates the art of employing and combining their forces so as to produce the maximum useful effect. Then victory ceases to belong to physical strength and passes to mental superiority.

However, intelligence does not stop at increasing man’s destructive capacity—it turns to creating and developing his productive capacity. After having helped him discover the most effective methods [68] of capturing the food that nature has placed at his disposal, it teaches him how to increase the supply of that food. The productive industries come into being, but their existence and development are conditional on one thing: security. What is security? It is the guarantee of the survival of the tools and products that are used to feed him. When that guarantee is lacking—when the weaker is constantly exposed to being stripped of the products of his industry by the stronger—he is not inclined to expend the labor required for any production, nor to endure the hardship that such labor entails. For the motive of his activity is profit—that is, the excess of pleasure over pain. Security is thus the indispensable condition of production. But who can provide it to the weaker, if not the stronger? And what can lead the stronger to impose on themselves the labor and risks involved in the production of security, [45] if not the lure of profit? They were drawn to it by the promise of a profit greater than what they had obtained by destroying the weak and appropriating their means of subsistence. They obtained this higher profit by conquering a territory and subjugating its population, once agriculture and the other productive industries had increased the productivity of labor [69] to the point that it yielded, in addition to what was needed for the worker’s subsistence and reproduction, a net product. This net product became the profit of the conquering firm—the price it charged for providing security to the subjugated population, which it now had an interest in preserving from destruction and pillage. This same self-interest dictated that it should not demand, in the form of forced labor or other dues, more than the amount of the net product, for fear of encroaching upon and destroying the fund of productive forces from which it drew its own subsistence. It even dictated that part of this net product be left to the subjugated population, in order to stimulate them to increase the gross product by more assiduous and active use of their productive powers. However, the members of the conquering firm that owned the State were naturally inclined to abuse their power, and they would eventually have exhausted the funds from which they drew their livelihood if the competition of other firms—seeking territorial expansion—had not forced them to find the best means of increasing the power of their State under the most effective of sanctions: elimination or, at the very least, expropriation and subjugation. Competition drove them to perfect their military, political, and economic institutions, and this stimulus [70] was all the more powerful and fruitful as the pressure of competition was more constant and intense. The firms that achieved these necessary advances to a higher degree than their rivals became the most powerful, enlarged their domains at the expense of those less capable of progress, and in enlarging them, extended the sphere of security.

Finally, in transforming the art and matériel of destruction, progress definitively assured victory to the superiority of science, capital, and moral value—that is, to elements of power that are products of civilization and which barbarian or backward people can acquire only by rising to the level of the most advanced nations in these three respects. Civilized nations having thus become the strongest, security is now guaranteed, and competition in its destructive form of war has ceased to be necessary to bring it about.

Yet competition is the necessary tool for the preservation and progress of the human species, as of all others. One might then ask whether war, after having guaranteed the security of civilization, might still have another indispensable role to fulfill: that of preventing the stagnation of human activity [71] and the arrest of its progress. It would indeed be so if war, in extending and consolidating security, had not brought into being another form—no less vigorous and more economical—of life-giving competition: productive or industrial competition.

This competition arose from the political and economic advances brought about by its predecessor. Let us briefly summarize its origin. Just as destructive competition arises when two or more individuals covet the same prey and engage in conflict to appropriate it, productive or industrial competition appears when two or more individuals vie to obtain—by way of exchange—the product or service they need. They offer a product or a service in exchange for the one they seek. Which one prevails and completes the exchange? The strongest—that is, the one who can supply the greatest quantity of the product he offers. But what enables him to offer more than his competitors? It is his capacity to create the product or service with less expenditure—in other words, at lower cost—by employing more effective and economical tools and methods. Productive competition thus has the effect of encouraging, by making it necessary, the improvement of tools and production methods—just as destructive competition [72] brings about advances in the means of destruction.

It is exchange that gives rise to productive competition, and exchange, in turn, arises from the division of labor, which is itself determined by the law of the economy of forces and the lure of profit. Labor is divided when it becomes more economical and profitable to produce a given article in quantities exceeding one’s own needs, and to obtain, by exchanging the surplus, another article whose production would require more labor and hardship if produced directly. However, the division of labor and exchange only became possible once the food industry—which satisfies man’s primary need—had become productive enough to provide a surplus of food for the amount of labor man could expend; that is, once he had learned to increases the things needed for subsistence. Then, producers of this article of the first necessity, able to dispose of a surplus, found it profitable to exchange that surplus for other products or services.

But it was not enough that man had learned to produce—he also had to be guaranteed of enjoying at least part of the products of his industry. This guarantee, as we have seen, was established by the stronger through conquest and appropriation [73] of a territory, the formation of a State, and the subjugation of the population devoted to productive labor. In the initial period of conquest, each co-owner of the territory lived off the products of his own domain and obtained only a small number of items by way of exchange—those whose raw materials were not found within the bounds of his domain. The sphere of exchange seldom extended beyond the limits of each seigneury. The lack of security and of the means of transportation posed further obstacles to its extension—obstacles that only the lure of high profits could eventually overcome.

Commerce developed despite these obstacles and multiplied markets where exchanges could take place. The political advances that led to the formation of the feudal system, then the unification of States, successively widened these markets, and as they expanded, competition within them became more active. The number of competitors in each branch of production kept increasing, and the profits that exchangers [46] could obtain by making the advances necessary to become stronger grew with the extension of these markets. Finally, when security and transportation began to internationalize and to create—despite the obstacles of taxation and protectionism—a “general market” [74] of unlimited extent, productive competition in turn became universal, and across the globe and in every branch of production, it became a powerful stimulus to progress. As it developed, all societies were driven to make the advances needed to sustain it—on pain of being excluded from an increasingly unified market and having their means of subsistence expropriated, as they once were by war.

Thus, war completed its work by engendering a series of advances that ensured the security of societies in the process of civilization and brought forth a new, more economical and more effective form of life-giving competition: productive competition.

(gap)

Once the superiority of civilized people in the art of war became evident, the idea of establishing universal and permanent peace began to take root in the minds of those most receptive to the concept of progress. Like all new ideas, it was at first dismissed as pure utopia. [47] Nevertheless, it spread during the eighteenth century; it inspired the generous apostles of the fraternity of people at the beginning of the French Revolution and shortly thereafter led to the founding of peace societies. [48] However, the realization of this utopia was contingent on advances still in their infancy, and war, before disappearing, was about to enter a period of resurgence. Yet it was no less a period of decline, for in ceasing to be useful, war had become harmful, and from now on it was to inflict—without the compensation of increased security—ever-growing damage on the whole of civilized society.

[79]

CHAPTER I. THE OLD REGIME OF CIVILIZED STATES — WHAT IT WAS AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY↩

How security was produced through the subjugation of the weak by the strong. — That it could not have been produced otherwise. — That the producers of security at first obtained only the payment necessary for their industry. — Causes of the steady increase in the price of security. — How the subjugated classes succeeded in limiting it. — Struggle between the subjugated classes and the firms which owned the political States. [49] — Vicissitudes of this struggle. — Revolutions and wars of emancipation — in the Netherlands, — in England, — in America. — Political situation of the civilized States on the eve of the French Revolution. — Decline of the state of war. — Its resurgence provoked by the premature overthrow of the Ancien Régime in France.

A necessary condition for the advances that raised the human species above the animal kingdom was security, and this was created through the subjugation of the weak by the strong. Given human nature, the inequality of the varieties of people within the species, and the diversity of their aptitudes, could it have come about any other way? Would the strong not have continued to strip the weak and make them their prey if they had not [80] found it more profitable to exploit their productive abilities—which implied the necessity of protecting them after subjugating them? This protection, no doubt, was costly for the races it shielded from the perils that threatened their existence in an age when only force could restrain force. They paid for it with their liberty and the greater part—if not the entirety—of the net product of their labor. But can it be said that the cost was too high? What would have become of these races who were incapable of defending themselves, if they had not found defenders? However high the price of the service of security they were provided, it remained below its value, since they could neither do without it nor produce it themselves. Can one even state that it exceeded the costs and the necessary profit of the production of security? [50] The firms made up of strong men [51] who ensured the survival of the weak through the founding of political States were exercising a naturally dangerous and uncertain industry. The conquest and maintenance of a territory and its population involved risks that constantly threatened the existence of the conquering and governing firm. As in any other industry, the profits had to be in proportion to the risks. It is true that the members of the firm which owns the State were naturally inclined to [81] abuse the discretionary power they held over the subjugated population. But, firstly, their interests as owners (of the state) worked to prevent them from overburdening their subjects with forced labor, dues, taxes, and monopolies to the point of exhausting their strength and thus drying up the very source of their revenues; secondly, the ruling power of the society—the government—had an interest in preventing abuses of exploitation that would result in weakening the power of the State by diminishing its resources. The moderating influence of this higher interest was especially felt when competition, in its destructive form of war, was constant and pressing. If one also considers that the productivity of most industries remained very low as long as the limited size of markets hindered the division of labor and the use of advanced machinery, one will recognize that the costs of feeding, maintaining, and governing the subjugated population—however minimal they may have been—left the class of the owners of the State only a bare minimum of net product, so that in reality, with rare exceptions, it obtained hardly more than the payment necessary for its services. The situation changed when the extension of security brought about the expansion of markets and spurred the advances that [82] steadily increased the productivity of most branches of industry. Then the net product grew, and the firm which owns the State—its government as well as its members—was able to raise the rate of its levies on the gross product. But at the same time, the increase in industrial productivity gave rise, from among the subjugated multitude, to an intermediate class whose wealth—and the influence which is attached to wealth—steadily grew. In countries where this class failed to rid itself of the yoke of servitude, or where it could not unite its forces, it remained—and with it the multitude from which it had emerged—at the mercy of the demands of the owners of the State. In countries, by contrast, where this industrious and frugal elite had bought its freedom and combined its strength in corporations or communities, it was able to create a check to these demands. It first claimed the right to consent to taxation and to negotiate its amount—just as the price of its own products or services was agreed upon after bargaining. Finally, as its wealth and influence grew with the rising productivity of its industry, its ambition also rose: it sought admission to the very management of the political establishment. Hence a series of reforms that led to the transformation of the constitutions of States and [83] to the institution of the representative and parliamentary regime.

At all times, the abuses of power by the firm which owns the State and its members—the excessive taxes and harsh regime imposed on the subjugated multitude to keep them obedient—had spurred the latter to cast off a yoke too heavy to bear. Rome had its slave revolts, and the States of the Middle Ages had their peasant and serf uprisings. But neither slaves nor serfs possessed the resources or the capacity needed to prevail in their struggle against the firm which owns the State and to establish a government which would replace theirs. Their uprisings were suppressed without gaining them any guarantee against the oppression and exactions they suffered. In a certain number of centers of production, where important branches of industry had gathered a population that was enterprising, energetic, and frugal, and where wealth had grown considerably, the outcome of the conflict between masters and their subjects was different. The subjects obtained—whether by persuasion or by force—charters that limited the power of their masters, especially with regard to dues and taxes, and granted them the right to provide for services which had previously been monopolized by the owners of the State. [84] It must be said, however, that in the cities where they succeeded in freeing themselves from an oppressive and burdensome rule, the new rule they established was no less so for the lower classes of the population. And when this new rule extended further downward, it resulted, as in Florence, in an anarchy that made people long for—and ultimately restore—the government of the old masters, that is the sovereign houses or oligarchies. It was only when a series of inventions and discoveries had expanded the markets of industry and the sphere of commercial operations that the struggle between the subjects and the masters of the State [52] resumed with new energy, and that the era of revolutions and wars of emancipation began. In the Netherlands, where commerce and thrift had produced a bourgeoisie which had become powerful through its ability and wealth, the struggle broke out between this "general staff" [53] of the subjugated multitude and the sovereign “house” of Spain. It ended in the victory of the revolution and the establishment of a State that belonged no longer to a house but—at least nominally—to the nation. In England, where the dictatorial concentration of governmental powers had not taken hold thanks to the shelter that the country’s insular position gave its conquerors against the risk of dispossession from abroad, and where, as in the Netherlands, the rapid development of industry and [85] commerce had brought forth, starting with the reign of Elizabeth, a middle class [54] conscious of its strength—the reckless attempts by the head of the sovereign house to import into England the practices of continental absolutism provoked a revolution. After a dictatorship followed by a restoration, this resulted in the establishment of a so-called constitutional and parliamentary monarchy. The defining feature of this regime, which was later adopted by most European States, lies, as is known, in the obligation imposed on the sovereign to entrust the administration of the State to a ministry that enjoys the confidence of the majority in a parliament which represents—or is supposed to represent—the nation. Finally, in America, where the governments of the colonizing people had established a system of subjugation and exploitation that conferred on the governing class of the mother country a monopoly on civil and military positions, and likewise reserved the import and export trade either entirely or partly to a privileged fraction of the industrial and commercial class—where, moreover, the government claimed the right it had retained in Europe (except in England) to tax its subjects without their consent—in America, we say, the subjects of the English colonies demanded the right their fellow citizens enjoyed [86] in the mother country. Unable to obtain it peacefully, they resorted to force and, with France’s help, freed themselves from British rule.

This was the political situation of the civilized States on the eve of the French Revolution. The State belonged to a house or an oligarchy that governed it sovereignly, like the owner of a commercial firm or the board of directors of a company governs its business, seeking to increase its clientele and extract the highest possible profit. In England alone, the subjects had obtained guarantees against the abuse of power by their masters, and the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie was represented in parliament. In fact, however, the government of the State still remained in the hands of the aristocracy, whose wealth and influence were, at that time, still absolutely predominant.

But throughout Europe, and particularly in France, this regime—which had adapted to the state of war—was in full decline. Since the lifting of the siege of Vienna (1683), the military superiority of the civilized people had become clear; the danger of invasions had disappeared; and the internal wars of civilization—made more costly by the combined advances in the tools of destruction and of production, and more [87] damaging by the expansion of markets—now visibly benefited only the ruling class, while increasing the burden of taxes and debts upon the multitude. At the same time, the industrious and thrifty bourgeoisie was growing richer, while the aristocracy impoverished itself through habits of idleness and dissipation. The Third Estate became conscious of its strength: it was nothing, but it aspired to be everything. Writers from its ranks, who had remained in subordinate positions despite the enormous increase in influence they owed to the invention of the printing press, shared and supported its ambition. They stirred popular passions by denouncing the vices and abuses of a regime that was no longer suited to the new conditions of existence, which an extraordinary efflorescence of progress had begun to create for societies. Thanks to the weakness and ineptitude of the head of the sovereign house, and the lack of unity and cohesion in a nobility whose capacity for resistance had been destroyed by the monarchy itself in subjugating it, this campaign of demolition—pursued with growing fury—culminated in the premature overthrow of the Ancien Régime. Premature, we say, because the instigators and authors of the Revolution had—and indeed could not yet have—any idea of the institutions suited to the regime of liberty and peace that they [88] intended to establish. Instead of instituting liberty, they resurrected despotism in its most brutal form; instead of establishing peace, they provoked a resurgence of war.

[89]

CHAPTER II. THE ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ANCIEN RÉGIME↩

Retrospective overview of the motive guiding the owners of political States. — In what respects the interest of the subjugated classes aligned with that of the class owning the State — and in what respects it differed. — The fiscal rate and the barrier it posed to the greed of the owners of the State. — That if the immediate interest of the producers of security was in immediate conflict with that of the consumers, these two interests aligned over time. — Characteristic difference between the old regime of the production of security and that of other branches of industry. — That there was no relation between the taxes imposed on the subjects and the payment for the services provided to them. — That these services were of two kinds. — Why the owners of the State focused preferentially on those relating to the preservation and extension of their domination. — Causes necessitating reform of this regime. — How the problem was posed. — Ignorance of the facts of this problem at the time of the Revolution. — The two general forms of government under the new regime of political States.

If one wishes to understand the difficulties involved in transforming the old regime, one must bear in mind the motive that guided the firm of powerful men who had founded the State and [90] who governed it. That motive was the same as that which determines the creation of all enterprises and the conduct of those who own and direct them: it was self-interest. The enterprise of founding a State consisted in the conquest of a territory, the subjugation and exploitation of its population, with a view to the profit such an enterprise could yield. Once the State was founded, the primary concern was to ensure its preservation, and thereafter to derive the greatest possible profit from it. It could only be preserved on the condition of maintaining, on a permanent basis, a body organised for fighting which was powerful enough to keep the subjugated population in obedience and to repel the aggressions of other firms of powerful men who lived by pillage or who sought to enlarge their own States at the expense of others. The profits of the enterprise could be increased in two ways: through enlargement of the territory — and the consequent increase in the number of exploitable subjects — or through increasing the yield extracted from them in the form of forced labor, dues, or taxes.

Did the interest of the owners of the State align with that of their subjects or not? This is the first question that arises in studying the economic characteristics of this regime.

The physical inferiority of the subjects provides the answer [91] to this question. The conquest of their territory and their subjugation showed that they were not strong enough to safeguard their own lives and means of subsistence. They were thus interested in getting this service of security, which they were incapable of producing themselves, from a firm run by men stronger and more capable of protecting them. They were also interested in the fact that this firm which provided protection[55] would maintain and even increase its power, in order to better shield them from the risk of invasions, massacres, pillage, or subjugation by conquerors who were more uncivilized, more brutish, and more greedy than those to whom they were already subjected. On this essential point, their interest aligned with that of their masters. Conversely, for this service of security which was provided to them, they were — and on this point there was an immediate opposition between the two interests at stake — interested in paying for it like any other service, at the lowest price possible.

But as they were the weaker party, they had to submit to the conditions and bear the taxes that their masters chose to impose. It was the master who set the price for the protection he granted his subjects, and he was naturally inclined, like any other producer of goods or services, to set it as high as possible — that is, to get the entirety of the net product of the [92] subjugated population, leaving them only the bare minimum necessary for their upkeep and reproduction.

However, the long-term interest of the association of the owners of the State [56] tempered this immediate interest of the producer of services toward the consumer. If this association, as a long-term owner of the State, [57] was interested in drawing the greatest possible profit from exploiting its subjects, it was no less interested in not exhausting their productive capacities; on the contrary, it had an interest in increasing them — and therefore in not raising the taxes, forced labor, and dues that provided its revenue to an excessive rate. It had an interest in not exceeding what would later be called the fiscal rate — that is, a rate which yields the highest return without diminishing that return through the weakening of the productive faculties that are its source. [58] The fiscal rate was not a measure of the actual price of the service; it could — and in fact usually did — rise even higher when the productivity of the subjects’ industry increased due to the security they enjoyed. But at least it imposed a check on the unconscious greed of the masters and their discretionary power.

In summary, then: if the immediate interest of the owners of the State conflicted with that of their subjects, the long-term interest of both [93] parties aligned — the subjects being interested in the preservation and increase of their masters’ power because it protected them from invasions and the evils that came from that; and the masters being interested in preserving and increasing their subjects’ productive capacities, because these provided them, along with the resources necessary for the defense and expansion of the State, with their means of subsistence.

But here is a feature that characterized this old regime of the production of security [59] and that distinguished political enterprises from industrial and commercial ones: [60] there was no relation between the forced labor, taxes, and dues that the owners of a State demanded from their subjects and the services they provided in return. These forced labor duties, taxes, and dues they commanded by virtue of their status as owners — just as they commanded the labor of their beasts of burden — without believing themselves obliged to provide any service in exchange. They protected their subjects and ensured their survival as they did with their cattle; but, as we shall see, solely in view of their own self-interest and to the degree that this interest merited.

The protection of the subjugated population comprised two types of services: services of guardianship and internal security, and services of external security. Now, although the former were no less [94] necessary to them than the latter, the masters of the State attached to them only secondary importance. They were far less concerned with protecting the lives and property of their subjects against internal threats than with defending their territory against external invasion. This was because the loss of any portion of their territorial domain caused them a significant reduction in revenue and power, while the individual abuses suffered by their subjects — murder, theft, etc. — caused them comparatively insignificant harm. [61] While they continually strove to increase their defensive and offensive power by improving their military institutions — sparing no expense on that front — they paid little attention and allocated meager funds to the services of justice and police. And even then, their concern was primarily, if not exclusively, with their own security. The most serious attacks on the lives and property of subjects were lightly punished, while the slightest offenses against the masters of the State were repressed with inexorable severity, and the police were chiefly employed to hunt down violators of laws [95] aimed specifically at ensuring the submission of the subjugated population. Bands of thieves and brigands could ply their trade undisturbed — sometimes even with the connivance of an underpaid police force — in States that possessed formidable armies. This was because the masters of the State considered their services solely from the standpoint of their own interest, without concern for that of their subjects. Only those who understood that the security of the subjects was a necessary element of the State’s prosperity — or who had some vague notion of the moral obligation they had contracted toward them — concerned themselves with justice and police services in any way that went beyond their own domination.

But in the minds of the majority of the owners of the State, there existed no more connection between the taxes they imposed on their subjects and the services they provided than there was between the labor demanded of their beasts of burden and the food and care they gave them. It was in his own interest, not that of his animals, that the owner of a herd of oxen or sheep bore the cost of their food and maintenance. Likewise, it was in its own interest that the firm which owns the State provided for the protection and security of its subjects. And the [96] tribute it demanded from them, in various forms, was measured not by the services it provided, but by their capacity to pay.

Despite its crude imperfections, this regime of the production of security — founded on the appropriation of the weak by the strong — had been the only one possible. Initially interested in stripping the weak and making them their prey, the strong, in appropriating them, became interested in protecting them. This interest was carried to its highest point, since the firms of powerful men [62] who had founded States by seizing territory and subjugating its population drew from them their means of existence. So long as the risks of a civilized world being overthrown by barbarian invasions persisted, and so long as the productivity of the industries to which the subjugated populations were assigned remained low, one cannot claim that the share appropriated by the partnership of the owners of the State from the labor of its subjects exceeded the costs of the production of the service of security, [63] with the necessary profit included. But these risks gradually diminished under the influence of advances in matériel and the art of destruction, while labor productivity rose under the influence of improvements in the productive arts. Then a moment had to come when the taxes and dues levied by the firm which owns the State [64] [97] on its subjects, exercising its power as owner, would exceed the value of the service it provided them — and the gap between price and value of that service would continue to grow. Reform of this regime thus became necessary, and the need for it was increasingly felt.

The problem to be solved consisted, on the one hand, in establishing a direct relation — which did not yet exist — between the service and its payment; and, on the other, in compelling the firms that produced this service to reduce its price to the level of the lowest cost of production plus the necessary profit, and at the same time giving them incentives to improve its quality.

We know how this problem has been resolved for the majority of other products and services, and we can glimpse how it might be resolved for those falling within the domain of the State; but no such understanding existed at the time the French Revolution broke out. Some believed the reform should consist in limiting the sovereign's power and modifying, more or less profoundly, the civil, military, and fiscal institutions; others thought it should lie in the dispossession of the governing class and the institution of a republican government founded on the sovereignty of the nation.

These are the two forms of government — constitutional and parliamentary monarchy and the [98] republic — which today prevail among civilized nations. Let us now consider what differences separate this new regime from the old and what influence those differences have on the question of peace or war.

[99]

CHAPTER III. THE CHANGES MADE TO THE CONSTITUTION OF STATES SINCE THE END OF THE 18TH CENTURY↩

How the new regime differs from the old. — The appropriation of the State by the nation. — The rights that derive from it. — Declarations and constitutions that proclaim these rights. — The two objectives pursued by constitutions. — The rights and guarantees of the governed. — That constitutions have erased, in this respect, the distinction between the governing and the governed classes. — That they have established a theoretical link between the services of the State and the taxes which are used to pay for them, and declared that such taxes must be in proportion to the services and reduced to what is strictly necessary, but that the old tax system was allowed to survive. — Why this dual objective was not achieved.

That a nation can own its State but not govern it. — That under the new regime the State remained what it was under the old: an enterprise, and that it must be constituted and governed as such. — How government has been organized in modern States. — The political parties that have arisen under the new regime, although the constitutions made no provision for them. — That their objective is to conquer the State and enjoy the benefits it provides. — That they are organized like armies. — Conditions under which they can achieve victory. — The electorate and the motives guiding the social groups composing it. — That each group follows its particular and immediate interest, even when that interest is [100] in opposition to the general and long-term interest of the nation. [65] — That each group is represented by a party that it compels to serve its particular interest. — That the parties have, moreover, a common interest, which consists in expanding the functions of the State and encouraging them to extend its domain.

In what way does the new regime differ from the old, and what influence can the features that distinguish it exert on the resolution of the question of peace or war? That is what we now need to examine.

The essential character of the old regime, as we have seen, was the appropriation of the State by a firm made up of powerful men whose powers eventually came to be concentrated in a family or an oligarchy, which governed it—or rather, which had the mission and the duty to govern it in the general and long-term interest of that firm which owns the State. The change that political reforms or revolutions accomplished in England, in the Netherlands, in the North American colonies, in France, and later in nearly all civilized States, consisted in attributing to the nation in constitutional monarchies a right of co-ownership—albeit undefined—of the State, and in republics a complete right of ownership, and, as a consequence, the sovereign right to govern the State in accordance with the general [101] and long-term interest of the nation. This change of regime was enshrined in bills or declarations of rights and in constitutions granted by the former sovereign or drafted and voted upon by delegates of the now-sovereign nation. These constitutions, whether they developed gradually without being codified in a specific document—as in the British constitution—or whether they were improvised following a revolution, as in most other States, consist of two distinct parts: one concerning the rights and guarantees of the governed, the other concerning the organization of the government.

Over the centuries, as the threat of destruction that loomed over nascent civilizations waned and the material and moral condition of subjugated classes improved, these classes obtained various guarantees against abuses of power by the masters of the State. Customs became established that in particular limited the rate of dues and taxes to which they were subject; rights concerning the exercise of their activity and the ownership of its fruits were granted and guaranteed to them in the form of privileges. These rights and guarantees were made general and completed by the constitutions, thus erasing the distinctions between the class of the owners of the State [102] and the subjugated classes. However, the old tax system was retained everywhere: in France, for example, it was almost entirely reinstated, with only the names changed after an unsuccessful attempt to abolish it. [66] But whereas under the old regime there was no link between the taxes imposed by the State’s owners on their subjects and the services provided to them, the constitutions established that link, if only in theory. The tax was no longer to be a tithe levied on subjects in accordance with the discretionary and sovereign power of their masters, limited only by their capacity to pay; it was to be payment for the services of the State, and each individual was to contribute in proportion to the amount of wealth he possessed and which the State was tasked with safeguarding against all internal or external aggression. It was no longer a tax—it was a contribution. Finally, the nation, now the owner of the State, had an interest in making its services as effective as possible and in reducing their cost to the lowest rate, by finding the best means to achieve both objectives.

But the nation could not govern its political establishment itself. The nature of things [103] forbade it. Under the new regime, as under the old, the State remained an enterprise—and the most important of all. The State employed a large civil and military personnel charged with the functions required by its nature and purpose—internal and external security—not to mention ancillary services that could, rightly or wrongly, be assigned to it rather than to other enterprises. Like the shareholders of an industrial company, the multitude of the members of a nation that had become, in whole or in part, the owner of the State, could govern and manage it only through delegates. We know how the constitutions provided for this necessity. They conferred on an electoral body—comprised of a more or less substantial portion of the nation—the right to elect delegates to govern the State. These delegates, in concert with the head of the former ruling house or a new one of their choosing in monarchies, and in accordance with the full sovereignty delegated to them in republics, formed the governing authority—but with the obligation, under penalty of dismissal, to conform in all their acts to the will of the majority of their delegates. This majority represented the will of the electoral body, and the latter, the majority of the nation—each presumed to be most capable of governing the State [104] in accordance with the general and long-term interest of the nation. This is, in its essential features, the mechanism of government in the majority of modern States.

The reformers and revolutionaries who instituted the new regime were convinced that this mechanism would fully achieve its goal. Experience, unfortunately, has shown that they attributed to it an effectiveness it does not possess. If the quality of government services has improved in some measure, that improvement has not been general; and the price paid by nations for these services has risen in far greater proportion than their improvement. And, to confine ourselves to the particular concern of this study, instead of ensuring peace among civilized people at a time when it has become both possible and necessary, governments have prolonged—and even now threaten to perpetuate—the state of war.

If we examine the causes of this twofold failure, we will find that the first lies in the importance of the State itself—in the power and advantages it naturally provides to those who manage it. In the great States, its functionaries number in the millions; its budget is reckoned in the billions of francs. Consequently, the government of this colossal enterprise, once [105] it became accessible to all members of the nation, became the object of ambition for all those who believed they had a reasonable chance of attaining it. For this purpose, they formed associations known as political parties, which differ from those of the early conquerors only in the methods they employ to achieve their aim: namely, the conquest, occupation, and exploitation of the State. How are they organized, and how do they proceed?

The goal that they pursue and their organisation are no different from those of the old conquering firms. They are veritable armies commanded by a leader or a committee of leaders, with a general staff and troops; their aim is the conquest of the State, in order to obtain the means of existence and the superior status that public office can confer. As General Jackson cynically admitted in the United States, public office constitutes the spoils of victory. The only difference is that, unlike the old conquering firms, modern political parties take care to conceal this self-serving aim. If they wish to seize power or retain it once gained—if, in the struggles they wage against rival parties, they resort to violence, cunning, and corruption—it is [106] because the nation is supposedly interested in their victory, and its prosperity, or even its survival, depends on it; because the triumph of their rivals would bring about the most disastrous consequences. It is to avert that peril that they fight, even sacrificing—when necessary and without hesitation—their own interests for those of the nation. Typically, they publish a platform containing the most appealing promises, particularly those of radically improving the State’s services and significantly reducing the taxes used to pay for them. Sometimes these promises are sincere, but whether or not they are kept does not depend on them. Once victory is won—once the State has fallen into the hands of the conquering army—its leaders and troops must be rewarded. Instead of improving services, jobs are multiplied; [67] instead of reducing public taxes, they are increased. This hypocrisy, which characterizes the conduct of modern political parties, is dictated by the very conditions of the struggle. The old conquering firms had no need for it because they did not have to consider the opinion of the subjugated multitude. Things are different in countries where the former subjects have become [107] the owners of the State, where, by constitutional right, they exercise the sovereign right attached to this property—like any other—to choose the agents tasked with managing it in their name and on their behalf. The outcome of the struggle between the party currently holding government and the rival parties seeking to wrest it away depends on the vote of the electorate. Victory requires conquering the majority of the electorate. It is therefore to the interests and passions of the predominant elements of the electorate that political parties must appeal.

To understand the motives that determine the choice of agents to govern the State in a constitutional country, one must consider first the intellectual and moral condition of the nation, and then the composition of the electorate.

Like the individuals that comprise them, nations are essentially unequal in intellectual and moral capacity. But even among those that occupy the higher rungs of intelligence and morality, the ability to rise above the individual’s private interest, that of his family, and his trade, in order to extend their concern to the interest of the nation or even more particularly to humanity itself —is rare, and still more rarely accompanied by a moral sense [108] powerful enough to subordinate private and immediate interest to the general and long-term interest of the community. Now, as we have noted, every society is comprised of groups or classes whose interests are immediately opposed, even if they align over time. In Europe, the aristocratic landowning class descended from conquest—which had almost exclusive control over the civil and military governing functions until the end of the 18th century—had an immediate interest in territorial annexations that would expand its market. It resorted to war to satisfy that immediate interest, without examining whether the benefits it derived from expanding territory compensated for the increasing taxes and damage war imposed on the nation, or considering whether those taxes and damage would eventually lead to the State’s decline—and thus to its own. Although it has lost its former privileged position, it still holds a more or less substantial share of senior civil—and especially military—positions, and its particular and immediate interest inclines it toward the continuation of a state of war that has become increasingly contrary to the general interest. Likewise, the class of industrial entrepreneurs has interests that are immediately [109] opposed, on the one hand to consumers and on the other hand to workers.It is interested in raising the price of the goods it sells to the former and lowering the price of the labor it buys from the latter. However, if one considers its interest over time, it aligns with that of the consumers and the workers, for the impoverishment of the former and the weakening of the productive abilities of the latter must inevitably bring about its own ruin. Nonetheless, under the impulse of its immediate interest, it has everywhere used its influence to erect a dual system of protectionism against both consumers and workers—which is, as we shall later see, simply another form of the state of war. Finally, the working class, which earns its means of existence by hiring out its labor, is immediately interested in using its influence to establish some system that increases its share in the fruits of production, at the expense of the class of entrepreneurs and capitalists who are their patrons.

In summary, then, for the majority—if not the near-totality—of individuals belonging to the various classes into which a nation is divided, the consideration of private and immediate interest outweighs that of the general and long-term interest of the community. [110] Each class or group is therefore naturally inclined to support the party that promises to wield the power of the State on its behalf, to impose its interests on those of other classes with which it is in opposition.

That being the case, the composition of the electorate takes on easily understandable importance. If it is drawn only from the upper and middle classes, the parties vying for control of government will serve exclusively the particular and immediate interests of those classes. If it extends to the masses, a party will emerge to serve their interests in exchange for their vote.

But however divergent or opposed the interests they represent may be, the parties nonetheless have one interest in common: to increase the size and importance of the enterprise over which they compete for ownership—one that offers to those who possess it, to their followers and their dependents, an easy means of existence and a degree of influence that no other enterprise can bestow. In all modern States—except for the few where the old regime still survives—a new governing class has formed, one that, like the one it replaced, tends to become hereditary, namely the class of politicians. Now, whether they are conservative, [111] liberal, radical, or socialist, politicians get—or aspire to get—their means of existence from the State’s budget. They are, to use a vivid expression, tax-eaters. [68] Even if the necessities of the struggle to conquer the state did not compel them to expand the spoils used to pay for these electoral services, they would still have an interest in enlarging the enterprise that serves as their market—and that interest becomes more pressing as their numbers increase, whether by birth or by the influx of recruits whom State-provided education renders unfit for any other profession or trade. But the market provided by the State can only grow in two ways: by extending its functions at the expense of other enterprises, or by enlarging its territorial domain—in other words, through war. Depending on circumstances, the governing class resorts to one or the other of these two methods, obeying its particular and immediate interest—without inquiring, any more than other social groups do, whether that interest aligns with the general and long-term interest of the nation.

What conclusion can we draw, except that the new regime of the government of the States is no more conducive to the establishment of peace than was the old? In fact, these two regimes differ less, even in [112] the countries where they seem furthest apart, than political theorists suppose. We shall have proof of this as we review the governments of the principal civilized States, and as we analyze the dominant interests within them, we will be able to understand why war has survived and threatens to survive for a long time even after having lost its reason for being.

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CHAPTER IV. THE INTERESTS THAT DETERMINE THE PEACEFUL OR WARLIKE POLICY OF THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE PRINCIPAL MODERN STATES↩

Overview of the political institutions of civilized states from the standpoint of the question of peace or war. — The predominant interests in the political organization of Russia. — That they are more warlike than peaceful. — Germany. Causes maintaining the predominance of the military element: the danger of socialism, the question of Alsace-Lorraine. — England. Circumstances favoring the progress of its institutions. — Resurgence of the power of its aristocracy, brought about by the French Revolution. — Peaceful tendencies of its industrious classes. — The setback they suffered after the war of 1870. — The Necessity for defence imposed on England by continental militarism. — France and its political revolutions. — Peace guarantees resulting from the current form of its government. — The two kinds of American republics. — That in the entire civilized world, the multitude devoted to productive industries is interested in peace, but that nowhere does it possess the power to maintain it.

If we study, from the standpoint of the question of peace or war, the state whose political constitution has remained the closest to that of the [114] old-regime states, namely Russia, we will find there a sovereign "house" supported by a body of military and civil functionaries recruited from a so-called "civilized" class, relatively small in number, beneath which lies a multitude of peasants and workers barely freed from servitude and exercising no appreciable influence. Of what is this civilized class comprised, whose opinion directs, far more than the particular will of the sovereign — nominally an "autocrat" — the policy of the government? For the most part, it consists of families whose market is public office and who live off the budget; [69] only a minority constitutes the general staff of the owners and managers of financial, industrial, and commercial enterprises. If we remember that opinions, save rare exceptions, are shaped by particular and short-sighted interests, we will see that the current political state of Russia offers very weak guarantees of peace. Indeed, the group made up of many military functionaries — comprised of officers of all ranks — is immediately interested in war. The profession of arms, which constitutes their industry and provides their means of existence, provides them in peacetime, except in the upper ranks of the hierarchy, with only meager profits. These profits, both material and moral, [115] are increased by war, which raises their pay during campaigns and increases the chances of promotion and honorary distinctions. Civil functionaries, while remaining guaranteed of the preservation of their salaries, gain a discretionary power over those they administer during the tumult of war; finally, if the war is successful, it opens up further markets for them in the conquered country. As for the minority of owners and the managers of production enterprises, their interests are not significantly harmed by war in a country like Russia, where foreign trade, hampered by protectionism, has yet to acquire much development. War even opens up an additional market for a large number of industries that supply the matériel and provisions to the armies — not to mention capital — and if it eventually increases their taxes, it provides them with immediate extra profits, which exert a warlike influence on the opinion of industrialists and financiers far more potent than the pacifying effect of foreseeing increased future costs.

But Russia remains alone in Europe — for Turkey is more Asian — as a state of the old regime. Most of the states on our continent have one by one adopted the regime of [116] constitutional monarchy. Though this regime differs from one country to another, it possesses essential characteristics common to all. As under the old regime, the State belongs, at least nominally, to the hereditary head of the sovereign house. But this property, which was once complete and legally unlimited, if not always so in fact — at the time when Louis XIV could say "L’État, c’est moi" — is now limited in various ways, even in the most politically backward states, and in the others it is subordinated to the higher right of the nation. First, the head of the sovereign house has lost the right to divide his political domain among his children or even to exchange or cede part of it, unless compelled to do so by force; he is required to bequeath it intact to his heir. Secondly, he no longer draws a discretionary share from State revenues to meet his and his family's expenses: he is allocated a civil list and endowments which constitute fixed salaries like those of other public functionaries. He governs the State with the aid of a Parliament, generally divided into two chambers. It is Parliament that votes on the laws and the budget of revenues and expenditures. Relieved of all responsibility in the internal and external management of public affairs, the head of State, constitutional king or emperor, [117] can act only through a responsible ministry that he appoints but must select from the majority within Parliament. In fact, he possesses a more or less considerable influence on the direction of State affairs, but this direction still belongs to the members of Parliament, who represent — or are supposed to represent — the nation which is the consumer of public services. This is, in its general features, the mechanism of the so-called constitutional monarchy.

But among the existing constitutional monarchies, we find differences more or less marked, depending on the degree of importance and influence of the various classes of the population. In the most powerful of all, Germany, an aristocracy owns the greater part of the land and holds almost all the senior posts in the military hierarchy, as well as most of the senior posts in the civil hierarchy. In this double capacity, it enjoys an influence wholly disproportionate to its numerical importance. It is true that in Germany, industry and commerce — far more developed than in Russia — have created a large and educated middle class, beneath which, the progress that has, as it were, "intellectualized" labor in large industry has brought about an aristocracy of the working-class whose intelligence [118] is beginning to open up to questions of general interest. Suffrage, having become nearly universal, grants these two increasingly numerous classes the power to intervene with some efficacy in the government of the German states. Unfortunately, the pacifying action they might exert in the event of foreign conflict is weakened, if not nullified, under the influence of two causes: first, the clash of interests, so far unresolved, between the class of entrepreneurs and their capitalist backers, and the working class; second, the critical situation Germany has faced since the conquest of Alsace-Lorraine. Against the socialism that is rapidly spreading within the working class, the industrial and financial bourgeoisie naturally seeks a safeguard in the army, whose leader is the Emperor and whose hierarchy is supplied by the landowning and military aristocracy. The same safeguard is sought by both bourgeoisie and working class — socialist or not — against the ever-looming revenge of the defeated of 1870. Hence the near-dictatorial power of the Emperor, master of the organized force that guarantees the nation’s security, threatened by the latent state of war between the bourgeoisie and the working class on the one hand, and between the victors and the vanquished of 1870 on the other. No doubt the Emperor must take into account the [119] peaceful interests of the great majority of his subjects, but in the meantime, can he be refused the resources necessary to sustain a defensive war, and even to take the offensive if he judges it indispensable for the nation’s future security?

England offers us a different — and almost opposite — model of constitutional monarchy. After the Norman conquest, the need to concentrate the powers of the class possessing the State was less pressing than it was in continental states, the conquerors’ domain being naturally protected by the sea. The hereditary head of the conquering army was forced to grant his companions and, later, the influential elite of the subjugated classes, guarantees against abuse of his sovereign power. A Parliament, drawn from the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, was invested with the right to consent to taxes and laws. However, until about the mid-nineteenth century, the aristocracy — owning most of the land — shared the government of the State almost alone with the head of the sovereign house. It held the top positions of the State and Church, and customs stronger even than laws forbade it from engaging in industry or commerce. Its particular and immediate interest — this time aligning to some extent with the general and long-term interest of the nation — incited it to expand [120] the nation’s domination abroad. After losing its continental possessions, England sought compensation in the conquest of the New World that the discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries had opened up, and there it carved out an immense domain. Thanks to these markets that the ruling class opened to the industry of other classes of the nation as well as to its own — and thanks especially to the exceptional security that its island position provided to Great Britain — various branches of production received a strong impulse during the 18th century. The industrious classes, [70] interested in peace, grew in number, wealth, and influence, when the security of England, threatened by revolutionary and imperial France, restored to the political and military aristocracy its former preeminence. Its statesmen managed to preserve England from this peril by organizing and funding coalitions under whose repeated blows the warlike and domineering power born of the Revolution eventually succumbed. It then seemed that control of the English government would remain forever in the hands of the aristocracy. But the restoration of peace and the tremendous expansion of industry, transformed by the application of science, soon shifted the axis of political power to its detriment. Economic reforms, [121] and in particular the repeal of the Corn Laws, dealt a significant blow to its influence — both by diminishing its wealth and by increasing that of the classes who drew their means of existence from industry and commerce. These classes, interested in peace, obtained an increasingly large share in government, and the England of Cobden and Bright became the center of pacifist propaganda. However, since the Franco-Prussian War, a marked reversal of opinion can be observed. The continual increase in armaments among the continental powers has forced England to increase its means of defense, particularly its navy. For it is not within England’s power alone to preserve peace. The invasion and systematic plundering of England has remained the favorite dream of continental militarists and politicians. [71] [122] No enterprise would, obviously, be more lucrative. The victor could not, no doubt, plunder the vanquished as brutally as the Vandals, Franks, or Visigoths once did. But the methods of plunder currently used by civilized people differ more in form than in substance from those of their barbarian ancestors. Populations are no longer reduced to slavery or forced labor, but they are subjected to war indemnities, which amount to a levy on the annual product of the nation’s labor — that is, a collective corvée imposed for the benefit of the victor. In 1871, the victorious Germans imposed on France an indemnity of 5 billion francs, and their statesmen later regretted not having doubled it. Could not England supply a sum five or even ten times as large through annually staggered payments, while also providing for the upkeep of an [123] occupation army of several hundred thousand men? It is thus understandable that England imposes upon itself the necessary sacrifices — however heavy — to protect itself from the peril that might one day arise from some new William the Conqueror. But must not this fear — and does it not in fact — have the effect of restoring to the class from which the political and military hierarchy is mainly recruited the influence it was losing, and thus of rolling back, in the principal stronghold of peaceful interests, the cause of peace?

Do republics today offer more certain guarantees of peace than absolute or more or less constitutional monarchies? These guarantees depend, as we have said, less on the form of government — though it is not without importance — than on the level of advancement of their industry and the nature and composition of their population.

In France, the Republic, born of the Revolution, has experienced various fortunes, and one cannot say that it has definitively taken root. At first, it was only the dictatorship of a minority as brutal as it was ignorant, and it imposed itself only through terror. An imperial dictatorship supported by the army and accepted by the nation, which it delivered from [124] Jacobinism, succeeded it. Then came two constitutional monarchies — the first brought about by invasion, the second by revolution — and after a brief interlude of a republic, another imperial dictatorship, then finally, following an invasion and a revolution, a third republic. Under these different regimes, peaceful interests certainly outnumbered and outweighed warlike interests, and they prevail today more than ever. But under the Jacobin and imperial dictatorships, they were condemned to silence. Under the two constitutional monarchies, they managed to assert their influence, thanks to the nation's exhaustion under the first, and to fear of revolution under the second; likewise, under the interim Republic of 1848, thanks to the terror inspired by the Red Specter. But the interests of the military hierarchy — accomplice to the coup d’état of December 2nd — took their revenge under the Second Empire and provoked the series of wars that led to the disaster of 1870, despite the peaceful will of the nation’s majority — a will formally confirmed by the plebiscite of May. If peaceful influences have regained the upper hand, if peace has been maintained for more than a quarter of a century despite the provocations of chauvinism, it is due far less, it must be said, to public opinion than to the [125] self-interest of the republican party in power. The politicians who make up the various factions of this party know full well that a war would inevitably bring about its downfall. If it were unsuccessful, it would give rise to a demagogic and socialist Commune, soon followed by a reactionary dictatorship; if successful, it would elevate the victorious general to power through irresistible acclaim. The Republic thus offers, under current circumstances, special guarantees of peace. Unfortunately, no one can say whether it will long withstand the financial wastefulness and lax practices of its politicians.

In America, where two kinds of republics exist — those belonging to the people of Latin race with a substratum of an indigenous race, and those founded by the Anglo-Saxon race with contingents of Irish, Germans, French, Italians, Blacks, etc. — the ruling class of the former constitutes a political and military oligarchy, divided into rival parties that fight, often arms in hand, for the exploitation of the budget and remain continuously on a war footing, without encountering any counterweight in the peaceful interests of an [126] ignorant and passive mass. The latter republics are comprised overwhelmingly of an industrious population whose interests are essentially peaceful, but which abandons the conduct of public affairs to politicians — to whom war causes no harm and who gain in importance by it. On every occasion, they display, under the pretext of patriotism, a hostile stiffness in their relations with foreign powers; after having unleashed civil war in pursuit of ambition, did they not, even recently, show their unwillingness to give up the power to unleash foreign war by rejecting the arbitration treaty proposed by England? [72]

In the final analysis, in the entire civilized world, peaceful interests outnumber and outweigh those that still benefit from the state of war and war itself — but the direction of state affairs continues, in spite of all revolutions and political reforms, to belong to a class whose professional interests have remained, in this respect, in immediate opposition to those of the multitude it governs. In this state of affairs we will find the true cause of the wars that have, more than ever, ravaged the world since war lost its reason for being.

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CHAPTER V. THE WARS OF CIVILIZED STATES SINCE THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY↩

Recapitulation of the determining motives behind wars under the old regime. — Why war continued under the new regime, even though it had lost its raison d’être. — The immediate opposition of interests between rulers and the ruled. — How this opposition was mitigated by the long-term possession of government. — How this ceased to be the case once that possession became precarious. — Determining causes of the wars of the French Revolution. — Necessities faced by the parties that succeeded one another in power. — Economic character of the wars of the Empire. — That all these wars were provoked by particular and immediate interests in opposition to the general and long-term interest of the nation. — That the same has been true of all the wars that have followed since the beginning of the century. — The Crimean War. — The Italian War. — The Franco-German War. — The American Civil War. — That these wars were undertaken without the nations who bore their costs being consulted or having the power to prevent them.

Until the end of the eighteenth century, wars had been undertaken in the interest of the sovereign house [128] and the ruling class, that is the nobility and the clergy, on which it relied. The heads of sovereign houses undertook wars to extend their domain and thus increase the profits that the industry of government [73] provided for them and their allies, namely the military and civil functionaries. Though these profits had decreased since conquest no longer involved the confiscation of the property of the defeated and their reduction to slavery, they still exceeded those of most other industries. To the material profits were added moral profits consisting in the glory acquired by the victor and the increase in prestige and influence that victory brought. It is true that war had become more expensive as it came to employ more sophisticated matériel and as a nations’ resources, which were growing thanks to industrial progress, enabled governments to increase their armaments. War, then, inflicted ever heavier taxes on nations—but these taxes weighed only lightly on the class whose opinion decided matters of war and peace. It was the multitude who were engaged in agriculture, industry, and commerce that bore almost the whole burden, and this multitude had no share or, as in England, only a negligible and almost infinitesimal share in the government of the state. One might have believed that [129] this situation would change completely when the nation claimed ownership of the political establishment, after having stripped the sovereign house of it, as happened in France. But if a nation can, like a house or an oligarchy, own a state, it cannot govern it by itself. It is forced to entrust its administration to representatives. The nation has the right to choose these representatives, but in fact, this choice soon comes to lie in the hands of associations or parties that organize to seize control of the government, drawn by the profits and advantages which its very nature is able to provide. We have remarked—and we cannot stress this enough—that the ruling personnel, [74] in its capacity as a producer of public services, finds itself in immediate opposition to the interest of the nation as a consumer of these services, just as any other producer is vis-à-vis his customers. Under the old regime, this immediate opposition of interests was tempered by the long-term ownership of the state by the sovereign house, which thus had a long-term interest in the nation’s preservation and prosperity. A party whose hold on government is temporary and precarious is not restrained by such long-term considerations, and the same can be said of dynasties implanted by a revolution, which another revolution [130] might just as easily uproot, and which therefore seek above all to build up a reserve fund against the risk of being deposed. Moreover, a party must, in order to maintain or attain power, increase its following and consequently expand the market for jobs and favors used to reward its supporters. So, if the nation lacks the intelligence and energy needed to defend its interests as a consumer of public services, it will hardly be better off if it became the owner of the state itself, as it will be more poorly and more expensively served than it was when the state belonged to a sovereign house which is interested in not ruining its clientele because of its long-term ownership of the state. This consideration must not be lost sight of when evaluating the behavior of parties deciding whether to undertake or prolong a war. We see this influence clearly in the series of wars initiated by the Revolution of 1789.

When the reform movement prepared by the philosophes and the economists culminated in France with the convening of the Constituent Assembly, political parties immediately arose within it, each expressing the divergent or immediately conflicting interests which were dividing the nation. On one side stood the nobility and high clergy, who were intent on defending their privileged position; on the other, [131] stood the bourgeoisie or Third Estate, aspiring to supplant them and promising the masses relief from the crushing taxes they bore. Each party was quick to identify its own interest with that of the nation, and resorted to whatever means it thought likeliest to secure victory: some sought the aid of foreign sovereign houses and ruling classes, others enlisted the urban and rural mobs with money and the lure of plunder. In this violent and chaotic conflict, which the feeble and inexperienced holders of power were powerless to control, war first appeared as a diversion, then as an economic necessity. Industry, paralyzed by the revolutionary crisis, left multitudes of workers and employees without work or resources. They filled the ranks of the armies, which became national workshops [75] supported by assignats [76] and requisitions. But assignats soon depreciated and requisitions ran dry. The invasions of Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Italy furnished external resources to replace the internal ones that were running out, sustaining these masses who were "without work". [77] Thanks [132] to the nation’s military aptitude and to the extraordinary abundance of men that the crisis—and later, conscription—placed at the disposal of the generals (enabling them to squander soldiers’ lives), the revolutionary armies achieved victories and enriched the country with the spoils of war that renewed its popularity.

Under the direction of the brilliant and unscrupulous man who seized the Republic for himself, war once more became what it had been in earlier times: the most profitable of industries. Conquered countries provided crowns for the imperial dictator’s family, grants for his generals and cronies, [78] well-paid jobs for the numerous politicians bequeathed by the Revolution and transformed into functionaries; and finally, provisions and indemnities to support the armies. Only conscription caused the nation appreciable harm, draining its most vigorous blood—but this damage would not be felt until later, in the weakening of future generations. In the present, war, by absorbing the surplus population, raised wages overall. [133] No doubt, under a regime of peace, the regular and normal development of industry would have broadened the demand for labor even more; but the people, intoxicated by victory, failed to see this, and war retained its popularity as long as the sovereign master of the state remained successful.

But what was the driving motive behind the instigators of the wars of the Revolution and the Empire? Under the Republic, it was the immediate interest of their party in seeking domination; under the Empire, it was the interest of the Emperor and of the dynasty he aimed to found. Certainly, each believed that this private interest of party or dynasty coincided with the general and long-term interest of the nation. The Jacobins were convinced they were saving France by resorting to Terror to remain in power, and Napoleon undoubtedly held the same belief when he returned from Elba. This is the excuse of all those who strive per fas et nefas [79] to seize or retain ownership of a state—and it is sometimes sincere; but rarely do the two interests coincide, and rarely does the particular and immediate interest that dictates a party’s or individual’s actions fail to be satisfied at the expense of the general and long-term interest that party or individual claims to serve.

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So it was during the period of civil strife and foreign war that began with the dispossession and ended with the restoration of the French monarchy. Under the Republic, members of the ruling parties and their supporters rose to ranks and made fortunes they could never have reached without revolution and war. Under the Empire, war created and enriched a new aristocracy of military and civil functionaries, along with the addition of the class of buyers of nationalized property who were only moderately interested in this. But what did the nation gain? It is beyond doubt that reform of the old regime could have proceeded more broadly and securely had peace been maintained at home and abroad, and had France not been weakened by the terrible bloodletting of the Terror and conscription, by the costs and damage of two invasions, and by the heavy indemnity it had to pay its conquerors. If Revolution and war served the immediate private interest of the ruling personnel of the Republic and the Empire, they ran counter to the general and long-term interest of France.

The same can be said of all the wars that followed, in Europe and across the civilized world. All were driven by the immediate private interest of the leader [135] and the ruling class of the state—an interest satisfied when victory came, but always in opposition to the general and long-term interest of the nation, whose resources they depleted and whose taxes they increased, without offering in return the compensation they had once offered through providing greater security.

After an interval of nearly forty years of peace, interrupted only by revolutionary flare-ups, the age of great wars resumed: the Crimean War, the Italian War, the Austro-German War, the Franco-German War, the Russo-Turkish War, etc., in Europe; and, in the New World, the American Civil War, not to mention the internal struggles of the South American states. All these wars were undertaken by state leaders backed by ruling classes, in pursuit of a particular and immediate interest in domination—an interest they always claimed aligned with the general and long-term interest of their nations. But while victorious governments may have profited from these wars, the people who paid for them did not. None of these wars brought their nations anything near what they cost them. If the Crimean War, undertaken under the pretext of protecting the Holy Places, served to [136] consolidate the regime born of the coup d’état [80] by boosting its prestige and brought promotion and honors to the military hierarchy, what did it bring to the French nation in return for the blood and money it cost? Was it more advantageous to the English nation? Did it stop the rise of Russian power or the decay of Turkey? The Italian War, fomented by conspirators, adventurers, and cunning politicians with the help of a crowned dreamer, had the consequence of politically unifying the various states of Italy. In France, this war gave the Empire a brief resurgence in popularity; but did the creation of a new military power, governed by politicians who quickly proved that gratitude is no political virtue, enhance France’s security? In Italy, unification immediately benefited the middle class by raising it to the status of a ruling class, placing at its disposal the hierarchy of civil and military offices, along with the machinery of legislation—machinery it was quick to use to protect a handful of industrialists and capitalists at the expense of consumers. But what benefit did the mass of the governed derive from this elevation and enrichment of a ruling class? Government expenditures [137] quadrupled, the debt increased tenfold, and no one could claim that public services improved in proportion. [81] Corruption flourished in parliament as much as it had in the courts of old; justice became subject to politicians; the law of forced domicile enabled them to treat their radical and socialist rivals as they themselves had once been treated by the tyrants of the old regime; and poverty, blacker than ever, drove increasing numbers of starving emigrants from Italy. The only excuse for the instigators of this war is that most of them sincerely believed they were serving the nation while serving themselves.

That excuse cannot be claimed by the instigators of the Franco-German War. This war, undertaken for a trivial and almost ludicrous pretext, had a single motive: the immediate and particular interest of the imperial establishment in its decline, and one aim: the conquest of the Rhine provinces. Had it succeeded, it would certainly have consolidated the Empire—but even then, what would France have gained in return for the blood and treasure expended? Would the profits that annexing one or two provinces [138] brought the ruling civil and military hierarchy have offset the increased costs and risks of a German revenge? The attempt failed, and the nation bore, first, the enormous costs of the war and the indemnity it was forced to pay, and then those of rebuilding and massively enlarging its war machine. The only compensation for this disaster was the replacement of the Empire’s ruling personnel by that of the republican party—but only time will tell if that compensation was sufficient. As for the German nation, what did it gain from its victory? The five-billion franc indemnity paid by France served to reward the military hierarchy and expand its apparatus of war; [82] the two conquered provinces offered an additional market to the class of functionaries, [83] but national taxes have steadily grown due to the elevated risk of war created by ever-present fears of revenge by the defeated. Did the benefits received by the class which owns the government of Germany and the class which the revolution of 4th September brought to power in France,outweigh the losses sustained by the two nations?

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In America, did the Civil War produce better results for the nation? It resulted in the emancipation of the negroes—but placed them in a condition materially and morally worse than the one they had under slavery, and even those who emancipated them now threaten them with mass expulsion. [84] It ruined the Southern states and spread across the Union a system of political and economic corruption without precedent, implanting "politicianism" [85] in its worst form and protectionism in its worst excesses.

At least, one might ask, did the nations involved in these costly wars of the past century actually want them? We have seen that they were declared without the governed multitudes—those who would pay with their blood and their money—being consulted, or even having the power to prevent them. Just as under the old regime, the power to make war belongs to the leader and the general staff of the ruling class; and though they never fail to invoke the interest and honor of the nation, it is their own interest they serve. If that interest, considered over time, happens to coincide with that of the nation, it is in immediate and actual terms opposed to it—and it is this immediate, selfish interest [140] that habitually guides their conduct. If the French nation had been consulted by its rulers, would it have gone to war with Prussia to prevent a Hohenzollern from becoming king of Spain? Was the American Civil War any more truly desired by the American people? It is well known that the Southern politicians initiated secession because they had lost hope of governing the entire Union, and that Northern politicians insisted on preserving the Union because they were now certain of the supremacy they would have in it. But would the mass of the nation, on either side, have chosen to fight had it been consulted? No one can say for sure. In any case, the outcome proved that separation would have been less harmful than the war and its consequences for the Northern states—and so too, maintaining the Union, for the South.

In former times, war was indirectly useful to all classes which made up a nation—not just to the oligarchies who owned and ruled the states, but even to the subjugated classes—because it was the vehicle which was necessary for the progress of the destructive arts and thus the only means of securing protection against invasion by barbarous people. [141] Once that security was achieved, these classes could gain no more from war; they now suffer, without any appreciable compensation, the taxes and damage it inflicts.

What situation have the useless wars we’ve just reviewed left these nations in? What is the scale of the taxes they bear, and of the premium they pay to insure themselves against the risk posed by the dominant interests that continue to perpetuate a state of war within the civilized world, against both the interests and the will of the industrious masses? How, finally, might those masses prevail against those interests? This is what remains to be explored.

[142]

CHAPTER VI. THE BALANCE SHEET [86] OF MODERN WARS. ARMED PEACE↩

The liabilities of the state of war. — Difficulty of calculating the costs and damages caused by war. — Direct losses and expenses. — Indirect damages. — Steady increase of the debts and budgets of civilized States since the beginning of the century. — The growth of military forces. — The blood tax and the burden it imposes. — The assets of the state of war. — The market it provides for personnel in the military and civil hierarchy. — That the governed multitude draws no appreciable profit from it. — Steady rise in the risk of war and the corresponding increase of the insurance apparatus of armed peace. — Causes contributing to the increase of this risk. — Colonial policy. — Protectionist policy. — Absorption of small States by large ones. — That the risk of war and the armaments it provokes are now carried to their maximum.

Statisticians have undertaken to calculate the cost, in men and capital, of the wars that have devastated the civilized world since the end of the eighteenth century. These estimates are inevitably incomplete, however, as they can only apply to the loss of life and the extraordinary expenses [143] directly occasioned by war. It is impossible to evaluate the indirect damages caused by the industrial, commercial, and financial crises that war generates, and which extend and worsen as international relations multiply. Nor can one account for what the fluctuations and final depreciation of paper money cost nations, paper money being what governments usually resort to in times when they cannot obtain by ordinary means the resources necessary to continue the war. But even if all estimates are necessarily inaccurate and incomplete in this matter, one can still form an idea of the burden with which modern wars have saddled nations by examining the state of the budgets and public debts of civilized States. In the aggregate budgets of the European States, military and naval expenditures and debt service absorb more than two-thirds of revenue, and the total debt accumulated over the past century—contracted almost exclusively to cover war expenses—exceeds 130 billion francs. [87] To meet this enormous increase in costs, governments have been forced to increase taxes, and they have [144] mainly resorted to indirect taxes, which are more easily accepted because they are not seen. To speak only of France, this category of taxes, which provided about one-third of total revenue under the Ancien Régime, now provides two-thirds. No doubt, the extraordinary progress of industry has considerably increased the wealth of nations; they can today bear taxes that would have crushed them a century ago; but it remains true that, instead of declining, the proportion that governments levy from national income increases daily, and tends more and more, as under the regime of slavery, to absorb the net product of their industry. The burden of the blood tax, [88] or conscription, has increased in even greater proportion. This, at a time when the peril of barbarian invasions—the only thing that could justify the sacrifices imposed on people to ensure their security—has completely ceased to exist.

It must further be added that the amount of these taxes, meant to guarantee a security which is no longer threatened, constitutes only part of the tax and damage they inflict. The collection of customs duties and other indirect taxes requires restrictions and constraints that hamper the development [145] of production. As for the blood tax, besides the loss and damage it directly causes by levying a infertile tithe upon labor, it strikes at the very vitality of nations by removing from reproduction their most vigorous individuals, at the age when they are most suited for it, to offer them up to the dangers and the corruption of the lowest form of prostitution.

In the face of this enormous liability of taxes, debts, and all kinds of damage—in which we have not even included the physical and moral sufferings that the very nature of war will cause—what can we set on the asset side of the continuation of the state of war? What benefits have civilized nations derived from it over the past century?

Here appears the immediate opposition of interests that exists between the governors and the governed. If one considers the particular and present interest of the governing classes of civilized States, one must acknowledge that these classes have benefited from the continuation of the state of war—though the establishment of a regime of peace would likely have been even more advantageous to them. It has provided a guaranteed market—if not a lucrative one, at least in the lower ranks of the hierarchy—for the families from which, generation after generation, the [146] vast majority, one might even say nearly all, of military and civil functionaries are recruited. It has increased the prestige of sovereigns and politicians who have retained the unlimited power to dispose of taxpayers’ resources and even to mortgage their future resources in order to undertake wars in clear opposition to the general and long-term interest of the nation. We have just given a brief overview of what these wars have cost the civilized community. What material and moral progress have they produced? The account would be easy to draw up, and it would almost invariably close with a further deficit. Throughout Europe, the wars of the Revolution and the Empire delayed the reform of the old regime by investing heads of state with the dictatorial power that war necessitates and allowing them to postpone the reforms demanded by their people. Only after a long period of peace did public opinion become strong enough to force them to reckon with it. If these wars and those that followed favored a certain number of interests—more or less defensible—they delayed the general development of wealth and civilization.

Finally, in addition to the costs they entailed and the damages they caused during their duration, these wars have made peace increasingly precarious; [147] in other words, they have raised the level of risk of war.

“We remarked in one of our earlier works [89] that the risk of war, heightened by the Revolution and the Empire, declined and even fell to its lowest point from 1815 to 1830. The revolution of 1830 raised it by several degrees, under the influence of fear that bellicose passions and interests would again gain the upper hand in France, but the resolutely pacific policy of King Louis-Philippe brought it back down. Moreover, one could draw a fairly accurate picture of its fluctuations by noting the opposite fluctuations of the stock exchange at each of its movements. It spiked sharply in 1848, but it is from the restoration of the Empire that its almost uninterrupted upward trend dates. Since the war of 1870, this upward trend has intensified further, although one can note many fluctuations in its development.

“As the risk of war has risen, the apparatus needed to address it has grown proportionally: military service, initially limited in practice to the lower classes, has been extended to all classes; each country [148] has surrounded itself with a ring of fortifications, as in the Middle Ages each lordship did; and the budgets of armed peace have risen to levels previously never reached even by wartime budgets.”

This steady rise in the risk of war is not, however, caused solely by war itself.

Among the causes that have generated it, we must note first the multiplication of opportunities for conflict since the extraordinary development of communications and commercial relations has brought people closer together and internationalized their interests—since, moreover, the governments of civilized States have undertaken to subject to their domination regions of the globe occupied by inferior or less advanced people. These conflicts are stirred up now by the jealousy felt by nations less capable of exploiting their territorial acquisitions at the success of those more apt at leading colonization ventures, and now by the spirit of monopoly, which incites tariff increases and tariff wars, condemning to ruin populations which are ever more numerous whose means of existence depends on foreign markets. These confiscations of clientele, voted daily by politicians in the pay of influential interests, maintain [149] among people the hateful passions created by past wars, by exacerbating the difficulties arising from their increased proximity and the growing multiplicity of their relations; they thus furnish heads of State or political parties who believe they will benefit from war with an opportunity to provoke it, invoking national interest or honor. Secondly, the absorption, carried out after the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, of a multitude of small States which served, so to speak, as buffers between the great powers, has had the effect, if not of making wars more frequent, at least of increasing their risks and consequences. Europe is now divided among six great powers, none of which is separated from a rival, and in most of which the interests tied to the maintenance of the state of war outweigh—in influence if not in number—the pacific interests. How could the immediate contact of bellicose interests not raise the risk of war and cause a corresponding increase in the apparatus of insurance required to cover it? Each time one of these great powers developed or improved its armaments, the others felt compelled to follow suit. Each time a war broke out, by heightening the risk of further ruptures of the peace through the hateful passions and [150] desires for vindication or revenge that it naturally engenders, the apparatus of insurance against that risk was reinforced. Matters have now reached the point that, since the Franco-German War raised the risk to its maximum, armaments have also been brought to the maximum level compatible with each power’s resources, both in personnel and matériel, and with what has been made possible by taxation. The small States—even those whose neutrality seemed to offer protection—have believed, perhaps not without reason, that they could not avoid imitating the great ones. Thus Europe has become a vast armed camp, bristling with formidable fortifications, and maintains in peacetime armies ten times larger than those that formerly were sufficient to shield it from barbarian invasions.

Under this regime of extreme armed peace, it would be, as we shall see, rash to affirm that the chances of peace outweigh the risks of war.

[151]

CHAPTER VII. THE CHANCES OF PEACE AND THE RISKS OF WAR↩

Present state of Europe. — The great powers and the secondary states. — The neutral states. — The European Concert. — That the power to decide on peace or war is concentrated in the hands of the great powers. — Their present division into two groups. — The chances of peace under this regime. — Chances stemming from the risk of loss of government following an unsuccessful war, — from the financial situation of states, — from the rising cost of war and the taxes it requires. — Insufficiency of these brakes to halt the pressure from bellicose interests. — Facilities which the development of credit brings to the action of these interests. — Banks transformed into war treasuries. — Paper money. — Mandatory military service. — Assessment of the power of resistance of peaceful interests. — That these interests have not increased in greater proportion than bellicose interests. — Conversely, that the damage caused by war to the industrial classes has increased in proportion to the progress of industry.

If one wants to understand the chances of peace and the risks of war at the present time, one must examine the political situation of the states that have the power to unleash war, and evaluate the influence [152] that peaceful and bellicose interests exert over the direction of public affairs.

In Europe, the mediation of disputes, annexations, and unifications have successively reduced — as in other branches of human activity — the number of small political establishments in favor of large ones. There were several hundred a century ago; today there remain scarcely twenty. These include, first, the great powers: France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Russia, and England; and second, the medium or small states: Scandinavia (Sweden and Norway, politically united for foreign relations), Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, the Balkan States, Turkey, and Greece. Among these secondary powers, Belgium and Switzerland form a distinct group of neutral states that are forbidden to make war, except in the case where their neutrality might be violated. In practice, the maintenance of peace in Europe depends exclusively on the great powers. They constitute what has been called the European Concert, and each time a dispute arises between two secondary states, they attempt to reach an agreement to resolve it, and, if necessary, to impose the solution they deem just and useful. At times, they allow conflict to be engaged in, as recently [153] occurred in the case of the Greco-Turkish war, only to intervene to prevent the victor from abusing his victory and to settle the terms of peace. This right of intervention, which they have assumed in the interest of the European community — for it can have no other foundation — they have even exercised upon one of themselves, at the end of the Russo-Turkish war, by revising and modifying the terms of the Treaty of San Stefano. They could have revised the Treaty of Frankfurt in the same way, and it is permissible to regret that they did not.

These great powers, who sovereignly decide questions of peace and war in Europe, are currently divided into two groups: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy form the Triple Alliance; France and Russia constitute the Dual Alliance; England remains isolated. These two alliances were concluded solely in the interest of the mutual defense of the states that are part of them, if one is to believe the formal declarations of their authors; and England’s isolation would itself bear witness, if needed, to the essentially peaceful character of her foreign policy. Let us add that on every occasion the sovereigns and statesmen who direct the affairs of the great powers have solemnly affirmed their firm resolve to preserve peace. Since no one intends [154] to break it, it would seem to be forever guaranteed, and one might ask why these same heads of state continuously work to strengthen the apparatus of war which none of them intends to use, and why they burden their people with the weight of military expenditures by invoking the need for defense, when no one wishes to attack.

But peaceful declarations, however solemn and even sincere they may be, offer only weak guarantees of peace. Was it not after those reassuring words — the Empire means peace — were spoken that the series of wars of the Second Empire began? It is the comparison of the relative strength of bellicose interests and peaceful interests that alone allows us to assess, with some approximation, the chances of peace and the risks of war.

The chances of peace lie first in the interest that the governments themselves may have in maintaining it. The first of these interests is that of their own preservation. If a successful war has the effect of increasing the power and prestige of a government, an unsuccessful war can, as occurred in France, provoke a revolution that topples it. This risk of dispossession, however, is very unequal. In Russia, Germany, [155] Austria-Hungary, and England — where the ruling houses have a centuries-old existence and where considerable interests are tied to their preservation — they currently seem to have nothing to fear from an unfortunate war. It is different in Italy, where the unitary monarchy is of recent date and not firmly rooted, and in France, where the republic is even less so. A more general guarantee of peace would seem to lie in the financial situation of the states, in the weight of their debts and the enormity of the expenditures required by the rising cost of war — in an age when armies are no longer counted in the thousands but in the millions of men, and when they employ matériel whose cost has risen along with its fire power. But experience shows that the additional taxes a war may add to those a nation already bears exert only a weak influence on the decisions of its government. That the increase in taxes does not immediately or materially affect the rulers themselves; it does not reduce the size of the civil list of the sovereigns nor the salaries of the civil and military functionaries. If it inevitably weakens and impoverishes the nation that provides their means of existence, and thus endangers the future of their own descendants, [156] that result occurs only gradually; and even if they vaguely foresee it, would such a consideration be sufficient to halt the pressure of the interests and passions that drive them to war? The insufficiency of the resources currently available to governments for war would, without a doubt, be more effective. But war today finds, in the development of credit institutions and the monetary system of civilized people, extraordinary and ever-ready resources that it lacked in the past. In former times, sovereigns had to go to great lengths to accumulate a “war chest” and to request additional subsidies from their subjects before embarking on a military venture; they could only rarely and at great cost resort to loans. It is no longer so today. Governments no longer need to accumulate a war chest. Only the German government has resorted to this outdated practice, by placing in reserve at the fortress of Spandau a sum of 120 million marks, taken from the 5-billion franc indemnity paid by France. The state banks or the privileged banks place at the service of war far larger sums. Instead of holding in metal only the necessary amount — that is, at most one-third of the value of their [157] banknotes — these banks, run or granted privileges by the state and staffed with a governor loyal to it, accumulate, under the government's open or covert pressure, a metal reserve nearly equal to the value of their banknotes, thereby unnecessarily raising the cost and price of their lending and discount services. [90] In time of war, governments have no qualms about seizing these reserves that they have not bothered to accumulate themselves, by authorizing the banks to suspend specie payments. After exhausting these metal reserves, they may still turn to paper money, either by issuing it directly or by forcing the banks to expand their issuing of money. No doubt these excessive issues cause the depreciation of the currency, but this depreciation only becomes noticeable after paper has completely displaced metal currency; and in the meantime, they can first yield a sum equal to the amount of metal suspended, then another sum equal to the difference in purchasing power between the depreciated paper and the metal it replaces. Finally, governments with solid credit can continue to raise [158]loans even during war, though at higher cost than usual. Thanks to these various expedients, they can avoid increasing taxes — which would surely provoke strong opposition — and in any case would provide only a nearly negligible increase in revenue. The great European powers could thus, in the event of war, immediately obtain resources that can reasonably be estimated at fifty billion francs. On the other hand, universal compulsory military service would instantly furnish them with ten or twelve million soldiers. Insufficient resources in men or money, then, would not be what stops bellicose interests from turning Europe into a vast battlefield.

That being so, the question is what resistance these interests might encounter from the peaceful interests. The factors one must consider in calculating the potential power of this resistance are, first, the size of the peaceful interests; then, the scale of the damage war may cause them — and, therefore, the intensity and extent of public opinion that fear of such damage might generate.

The extraordinary growth of production over the past century has led to a corresponding increase [159] in the population that lives off the product of its capital and labor. But while this population — which is called upon, generation after generation, to bear the burden of war — has grown significantly, so too has the number of civil and military functionaries, to whom war causes no harm and, on the contrary, offers additional benefits, power, and influence. One cannot claim that the ratio between these two social groups, as it existed under the old regime, has changed markedly. If it has changed at all, it is rather to the advantage of the population that lives off the budget, rather than of the one that feeds it.

Yet even if peaceful interests have not increased more than bellicose interests, we shall see that war has become infinitely more damaging to them than it was before the modern expansion of industrial and agricultural markets and the steady transformation of its equipment — in short, that it has become ever more incompatible with the current conditions of existence of the industrious classes.

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CHAPTER VIII. THE CHANCES OF PEACE AND THE RISKS OF WAR (continued)↩

How the damage caused by war, once merely local, has become general. — Disruptions caused by war in the internationalized markets for goods, capital, and labor. — War has become a universal nuisance, but one that is unequal in its effects, as is the resistance of pacific interests. — Peace finds its firmest support in the capitalist class, especially among holders of securities. — The division of the great powers into two blocs is only an uncertain guarantee of peace in Europe. — Peace is no more guaranteed in America or the rest of the world. — The classes interested in maintaining peace have not yet acquired the necessary power to put an end to the state of war.

Since the rise of large-scale industry, [91] and especially since the improvements in land and sea transport, the losses and damages caused by war have spread gradually through every region of the civilized world, which is interconnected and [161] interdependent through the multiple ties of exchange. From being local, these harms have become general.

What was the character of industry until the recent period, when the transformation of its tools greatly increased its productive power? It was, with rare exceptions, extremely localized. The inadequacy and high cost of transportation, combined with a lack of security, limited markets. Foodstuffs, which made up — and still make up — the bulk of human necessities, were generally consumed where they were produced. The foreign trade of even the most industrious nations rarely went beyond secondary or luxury goods, accessible only to the wealthy classes. Barely two centuries ago, the entire commercial value of Europe did not equal that of one of today’s smallest states — Belgium, Holland, or Switzerland. What followed from this localization of production and consumption when war broke out? That nations not involved in the conflict, having only minimal economic relations with the belligerents, felt little impact. Even in countries at war, only the localities [162] where fighting took place suffered significantly from disrupted trade and the supply of provisions. When Louis XIV’s armies ravaged the Palatinate, the rest of Germany barely felt it. This is no longer the case since all nations are now bound together by a dense network of exchanges and loans. It is during this century — especially since the application of steam and electricity to transportation has so vastly expanded industrial markets — that this internationalization of interests has occurred, despite the artificial barriers that protectionism has erected in place of the natural one of distance. At present, the external trade of the world’s civilized nations exceeds 80 billion francs, and the value of loans made by capital-producing nations — England, France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, etc. — to those where capital is lacking — Russia, Spain, Italy, North and South America, Asia, Africa, Australia — is probably no less. A circulation of labor has also begun to emerge, both between European nations and between Europe and the rest of the globe. In times of peace, this internationalization [163] of goods, capital, and labor proceeds steadily, and all nations benefit. What enormous savings in labor and effort England, for instance, achieves in acquiring life’s necessities by buying over half its food from countries where they are cheapest! And do not those countries, which in return receive goods they could only produce at greater cost, benefit just as much from the exchange? Likewise, countries with abundant capital andwhere loans are made cheaply, profit by exporting it to places where it is scarce and expensive, while the borrowing nations can found and finance productive enterprises more cheaply and increase their number. The same applies to the import and export of labor. Both importers and exporters of goods, capital, and labor enjoy greater access to the things essential to life, increased wealth, and improved well-being.

But let war break out in any part of this international market, and disruption follows inevitably and spreads [164] throughout the rest. Relations between the warring nations and the others slow or even halt completely, harming both consumers and producers. During the whole of the American Civil War, U.S. cotton stopped arriving in Europe. Lacking this vital raw material, many cotton mills were forced to shut down; thousands of workers in England and elsewhere in Europe lost their means of existence. And this crisis in the cotton industry then reverberated, to varying degrees, across nearly all sectors of production. The income — and hence purchasing power — of entrepreneurs, capitalists, and workers in that industry dropped, forcing them to reduce their consumption of all goods, which in turn reduced the purchasing power of producers overall. In the capital markets, war causes a disruption similar to that seen in markets for goods. Industries whose markets shrink demand less capital or become less able to pay for it. It is true that war generates extraordinary demand which drives up interest rates. [165] But war destroys this capital instead of reproducing it. Had it remained invested in productive industries, it would have contributed to growing wealth. Spent on war, it disappears — yet the need to repay it, with interest and amortization, remains. Thus current and future generations must pay taxes that not only consume part of national income but also slow down the development of the very enterprises that fund them. Finally, war causes the same disruptions and losses in the labor market. It removes multitudes of people from farms and factories to destroy rather than produce — a double loss: the wealth they destroy and the wealth they fail to create.

War thus inflicts upon nations, now bound together by exchange, ever greater losses as their economic ties become more numerous and intimate. When we consider that the most industrially advanced nations — England, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland — rely on imports for the means of subsistence of a [166] growing share of their populations (in England and Belgium, already nearly a third), we see how war, by disrupting the globalized market of production, endangers the livelihoods of millions. In short, under the old industrial system, war was a local nuisance; under the new, it has become a universal one.

Yet it would be an illusion to believe that this nuisance which is inherent in war can effectively restrain bellicose passions and interests. First, it must be noted that the damage caused by war varies widely from country to country. It is much less severe and less apparent in nations where commerce remains largely localized than in those where it has become internationalized. Second, the power of pacific interests to respond — and the influence of the public opinion which is aroused by them — is also highly unequal. Finally, the classes most interested in preserving peace have only a vague and confused idea of the harm war might cause them, and they are especially prone to be swept up in bellicose excitement.

If we ask which class of society best understands its interest in this [167] matter, the answer is undeniably the capitalist class — especially that portion whose wealth is chiefly in securities. This is because war’s harm to them is immediate: it is felt even before war begins through the rapid and almost catastrophic fall in the value of government bonds and industrial shares. Warmongers, patriots, or chauvinists delight in denouncing the selfishness and lack of patriotism of capitalists on such occasions. During the Revolution, they shut down the stock exchange, and under the First Empire, Napoleon tried — in vain — to stop the market’s decline, using Treasury funds to buy annuities and threatening speculators with his wrath. The opinions of the working masses, who live from day to day, have far less influence on government policy than those of the so-called capitalist class. And while the workers are even more interested in peace than capitalists, they are easily stirred by chauvinist passions. Nevertheless, intelligent workers are beginning to understand that laborers need peace even more than capitalists do, and amid the chaff of false and subversive ideas propagated by socialism, opposition to war has crept in as a kernel of good grain.

[168]

Finally, universal military service, by subjecting the wealthy and influential classes to the harshest and cruelest form of servitude, has certainly become an important and active force for peace. But in countries like Germany and Russia, is not the interest of the masses, who pay the blood tax, balanced or even outweighed by that of the far more powerful military hierarchy whose principal market is found in it?

If, then, pacific interests and the opinions they inspire outweigh bellicose ones in England, for example, we cannot say the same of the Continent. People take comfort in the fact that the great continental powers are divided into two blocs of roughly equal strength, as if this ensured peace. But is it really a reliable guarantee? In any case, this division implies the continuation of the heavy burden of the armed peace. Even if the Alsace-Lorraine question were resolved — a most desirable outcome — it would be naïve to believe that such a resolution would lead to disarmament. Other causes of conflict exist and new ones emerge daily: questions in the East and Far East, colonial disputes, etc. And if one of the two alliances were weakened or broken, would this not [169] incite the other to use its strength to provoke war?

Is peace more secure in America? In the South American states, government rests in the hands of an oligarchy which is descended from the conquistadores, which monopolises civil and military positions and which is, as a result interested in increasing their number.Thus a successful war offers them an increase in the size of their market. The populations they rule — Indians, Blacks, mixed-race people, and immigrants — wield no counterbalancing influence. This situation may change over time through immigration and industrial development. But for now, the balance of power clearly favors the maintenance of a state of war.

In the United States, by contrast, pacific interests would seem to be preponderant. Yet during the secession crisis, Northern protectionist interests decisively supported the war, allying themselves with politicians who, like them, faced diminished prospects if the Southern states seceded. Though they have not yet succeeded in increasing the number of size of the army and navy, they have raised military spending to nearly the levels of [170]Europe’s most militarized states, by granting pensions to the more or less genuine veterans of the Civil War, the level of which instead of decreasing is increasing as death thins the ranks of the generation who took part in this war. [92] These pensions have become mere political currency for them. Toward Europe — and especially England — American politicians routinely adopt an arrogant and hostile stance. It is not for lack of trying on their part that the Venezuela and Bering Sea fisheries disputes did not end in war.

Even now, they are trying to rally public opinion in favor of coastal fortifications and naval expansion. Though the class of politicians is a tiny minority, the powerful party organisation is shared among them and, in spite of their struggle to seize control of the power it has, theyhave an interest in common, which is to increase the budget from which they make their living. This class, we say, makes up for its small numbers with its unscrupulous activity, and it finds zealous allies among the protectionist interests whenever a dispute arises between the Union and a country whose goods compete with domestic industry. Thus, [171] just as in the political situation in Europe, America offers no firm guarantees of peace.

We need only mention the current state and tendencies of the Asian and African powers. Russia in northern Asia, England and France in the south, now joined by Germany, possess overwhelming dominance, constantly expanding at the expense of native states. The Tartar conquest in the 17th century, the wars that opened Chinese ports, and the Sino-Japanese War all show how little resistance China could offer European domination. Even Japan is too weak to halt this inevitable spread across the Asian continent. In Africa, native people are even less able to resist white invasion. And as in Asia, the division of vast territories between European powers remains a permanent source of conflict.

What conclusion should we draw from this survey of the political state of civilized nations in regard to peace or war? That in all of these states, whatever their form of government — whether it be absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, [172] or republic — the management of public affairs remains in the hands of a class which is interested in the persistence of the state of war and of the enormous and costly apparatus of destruction which it requires; and that the multitude, whose interest lies in establishing a permanent regime which can guarantee the peace, has not yet acquired the influence needed to make governments do this.

Yet the state of war takes other forms beyond just that of militarism. It appears — driven by the same self-interest, if by different means — in protectionism, statism, and socialism. A brief analysis of these modes of invading other people’s property will provide the proof of this.

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CHAPTER IX. THE OTHER FORMS OF THE STATE OF WAR. PROTECTIONISM, STATISM, AND SOCIALISM↩

Various modes of acquiring wealth. — Protectionism. — The harm it inflicts on domestic consumers and foreign producers. — That it proceeds by way of confiscation and its effects are analogous to those of ordinary war. — That it provides a partial and immediate benefit to protected interests at the expense of the general and long-term interest of the civilized community. — Statism and Socialism. — The harms they cause and the dangers they pose to societies. — What these various forms of the state of war cost the industrious classes.

War consists of the use of force to acquire the things necessary for life and well-being, whether its purpose be, as in primitive times, cannibalism and pillage, or, as in a more advanced stage, the conquest of territory and the subjugation of its population in order to obtain the means of subsistence—in other words, wealth—furnished by that conquest and subjugation in the form of forced labor and taxes paid in kind or in money. So long as war was the necessary tool [174] for the production of security, [93] this method of using force to acquire wealth was, as we have seen, fully justified. It ceased to be so once civilized nations acquired productive and destructive powers that put them out of reach of predatory people. In this new state of things, war imposes taxes on the classes that employ their capital and labor in production—taxes for which no service compensates. We shall now see that the same is true of the methods of acquiring wealth through the use of the organized force of the State. Everywhere, the class that holds power over this force has used it to protect its particular interests at the expense of the general interest of the nation and the civilized community. This protection takes the form of an annual tribute levied on the general stock of life’s necessities, as in the case of protectionism, or the appropriation or confiscation of the tools used to produce them, as in the case of statism and socialism. But in both cases, those who abuse—or intend to abuse—the power of the State to “conquer” wealth never fail to justify their actions by appealing to the interest of the very nation they are plundering and, if need be, of humanity itself, which they would plunge back into barbarism. A brief analysis of protectionism, [175] statism, and socialism will show us the worth of this justification for these pale copiesof militarism.

I. Protectionism — All governments surround the territories which are subject to their domination with a ring of customs houses; they maintain an army of customs officers who are tasked with collecting duties according to a tariff that has two contradictory aims: the first, to provide the highest possible revenue—these are fiscal duties; the second, to prevent or restrict the importation of a more or less extensive range of products—these are protective duties; sometimes prohibitions are even added to forbid entirely the entry of the targeted goods. Customs duties are purely fiscal when they apply to items not produced in the country, and both fiscal and protective—which is the case for the majority—when they aim to shield domestic products from foreign competition.

Let us set aside the fiscal aim of customs duties; let us simply note that the English tariff, by taxing only a dozen articles that have no domestic equivalents, is as productive as most protective tariffs, although the latter [176] apply to thousands of articles. Let us consider at whose expense and to whose benefit the protectionist regime operates.

It immediately strikes two groups of interests: those of domestic consumers and those of foreign producers.

The tax or burden it imposes on domestic consumers consists in the difference between the price they are forced to pay for protected domestic goods and the price they would pay under a regime of free trade. On staple goods of general consumption, the price increase resulting from the protection of wheat alone exceeds 500 million francs in France: for all protected goods combined, it certainly rises to several billion. And this is only the current surcharge. For the protectionist regime, by restricting the markets of all industries, impedes their progress and thus the reduction of their costs of production.

Along with domestic consumers, protectionism harms foreign industries that produce the goods those consumers demand. Two cases may arise when a protective tariff is introduced or raised. Either the foreign industry had not yet contributed [177] to the supply of national consumption, in which case it is harmed only in its potential development; or—and this is the general case, which usually motivates the enactment or increase of a protective tariff—it does contribute to that supply. In this case, the protective tariff inflicts a real loss: that which results from the partial or total confiscation of its clientele in favor of domestic industry. Suppose its share in supplying the nation amounts to 100 million francs, and its goods are suddenly hit with a duty or a duty increase of 25% ad valorem, so that the price rises by a quarter: its market will inevitably shrink, both due to the drop in consumption caused by the higher price, and due to the domestic protected industry capturing part of the supply. The resulting loss from these two factors will be more or less severe depending on how necessary the taxed article is and how capable the domestic industry is of producing it. On importats worth 100 million francs, the loss will amount to 10 or 20 million francs, and it will increase as the domestic industry, stimulated by the bounty of [178] protection, grows; but this uncompensated expropriation of a share of their foreign clientele will translate—whatever the amount—into a drop in profits for the affected foreign industrialists. It will ruin some of them and deprive their workers of wages and employment until they manage to find work in other branches of production. If one assumes—and this estimate is at least very close to reality—that the creation of one million francs in products provides income to one thousand individuals, entrepreneurs and workers, then a 20 million franc decrease in exports deprives 20,000 families of their means of existence, thereby impoverishing the nation to which they belong.

On the other hand—and this explains the favor enjoyed by the protectionist regime and the fervor with which, in countries where domestic production relies to a significant degree on imports, farmers and industrialists producing the same goods clamor for protective duties—it is because protection immediately yields extra profits for them and even enables them at first to amass great fortunes. [94] So if the foreign industry loses, the domestic one gains; if [179] the former provides fewer profits and wages to its partners, entrepreneurs and workers, the latter provides more to its own, and protected industrialists never fail to boast of having enriched the nation by enriching themselves.

It is true that consumers, having to pay more for protected goods, can no longer buy the same quantity of other goods, leading to reduced output in the industries that provide those other goods, and thus less profit and wages. But to this, protectionists reply that the price increase is only temporary; that protective duties, by attracting the spirit of enterprise and capital to the protected industry, bring about advances that lower production costs; and that domestic competition soon forces market prices down to reflect these lower costs. If there remains a long-term difference between the prices of protected domestic goods and those that consumers could buy from abroad under a regime of free trade, the deprivation inflicted on consumers and the harm caused to other sectors by their reduced purchasing power is, they say, amply compensated—in terms of the general interest of the nation— [180] by the creation or growth of an industry that offers the population new opportunities to employ its capital and labor and thereby increases its overall means of existence. By confiscating from foreign industry the market it had built and transferring it to domestic industry, the nation visibly grows in wealth and power, while foreign nations grow poorer and weaker—and this is a double benefit.

But when we wish to judge the value of an economic or other system, we must not limit ourselves to its partial and immediate results; we must examine its general and long-term consequences. [95] If we were to look only at the immediate effects of a spendthrift who squanders his capital on extravagance, we would no doubt find that he increases his present enjoyments and helps along the businesses that cater to them—but if we consider the future as well, we will see, on one hand, that if he has increased his present pleasures, it is at the cost of his future welfare, and that the poverty awaiting him in old age will tilt the balance of pleasure and pain against him; and on the other hand, that if his spending has helped certain branches of industry, [181] it has made capital necessary for production scarcer and more expensive, to the detriment of all.

The same can be said of the protectionist system. Though it provides a partial and immediate benefit, it causes general and long-term harm to all members of the civilized community, in their dual roles as consumers and partners in production. It suffices, to be convinced of this, to cast a glance at the later consequences of its application.

Industries in the countries that have one after the other adopted the protectionist system fall into two very distinct groups: those capable of defending their domestic market against foreign competition—and which demonstrate it by gaining clients abroad, in countries without tariffs to shield them—and those that could not survive without the safeguard of customs duties. Now what has happened as the protectionist system has spread? It has encouraged weak industries everywhere and discouraged strong ones—those best suited to the country’s soil and climate and to the aptitudes of its population—by preventing them from expanding as much as they would have under a regime of free trade. Suppose the system succeeds completely in its goal of closing off each country to foreign industries that compete [182] with its own—what would be the final outcome? It would be to reduce all branches of production to serving only the national market and thus to shrink the market of the strongest industries while expanding that of the weakest. Hence there is a twofold harm: first, to the consumer, consisting in: 1) the difference between the prices he must pay for the goods of the weakest domestic industries and the prices he would pay for the same goods from the strongest foreign industries; 2) another, less visible but no less real, difference in the prices he pays for the goods of the strongest domestic industries compared to what he would pay if their market were not artificially restricted and they could make greater use of economies of scale and better equipment. Second, for the partners in production—the entrepreneurs and workers—in the entire civilized community, another harm arises from the general decline in consumer purchasing power, which is the natural consequence of artificially inflated prices. A decline in purchasing power entails a decline in productive capacity: the final outcome of a generalized protectionist system would be a reduction in both production and consumption.

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To these harms which are inherent in protectionism must be added those resulting from the instability of protective tariffs. Every time a nation changes its tariff—either raising or lowering duties, and such changes are constant—it causes a disturbance [96] in markets, with some contracting and others expanding, and a series of crises arising from the shift of part of these markets from one country to another. Hence there is an ever-present risk of ruin for entrepreneurs, of unemployment for workers, and the necessity for insurance against this risk, in the form of higher payments required by both capital and labor, which raises the cost of goods and reduces the ability to purchase them.

Lastly, we must mention—if only in passing, despite its deleterious effect on national morality—the self-serving cooperation of politicians in building a system of protection. Protectionists need politicians’ support to obtain the passage of tariffs that aim to—and instantly do—increase their profits. Politicians need the support of protectionists to secure or renew their mandate which is the foundation of the powers of the nation, and thus to enjoy all the material and moral benefits which this mandate brings. [184] From this comes bartering in kind, to which in new countries like the United States, where politicians and industrialists are not deterred by the outdated moral scruples of the Old World, is added a cash payment intended to cover the election expenses of pro-protectionist candidates. This traffic in votes and laws does not, as we have just seen, help increase the wealth of nations, and it is doubtful that it raises their moral standards either.

II. Statism. — Just as protectionism aims to increase the profits of a more or less numerous group of producers by confiscating the clientele of their foreign competitors, statism likewise aims to increase the resources of the State and the influence of those who govern it by taking control of branches of labor that belong to the domain of private industry. Sometimes the State seizes them for a purely fiscal purpose, that is to raise the price of their products for its own benefit—as in France with the monopoly on tobacco and matches; sometimes, on the contrary, as in the case of education, it aims to lower the price of the services it takes over in order to bring minds under its control, and in such cases, it operates at a loss. Under the influence of causes we have [185] analyzed elsewhere, [97] the productive capacity of the State being naturally inferior to that of private industry, the expansion of statism leads to an artificial rise in the cost of goods or services, whether the costs of production of state-run industries are covered directly through increased prices or indirectly through taxation. This is a price increase which is analogous to that caused by protectionism, and it produces the same consequences: a reduction in purchasing and productive power, and the general impoverishment of the nation.

III. Socialism. — Just as protectionism uses the law to confiscate the clientele of foreign industry for the benefit of domestic industry, and statism to lay hands on the branches of private industry that suit the State, socialism—which, rightly considered, is merely an extension of statism—aims to use the same method to transfer to the State the entirety of the means of production, thereby making it the universal producer and distributor of wealth. But whereas protectionism and statism are already in full operation, socialism is still in its period of incubation and propaganda. Since it can only achieve its goal by first [186] seizing the power to make laws, and consequently by dispossessing existing governments, the latter are obliged to insure themselves against this risk. Under certain circumstances, when the invasion of socialism appears particularly imminent, the premium on this insurance suddenly rises to an extraordinary height. It is the "red specter"—that is, the more or less well-founded fear of a socialist revolution—that gave rise in France to the coup d'état of December 2nd and the restoration of imperial dictatorship. [98] At all times, it requires the maintenance of an expensive apparatus of defense against the invasion of internal barbarism, which today is more threatening than external barbarism.

The father of the main sect of socialism, Karl Marx, strove to demonstrate that labor creates a surplus value of half, which is surreptitiously taken from it by capital. One could, with greater accuracy, demonstrate that labor suffers a negative value of half, owing to the burdens imposed upon it by militarism, protectionism, statism, and socialism.

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CHAPTER X. THE PEACE QUESTION: HOW IT CAN BE SOLVED↩

Progress that has made the solution of the peace question possible. — How the establishment of a collective body to guarantee the security of nations would eliminate most of the risk of war. — That the right of war, from which this risk comes, was originally absolute. — The burdens and obligations it imposed on neutrals. — That it has been steadily limited under the influence of the interests of neutrals and even belligerents. — That it has nonetheless had increasingly harmful effects on neutrals. — That since war has ceased to be useful, they have acquired the right to intervene to prevent it. — Historical overview of the right of intervention. — That it was first exercised to maintain the balance of powers. — The Holy Alliance. — The European Concert. — Two modes of exercising the right of intervention. — The League of Neutrals. — The general association of civilized States. — Consequence of this progress: enormous reduction in the cost of guaranteeing nations' external security. — Why its realization cannot be expected soon.

If, as we have attempted to demonstrate, war was the necessary factor for the production of security [99] — without which the human species could not have risen to civilization — if the progress it [188] fostered in both the art of destruction and that of production definitively protected civilized people from the threat of destruction or regression caused by barbarian invasions, if it has been replaced in its role as a driver of progress by a more effective and less costly form of competition, if it has now become incompatible with the new conditions of existence created by the development of industry and the internationalization of trade among civilized societies, if, after having been useful, it has become harmful to them, and if it is within their power, if not to eliminate this nuisance completely in the present state of the world, at least to reduce it to a minimum by ceasing to wage war among themselves, then the solution of the peace question no longer appears to be a mere utopia — it becomes the most desirable of realities.

Defined within these limits, the peace question implies only the elimination of the portion of the risk of war related to the relations between civilized States. But this portion is by far the principal one, and it is the one that necessitates at least nine-tenths of the vast apparatus of insurance that consumes a growing share of the revenues of civilized people and continually increases the burden of their debts.

Suppose, indeed, that the great and small States [189] belonging to our civilization in Europe and the rest of the world no longer had to fear attacks from anyone except those people who still escape their domination but who are notoriously incapable of offering serious resistance; suppose that peace were established under the guarantee of a collective power which was superior to all the individual powers within the vast community that already occupies most of the globe — it is evident that the external risk against which it would have to be protected would be minimal, and that a greatly reduced apparatus of insurance would be enough to cover it.

The question is, therefore, first, whether it is possible to establish a collective body that could securely and permanently guarantee peace among civilized nations, and second, in what this insurance mechanism of peace should consist.

We shall see that the solution to the peace question, remote as it may seem, has long been prepared by the steady limitation of the right of war.

Founded on the interests of warlike firms — which, as long as war was the necessary factor for establishing security, aligned with the general interest of the species — the right of war began by being absolute and unlimited. At first, and [190] for many centuries, the customs that make up the law of nations placed the vanquished entirely at the mercy of the victors; and even to the present day they have imposed on neutrals, in relation to belligerents, far more obligations than those placed on belligerents in relation to neutrals. This was because war was the industry of the stronger firms and provided their means of existence, either through destruction and pillage or through the subjugation and exploitation of the weaker. Any restriction on the right of war over the lives and property of the defeated, any interference in the full exercise of that right by third parties, any intervention on behalf of one or other of the belligerents, was condemned — just as today interference with the freedom of industry and honest participation in competition would be. For firms that lived by war had a vested interest, on the one hand,in collecting all the profits that were in its power to get, and on the other hand, in preventing the balance of forces and the chances of success in battle from being upset by the intervention or assistance of a third party — which would have interfered with all their expectations and upset all the calculations that led them to undertake their campaign of plunder or conquest. Nor should we forget that these third parties, [191] these spectators of a war, often became participants. Thus we see the rationale behind human sacrifices offered to the gods of ancient times, the burdens and obligations imposed on neutrals — and accepted by them without resistance: prohibitions against providing belligerents with military personnel or matériel (including food supplies); commercial restrictions such as the blockade of ports and coasts; bans on carrying enemy goods on neutral ships, or neutral goods on enemy ships, etc., etc., all under penalty of confiscation or indemnities in proportion to the damage caused. These burdens and obligations, moreover, were of little cost at a time when trade rarely crossed national borders and when the interests that mandated such rules vastly outweighed those harmed by them.

It was the interest of the belligerents themselves — and later that of the neutrals — that led to the steady limitation of the right of war, until finally the general interest of civilization now demands its suppression.

Instead of massacring their prisoners and [192] offering them as sacrifices to the gods, the belligerents eventually found it more advantageous to ransom or exchange them, taking into account differences of rank or status. Similarly, their interest led them to spare the lives and property of non-combatants and to refrain from sacking undefended towns, for experience had shown that their own supply lines were more secure and their operations less hindered when they refrained from exercising the full brutality of the right of war against unarmed civilians in an invaded country. Still, it must be noted that whenever belligerents see more advantage in killing prisoners, destroying private property, or looting, they do not hesitate to do so. Even today, this remains the typical behavior of so-called "civilized" people when waging war against those they claim to be bringing the benefits of civilization.

The burdens and obligations imposed on neutrals under the right of war were likewise eased as the growth of international trade made them more damaging. The nations most affected by these restrictions banded together repeatedly to demand reform, and they obtained it on [193] several points: belligerents renounced the right to seize neutral goods on enemy ships and enemy goods on neutral ships; blockades were only recognized if they were effective; and the list of items considered contraband of war was somewhat curtailed. [100] Moreover, the internationalization of credit, following that of trade, has made in large part null or unenforceable many of the traditional restrictions placed on neutrals in giving aid to belligerents : while neutrals may still be forbidden from selling rifles, cannons, and explosives to warring States, it is now practically impossible to prevent them from participating in the loans that provide the capital with which those rifles, cannons, and explosives are produced or purchased. [101]

Despite these reforms, the exercise of the right of war has become increasingly harmful to neutrals. We have already noted the damage inflicted by the American Civil War on populations dependent [194] for their means of existence on the cotton industry, and the general economic crisis triggered by the Franco-Prussian War. Should a conflict erupt between the powers of the Triple and Double Alliances, neutrals around the world would feel its aftershocks. Losses from the disruption of trade and the fall in asset values would amount to billions of francs, and millions of entrepreneurs, workers, and employees would be left without their means of existence.

Now, if war has ceased to be useful to the civilized community — ever since the combined advances of military and industrial technologies have shielded it from barbarian invasion — and if the growing harm it causes to neutrals can no longer be justified by any necessity or general utility (for every war between civilized people is a matter of choice and can be avoided), then the neutrals have a right either to demand compensation for their losses or to intervene and form coalitions to prevent the war that causes them.

This right of intervention and of forming coalitions has not only been exercised by neutrals seeking to reform the burdens imposed on their trade. It has also — and continues to be — exercised by those powers [195] strong enough to assert it, when they judge that war and its consequences run counter to their interests. Originally, it was invoked to prevent a single State from acquiring overwhelming power that would endanger the independence and security of the others; it was applied against the expanding dominance of the House of Austria, and later against that of Napoleonic France; it served as the basis of the Holy Alliance and, more recently, the intermittent and fragile institution known as the European Concert.

The powers that have exercised and still exercise the right of intervention have not, to be sure, always concerned themselves with whether their particular interest aligned with the general interest of the civilized community. Interventions and coalitions formed to preserve the European balance of power against an excessive aggrandizement of one power were motivated solely by the interests of the powers who joined the coalition. The Holy Alliance, though initially inspired by religious and humanitarian sentiments, soon degenerated into a mutual insurance pact against revolution. The European Concert, which includes only the great powers and excludes the small ones, intervenes less to prevent war than to revise the terms of peace treaties deemed dangerously favorable [196] to the victor, as in the revision of the Treaty of San Stefano or in the settlement of peace between Turkey and Greece. Yet whatever motives drive those who exercise it, the right of intervention is ultimately based on the shared interest of nations, and it is easy to conceive that it could one day entirely override the right of war — when it becomes clear that war among civilized people is definitively contrary to the general and long-term interest of civilization.

This progress may take place in one of two ways: either through the association and intervention of those nations most committed to peace, via the formation of a League of Neutrals in Europe that would align itself with either the Triple or the Double Alliance should either initiate war — thereby making war impossible; [102] or through a general agreement among all powers to submit their disputes to a tribunal whose judgments would be enforced by a collective force stronger than the party (or parties) against which it ruled, and which could compel obedience if necessary. [197] In either case — and in all likelihood the creation of a permanent peace association would first emerge from the initiative of a League of Neutrals — the immense military establishments maintained in anticipation of war between civilized States could be drastically reduced to the scale necessary to defend the external security of the civilized community, implying a decrease of nine-tenths or more of the total war budgets. [103]

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This is the progress that the increasingly evident incompatibility between war and the new conditions of civilized life will eventually impose. But does that mean this progress is likely to be achieved as soon as peace advocates would hope? If we examine and compare the power of the class directly interested in maintaining the state of war and its costly apparatus, with that of the much larger, but politically less influential classes that have a stake in peace and disarmament, we are sadly [199] forced to conclude that only the horrors of another great war will finally enable the peaceful interests to triumph — and compel governments to establish a true institution of peace.

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CHAPTER XI. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE ELIMINATION OF THE RISK OF WAR WITHIN THE CIVILIZED COMMUNITY — CONCLUSION↩

Other advances resulting from the elimination of the risk of war among civilized people. — Limitation of the sovereign right of governments over the lives and property of their subjects. — Reform of the tax system becomes possible. — Linking taxes to their purpose. — Abolition of the regime of subjection. — Historical justification for this regime. — Why it has continued to exist. — Consequences of lifting the political servitude it imposes. — Moral progress resulting from the disappearance of the necessities on which raison d’état and its practices were based. — Obstacles to solving the problem of peace. — Conflict between the particular and immediate interest of ruling classes and the general and long-term interest of nations. — Analogy of their situation to that of workers confronted by the invention of a new machine. — How their opposition can and will finally be overcome. — The two periods in the life of war. — Its grandeur and its decline.

It has often been observed that every advance achieved in one branch of human activity generates others, by providing a science or an industry with [201] ideas, tools, or materials essential to its further development. The day when civilized nations replace the costly apparatus of isolated guarantees of their external security with an economical apparatus of collective guarantee, other advances, which are currently deemed chimerical, may be realized in their political institutions and in their fiscal systems.

It will become possible, first of all, to limit the sovereign right that governments have not ceased to possess over the lives and property of their subjects. This right is based on the risk that war poses to the existence of nations. So long as this risk remains evident and unlimited, it is necessary that governments possess the likewise unlimited right to impose on their subjects all burdens and sacrifices, including that of life itself, that the common safety requires. But once a system of collective guarantees of the security of the civilized community replaces the system of isolated guarantees of individual states, and the risk of war consists only in possible attacks by people who remain outside the domain of civilization, then the insurance of this risk will require only a reduced premium, nearly fixed and capable of further reduction as the domination of civilized people extends. In this new state of affairs, the unlimited [202] right of governments over the lives and property of their subjects will cease to have a rationale. The guarantee of external security — which today may demand virtually limitless sacrifices in the case of a war among civilized people — will now require only a limited amount, and the power to tax may be reduced to this limit. Then, the system of taxes which are disconnected from the services which are provided— which those who impose and those who pay them do not understand — a true black hole from which governments draw until the taxpayers' resources are extinguished, may be replaced by a system of contributions tied to each specific service, starting with the service of external security, which can now be evaluated and which implies only reductions rather than increases in expenditure. [104] If one considers that this service currently absorbs the largest share of public revenues in most civilized nations for the upkeep of their defensive and offensive apparatus, and for the interest and amortization of war-related debt, one may grasp the enormous savings they will be able to achieve in this regard. Moreover, linking contributions to their purpose will allow taxpayers to judge whether the premium they pay for the guarantee of their security and other collective services provided by the government is proportional to [203] the value of those services, as it is with goods consumed individually. This will presumably mark the end of statism and protectionism.

Secondly, another, an even greater advance will become possible: we refer to the abolition of the old regime of subjection, which still persists even among people who consider themselves the most free. This regime of political appropriation was in fact — and has continued to be, in republics as well as in monarchies — a necessity inherent to the state of war. It dates back, as we have seen, to the era when the advances that gave rise to agriculture and the earliest trades made the regular and permanent exploitation of populations incapable of protecting themselves more advantageous than pillage. The stronger varieties of the human race subjugated the weaker; they founded establishments or states, and lived off the net product of the labor of the appropriated population, which they collected in the form of forced labor and dues in kind or money. This property (political appropriation), which the strongest had conquered and which provided their means of subsistence, was the one they had the highest interest in defending and expanding. They thus found themselves in competition with others, and we have also seen that this competition [204] helped to bring about, among other advances, the emancipation of the subjugated classes. These, in turn, dispossessed their former masters, at least in those countries where their power had grown especially strong through the development of their industry. After having been the property of a caste or a house, the state became the property of the nation, along with all sovereign rights, including the right of war. But lacking the ability to govern the state themselves, the nation constituted or agreed to a government responsible for ensuring its security and providing it with various other services. As the right of war continued to survive under this new regime and in order to remain unlimited, governments had to insure against the still unlimited risk of war. Hence the need to preserve and strengthen their offensive and defensive power as much as possible, and consequently to concentrate their forces and prevent any separation or secession of any portion of the populations that supplied them with resources. This was a form of servitude [105] imposed on each constituent part of the nation in the interest of the whole. But suppose that the right of war and, with it, the risk of war comes to be limited; that the security of the civilized community is guaranteed by a collective power superior to any individual power — then the [205] situation changes: the security of the weaker nations becomes just as guaranteed as that of the stronger; as a result, no government can any longer invoke the necessity of the common good to prohibit one or another part from separating from the whole in order to constitute an autonomous nation or to unite with another. One may even imagine that under this regime of free political association, [106] nations will adopt a mode of organizing their collective services analogous to that of the industries that provide for the individual consumption of their members, and that competition will function in the same way to improve quality and reduce cost. [107]

Finally, if the security of civilized states, large or small, were equally guaranteed by a collective power — if they no longer had to protect themselves against the risk of war with one another — they could renounce the underhanded practices, such as corruption and espionage, to which they resort either to ensure their defense or to prepare for aggression. Likewise, if external security were guaranteed, and if the regime of free association [108] came to replace that of imposed association and subjection, political policing would lose its justification, and the morality of the state would cease to be in flagrant contradiction with the morality it is charged with enforcing.

However, one cannot expect that the class [206] which is immediately — if not permanently — interested in preserving and perpetuating the state of war will willingly accept this progress that threaten its means of existence. In this respect, its situation and outlook differs little from those of workers to whom the introduction of a new machine causes present harm, even though it will ultimately improve their condition. Had spinning or weaving workers had the power to prevent the use of mechanical looms, we would still be using the spinning wheel and hand looms. If stagecoach operators and innkeepers had been able to veto advances in transportation, we would still be waiting for the railroads. Now, the ruling class of the states possesses the power that those workers, coachmen, and innkeepers lacked. It can, at will, obstruct the progress it deems contrary to its interest, and we must not delude ourselves into thinking it will voluntarily allow the general and long-term interest of the nation — though its own is included therein — to prevail over its particular and immediate interest.

Therefore, if the multitudes who bear the crushing burden of the old machinery of the state of war wish to reform it, they must first become conscious of the harms and burdens [207] it inflicts upon them and must learn to trace them back to their true cause; and then they must win over the power of public opinion which is capable of overcoming all resistance. This reform may, as a result, be delayed for a long time — but it is nonetheless inevitable, because peace is the necessary condition of existence for present and future societies, just as war was for the societies of the past.

As long as war was the indispensable factor for the production of security [109] and the vehicle of progress, it was rightly regarded as the highest and noblest expression of human activity: warriors were the object of the people’s enthusiastic admiration and, in distant antiquity, were even counted among the gods. War was then in its period of grandeur. But since it has completed its task of destroying obstacles to the establishment of security, and since it has been replaced as a vehicle of progress by another form of competition, more effective and less costly; since, in short, it has ceased to be useful, it has lost its prestige, and all attempts to restore it have failed. After its period of grandeur, war has entered its period of decline, and it is destined to disappear, giving way to the peace it helped make possible.