The Greatness and Decline of War

(Grandeur et Dιcadence de la Guerre – 1898)

by Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912)

CORRESPONDENT OF THE INSTITUTE
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF THE Journal des Ιconomistes


Translation by Roderick T. Long

This online edition of Gustave de Molinari’s The Greatness and Decline of War is a work in progress.
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PREFACE

I. – The Greatness of War.

CHAPTER I: 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 combine to produce the phenomenon of war. – Difference between hunting and war. – Profits of war against competing species of animal. – Determining cause of man-hunting. – Human sacrifice. – Determining cause of war among competing varieties of the human species. – Profit which it yielded to the victor. – That it answered to the general and permanent interest of the species, in other words that it was useful.

The capacity to produce unique to the human species. – Savings and advancement to which it gave rise in the acquisition of the means of survival. – Augmentation in productivity of the industry of nourishment and its consequences. – How it has determined the foundation of political States. – That competition forces itself on them under the destructive form of war. – The two sorts of struggles that they had to carry on. – Objective of these struggles. – That they implied the necessity of developing the destructive power of the State, under the most effective of penalties: extermination or subjugation.

Vital necessity that determined the creation of an organisation for combat. – The constitutive elements of this organsiation. – Personnel. – How military valour is produced and conserved. – Materiel. – Command, hierarchy, and discipline. – The capital accumulation necessary for the formation and implementation of an organisation for combat. – That this accumulation could not be produced except with the assistance of security and necessitates the institution of a government.

Why security cannot arise of itself in the midst of human societies. – Necessity of a government charged with producing it. – How and to what end governments were instituted following the conquest and foundation of political States. – Analogy between conquest and other entreprises. – Apportionment of its fruits. – Necessity of conservation that forced itself uppn the conquerors and founders of States. – That governments had at their start no other purpose but to ensure the security of possesson of the conquerng societies. – The three periods of the establishment of political States. – That their transformation determined the enlargement of the area of security.

That those sharing in a political dominion drew their means of survival from the profit of labour and the rents they imposed on the subject population. – That their properly understood interest obliged them to moderate their exactions and to improve their regime of exploitation. – Progressive transformation of this regime. – That the policy of the proprietors of States had for its objective the augmentation of their power and wealth.

The risks against which the propietary societies of political States had to provide. – The natural antagonism of these societies and the practices that it necessitated. – Political alliances. – Why they were precarious. – Matrimonial alliances and the motives that determined their being contracted or prevented. – Political morality, founded on the Reason of State. – What differentiates it 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 no farther than war is useful, that is to say in conformity with the general and permanent interest of the species.

Cause of the invasions of Asiatic hordes into Europe. – Why they have ceased. – Determining motives of the Crusades. – The wars of the peoples of Europe up to the modern era. – The wars of internal and external conquest. – The wars of succession. – The wars of religion. – The struggle between Paganism and Christinity. – The Reformation. – Role of economic motivation in the wars of religion. – That these different wars have determined the advances that have deprived war of its rational basis.

Growing role of intelligence in the art of war. – Causes that gave victory to the hordes of hunters and warriors in their struggles with peoples on the path to civilisation. – Why these conquering hordes subsequently lost their warlike qualities. – The Greco-Persian wars. – Determining causes of the enlargement, decline, and fall of the Roman State. – The origin of the invention of gunpowder. – Why this invasion has assured the ascendancy of the civilised peoples in the art of war. – That this ascendancy has become decisive since the new advances achieved in armaments. – Transformation that these advances have brought about in the constitutive elements of military valour. – That these advances have secured the civilised peoples against the risk of barbarian invasion and have permitted them to encroach in their turn upon the domain of barbarous or backward peoples. – That the security of civilisation finding itself thus secured, war has lost its rational basis.

Recapitulation of the causes that have given rise to war and the advances that have deprived it of its rational basis. – That it would nonetheless have continued to be necessary if it had not been replaced by a superior form of vital competition: productive competition. – Genesis of productive competition. – The division of labour and trade. – The natural obstacles to the extension of trade. – How these natural obstacles have been successively overcome. – How the extension of markets for trade has developed productive competition and made it general. – That it has taken the place of war as the vehicle of conservation and advancement.
Birth of the idea of peace and the decline of war.

How security has been produced by the subjection of the weaker by the strong. – How it could not have been produced in any other way. – That the producers of security received at the start only the necessary compensation for their industry. – Causes of the progressive increase in the price of security. – How the subject classes have succeeded in limiting it. – Struggle between the subject classes and the proprietary societies of politicial States. – Vicissitudes of this struggle. – Revolutions and wars of emancipation, – in the Netherlands, – in England, – in America. – Political situation of the civilised States on the eve of the French Revolution. – Decline of the state of war. – Its recrudescence prompted by the premature overthrow of the former regime in France.

Review of the motivation governing the proprietors of political States. – In what respect the interest of the subject classes accorded with that of the class enjoying propietorship of the State, – in what respect it differed. – The tax rate and the restriction it placed on the greed of the proprietors of States. – That if the immediate interest of the producers of security was in immediate opposition with that of the consumers, these two interests were in accord in the long run. – Characteristic difference between the former regime of the production of security and that of other branches of industry. – That there was no relation between the charges imposed on subjects and compensation for the services they were rendered. – That these services were of two sorts. – Why the proprietors of States preferred to engage in those that concerned the conservation and extension of their domination. – Causes that acted to necessitate the reform of this regime. – Formulation of the problem that had to be solved. – Ignorance of the basic features of this problem in the era of the Revolution. – The two general forms of govenrment of the new regime of political States.

In what respect the new regime differs from the former one. – The appropriation of the State by the nation. – Rights deriving therefrom. – Declarations and constitutions that proclaim these rights. – The two objectives that constitutions have in view. – The rights and guarantees of the governed. – That constitutions have in this respect erased the distinction between the governing classes and the governed classes. – That they have established, in theory, a link between the services of the State and the charges that serve as their compensation, and have declared that charges must be proportioned to services and reduced to the strictly necessary, but that they have allowed the former system of taxation to survive. – Why this double objective has not been attained.
That a nation can possess a State but cannot govern one. – That the state has remained under the new regime what it was under the former one: an enterprise, and that it must be set up and governed as an enterprise. – How government has been organised in modern States. – The political parties that have emerged under the new regime, despite the constitutions’ not having foreseen their existence. – That they have for their objective the conquest of the State and the benefits it procures. – That they are organised like armies. – Conditions under whiich they can gain victory. – The electoral body and the motivations governing the social categories that constitute it. – That each category is governed by its particular and immediate interest, although this interest is opposed to the general and permanent interest of the nation. – That each category is represented by a party that is obliged to serve its particular interest. – That the parties have moreover a common interest, which consists in augmenting the scope of the State and prompts them to extend its domination.

Sketch of the political institutions of civilised States from the standpoint of the question of peace or war. – The predominant interests in the political organisation of Russia. – That they are more bellicose than pacific. – Germany. Causes that maintain the ascendancy of the military element there: the danger of socialism, the question of Alsace-Lorraine. – England. Considerations that have favoured the advancement of her institutions. – Recrudescence of the power of her aristocracy, determined by the French Revolution. – Pacific tendencies of her industrious classes. – Setback which they have suffered since the war of 1870. – Necessities of defense that force continental militarism on England. – France and her political revolutions. – Pacific guarantees resulting from the present form of her government. – The two categories of American republics. – That throughout the civilised world, the multitude devoted to productive industries is interested in peace but possesses no power to maintain it.

Recapitulation of the motivations determining the wars of the former regime. – Why war has survived under the new regime despite having lost its rational basis. – The immediate opposition between the interests of those who govern and those who are governed. – That this opposition was attenuated by the perpetuity of the government’s possession of the State. – That it has ceased to be so since that possession has become precarious. – Determining causes of the wars of the French Revolution. – Necessities to which the parties succeeding to power were subject. – Economic character of the wars of the Empire. – That both the former and the latter were prompted by particular and immediate interests in opposition to the general and permanent interest of the nation. – That this has been true of all the wars that have followed since the beginning of the century. The Eastern War. – The Italian War. – The Franco-German War. – The American War of Secession. – That these wars were carried on without the nations that paid their costs having been consulted and without their having had the power to prevent them.

Liabilities of the state of war. – Difficulty of making an account of the costs and harms caused by war. – Losses and direct expenses. – Indirect harms. – Progressive increase of the debts and budgets of civilised States since the beginning of the century. – The augmentation of military capability. – The blood tax and the burden that it imposes. – Assets of the state of war. – The opportunity it provides to the military and civil hierarchy. – That the governed multitude derives no appreciable profit therefrom. – Progressive heightening of the risk of war and corresponding increase of the security apparatus of the armed peace. – Causes that contribute to the aggravation of this risk. – Colonial policy. – Protectionist policy. – The absorption of small States by large ones. – That the risk of war, and the armaments to which it gives rise, are at present carried to their maximum.

Present condition of Europe. – The great powers and the secondary States. – The neutral States. – The Concert of Europe. – 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 arising from the risk of dispossession of the government following an unsuccessful war, – from the financial situation of States, – from the increase in the costs of war and from the charges that it necessitates. – Insufficiency of these restraints to halt the pressure of bellicose interests. – The facility with which the development of credit supplies the action of these interests. – Banks transformed into war chests. – Paper currency. – Obligatory military service. – Increase in the power of resistance on the part of the pacific interests. – That these interests have not increased in a proportion superior to that of the bellicose interests. – That, on the other hand, the harms inflicted by war on the industrious classes have grown in proportion to the advance of industry.

That the harms caused by war, after having been merely local, have become general. – Disturbances that war causes in the internationalised markets for products, capital, and labour. – That it has become a universal menace, but not a uniform one, as the force of resistance on the part of the pacific interests is likewise not uniform. – That peace finds its firmest support in the capitalist class, and in particular among the holders of movable goods. – That the division of the great powers into two groups is at best an uncertain guarantee of the peace of Europe. – That peace is no more secure in America and the rest of the world. – That the classes interested in the permanence of peace have not yet achieved the power necessary to put an end to the state of war.

Different modes of the conquest of wealth. – Protectionism. – The harms it inflicts on domestic consumers and foreign producers. – That it proceeds by way of confiscation and that its effects are analogous to those of ordinary war. – That it provides a partial and immediate benefit to the protected interests at the expense of the general and permanent interest of the civilised community. – Statism and Socialism. – Evils that they cause and dangers with which they threaten societies. – What these different forms of the state of war cost the industrious classes.

Advances which have rendered possible the solution to the problem of peace. – How the establishment of a collective organisation to guarantee the security of nations would suppress most of the risk of war. – That the right of war from which this risk proceeds was initially absolute. – Servitude and obligations that it imposed on neutrals. – That it has been successively limited under the influence of the interest of neutrals and of the belligerents themselves. – That it has nonetheless had more and more harmful effects on neutrals. – That war having ceased to be useful, the latter have acquired the right to intervene in order to prevent it. – Historical sketch of the right of intervention. – That it was initially employed in orde to maintain the balance of power. – The Holy Alliance. – The Concert of Europe. – Two ways of implementing the right of intervention. – The League of Neutrals. – The general association of civilised States. – Consequence of this advance: enormous decrease in the costs of guaranteeing the external security of nations. – Why the realisation of this advance is not to be expected soon.

Other advances resulting from suppressing the risk of war among civilised peoples. – Limitation of the sovereign right of governments over the lives and property of their subjects. – Reformation of the tax system made possible. – Linkage between contributions and their purposes. – Suppression of the regime of subjection. – Historical reason for this regime. – Why it has continued to survive. – Consequences of removing the political servitude it imposes. – Moral advance resulting from the disappearance of the necessities on which the Reason of State and its practices are founded. – Obstacles to the solution of the problem of peace. – Opposition between the particular and immediate interest of the governing classes and the general and permanent interest of nations. – Analogy between their situation and that of workers faced with the invention of a new machine. – How their opposition can and will be finally defeated. – The two periods of war’s existence. – Its greatness and its decline.

I. – The political role of the secondary States.
II. – The right of peace.
III. – Proposal for an association to establish a League of Neutrals.
IV. – How war can be prevented and peace disarmed in Europe.
V. – A peace syndicate. – Concerning the visit of Russian sailors to France.
VI. – The assuring of peace.

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