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The economics of war

BILLY I AHMED
What distinguishes man from animals is the insight into the advantages that can be gained from cooperation to divide labour. Man restrains his inherent instinct of aggression to cooperate with other human beings. The more he wants to improve his material well being, the more he must expand the division of labour. To develop, the international division of labour needs the total abolition of war. Such is the essence of the non-intervention philosophy.
Concomitantly he must more and more restrict the sphere in which he resorts to military action.
This philosophy is, of course, incompatible with statolatry (literally, worship of the state analogous to idolatry as worship of idols). In this context the state, the social apparatus of violent oppression, is to protect the smooth operation of the market economy against the onslaughts of antisocial individuals and gangs. Its role is indispensable and worthwhile, but it is an ancillary role only. There is no reason to idolize the police power and ascribe to it omnipotence and omniscience. There are things that it can certainly not succeed. It cannot conjure away the scarcity of the causes of production; it cannot make people more prosperous, it cannot raise the productivity of labour. All it can achieve is to prevent gangsters from frustrating the efforts of those people who are intent on promoting material well being.
The liberal philosophy of Bentham and Bastiat had not yet completed the work of removing trade barriers and government meddling with business when the counterfeit theology of the divine state began to take effect. Efforts to improve the conditions of wage earners and small farmers by government decree made it necessary to loosen more and more the ties that connected each country's domestic economy with those of other countries. Economic nationalism, the necessary complement of domestic interventionism, hurts the interests of foreign peoples and thus creates international conflict. It suggests the idea of amending this unsatisfactory state of affairs by war. Why should a powerful nation tolerate the challenge of a few powerful nations? Is it not insolence for small Laputania to injure the citizens of big Ruritania by customs, migration barriers, foreign exchange control, quantitative trade limits,
and expropriation of Ruritanian investments in Laputania? Would it not be easy for the army of Ruritania to crush Laputania's contemptible forces?
Such was the ideology of the German, Italian, and Japanese warmongers. It must be admitted that they were consistent from the point of view of the new "unorthodox" teachings. Interventionism produces economic nationalism, and economic nationalism produces bellicosity.
From the day when Italy, in 1911, fell on Turkey, fighting was continual. There was almost always shooting somewhere in the world. The peace treaties ended were merely armistice agreements. Besides they had to do only with armies of the great powers. Some of the smaller nations were always at war. In addition there were no less destructive civil wars and revolutions.
How far we are today from the rules of international law developed in the age of limited warfare! Modern war is merciless, it does not spare pregnant women or infants; it is indiscriminate killing and destroying. It does not respect the rights of neutrals. Millions are killed, enslaved, or expelled from the dwelling places in which their ancestors lived for centuries. Nobody can foretell what will happen in the next.
This has little to do with the atomic bomb. The root of the evil is not to build more weapons. It is the spirit of conquest. It is probable that scientists will discover some methods of defence against the atomic bomb. But this will not alter, it will merely prolong for a short time the complete destruction of civilization.
Modern civilization is a product of the philosophy of laissez-faire. It cannot be preserved under the ideology of government omnipotence. Statolatry owes much to the doctrines of Hegel. However, one may pass over many of Hegel's inexcusable faults, for Hegel also coined the phrase "the futility of victory" (die Ohnmacht des Sieges) [1]. To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main purpose is to discard the ideology that generates war. [p. 833]
Reference: [1] Cf. Hegel Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte ed Lasson (Leipzig, 1920), IV, 930-931.
The author is a columnist and researcher.