Just Wars

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu May 10 11:13:26 PDT 2001


Archer.Todd at ic.gc.ca wrote:
>
> Ian asked:
>
> Name one person in the history of the world that has the moral authority to
> inaugurate death. Not political power, moral authority.
>
> According to Thomas Aquinas, Augustine of Hippo says that
>
> "`The natural order
> conducive to peace among mortals demands that the power to declare and
> counsel war should be in the hands of those who hold the supreme
> authority.'"(3) et cetera

The problem with the theory of "Just War" is that it posits a metaphysical basis for the judgment of human actions. But since no such basis exists, it is (except for agitational purposes) wrong to call a war _either_ just or unjust.

******

The above application of the Ricardian theory, that the entire social product belongs to the workers as _their_ product, because they are the sole real producers, leads directly to communism. But, as Marx indicates too in the above-quoted passage, formally it is economically incorrect, for it is simply an application of morality to economics. According to the laws of bourgeois economics, the greatest part of the product does _not_ belong to the workers who have produced it. If we now say: that is unjust, that ought not to be so, then that has nothing immediately to do with econonics. We are merely saying that this economic fact is in contradiction to our sense of morality. . . .If the moral consciousness of the mass declares an economic fact to be unjust, as it has done in the case of slavery or serf labour, that is a proof that the fact itself has been outlived, that other economic facts have made their appearance, owing to which the former has become unbearable or untenable.

(F. Engels, "Preface to the First German Edition," in Karl Marx, _Poverty of Philosophy_ [Moscow, 1973], p. 9) *******

and furthermore, Engels points out:

*****

But the Ricardian definition of value, in spite of its ominous characteristics, has a feature which makes it dear to the hear of the good bourgeois. It appeals with irresistible force to his sense of justice. Justice and equality of rights are the basic pillars on which the bourgeois of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would like to erect his social edifice over the ruins of feudal injustice, inequality and privilege.

(Ibid., p. 10) ***********

The horror and immorality of war is an essential part of the propaganda of those who would actually lead us into war. It was LBJ who proclaimed loudly "Ah hate war!" Non-violence in its various forms remains a major tactic of resistence. Non-violence as an abstract moral principle merely sows confusion among those who oppose a given war and gives aid and comfort to those who make war.

Carrol

I highly recommend Christopher Caudwell's great essay, "Pacifism and Violence: A Study in Bourgeois Ethics, in _Studies and Further Studies in a Dying Culture_



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list