[lbo-talk] War (was Conservatism)

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Tue Sep 15 13:10:44 PDT 2009


Let me try again, since I seem to have been unclear.

In premodern times, hard to draw a line, the dominant view among the _upper classes_ in _European_ society, maybe some others, definitely Japan, was that war was the pinnacle of human endeavor, the field where a man might prove himself, serve his king and (if he cared) his people/nation/clan/kin, etc., and in general a good way to get what one wanted. Land, Money. Women. Good not-clean fun. Glory. What else is there?

There were a few dissident voices like Euripides, maybe -- _maybe_, Thucydides (who did not, however think that war was avoidable); later on, among the philosophers. These views did not have much practical influence.

Among the _lower classes_, there is no reason to think that war was ever viewed as anything but an unmitigated disaster. They were not eligible for glory, in most societies, were not allowed to own land (the land, rather, owned them, as it were), and the opportunity that some men had to steal some booty, rape some women, and see the world five miles from the village was almost certainly more than offset by the personal burden of being dragged away from one's livelihood and kin, if one was a lower class soldier, or being subject to the ravages of marauding armies, if one was not, having one's crops stolen, pitiful belongings stolen, being raped or impressed, having one's house or village burned, and perhaps getting the Melian/Trojan treatment, having the men all massacred and the women and children sold into slavery. Or maybe the Mongolian/Crusader treatment, Kill 'Em All! Let God (or the Gods) sort em out! (This from the attack on the Albigensian heresy

in the 13th C, roughly.

In this contrast I realize now that I am probably influenced unconsciously by Nietzsche's Towards The Genealogy of Morals, with his contrast between the value systems Good (noble) and Bad (base) vs Good (base) and Evil (noble). But it is really common sense.

When open support for war starts to become unacceptable among the upper classes is harder to say. Certainly by WWII and the League of Nations, with its official renunciation of war as an instrument of policy, something that would have seemed bizarre to, say, Clausewitz ("War is the continuation of politics by other means."). Btw Clausewitz's instrumental view of war as something to achieve political ends rather than as intrinsically glorious is a modern departure. Of course war was always known to be instrumentally useful -- ultima ratio regis, the final argument of the sovereign. Thucydides is particularly cold-eyed about the material-political motivations for war. But for all La Gloire and Nelson at Tralfagar, etc., by the time Hegel wrote that War Is The Health Of the state the view was dying. As he should have expected. Owl of Minerva and all that. The future of military ideology belonged to the Clausewitzes.

More: the Enlightenment floated schemes for Perpetual Peace (title of essay by Kant), even before Hegel wrote the War Is The Health of the State passage in the PhR. Hobbes was probably the first thinker of the bourgeois era to see clearly that war is an impediment to commerce. His philosophy is constructed around that premise, and he repudiates aristocratic glory for the shopkeeper's ideals of commodious living.

At any rate is is recent in Europe and America to even have an ideology that says War Is A Bad Thing. When Sherman said that War Is Hell, or words to that effect, he didn't think he was saying anything startling or radical. Interestingly there's been a strange inversion. At least in America, a great many more of the lower classes, probably, than in the old days, embrace a militaristic culture. Perhaps it's because Americans have, since the the Civil War, avoided direct experience of war and defeat at home, partly maybe because the benefits of war are no longer reserved wholly for the upper classes. In Europe it took the nightmare of two world wars and everybody being defeated by somebody, generally under conditions and using methods that Genghis Khan would think utterly immoral and inhumane, to squelch, for now, the attraction of war.

So I guess Chris and I are pretty much singing out of the same hymnal. I just have a lot of counterpoint.

Andie

--- On Tue, 9/15/09, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:


> From: Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] War (was Conservatism)
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Tuesday, September 15, 2009, 1:44 PM
>
> Yeah well, you can find quotations supporting any belief in
> any time period given the large numbers of people around at
> any given time, just like if you're a Christian you can find
> stuff that prefigures Christianity in the Stoics or Plato if
> you so desire. I think it would be really really hard to
> argue that the premodern view of war and violence in general
> was not a lot different than our own. Not a whole lot of
> people nowadays go around praising war as an intrinsic good
> -- it is a very fringe belief. Neither do we go in for blood
> sports, public executions, dueling to settle disputes, or
> putting populations to the sword. I also don't think you can
> talk about the common people (a vague concept) in any era as
> having a single view.
>
> It occurs to me that translating "polemos pater panton" as
> "war is father of all things" is kind of problematic.
> Classical Greek did not use word order except in the case of
> articles and prepositions, so it is unclear if war or father
> is the subject of sentence. It's also not clear which word
> "of all things" goes with. In addition, since no articles
> are employed, it is unclear if what is meant is war or
> father in general, a specific war or father, or some war or
> father. It's quite, well, delphic. ;)
>
> --- On Tue, 9/15/09, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> > Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] War (was Conservatism)
> > To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> > Date: Tuesday, September 15, 2009, 2:17 PM
> > Yes, well, see Simone Weil, The
> > Iliad, Poem of Might (or Force), published after the
> fall of
> > France. Up until fairly recently the nobility viewed
> war as
> > an opportunity and a duty. it was, literally, the
> basic
> > feudal duty. Fight for me and I will give you this
> land.
> >
> > On the other hand the common people had a different
> view:
> > see Grimmelshausen's novel Simplicissimus, about the
> 30
> > year's war.
> >
> > Anti-war attitudes go as far back as the always out-of
> step
> > Euripides, whose The Trojan Women is hard not to read
> as a
> > great anti-war statement. "Greeks, your strength is in
> your
> > spears, not your minds," says Hecuba, as she lays the
> body
> > of her grandson, Hector's son, Astyanax, into his his
> dead
> > father's shield -- the child had been thrown off the
> > remaining battlements to complete the destruction of
> Troy.
> >
> > This was written or performed 415-16 BC, right after
> the
> > Athenian destruction of Melos in the Peloponnesian
> War,
> > another 30 years war, an event recounted with
> shocking
> > cynicism and brutality by Thucydides in his History --
> a
> > more ambiguous work, but one that certainly has among
> its
> > points that war leads to moral degradation of victors
> as
> > well as destruction of the vanquished.
> >
> > http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Melian.html
> >
> > in a the stiff Victorian Jowett translation.
> >
> > The theory of the Just War, developed by the
> Scholastics,
> > _presumes_ war is an evil. Aquinas, in the Summa
> II.ii. q.
> > 40,  puts forth three conditions: that it be waged
> by
> > sovereign authority and not privately -- vendettas
> were a
> > big problem in those days; that it be for a just
> cause
> > against belligerent at fault (today, and not long
> after
> > Aquinas, put in the idea that war is supposed to be a
> last
> > resort), and that it be fought for a good purpose --
> not
> > just for glory or booty or as a land-grab.
> >
> > It's my understanding that in traditional Chinese
> culture
> > war was considered an evil even by the upper classes.
> > Soldiers were not held in high esteem, unlike in
> Europe or
> > Japan. After the Warring States era, China was
> actually
> > remarkably peaceful for a very long time. Sun Tze's
> The Art
> > of War emphasizes winning without actually fighting,
> if you
> > can do it, s the mark of the superior military
> leader.
> > Buddhism in theory repudiares war, but that didn't
> seem to
> > have a lot of impact, and the Japanese managed to
> combine
> > Zen with military dictatorship and all-around
> militarism
> > without a blink.
> >
> > Andie
> >
> > --- On Tue, 9/15/09, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > From: Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
> > > Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] War (was Conservatism)
> > > To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> > > Date: Tuesday, September 15, 2009, 6:49 AM
> > >
> > > Πολεμοσ πατηρ παντων. (this
> damn
> > translit
> > > program can't do diacritical marks or terminal
> sigmas
> > > right.)
> > >
> > > Well, getting killed BY A GOD is kind of a
> singular
> > honor.
> > >
> > > "War is evil" is in general a pretty modern
> > sentiment,
> > > likely brought about by secularization of
> Christian
> > norms
> > > and (more materially) weapons that are far more
> > destructive
> > > than even Achilles' shield.
> > >
> > > More broadly, why would it its closeness to the
> > dialectic
> > > be distrurbing to you? The dialectic includes
> all
> > things,
> > > one of which is war. More specifically, violence,
> not
> > just
> > > war.
> > >
> > > --- On Tue, 9/15/09, James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk>
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > "Those killed by Ares are honoured by gods
> and
> > men."
> > > > ___________________________________
> > > > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >      
> > >
> > > ___________________________________
> > > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
> >
> >      
> >
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>
>
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