An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation
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Thorstein Veblen >> An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation
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This may not seem a veracious and adequate account of these matters; it
may, in effect, fall short of the formulation: The truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth; nor does the question here turn on its
adequacy as a statement of fact. Without prejudice to the question of
its veracity and adequacy, it is believed to be such an account of these
matters as will increasingly come easy and seem convincing to the common
man who, in an ever increasing degree, finds himself pinched with
privation and insecurity by a run of facts which will consistently bear
this construction, and who perforce sees these facts from the prejudiced
standpoint of a loser. To such a one, there is reason to believe, the
view so outlined will seem all the more convincing the more attentively
the pertinent facts and their bearing on his fortunes are considered.
How far the contrary prejudice of those whose interest or training
inclines them the other way may lead them to a different construction of
these pertinent facts, does not concern the present argument; which has
to do with this run of facts only as they bear on the prospective frame
of mind of that unblest mass of the population who will have opportunity
to present their proposals when peace at large shall have put national
interests out of their preferential place in men's regard.
At the risk of what may seem an excessively wide digression, there is
something further to be said of the capitalistic sabotage spoken of
above. The word has by usage come to have an altogether ungraceful air
of disapproval. Yet it signifies nothing more vicious than a deliberate
obstruction or retardation of industry, usually by legitimate means, for
the sake of some personal or partisan advantage. This morally colorless
meaning is all that is intended in its use here. It is extremely common
in all industry that is designed to supply merchantable goods for the
market. It is, in fact, the most ordinary and ubiquitous of all
expedients in business enterprise that has to do with supplying the
market, being always present in the businessman's necessary
calculations; being not only a usual and convenient recourse but quite
indispensable as an habitual measure of business sagacity. So that no
personal blame can attach to its employment by any given businessman or
business concern. It is only when measures of this nature are resorted
to by employees, to gain some end of their own, that such conduct
becomes (technically) reprehensible.
Any businesslike management of industry is carried on for gain, which is
to be got only on condition of meeting the terms of the market. The
price system under which industrial business is carried on will not
tolerate production in excess of the market demand, or without due
regard to the expenses of production as determined by the market on the
side of the supplies required. Hence any business concern must adjust
its operations, by due acceleration, retardation or stoppage, to the
market conditions, with a view to what the traffic will bear; that is to
say, with a view to what will yield the largest obtainable net gain. So
long as the price system rules, that is to say so long as industry is
managed on investment for a profit, there is no escaping this necessity
of adjusting the processes of industry to the requirements of a
remunerative price; and this adjustment can be taken care of only by
well-advised acceleration or curtailment of the processes of industry;
which answers to the definition of sabotage. Wise business management,
and more particularly what is spoken of as safe and sane business
management, therefore, reduces itself in the main to a sagacious use of
sabotage; that is to say a sagacious limitation of productive processes
to something less than the productive capacity of the means in hand.
* * * * *
To anyone who is inclined to see these matters of usage in the light of
their history and to appraise them as phenomena of habituation,
adaptation and supersession in the sequence of cultural proliferation,
there should be no difficulty in appreciating that this institution of
ownership that makes the core of the modern institutional structure is
a precipitate of custom, like any other item of use and wont; and that,
like any other article of institutional furniture, it is subject to the
contingencies of supersession and obsolescence. If prevalent habits of
thought, enforced by the prevalent exigencies of life and livelihood,
come to change in such a way as to make life under the rule imposed by
this institution seem irksome, or intolerable, to the mass of the
population; and if at the same time things turn in such a way as to
leave no other and more urgent interest or exigency to take precedence
of this one and hinder its being pushed to an issue; then it should
reasonably follow that contention is due to arise between the unblest
mass on whose life it is a burden and the classes who live by it. But it
is, of course, impossible to state beforehand what will be the precise
line of cleavage or what form the division between the two parties in
interest will take. Yet it is contained in the premises that, barring
unforeseen contingencies of a formidable magnitude, such a cleavage is
due to follow as a logical sequel of an enduring peace at large. And it
is also well within the possibilities of the case that this issue may
work into an interruption or disruption of the peace between the
nations.
In this connection it may be called to mind that the existing
governmental establishments in these pacific nations are, in all cases,
in the hands of the beneficiary, or kept classes,--beneficiaries in the
sense in which a distinction to that effect comes into the premises of
the case at this point. The responsible officials and their chief
administrative officers,--so much as may at all reasonably be called the
"Government" or the "Administration,"--are quite invariably and
characteristically drawn from these beneficiary classes; nobles,
gentlemen, or business men, which all comes to the same thing for the
purpose in hand; the point of it all being that the common man does not
come within these precincts and does not share in these counsels that
assume to guide the destiny of the nations.
Of course, sporadically and ephemerally, a man out of the impecunious
and undistinguished mass may now and again find his way within the
gates; and more frequently will a professed "Man of the People" sit in
council. But that the rule holds unbroken and inviolable is sufficiently
evident in the fact that no community will let the emoluments of office
for any of its responsible officials, even for those of a very scant
responsibility, fall to the level of the habitual livelihood of the
undistinguished populace, or indeed to fall below what is esteemed to be
a seemly income for a gentleman. Should such an impecunious one be
thrown up into a place of discretion in the government, he will
forthwith cease to be a common man and will be inducted into the rank of
gentleman,--so far as that feat can be achieved by taking thought or by
assigning him an income adequate to a reputably expensive manner of
life. So obvious is the antagonism between a vulgar station in life and
a position of official trust, that many a "selfmade man" has advisedly
taken recourse to governmental position, often at some appreciable cost,
from no apparent motive other than its known efficacy as a Levitical
corrective for a humble origin. And in point of fact, neither here nor
there have the underbred majority hitherto learned to trust one of their
own kind with governmental discretion; which has never yet, in the
popular conviction, ceased to be a perquisite of the gently-bred and the
well-to-do.
Let it be presumed that this state of things will continue without
substantial alteration, so far as regards the complexion of the
governmental establishments of these pacific nations, and with such
allowance for overstatement in the above characterisation as may seem
called for. These governmental establishments are, by official position
and by the character of their personnel, committed more or less
consistently to the maintenance of the existing law and order. And
should no substantial change overtake them as an effect of the war
experience, the pacific league under discussion would be entered into by
and between governments of this complexion. Should difficulties then
arise between those who own and those who do not, in any one of these
countries, it would become a nice question whether the compact to
maintain the peace and national integrity of the several nations
comprised in the league should be held to cover the case of internal
dissensions and possible disorders partaking of the character of revolt
against the established authorities or against the established
provisions of law. A strike of the scope and character of the one
recently threatened, and narrowly averted, on the American railroads,
e.g., might easily give rise to disturbances sufficiently formidable to
raise a question of the peace league's jurisdiction; particularly if
such a disturbance should arise in a less orderly and less isolated
country than the American republic; so as unavoidably to carry the
effects of the disturbance across the national frontiers along the lines
of industrial and commercial intercourse and correlation. It is always
conceivable that a national government standing on a somewhat
conservative maintenance of the received law and order might feel itself
bound by its conception of the peace to make common cause with the
keepers of established rights in neighboring states, particularly if
the similar interests of their own nation were thought to be placed in
jeopardy by the course of events.
Antecedently it seems highly probable that the received rights of
ownership and disposal of property, particularly of investment, will
come up for advisement and revision so soon as a settled state of peace
is achieved. And there should seem to be little doubt but this revision
would go toward, or at least aim at the curtailment or abrogation of
these rights; very much after the fashion in which the analogous vested
rights of feudalism and the dynastic monarchy have been revised and in
great part curtailed or abrogated in the advanced democratic countries.
Not much can confidently be said as to the details of such a prospective
revision of legal rights, but the analogy of that procedure by which
these other vested rights have been reduced to a manageable disability,
suggests that the method in the present case also would be by way of
curtailment, abrogation and elimination. Here again, as in analogous
movements of disuse and disestablishment, there would doubtless be much
conservative apprehension as to the procuring of a competent substitute
for the supplanted methods of doing what is no longer desirable to be
done; but here as elsewhere, in a like conjuncture, the practicable way
out would presumably be found to lie along the line of simple disuse and
disallowance of class prerogative. Taken at its face value, without
unavoidable prejudice out of the past, this question of a substitute to
replace the current exploitation of the industrial arts for private gain
by capitalistic sabotage is not altogether above a suspicion of
drollery.
Yet it is not to be overlooked that private enterprise on the basis of
private ownership is the familiar and accepted method of conducting
industrial affairs, and that it has the sanction of immemorial usage, in
the eyes of the common man, and that it is reenforced with the urgency
of life and death in the apprehension of the kept classes. It should
accordingly be a possible outcome of such a peace as would put away
international dissension, that the division of classes would come on in
a new form, between those who stand on their ancient rights of
exploitation and mastery, and those who are unwilling longer to submit.
And it is quite within the possibilities of the case that the division
of opinion on these matters might presently shift back to the old
familiar ground of international hostilities; undertaken partly to put
down civil disturbances in given countries, partly by the more archaic,
or conservative, peoples to safeguard the institutions of the received
law and order against inroads from the side of the iconoclastic ones.
* * * * *
In the apprehension of those who are speaking for peace between the
nations and planning for its realisation, the outlook is that of a
return to, or a continuance of, the state of things before the great war
came on, with peace and national security added, or with the danger of
war eliminated. Nothing appreciable in the way of consequent innovation,
certainly nothing of a serious character, is contemplated as being among
the necessary consequences of such a move into peace and security.
National integrity and autonomy are to be preserved on the received
lines, and international division and discrimination is to be managed as
before, and with the accustomed incidents of punctilio and pecuniary
equilibration. Internationally speaking, there is to dawn an era of
diplomacy without afterthought, whatever that might conceivably mean.
There is much in the present situation that speaks for such an
arrangement, particularly as an initial phase of the perpetual peace
that is aimed at, whatever excursive variations might befall presently,
in the course of years. The war experience in the belligerent countries
and the alarm that has disturbed the neutral nations have visibly raised
the pitch of patriotic solidarity in all these countries; and patriotism
greatly favors the conservation of established use and wont; more
particularly is it favorable to the established powers and policies of
the national government. The patriotic spirit is not a spirit of
innovation. The chances of survival, and indeed of stabilisation, for
the accepted use and wont and for the traditional distinctions of class
and prescriptive rights, should therefore seem favorable, at any rate in
the first instance.
Presuming, therefore, as the spokesmen of such a peace-compact are
singularly ready to presume, that the era of peace and good-will which
they have in view is to be of a piece with the most tranquil decades of
the recent past, only more of the same kind, it becomes a question of
immediate interest to the common man, as well as to all students of
human culture, how the common man is to fare under this regime of law
and order,--the mass of the population whose place it is to do what is
to be done, and thereby to carry forward the civilisation of these
pacific nations. It may not be out of place to recall, by way of
parenthesis, that it is here taken for granted as a matter of course
that all governmental establishments are necessarily conservative in all
their dealings with this heritage of culture, except so far as they may
be reactionary. Their office is the stabilisation of archaic
institutions, the measure of archaism varying from one to another.
With due stabilisation and with a sagacious administration of the
established scheme of law and order, the common man should find himself
working under conditions and to results of the familiar kind; but with
the difference that, while legal usage and legal precedent remain
unchanged, the state of the industrial arts can confidently be expected
to continue its advance in the same general direction as before, while
the population increases after the familiar fashion, and the investing
business community pursues its accustomed quest of competitive gain and
competitive spending in the familiar spirit and with cumulatively
augmented means. Stabilisation of the received law and order will not
touch these matters; and for the present it is assumed that these
matters will not derange the received law and order. The assumption may
seem a violent one to the students of human culture, but it is a simple
matter of course to the statesmen.
To this piping time of peace the nearest analogues in history would seem
to be the Roman peace, say, of the days of the Antonines, and passably
the British peace of the Victorian era. Changes in the scheme of law and
order supervened in both of these instances, but the changes were, after
all, neither unconscionably large nor were they of a subversive nature.
The scheme of law and order, indeed, appears in neither instance to have
changed so far as the altered circumstances would seem to have called
for. To the common man the Roman peace appears to have been a peace by
submission, not widely different from what the case of China has
latterly brought to the appreciation of students. The Victorian peace,
which can be appreciated more in detail, was of a more genial character,
as regards the fortunes of the common man. It started from a reasonably
low level of hardship and _de facto_ iniquity, and was occupied with
many prudent endeavours to improve the lot of the unblest majority; but
it is to be admitted that these prudent endeavours never caught up with
the march of circumstances. Not that these prudent measures of
amelioration were nugatory, but it is clear that they were not an
altogether effectual corrective of the changes going on; they were, in
effect, systematically so far in arrears as always to leave an uncovered
margin of discontent with current conditions. It is a fact of history
that very appreciable sections of the populace were approaching an
attitude of revolt against what they considered to be intolerable
conditions when that era closed. Much of what kept them within bounds,
that is to say within legal bounds, was their continued loyalty to the
nation; which was greatly, and for the purpose needfully, reenforced by
a lively fear of warlike aggression from without. Now, under the
projected _pax orbis terrarum_ all fear of invasion, it is hopefully
believed, will be removed; and with the disappearance of this fear
should also disappear the drag of national loyalty on the counsels of
the underbred.
If this British peace of the nineteenth century is to be taken as a
significant indication of what may be looked for under a regime of peace
at large, with due allowance for what is obviously necessary to be
allowed for, then what is held in promise would appear to be an era of
unexampled commercial prosperity, of investment and business enterprise
on a scale hitherto not experienced. These developments will bring their
necessary consequences affecting the life of the community, and some of
the consequences it should be possible to foresee. The circumstances
conditioning this prospective era of peace and prosperity will
necessarily differ from the corresponding circumstances that
conditioned the Victorian peace, and many of these points of difference
it is also possible to forecast in outline with a fair degree of
confidence. It is in the main these economic factors going to condition
the civilisation of the promised future that will have to be depended on
to give the cue to any student interested in the prospective unfolding
of events.
The scheme of law and order governing all modern nations, both in the
conduct of their domestic affairs and in their national policies, is in
its controlling elements the scheme worked out through British (and
French) experience in the eighteenth century and earlier, as revised and
further accommodated in the nineteenth century. Other peoples,
particularly the Dutch, have of course had their part in the derivation
and development of this modern scheme of institutional principles, but
it has after all been a minor part; so that the scheme at large would
not differ very materially, if indeed it should differ sensibly, from
what it is, even if the contribution of these others had not been had.
The backward nations, as e.g., Germany, Russia, Spain, etc., have of
course contributed substantially nothing but retardation and
maladjustment to this modern scheme of civil life; whatever may be due
to students resident in those countries, in the way of scholarly
formulation. This nineteenth century scheme it is proposed to carry over
into the new era; and the responsible spokesmen of the projected new
order appear to contemplate no provision touching this scheme of law and
order, beyond the keeping of it intact in all substantial respects.
When and in so far as the projected peace at large takes effect,
international interests will necessarily fall somewhat into the
background, as being no longer a matter of precarious equilibration,
with heavy penalties in the balance; and diplomacy will consequently
become even more of a make-believe than today--something after the
fashion of a game of bluff played with irredeemable "chips." Commercial,
that is to say business, enterprise will consequently come in for a more
undivided attention and be carried on under conditions of greater
security and of more comprehensive trade relations. The population of
the pacified world may be expected to go on increasing somewhat as in
the recent past; in which connection it is to be remarked that not more
than one-half, presumably something less than one-half, of the available
agricultural resources have been turned to account for the civilised
world hitherto. The state of the industrial arts, including means of
transport and communication, may be expected to develop farther in the
same general direction as before, assuming always that peace conditions
continue to hold. Popular intelligence, as it is called,--more properly
popular education,--may be expected to suffer a further advance;
necessarily so, since it is a necessary condition of any effectual
advance in the industrial arts,--every appreciable technological advance
presumes, as a requisite to its working-out in industry, an augmented
state of information and of logical facility in the workmen under whose
hands it is to take effect.
Of the prescriptive rights carried over into the new era, under the
received law and order, the rights of ownership alone may be expected to
have any material significance for the routine of workday life; the
other personal rights that once seemed urgent will for everyday purposes
have passed into a state of half-forgotten matter-of-course. As now, but
in an accentuated degree, the rights of ownership will, in effect,
coincide and coalesce with the rights of investment and business
management. The market--that is to say the rule of the price-system in
all matters of production and livelihood--may be expected to gain in
volume and inclusiveness; so that virtually all matters of industry and
livelihood will turn on questions of market price, even beyond the
degree in which that proposition holds today. The progressive extension
and consolidation of investments, corporate solidarity, and business
management may be expected to go forward on the accustomed lines, as
illustrated by the course of things during the past few decades. Market
conditions should accordingly, in a progressively increased degree, fall
under the legitimate discretionary control of businessmen, or syndicates
of businessmen, who have the disposal of large blocks of invested
wealth,--"big business," as it is called, should reasonably be expected
to grow bigger and to exercise an increasingly more unhampered control
of market conditions, including the money market and the labor market.
With such improvements in the industrial arts as may fairly be expected
to come forward, and with the possible enhancement of industrial
efficiency which should follow from a larger scale of organisation, a
wider reach of transport and communication, and an increased
population,--with these increasing advantages on the side of productive
industry, the per-capita product as well as the total product should be
increased in a notable degree, and the conditions of life should
possibly become notably easier and more attractive, or at least more
conducive to efficiency and personal comfort, for all concerned. Such
would be the first and unguarded inference to be drawn from the premises
of the case as they offer themselves in the large; and something of that
kind is apparently what floats before the prophetic vision of the
advocates of a league of nations for the maintenance of peace at large.
These premises, and the inferences so drawn from them, may be further
fortified and amplified in the same sense on considering that certain
very material economies also become practicable, and should take effect
"in the absence of disturbing causes," on the establishment of such a
peace at large. It will of course occur to all thoughtful persons that
armaments must be reduced, perhaps to a minimum, and that the cost of
these things, in point of expenditures as well as of man-power spent in
the service, would consequently fall off in a corresponding measure. So
also, as slight further reflection will show, would the cost of the
civil service presumably fall off very appreciably; more particularly
the cost of this service per unit of service rendered. Some such climax
of felicities might be looked for by hopeful persons, in the absence of
disturbing causes.
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