War and Democracy

Essays on the Causes and Prevention of War

E. F. M. Durbin, John Bowlby, Ivor Thomas, D. P. T. Jay, R. B. Fraser, R. H. S. Crossman, George Catlin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000024630
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Sicurezza nazionale

Originally published in 1938, this book consists of a group of papers considering widely different subjects, but all bearing upon one social problem – the causation and prevention of war. The authors all occupy the same general political position, they are democratic socialists and active members of the Labour Party. The book falls into three rough divisions, although all the papers are self-contained. The first part of the book is psychological and attempts to summarise and analyse the non-historical evidence (ecological, psychological, and anthropological) about the causes of fighting. The second part is historical. It surveys the different causes of international war in the nineteenth century and then discusses the relation between nationalism and capitalism during the same period. The third part is political and first considers the relation of the use of force to the preservation of peace. Then analyses the choices of foreign policy for a pacific power confronted by the threat of aggressive military dictatorship. It concludes with a review and assessment of the various available policies for the prevention of war in general and under the specific contemporary conditions of the time.

PART I

1. PERSONAL AGGRESSIVENESS AND WAR

Appendix : An Examination of the Psychological and Anthropological Evidence

by
E. F. M. DURBIN AND JOHN BOWLBY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I

INTRODUCTION

PEACEFUL CO-OPERATION

THE SIMPLER CAUSES OF FIGHTING

THE FURTHER CAUSES OF AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR

ANIMISM

THE TRANSFORMATION OF AGGRESSIVE IMPULSE—DISPLACEMENT AND PROJECTION

THE THEORY OF WAR

II

INTRODUCTION

THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF WAR

NATIONALISM AND WAR

III

INTRODUCTION

EDUCATION AND WAR

GOVERNMENT AND COLLECTIVE SECURITY

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX

An Examination of the Psychological and Anthropological Evidence

INTRODUCTION

A. STUDIES OF INDIVIDUAL AGGRESSION

1. Social Life of Monkeys and Apes

2. Social Development and Aggression in Children

3. Psycho-Analytic Studies of Aggression

4. Animism

B. STUDIES IN GROUP AGGRESSION

1. War between Primitive Communities

2. War between Civilized Communities

PERSONAL AGGRESSIVENESS AND WAR

I

THE purpose of this article is to examine the bearing of some recent biological and psychological work upon the theories of the cause of war.

The authors hold that war—or organized fighting between large groups of adult human beings—must be regarded as one species of a larger genus, the genus of fighting. Fighting is plainly a common, indeed a universal, form of human behaviour. It extends beyond the borders of humanity into the types of mammals most closely related in the evolutionary classification to the common ancestors of man and other apes. War between groups within the nation and between nations are obvious and important examples of this type of behaviour. Since this is so, it must of necessity follow that the simplest and most general causes of war are only to be found in the causes of fighting, just as the simplest and most general causes of falling downstairs are to be found in the causes of falling down.

Such a simple thesis could hardly be expected to contain any important conclusion. Yet if the causes of war are to be found in their simplest form only in phenomena more widely dispersed in space and time than comparatively recent forms of political and economic organization, like the nation State and the capitalist system, it must surely follow that theories tracing the cause of war either to ‘capitalism’ or ‘nationalism’ can only at the best contain part of the truth. Nevertheless, it is theories of this kind that are fashionable in the current discussions of the cause of war.

We shall revert at length to the bearing of our own views upon these theories. In the meantime, it is our primary task to examine some of the evidence recently collected on the extent and causes of fighting. The procedure that we propose to follow is to summarize and analyse the descriptive work that has been done upon fighting among apes, children, and civilized adults in the Appendix, and to use the conclusions to be derived from that work in the argument of this article. The empirical evidence that is available is far from complete, but we think that it is more than sufficient to sustain a number of most important conclusions about the effective causes of war.

Fighting, as we have already pointed out, is a form of behaviour widely distributed through history and nature. It occurs in the form of group conflict throughout recorded time. It takes place spasmodically between individuals in civilized countries. It occurs among primitives, among children, and among apes. Whether one looks back through time or downwards to simpler forms of social organization, it is a common practice for individuals or groups to seek to change their environment by force, and for other individuals and groups to meet force with force.

But fighting, or the appeal to force, while universal in distribution, is not continuous in time. The most warlike groups and the most aggressive individuals spend considerable periods in peaceful toleration of, and positive co-operation with, other animals or persons. Most organized communities have enjoyed longer periods of peace than of war. The greater part of human activity—of man-hours—is spent, not in war, but in peaceful co-operation. The scientific problem is, therefore, twofold—why is there peaceful co-operation and why does peaceful co-operation sometimes break down into war? The practical problem—at least, for lovers of peace—is how peaceful co-operation is to be preserved against the universal tendency exhibited in history for it to degenerate into war.

PEACEFUL CO-OPERATION

What, then, are the simplest causes of peaceful co-operation? Here it is necessary to distinguish between groups with and without ‘government’—that is, an apparatus of force constructed with the conscious and explicit purpose of preserving peace within the group. Clearly, the existence of a powerful organization taking action to preserve peace itself constitutes a strong and immediate cause for the appearance of peace.¹ With the consequence of this obvious point we shall be concerned at the end of this article. For the moment, however, we are interested in a prior and more fundamental question. What are the causes of peace in a group without government or any effective machinery for the restraint of fighting ? Why do animals co-operate in the absence of any agent powerful enough to prevent them from fighting ?

¹ We feel unable to accept Dr. Glover’s rather casual rejection of instruments of government and collective security as a means of preserving peace. (See Glover, The Dangers of being Human.) We feel that he does not appreciate the strength of the will to co-operate expressed in them. We shall consider this point at some length at the end of Part III of this article.

Now a survey of the life of mammals in general, and of apes and men in particular,¹ suggests that the causes of peace in the absence of government are, for the extra-familial group,² of three main kinds :

1. The obvious, most important, and overwhelming advantage to be derived from peace lies in the division of labour and the possibility of thus achieving purposes desired by the individual but obtainable only by active co-operation with others. This is so plain in the case of adult human society that the point is scarcely worth elaborating. The whole of the difference in the variety of satisfactions open to the individual in isolation and the same person in the active membership of a peaceful society, measures the advantages to be derived from continuous co-operation between adults. The extent of co-operation in any groups other than adult human societies is, of course, much more limited. But groups of children co-operate in simple tasks and in games that require a specialization of function between the individual members of the group. And there is some evidence to suggest that apes exhibit still simpler forms of co-operation and that even mammals who hunt and live in herds develop simple differentiation of function for various common purposes of defence or attack³.

Co-operation extends enormously the opportunities for life and satisfaction within groups that have developed it. It is reasonable to presume that these advantages are also causes of co-operation, since many of the results of co-operation are of survival value. In any case, few persons would wish to deny that the sovereign advantages of co-operation are for adult human beings one of the main causes of voluntary peace.

¹ See Appendix passim.

² We have not concerned ourselves with the reasons for peace within the family, (a) because it leads at once to the rather different question of the nature of sexual and familial ties ; (b) because the family usually exhibits the phenomenon of patriarchal and matriarchal authority.

³ This last point is not universally conceded by the students of animal behaviour. Apes appear to scratch each other and some herds of herbivores seem to maintain a system of outposts and sentries. But it has been denied that these phenomena can be compared with the purposive co-operation found in human society. The conflict of view could only be resolved by further investigation.

2. In the case of apes, there is also evidence that satisfaction is found in the mere presence of others of the same species.¹ Whether this satisfaction is exclusively sexual—i.e., whether the advantage lies in the possibility of varied relations with the opposite sex—there is not sufficient evidence to determine. In so far as it is sexual, such gregariousness may easily become a source of conflict within the group. This we shall see in a moment. But in so far as pleasure is felt in the mere presence of other members of the group, there is a force binding those members together in peace.

The counterpart of the primitive sociability of the apes in children and adult human beings is obvious. Its relationship to sexual promiscuity remains as obscure in human beings as in apes, but the existence of a pleasure felt in the presence of human company could scarcely be denied. Sociability is therefore an independent cause for the existence and stability of society.²

3. The reasons for co-operation so far mentioned are all self-regarding advantages. They derive their importance from the existence of kinds of individual satisfaction that can only be obtained with the aid of others. We do not, however, suppose that self-regarding ends are the sole causes of peaceful co-operation. We think it obvious that in the development of the child there is to be traced the emergence of an interest in others for their own sakes, a gradual but growing recognition of the rights of others to the kinds of advantage desired by oneself; and finally in the fully developed personal relationships of friendship and love, the positive desire for the loved one’s happiness as a good for oneself. From reflection and logic this care for the good of others can make the common good a personal end. The existence of a general desire for the common good is clearly a force making for peace in adult society. But its power will only extend as far as the idea of the common good extends. If the common good is only felt to reach to the limits of a racial, or a geographic, or a social group, there will be no force in this recognition of the common good within the group to prevent the use of force outside and on behalf of it.

¹ See Appendix.

² We feel it unnecessary to argue the obscure and rather formal controversy as to whether there is a specific ‘herd instinct.’

All this is very important, but it is also very obvious. It is indeed the common-place of pacifist literature. It is never difficult to find reasons for peaceful co-operation. And with such overwhelming advantages in its favour, the real problem is why peace so frequently degenerates into fighting. It is consequently much more in the study of the actual breakdown of peaceful co-operation among apes and children and grown-up people that recent descriptive work has brought new light. The work that we think to be of greatest interest falls into two parts. There is first the careful work of observation that has been carried out by Doctor Zuckermann on apes, and on children by Dr. Susan Isaacs. This does much to throw into clear perspective the most primitive causes for aggression and fighting in the absence of government. The second clue to the puzzle is to be found, in our opinion, in the mass of descriptive material laid bare by the anthropologist and in the case-papers of patients treated by the therapeutic technique of psycho-analysis. We, therefore, propose to distinguish in our brief survey between the simple causes and forms of aggressive behaviour common to apes and to human beings on the one hand and the more complicated forms exhibited by human beings alone, on the other. For an account of the complications added by the faculties of the adult human mind, we shall offer a brief and necessarily controversial interpretation of the significance of the anthropological and psycho-analytical evidence as to the origins of personal and group aggressiveness.

THE SIMPLER CAUSES OF FIGHTING

The evidence taken from the observation of the behaviour of apes and children suggests that there are three clearly separable groups of simple causes for the outbreak of fighting and the exhibition of aggressiveness by individuals.

1. One of the most common causes of fighting among both children and apes was over the possession of external objects. The disputed ownership of any desired object—food, clothes, toys, females, and the affection of others—was sufficient ground for an appeal to force. On Monkey Hill disputes over females were responsible for the deaths of thirty out of thirty-three females.¹ Two points are of particular interest to notice about these fights for possession.

In the first place they are often carried to such an extreme that they end in the complete destruction of the objects of common desire. Toys are torn to pieces. Females are literally torn limb from limb. So over-riding is the aggression once it has begun that it not only overflows all reasonable boundaries of selfishness but utterly destroys the object for which the struggle began and even the self for whose advantage the struggle was undertaken.

In the second place it is observable, at least in children, that the object for whose possession aggression is started may sometimes be desired by one person only, or merely because it is desired by someone else. There were many cases observed by Dr. Isaacs where toys and other objects which had been discarded as useless were violently defended by their owners when they became the object of some other child’s desire.² The grounds of possessiveness may, therefore, be irrational in the sense that they are derived from inconsistent judgments of value. Whether sensible or irrational, contests over possession are commonly the occasion for the most ruthless use of force among children and apes.

One of the commonest kinds of object arousing possessive desire is the notice, goodwill, affection, and service of other members of the group. Among children one of the commonest causes of quarrelling was ‘jealousy’—the desire for the exclusive possession of the interest and affection of someone else, particularly the adults in charge of the children. This form of be...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Prefatory Note
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Index