Annihilation and Utopia (Routledge Library Editions: Political Science Volume 8)

Errol E. Harris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415555388
• eBook ISBN: 9781135027254
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Originally published in 1966. The main purpose of this book is not philosophical speculation, but to draw the obvious conclusions from political and historical facts about the prospects and methods of human political survival. The central theme is developed in the context of problems which cause most anxiety today: the mounting arms race, the unstable balance of power, the rapid growth of population, racial conflicts and ideological incompatibilities.

Part I

The State and War

Chapter II

War as a Social Institution

I

Today, as never before, man possesses the actual practical means of annihilating the entire race, or at least of destroying human civilized life on the planet. Never before has the prospect of war entailed this possibility; for the first time in history, the nations find themselves in the dilemma that their means of self-defence are equally the means of self-destruction, and their attempts to preserve what they value most are liable to result only in the destruction of everything they hold most dear. Consequently, if civilization is to be saved there is today an imperative necessity that war should be prevented, small wars for fear that they may expand into world war, and world war because it will destroy everything worth fighting for.

There are many who say that the permanent abolition of war is impossible, because pugnacity is an innate propensity in men, and there is no way, without changing human nature, of preventing them from fighting. We cannot therefore abolish war, we can at best do whatever is necessary first to win it, and secondly to mitigate its effects. At a later stage I shall discuss the recommendations that some writers and politicians are currently making for each of these objectives, but first it may be well to examine the presumption that man is naturally pugnacious and that therefore, war is inevitable; and to consider the relation between war and social organization as such.

First, does it follow necessarily that if man is by instinct violent and, as Oswald Spengler maintained, by nature a beast of prey, he cannot be tamed and schooled to settle his differences with his fellow men by peaceful methods? Secondly, is it true that human nature is essentially and ineradicably pugnacious?

In answer to the first question, it is clear that the conclusion of the proposed argument is a non sequitur. Even if mankind is by nature war-like and quarrelsome, it does not follow that he cannot therefore become civilized and peaceable. That would require that he should also be essentially irrational or even insane. Man is by nature acquisitive, but he is not necessarily a thief. By nature he ran about naked, but he has become accustomed to wearing clothes. His natural mode of locomotion is pedestrian, but he now drives motor cars and aeroplanes. By nature he is terrestrial, but nowadays he looks forward to flying to the moon. Civilization in general is a way of living that curbs, canalizes and modifies man’s natural propensities. Why should it not do the same for his natural pugnacity?

There is, in fact, no reason at all. On the contrary this has already been done. In civilized communities people no longer habitually give vent to their anger by violence. Feuds are no longer tolerated; duelling has been suppressed; assault is prevented and punished by law, and the individual man has, for the most part, learned to control his temper, and to settle disputes by negotiation or litigation. Exceptions, of course, occur but, in civilized societies, they are not approved and are not tolerated. If this is possible for individual men, it should be possible for groups and communities, which are after all composed only of individuals. If there are special differences and difficulties in the case of nations, we must examine them in due course to find out why this is so and whether they are insuperable. A priori it does not seem warranted to maintain that because man is by nature pugnacious—if that is true—he cannot school himself to restrain his pugnacity and prevent the outbreak of violence.

II

Is it, however, true that man is by nature warlike? There is little or no doubt that the human animal, like other mammals possesses combative tendencies, and if thwarted in the pursuit of instinctive or innate dispositions he is liable to become angry and to fight. But warfare is not the same sort of activity as the impulsive resort to violence on the part of an individual. It is organized violence; and there is an impressive body of evidence that, organized violence is not natural to human kind, but has been cultivated by human societies, like other artificialities of behaviour, through social influence and training.

Anthropologists divide human groups into two main classes: food-gatherers and food-producers. The former get their livelihood from natural sources, as do other animals, by picking wild fruits, digging wild roots or hunting animals. The latter, domesticate animals or cultivate grains and other edible plants, or both. Food-gatherers are the most primitive of mankind. They live in family groups linked by immediate kinship; and, if uninfluenced by more developed peoples, they have virtually no social organization or social institutions. They have no domesticated animals other than the dog; they know nothing of agriculture; they do not store food, but simply go hungry in times of scarcity. We may say with accuracy that they have no civilization. Such groups, it has been found, do not practice warfare. They hunt, but do not fight among themselves and are in the main friendly to strangers, unless attacked by them and made victims of their violence. Today there are few such groups remaining who have not acquired some social organization and institutions by contact with more developed societies, and among these warfare is sometimes included, but wherever this has occurred at least a good case can be made for the view that it is not a natural tendency among food-gatherers, but has been imposed upon them often aggressively by more advanced societies. W. L. Perry in his book, The Primordial Ocean,¹ makes out a very imposing case for this position.

Moreover, in even so warlike a society as that of the Cheyenne Indians, it was observed by George B. Grinnel, who lived among them for many years, that the boys hardly ever quarrelled or fought with one another, though they constantly indulged in competitive games similar to football, wrestling and contests of strength. They took part in these contests in the most cheerful and good-natured spirit, the loser laughing and enjoying the game as much as the winner. Nevertheless, they were, as they grew up, trained to fight and were expected and encouraged to be brave in war. Similarly, in spite of the habitual warfare of the Cheyenne against other tribes, among themselves violence and murder was extremely rare, no more than five or six cases occurring in forty years. This goes to show, Perry maintains, that warfare is a social institution imposed upon men, not a natural expression of innate propensities.

He gives numerous examples from tribes as widespread and remote as South American Indians, Dyaks of Borneo, and Andamanese Islanders, to show that habitual or traditional warfare is always associated with social organization and often with particular social customs, beliefs or institutions; and among many primitive peoples it has been deliberately introduced and taught to them by alien invaders with more highly developed social systems. For instance the Arabs committed piracy throughout the Indian Ocean and introduced this form of maritime violence to the Malays, who in turn practiced it on the surrounding islanders employing the shore-dwelling Dyaks of Borneo (later known as the Sea Dyaks) as mercenaries. Thus, they encouraged wanton head-hunting among them for its own sake, whereas normally it had been a feature only of social ceremonies connected with crop fertilization, burial, building, canoe-launching, or the like; and, however revolting to us, had not been a form of organized warfare.

When Perry wrote little was known of the mountain people of Papua (New Guinea). The results of recent observations there² seem at first sight to contradict his theory, but on more careful investigation may well prove to support it. These people are very primitive indeed, in fact in many ways they are still living in the stone age, but they are constantly fighting among themselves and the toll of life and damage to huts and crops caused by their frequent battles is a perpetual problem to them. It must be noted, however, that they are not strictly food-gatherers. They cultivate gardens and domesticate animals (pigs, in particular). They also have elaborate customs and social institutions. Their primitive way of life is certainly to be explained by their isolation, but this could as easily be the result of their having withdrawn in the distant past from the advance of more socially developed peoples as from their never having had contact at any time with other cultures. The title they give to their leaders is ‘Kain’, a possible descendent from the Turkish ‘Khan’, which points to earlier influences from Asia, perhaps of the Arabs and the Malays; and there are indications in their social structure of a dual division found in most of the aboriginal societies of the surrounding regions—Indonesia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. This form of social division is always accompanied by hostility between the moeities (as they are called). Elsewhere this hositility seems definitely to be institutional and may well have originated as a feature of a more complex organization. It is mentioned by Perry as occurring also in New Guinea.³

There seems thus to be good evidence that war, wherever it is practised is institutional and consequent upon social organization and that it is not a natural instinct in man. Institutions are not unchangeable and there is nothing in principle to prevent the abolition of any one of them or the modification of social structure so as to serve its purpose in a different way. Nevertheless there can be no doubt that war is a widespread social institution and has been a feature of every known form of politically organized society. To understand its function and significance, therefore, we must examine the nature and principles of social and political organization to see how war is implicated in politics.

III

What brought about the transition from the food-gathering to the food-producing stage of social development is obscure, but whenever men domesticate animals and cultivate the soil, they are found (perhaps of necessity), living together in some form of social organization, with elaborately formal customs and institutions and a recognizable social authority directing their lives. This authority is often concentrated in a single person—a chieftain —presiding over an advisory council of elders. The lives of the people are regulated by rules and laws, and disputes and infringements are adjudicated in courts either directly conducted by, or drawing their authority from, the chief.

There seem to have been, historically, two main lines of development: one through the clan and the tribe, with their headman and chief, to the militarily supported king ruling over a nation or a conquered empire; the other is from family organization to the village community, governed by a council of elders, and thence to the city-state, with its tendency to more popular forms of government. These two lines of development have had many features in common, but I am not concerned, in this study, to describe the historical development, so much as to trace the logical connexion between institutions. What is interesting is that, though warfare is not found to be typical of food-gathering groups, it is found to be practised by all organized societies with any pretence to political structure. That is to say, by societies which recognize a political authority administering law.

That social and political institutions—that is, formal organization —should appear with the arts of food-production is hardly surprising. The care of flocks and herds and the cultivation of crops call for a variety of skills seldom if ever possessed by one man. Consequently a number of persons with a variety of capacities is called for, successfully to carry out the pursuits of a food-producing society. Animals must be tamed, bred, reared, and guarded, fleeces must be sheared, skins cured, wool teased, spun and woven. Each special skill gives rise to the need for others and so special functions proliferate.

As the means of supplying the material needs of human life develop, still more skills are needed and more functions must be performed. For agriculture and building, as well as for weaving and the making of clothes, tools are in demand and must be skilfully made. Craftsmen like the blacksmith, the carpenter, the potter and the leather-worker find place in society. The consequence is specialization of occupation, and a new need arises for some orderly system of exchange of products between the specialists.

The co-ordination and interplay of such functions is not possible without some form of organization and the imposition of some rules of behaviour, and once rules are imposed and recognized, an authority is needed to enunciate, to interpret and to administer the rules.

So the simple family or dan develops into a village community with some commerce and exchange; economic activity grows and becomes more complex, and more elaborate rules of procedure are needed to regulate the relations between men and the social functions they perform. Customary rules of behaviour pronounced and interpreted by a tribal head become laws administered by a political authority, institutions for their enactment and enforcement are developed and an entirely new class of administrators is called into being to maintain law and order within the community. In Aristotle’s words, ‘the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of the good life’. ‘The good life’ here may be interpreted as the welfare of the community assured by conformity to precept and law.

Throughout this course of development, the necessity of regulation of conduct produces an antithesis which is at the root of all morality. Momentary inclination and impulse are distinguished from and, for the most part, become opposed to what is required of a man by society, in the performance of his special function and for the maintenance of peace and order. Duty is thus opposed to inclination and there emerge forms of behaviour that a man ought to carry out and others from which he ought to abstain whether he likes to or no. He ought because the common interest of the group requires it and, if civilized life is to be possible, the public interest must take precedence over momentary individual impulses and desires. In fact the common good includes that of the individual, whose aims and aspirations cannot be achieved without the co-operation of his fellows or independently of the organized life of the community to which he belongs. He must therefore identify his ends with those of the community if they are to be realized and must recognize that, in the long run, his best interests can be satisfied only if what ‘the good life’ of the community requires is carried out. This then becomes an obligation upon him and he has to acknowledge a commitment to fulfil it. The social order is consequently at the same time a moral order, and, its aim being the welfare of all its members, its end is precisely the maintenance of ‘the good life’. The fulfilment of its requirements by the individual in the pursuit of that end is the condition of its attainment and is the foundation of all morality.

Two conclusions are to be drawn from all this: (i) that for man a satisfactory way of life and a tolerable standard of living are attainable only in an ordered and organized society; in short, that the essence of civilization is social and political order, with its logical implication of moral order, (ii) that such order is not possible without government, which again implies some definite authority, with power to enforce laws.

But just as civilized life depends on the maintenance, within an organized society, of peace and civil order, so also it depends on the freedom of such a community from external attack and its ability to defend itself against aggression from without. So we begin to see the connexion between civilization, as social organization, and war, as a social institution. War is the organized defence of a social system—of the civilized way of life of a community— and as such, is an institution—an organized element within that system. Even aggressive war is an expression of the organized aims of the society by which it is waged. The organization of defence involves, as do the pursuits of peace, the co-ordination and regulation of numerous and complex activities; and so, precisely for the same reasons, requires a central command to direct operations. The authority which performs this function coincides with that which maintains internal law and order. It is the central, or sovereign, power of the political body.

The sovereign power of the state is used internally to enforce the law and externally to defend the community against foreign attack. It is as a feature of the relations between independent sovereign states that war occurs, and if we are to understand the function it performs we must begin by examining the nature of the political power and authority which uses it as an instrument of policy. It is, moreover, one of the means by wh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I. The State and War
• Part II. The Conditions of Peace
• Part III. The Ideological Conflict
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Index