WAR ON WORKERS: ANTI-LABOR POLITICAL, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, and CULTURAL FORCES

The Problem of Labor and Democracy

Governments, mainstream politicians working within the existing system, businesses, many think tanks and a segment of academia, and the media portray workers as the enemy of progress and society trying to achieve “bourgeois consensus” under the market economy that its apologists project as the only possible option without any room for criticism outside the system.

Whether in the West or in the rest of the world, politicians representing businesses, advocates of globalization and neoliberal orthodoxy, and even workers regard the labor movement and workers as a class as “the enemy” of the status quo. While some analysts may view as normal simply because the working class has antithetical interests from the capitalist class and is engaged in an endless class struggle, it is amazing that in pluralistic societies the socioeconomic and political elites have unleashed such an open war against labor that is essential to a democratic society.  

In his classic study The Making of the English Working Class, E. P. Thompson describes the horrible conditions of the working class during the First Industrial Revolution and how they could have led to a political revolution if Parliament had not addressed some of the problems.  Instead of having a revolution like France, England evolved to develop a liberal bourgeois society that took into account some of the very basic needs of labor. Many intellectuals as well as activists of all types, including Jacobites, Luddites, Owenites, Chartists and all the others protested the absence of social justice until government realized reform was preferable to revolution that the rest of Europe encountered in 1848. The withering away of working class rights, lower living standards, and erosion of social justice affecting workers is extremely dangerous for a democracy in the 21^st century and creates the foundations for social upheaval in the future unless gross socioeconomic inequities and lack of political representation are addressed.

Theme: At the core of the war on workers is the direct correlation between the decline of the social welfare state whose foundations were laid during the Great Depression, and the emergence of “containment militarism” established in the early Cold War, followed by the gradual rise of the corporate welfare state.

Historical Introduction: The Early Cold War 

The war on the working class and especially on unionized or aspiring unionized workers has been relentless with the media, mainstream politicians, and just about anyone trying to mold public opinion to support the existing political economy and its culture. This trend started with the end of WWII and the beginning of the Cold War that the US government used as a pretext to force labor into a docile role in society. This policy was then internationalized (globalized) and governments throughout the world from Latin America to Europe and Asia friendly to the US followed the lead of the superpower of the West.

This is reflected in the split of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) over the Marshall Plan, Truman Doctrine and the hard line of the Truman administration to opt for confrontation instead of coexistence with Moscow and the Soviet bloc. The WFTU had included labor unions from the entire world and helped promote the war effort, but the AFL led a campaign that resulted in the creation of the pro-US anti-Communist International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).

Reflecting the Cold War East-West division, the existence of rival international organizations necessarily weakened labor because national and local trade unions had to choose sides and become co-opted by political parties, thus losing their solidarity and their strength to fight for workers and social justice.  The early Cold War was the beginning of the long decline not just of trade unions, but of labor as a political force in society as it had been during the 1930s and 1940s in the US, some European and some Latin American countries.

The WFT represented an era when labor in most countries was at the zenith of its power because it played such a significant role in the Second World War that made the international political climate possible for the creation of the unified WFTU. However, this global unity and temporary power labor enjoyed in society was bound to be short lived not only because of the Cold War but because of nationalism among trade unions as well as their respective governments; resolve to use them as instruments of their policies. This was as much in the US and the USSR as it was for European, Latin American, and Asian labor central (confederations where regional syndicates were members). 

Trade unions in non-Communist countries operating under the cover of the political opposition paid a high price of persecution. Others were co-opted by governments, something that diminished the credibility of the trade union leadership in the eyes of the rank-and-file. In any case, workers’ interests were compromised either as members of unions that were persecuted or unions co-opted. US-backed right wing regime persecuted labor in Colombia, Peru, South Korea, Greece, Turkey, Iran under the Shah, Philippines, South Africa, to mention only a few of the countries where labor had few rights and where the anti-Communist campaign was used to persecute workers and deny them social justice. Added to this reality of Cold War labor politics, the great shift in manufacturing from the developed to the less developed nations contributed to the gradual demise of the trade unions and to the erosion of working class living standards because their counterparts in the Southern Hemisphere were earning a great deal less and enjoyed far fewer benefits. (For more on this issue see “US Foreign Policy and the World Federation of Trade Unions”, Jon Kofas, Diplomatic History, Vol. 26 No. 1 2002) 

The Reagan-Thatcher Decade

After the early Cold War that placed political perimeters on organized labor, the next big blow to the working class as a whole came during the Reagan-Thatcher decade. From Truman to Reagan, organized labor in the US and in pro-West countries had become an integral part of the political establishment, some trade union bosses immersed in corruption, others merely following dictates of management because they knew that the courts would side with employers and not support their struggle. The message to unionized and un-unionized workers was that conformity was the only option, otherwise it was eclipse. Against such a powerful institutional anti-labor tide that included the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the OECD, and numerous think tanks that argued against giving any power to labor, most workers became disillusioned and simply tried to survive rather than fight for working class rights and social justice through labor solidarity.  

Receiving new life in the 1980s in the US, the anti-labor trend gradually spread to the rest of the world in the age of globalization and neoliberal policies. Many observers of labor issues may be surprised that the war on labor has prevailed in Europe that traditionally respected labor rights under varieties of regimes, from conservative to Socialist, all embracing neoliberal policies that at their core are vehemently anti-labor. Although university studies as well as those conducted by the International Labor Office (ILO), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and other mainstream international organizations.

Even in the former Communist bloc where the proletariat was once the national symbol the anti-labor movement gained political momentum. The worker and the peasant as symbols of society have been replaced with the millionaire or billionaire businessman invariably linked to public and private sector corruption that go hand in hand.  Not that labor conditions are much different in the one-party state of China that claims to Communism, but practices capitalism and some of the most exploitative conditions in the world at the expense of workers.

Mainstream politics and media portray workers as the enemy of progress and society trying to achieve “bourgeois consensus” under the market economy that its apologists project as the only possible option without any room for criticism outside the system. Whether in the West or in the rest of the world, politicians representing businesses, advocates of globalization and neoliberal orthodoxy, and even workers see not just trade unions, not just the labor movement, but workers as a class as “the enemy” of the status quo.  One must wonder if slaves in ancient Rome detested other slaves because they detested slavery as an institution and saw it as a blemish on society.

It is as though the working class is not producing capital and keeping society going for the parasitic elites living off the profits that labor produces. According to the analysis of mainstream media, politicians and varieties of well-paid analysts, workers are the obstacle and arch enemy to be reduced as closely to slavery as possible, so that the socioeconomic and political elites do not feel threatened by the emergence of working class solidarity. In the culture of liberal bourgeois democracy it is trendy to detest the working class while defending the civil rights of the individual worker who may someday become a businessman and redeem himself as the Calvinist work ethic implies. In the last three decades it is fashionable not to use the term working class at all or to refer to its problems. There is something very seriously wrong when the president of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO, Phil Neuenfeldt, in his effort to save the union against Republican efforts in that state argued during the 2012 elections that there was a growing movement “to reclaim the middle class”, refusing to use the word worker or labor.

The real focus of society, including mainstream trade unions like the conservative AFL-CIO, has been and remains on the middle class and its problems owing to its shrinkage numerically and of course economically. Especially in the US and to a large degree in EU, there is almost a pretense that the working class does not even exist, and society is made up only of one large middle class with variations.

No doubt, the class structure accounts for antagonism between labor and capital, as it does between labor and the broader middle classes that identify with capital where their aspirations rest. Of course, if everyone belonged to the capitalist class, there would be a classless utopian society made up of capitalists! Because workers have been the popular base for Communist parties and regimes, it is understandable that hard core anti-Communist conservatives and liberals would detest them. In the age of mass politics of pluralistic societies, the socioeconomic and political elites fear workers because of sheer numbers. The goal is to co-opt them by promising that their policies represent “all citizens”, but in essence there is enormous fear of labor in case the bourgeois parties fail to co-opt them so they can form and maintain a government. The way to maintain control is ceaseless anti-labor propaganda aimed to maintain the status quo.

In his classic work entitled Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, Harry Braverman analyzes the role of the working class in modern society where the state as an instrument of capital places institutional constraints on workers. Written during the Nixon era, Braverman’s study undertook to analyze the changing “new working class” that include “occupations which serve as the repositories for specialized knowledge in production and administration: engineers, technicians, scientists, lower managerial and administrative aides and experts, teachers, etc. ”.  

Class Identity in the Dominant Culture

A much broader definition of the working class is appropriate, considering that even the term itself is a source of confusion in the media and public dialogue. This confusion is deliberate because in bourgeois society class identity is very different than it was in the former Communist bloc. For example, it is interesting that a teacher or a bank teller would rarely identify themselves as “working class”, claiming middle class status instead. The question, of course, is if a banking service worker is middle class, what is the bank president? Is society made up of one large middle class and has capitalism managed to end the class system despite the enormous socioeconomic polarization?

Self-assigned class identity has a great deal to do with how the “dominant culture” that defines the norm in society views and projects the class system and specifically the working class, so that very few people in the working class would identify with it. In short, people prefer class identity of what they aspire to and not what they really are, which is also the basis of how they often vote. One reason for this is that the media and business establishment has been trying to wipe off the image of workers that they are indeed part of the working class and ought to have a working class consciousness. If we live in a bourgeois society, then the only acceptable class consciousness is bourgeois. Even when a fast food chain hires some teenager to flip burgers, or a department store chain hires someone to sell shoes, there is the promise that within months if not weeks that low-paid worker will earn the title “assistant manager”. There are no workers any more, just management that cannot be part of a labor union. Therefore, there is no working class consciousness and no need for a labor union either in the fast food areas or any service sector.

Given that the sociopolitical elites determine the dominant culture that control everything from political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions, the subculture of the working class is always on the periphery rather than mainstream of society. Therefore, class identity necessarily gravitates toward the dominant culture and only a small percentage embraces the subculture, especially minorities. When elements of the subculture are commoditized – commercially exploited in art, music, fashion, sports, etc. – then that element of the working class subculture becomes an integral part (co-opted) by the dominant culture. Class identity itself can be commoditized and transformed thus assuming a sense of socio-cultural legitimacy. In the absence of being part of the dominant culture that is the domain of the elites, there is no socio-cultural legitimacy.

Workers are made to feel that they must either conform to the bourgeois institutional structure and dominant culture, or they have no one to blame but themselves for their failure. In the early 19^th century, English industrial workers took out their frustrations against labor-saving machines in the textile industry. US auto workers had somewhat of an anti-labor-saving device reaction when robotics was introduced. Instead of placing the focus on the labor-management issue, it was worker against the machines.

Rather than focusing on class solidarity, workers tend to focus on why they dislike their follow workers for different reasons, why they dislike workers in another field of work, why they hate their specific job but would be happier doing another as workers, etc. All along, they are dreaming of success as defined by the dominant culture operating under and determined by capitalism. For this worldview of the working class to be inculcated into the mind of the public it takes enormous propaganda and ceaseless effort by all institutions, from political and educational to business and social.

There are many fine scholarly works on how the working class in the US and the Western World has been fighting a losing battle from the end of WWII until today. Braverman’s work is one of many that remains a classic, though a product of the 1969s. Complimenting Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, Monopoly Capital written during the Kennedy-Johnson era, Braverman’s work written from a Marxist perspective is worthy of study and analysis for the mid-20^th century. My only comment is that “degradation of work” was never limited to the mid-20^th century, but it goes as far back as the dawn of civilization and it will continue well into the 21^st century.

If Braverman, Baran and Sweezy were writing today in the age of globalization and neoliberal policies devastating the working class across the world, they would probably see that capital concentration is at much higher levels than in the mid-20^th century, and labor not just in the US but globally in much worse shape after the Reagan-Thatcher decade. Even more tragic, trade unions are weaker and some on the way to eclipse co-opted by the mainstream political parties and divided. Meanwhile, leftist politicians, of all varieties from center-left to far left, are divided and weak against the tide of neoliberal assault on workers, and a new wave of far right wing politics that is just as anti-labor as the traditional conservatives and many liberals.    

Why are workers who keep society going the evil social class and arch enemy to be disciplined by the heroic capitalists? Why must they be forced into docile role in society without a voice in a pluralistic society if they belong in labor unions and forced to submit to whatever capital with the state’s backing offers them? What possible threat do workers represent to bourgeois society in the 21^st century that is free of Communism challenging the West with an alternative social order?

Why is the mainstream media, politicians, well paid pro-business consultants and academics, and just about everyone who is not in the working class deems labor as a threat to be viewed no differently than a military force views its enemy in the battlefield? Even individual workers blame each other for problems in society or they blame groups of workers such as non-unionized service industry laborers blaming auto union workers for the high prices of cars. The enormous executive salaries and profiteering by the company during the upswing business cycle is not to blame for the price of the car, but the auto worker alone is to blame.

I was recently watching a European TV debate with an International Monetary Fund (IMF) representative who argued that everything would be great in the economy of any society, if only business had a completely free hand and workers were not the obstacle. She went on and on about how workers are the enemy of capitalist progress and how governments must contain them. At one point, when another panelist asked who would actually do the work in the absence of workers, she replied that workers’ role is no different than that of any tool under the control of the business owner. The implication was that as a tool, the workers ought to behave accordingly, and suppress any aspirations to their own humanity. As a fan of the rationalist Western tradition, I could not understand the hatred that this IMF representative harbored toward workers, considering that without them business could not function, even if the specific business relied largely on computers and robotics.

How can human beings detest the person who picks tomatoes in the fields, paves the roads, work in a steel factory, anyone who actually produces goods and services for society, instead of trading derivatives in some Wall Street office and making millions through parasitic methods that add no value to the economy? Why is the CEO and executives who drive a company into the ground while walking away with millions the heroes, while the workers who lose their jobs are the violins because they demand their money paid into the defrauded company pension fund? There is no problem when the general taxpayer has to bail out capitalism to the tune of several trillion dollars as was just in the last recession of 2008-2013, but God forbid a worker make any demands for a 25 cent wage and a better health care plan. 

Owing to deplorable working conditions so that Western multinational corporations can make just a bit more profit, 1,129 garment workers were killed in the capital of Bangladesh, but there the outrage for the worst accident of its type in history was not the same by governments and businesses as when workers in factories or service sector want to be unionized. In short, businesses and government project the view that the worker is just a disposable commodity, and not a human being like his capitalist employer.  This is reflected not only in slave labor but also in the reality of illegal work throughout many parts of the world, including all Western nations that have no problems calling themselves democratic but refusing to provide human rights to a segment of the labor force.

The culture of hating workers has become so pervasive that even many workers are ideologically anti-labor and see the working class in the very negative terms that the mainstream media depicts them. How has civilization evolved to hate people who work but praise those who defraud, and what does this say about our values? For the last three and half decades, I have been reading about and watching on TV – both US and European – politicians, journalists, academics, and especially business people on crusade against workers as though all calamities that befell planet earth emanate from anyone in the working class. Especially from the start of the Reagan-Thatcher anti-labor pro-business decade, the worker is the arch enemy of society, an enemy that must be reduced as closely to a docile minimum wage entity without any rights whatever as possible. In the second half of the 21^st century, this mindset is part of a global trend. Hating workers is the safe thing to embrace, while praising anything to do with the working class is an anathema.

It is difficult to find any society from ancient civilizations to the present that honor workers who are responsible for the survival of those that do not work for any number of reasons, whether they old or ill, or they are owners of capital and have others working for them. Plato and Aristotle had nothing kind to say about slaves who did much of the work so that Athenian citizens like Plato and Aristotle could enjoy a life of leisure essential to creative endeavors.   Athenians enjoyed a thriving culture and Spartans a thriving militaristic society because slaves did the work for them. If everyone worked more or less equally in the fields, mines, at sea, in arts and crafts, then there would not be as much time to devote to military affairs for Spartans or to culture and military affairs for Athens. Despite this reality that at the base of a civilization is labor, someone has to work otherwise civilization will become extinguished there has never been a celebration of the peasant or worker as a hero in society.

  

Like Plato and Aristotle, Confucius defended slavery and did not view people doing manual work as anything but lowly in society. In the hierarchical system that Confucius laid out, the value of workers doing the most difficult tasks in society were not appreciated nearly as much as those engaged in intellectual pursuits. There is hardly much appreciation for workers in ancient Egypt, although they kept the imperial system going. Similarly, the Romans had disdain for their slaves, peasants and workers, reflecting the kind of elitism that existed in classical Greece.   

Reflected in the works of the intelligentsia, the master-slave social structure on which the mode of production was based started in Mesopotamia, as a result of wars and the institutionalization of private property. This mode of production prevailed in the Near East, North Africa, ancient Greece and Rome where attitudes about work reflected the disdain of workers, and the value system of the master class whether that class of master were landowners or merchants, invariably with a hegemonic role in state affairs running the government and military. 

Anti-Labor Policies and Dilution of Democracy

There is a direct correlation between anti-labor policies that accelerated in the 1980s and the decline not just of the middle class and social justice, but of democracy in the Western World. There is, of course at the same time of labor’s declining influence in society, the rise of the corporate welfare state. Nowhere is this more evident than in the US and UK after 1980 where we see that the attack on the working class in general is accompanied by a sharp rise in corporate gifts in the form of the fiscal legislation, subsidies and laws that favor capital and its movement on a world scale. For example, the corporate empire of the media giant Murdoch took place under Thatcher whose anti-labor pro-business policies made it possible.   

Among the many hundreds of books and articles on the American working class losing its role in society in the last seventy years, an article by James Gregory, Southernizing the American Working Class, (Labor History, Vol. 39, No 2, 1998) accurately depicts how in the post-WWII era the American working class gradually lapsed into the status of black southern workers; a role that some labor historians compare with Third World workers. Indeed, the American labor force once the envy of the world, has experienced gradual downward mobility, especially from the end of the Vietnam War to the present, and rapidly after the Reagan anti-labor era. At the core of this issue is that workers’ American Dream of owning a home, a car and having the ability to send the kids to college so they can move into the lower middle class has become a distant dream reserved for the few.

In short, the promise of capitalism and democracy has not presented the working class with the fruits they expected, so the institutional mainstream has been appealing to American patriotism and asking people to remain loyal to the status quo because the nation has enemies, like Muslim terrorists. Is there any kind of relationship between the war on terror and the American Dream for the worker? The answer is yes, because the economy has become weaker considerably in the last six decades in relationship to the rest of the world, but military spending has remained very high and the sums devoted to keep corporate welfare strong has made it impossible for the working class to enjoy the fruits of its own labor. How long can the institutional structure remain untouched before there is serious political and social upheaval? It is difficult to say what the boiling point will be in the otherwise fairly conservative American society that fears revolution more than it does a Great Depression that may be coming before the middle of this century.

The working class of EU members was actually making very good progress partly because the social safety net was not as seriously damaged in the rush to adopt neoliberal policies in the 1980s and 1990s as was the case in the US. Moreover, the EU does not have the burden of the massive defense spending problem of the US, and it has a tradition where trade unions have played a role in achieving political consensus under a liberal bourgeois political economy. More significant, Europe has a greater variety of democracies, ranging from the very progressive Norwegian model that some wish to emulate to the more conservative elitist system that exists in Germany where “labor aristocracy” (highly paid trade unionists) are a world apart from unorganized immigrant workers barely making a living.

The major attack on labor has come in the last ten years, largely because the global recession that started in 2007-8 has convinced governments that workers must pay for the losses of the banks and corporations as well as the fiscal problems governments are facing. The so-called austerity measures that either have been implemented officially by the IMF in a number of countries including Ireland, Portugal, Greece and other parts of the world, or unofficially as in Spain, France, Italy, etc. have entailed massive income redistribution from labor to capital. This is clearly seen in statistics that various European and OECD entities have provided, but also in studies that universities and labor institutes have conducted. Why has income redistribution taken place to strengthen capital? The assumption is that the stronger capital is in society, the healthier the economy. Does this assumption hold true, however, if capital is not more equitably distributed so that there can be greater economic and social justice as well as a viable democracy?

Conclusions: Can Democracy Survive with a Weak Working Class?

From the 1940s when labor was at the zenith of its influence in society until today, we have seen a very radical transformation that took place as a result of government policy intended to strengthen capital at the expense of labor. In order to accomplish this goal, there was a much broader institutional effort where mainstream media was at the core of the anti-labor campaign. Whereas during the Roosevelt and Truman presidencies newspapers devoted articles on labor affairs, by the end of the century it is almost impossible to find any newspaper, TV, radio, or web page devoting any articles on labor issues. By contrast, there is no end to media outlets devoting all kinds of news and analysis on business matters, as though business does not require workers to run it but somehow runs itself and workers have simply vanished from the face of the earth.    

The value system of the bourgeois society is reflected in our daily institutional dealings. This issue was perfectly captured when Pope Francis wondered why it is that media goes into a hysteria mode when the stock market drop by a couple of percentage points, but never mention that a homeless woman dies on a park bench in the middle of winter in New York city? What does it say about society when its entire focus is on markets that benefit the small percentage of the rich, while the many problems of the many are ignored?  
Can such a society be a functioning democracy, or simply call itself so for the sake of appearances? By the early 21^st century, it is much clearer to look back around the middle of the 20^th century to see how the gradual demise of organized labor and the institutionalization of anti-labor ideology and policies are directly linked to downsizing the social welfare state. Many scholars wonder if democracy can survive without a strong middle class.  My question is can there be a future of democracy in the absence of a solid working class that in essence supports the viable middle class?

HUMAN NATURE AND WAR: A Historical-Philosophical Perspective

Introduction: Human Nature and War

The subject of war is one that scholars in different fields have studied throughout history. Even today, anything to do with war – from large defense contractors to motion pictures and video games - is big business. What does this say about the fascination of people with the ultimate form of mass destruction?  Philosophers, priests and poets have all dealt with the topic and how it is a reflection of who we are as a species. In modern times, psychologists and varieties of social scientists have made their contributions, as have celebrated writers like Leo Tolstoy and Ernest Hemmingway.  For novelists to be devoting so much work to this topic, it reveals that it goes to the heart of our societal structures and how they shape the nature of human beings that in turn shape those structures.  

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt deal with war as a perverse force that affords meaning to an otherwise alienating life in a world of nihilism. Existentialist interpretations of war as something that can be fulfilling against the background of mass politics and mass alienation is something to contemplate, although by no means should one fall into the trap of assuming that human beings are not conditioned into accepting war as natural like the weather. 

Perhaps there is something fascinating about war, given that Hollywood has devoted billions of dollars producing war films depicting nothing less than the worst in human nature, yet, managing to romanticize and honor it as though to tell the audience that mass destruction is just another aspect of life. After all, if human are innately aggressive like other animals. War makes perfect sense.   Of course we are not so sure what other species regards mass destruction as an honorable enterprise and takes pride at it, deriving a sense of power as though it is a godly trait to kill people for no reason other than the government said “they are the enemy”.  Some psychologists blame not the soldiers doing the killing, but the personality disorders in the leaders. After all, it could not possibly be the fault of the Nazi soldier carrying out atrocious acts in WWII, but it was all Hitler and the blame stops there and goes no father. 

Thinkers embracing pessimistic assumptions about human nature – Machiavelli, Hobbes, for example – conclude that human beings are capable of just about any atrocity the mind can conceive, so aggression in human nature finds expression in all forms, including war.  Life itself is a struggle, according to Thomas Hobbes who lived during the bloody English Civil War (1642- 1650) witnessed the destruction of his country owing to a war based on political, religious and socioeconomic differences that failed to find consensus until the Glorious Revolution of 1689. Unlike Hobbes who saw war as an innate or instinctive human trait, perhaps because human beings fall from grace and committed sin against their own creator according to Christians, Jon Locke living a generation after Hobbes insisted that war is an aberration of the human condition while harmony is the norm.  

Needless to say, the topic is far too complex for any one academic discipline to explain without taking into account every other’s perspective. In the absence of devoting an encyclopedia to this topic, it is simply not possible to do justice to it. For that reason, I will focus my analysis here on certain aspects that reveal underlying causes of war and its continuity in society throughout the history of the world. 

Ancient Beliefs about War: Classical Greece, Rome, India and China

Wars – organized and institutionalized conflict under the aegis of the state - began with the dawn of civilization when the earliest tribal invaders known as Sumerians took over the lower Mesopotamian region, an area that has endured thousands of wars in the last five thousand years and remains in turmoil to this day.  Unlike modern day politicians making pretenses about the causes of war, ancient Sumerians were honest about why they engaged in conflict with other tribes and city-states; the goal was to capture trade routes, loot them, secure slaves for labor, and impose hegemony upon them. 

The war s between Athens and Sparta – Peloponnesian Wars – created a pacifist trend as revealed in the works of Thucydides (Peloponnesian Wars), Aristophanes (Lysistrata, 411),  and Euripides (Trojan Women, 415 BC) all critical of militarism amnd from the perspective of the victims rather than the conquerors.  Plato and his pupil Aristotle argued that war was an integral part of state structure, a concept that Alexander the Great put into practice by ruling through perpetual warfare.  

The concept of honor and duty in war was introduced by the Hindu faith and later by the ancient Greeks. In the Homeric epics – Trojan War - war becomes a virtue, while the ancient Spartans, themselves invaders of the indigenous population of southern Greece, linked warfare to the highest noble aspect of human nature and the greatest pursuit for humanity. By the fifth century B.C., Athens under a democratic city-state, discovers that war can be justified in the name of freedom and democracy – as we see in the work of Thucydides, The Melian Dialogue. The concept of war for the sake of freedom and democracy became popular with the US from the Woodrow Wilson presidency (under missionary diplomacy) until the present when every military and covert intervention that the US has undertaken is nothing less than a crusade to “save the people invaded and placed under some type of hegemonic control”.

To explain why human beings kill each other in organized conflicts sanctioned by the state, philosophers and scholars of various disciplines argued that it is inevitable to have organized conflict between societies because it is a reflection of innate aggressive traits in human nature, and symptomatic of military, political, economic and social conditions that reflect antagonism rather than harmony and coexistence.  Plato, Aristotle, Roman and Christian thinkers accepted the view of war as necessary, even acceptable, as did the Hindus in India.  In China, however, the status of the soldier was lowly, equated with that of a dog, despite the fact that China also has a long history of organized conflict and internal colonization, just like Russia – Eurasia. 

Closer to the Spartan worldview on war, the Roman intellectuals and politicians identified war with civic duty, and the soldier is a symbol of reverence rather than a necessary evil as some Chinese intellectuals saw it. Death in the battlefield was a virtue, rather than a dreaded reality. Despite an ideology of war that the political social and military elites used to justify it, the fundamental causes and goals were no different for Rome than they were for Sumeria and Athens. As was the case in Athens, there were pacifists in Rome. Philosophers of Stoicism, a cosmopolitan school of thought reflecting the cultural structure of Rome, contended that all humanity is one. Therefore, war is unacceptable because it destruction of humanity. However, this was in the early stages of Stoicism. Once Stoicism became the official school of thought for the Roman Empire, war became acceptable. 

Dating back five thousand years, Hinduism does not object to armed conflict if it is carried out in the name of protecting property and people from evil and injustice. Hinduism as well as Buddhism as an offshoot after the 6^th century BC adamantly oppose war for the purpose oppressing people and causing violence against them. More so with Buddhism, non-violence is essential for spiritual transcendence and salvation possible only through meditation and wisdom.  

Like most religions, Hinduism condemns war on moral grounds but also insist it is a matter of honor and duty, while cowardice is infamy. Hindus throughout their history conducted  warfare, despite the taming influence of some pacifist voices against it. In a conversation regarding the morality of war between Ajuna and Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita (Hindu “Bible”), the following passages reveal the contradictions.  “I do not see how any good can come from killing my own kinsmen in battle, nor can I desire any subsequent victory…I would consider it better for the sons of Dhrtarastra to kill me than to fight with them. … Consider your specific duty, you should know that there is no better engagement for you than fighting for religious principles. If however, you do not fight this religious war, you will certainly incur sins for neglecting your duties and thus lose your reputation as a fighter.”

While Hinduism like all religions respects all life, this does not mean that the followers and especially the leaders who espouse religious doctrines and a body of ethics rooted in pacifism follow such a path. On the contrary, religion is invariably used to justify mass violence. A power-rooted if not crusader mentality takes precedence in those who rule because the ethics of pacifism entails weakness, if not manipulation or some type of subjugation by the strong. The great warrior king Ashoka (269-232 BC) is a good example in ancient Indian history as one of the bloodiest rulers who in embracing Buddhism realized that there is no glory, victory or justice in war.

Pacifism was an underlying pacifist trend among all religions, but most pronounced about the oneness of humanity so characteristic of Indian religions can be found in Guru Nanak (1469-1534), the first Sikh Guru who wrote a hymn regarding the sacredness of life and peace.
‘No one is my enemy
No one is a foreigner
With all I am at peace
God within us renders us
Incapable of hate and prejudice.’

The importance of non-violence and the equality of all humans is a belief that decries war while promoting the spiritual reverence of humans and their creativity that wars obviously destroy. If human beings are special because of their creative potential, then war is their enemy.  

Some scholars contend that China’s history is not militaristic, like that of the West. However, China had its share of wars, especially from the 10^th to the 13^th century, an era that coincides with the zenith of Arab civilization. Wars also characterize Chinese history during the Ming dynasty from the mid-14^th to the mid-17^th century, an era when Europe experiences its Commercial Revolution and expands outward in search of colonies. In The Art of War, Sun Tzu outlines various aspects of warfare that influenced the Chinese from ancient times to the present. China’s wars focused on its internal politics and internal colonization similar to Russia, and mostly of defensive mode against Japan and the West. This is unlike the West where the object was to take trade routes and conquer colonies. 

The Han Dynasty (206BC-220 AD) may be pointed to as an exceptionally enlightened, but it lived and declined by the sword as the Roman Empire. China’s history is one of wars, especially from the 10^th to the 13^th century, an era that coincides with the zenith of Arab civilization. Wars also characterize Chinese history during the Ming dynasty from the mid-14^th to the mid-17^th century, an era when Europe experiences its Commercial Revolution and expands outward in search of colonies.  

Living in China five centuries before Christ, Confucius provided a moral guide for institutional and individual practices. A moral guide that has prevailed in much of East Asia for twenty five centuries, the system Confucius laid down has had far reaching influence in East Asia for the past 25 centuries. Unlike Christ, Mohammad and the Buddha, Confucius did not focus on afterlife. It is believed he stated that he would only worry about the “next world”, only after figuring out the proper way to live in this one.  More interested in social relations and maintaining order in society without overturning the status quo, he believed that war has no place in society if everyone just follows their proper role – clearly an optimistic way of thinking. If there is war, then Confucianism has failed. 

Confucianism has shaped a certain perception of Chinese security strategy, symbolized by the defensive, nonaggressive Great Wall. Many believe China is antimilitary and reluctant to use force against its enemies. It practices pacifism and refrains from expanding its boundaries, even when nationally strong. They adopted defensive strategies when their country was weak and pursued expansive goals, such as territorial acquisition, enemy destruction, and total military victory, when their country was strong. Despite the dominance of an antimilitarist Confucian culture, warfare was not uncommon in the bulk of Chinese history. Grounding his research in primary Chinese sources, Wang outlines a politics of power that are crucial to understanding China's strategies today, especially its policy of "peaceful development," which, he argues, the nation has adopted mainly because of its military, economic, and technological weakness in relation to the United States.

Ancient Rome and Medieval Christianity

The Roman militarist ideal, also found in other ancient societies, becomes an important legacy of Western Civilization passed on through Christianity. The history of Rome was roughly 1000 years of war with interval of peace, a history that left a legacy on the Barbarians who inherited Rome’s militarist legacy and passed it on to European Christendom.  Like Stoicism in its early stage, Christianity was pacifist and more non-violent than any humanist philosophy. However, in its institutional stage, Christianity advances numerous justifications for war, adding God into the equation, making it war a holy affair instead of a secular one as it really is. St. Augustine, a Platonist, was the first Christian theologian to advance arguments in favor of war, arguing that defense necessarily entailed going to war. 

St. Thomas Aquinas, an Aristotelian, argued that peace is preferable, but war is necessary to defend the integrity of the realm. Between Augustine writing during the Fall of Rome in the 5^th century, and Aquinas writing in the late Middle Ages, St. Gregory of Tours and Einhard, both representing Barbarian Christendom, argued that war was moral only if carried out in defense of the faith and its institutions, but immoral for any other reason.  Religious institutional interests transcend any other consideration, including individual life. Therefore, killing Barbarian pagans who refuse to yield to Christianity is moral, whereas harming Christians or church property in the course of war is immoral. This was the birth of Christian ‘exceptionalism’ that would lead to Christian imperialism and it would be used as the doctrine to justify the crusades from the 11^th to the 13^th century.  

To glorify God the Papacy and Christendom, many thousands of European knights rushed to “save the Holy land”, a place dripping with blood for more than a thousand years.  Of course, the real goal of the crusaders was to capture trade routes of the Near East, the Arab gold trade and set up colonies at the core of Muslim territories, not far from Byzantium.  Crusader thinking about trade, gold and hegemony finding expression in religious wars would ultimately shape European thinking about wars of colonization in the 15^th, 16^th and 17^th century.

A significant consequence of religious wars between Christians and Muslims – the Crusades -  was not just the wars of colonialism by Portugal and Spain in the late 15^th and early 16^th century, but northwest Europe and Russia. Northwest Europe’s colonial exploits through warfare are well documented, as they launched a new era in North-South, East-West divisions of the planet, along with racism thinly veiled behind the cloak of Christianity and Western civilization. Russia too began wars against Muslim-dominated Ottoman Empire, and just like its European counterparts, Russia under Catherine the Great in the 18^th century (Enlightenment) passed laws legally discriminating against minorities, including Jews. In other words, wars against distant lands and non-Christian religions had reverberations back home where war became both a catalyst for national unity and conformity to the regime, as well as a pretext for the domestic elites to consolidate power and isolate minorities deemed a threat to the status quo.

Were there any voices of reason and pacifism amid such strong institutional tides of war from the Iberian to Eurasia? In 1510, Dutch theologian Disiderius Erasmus published ANTI-POLEMUS, or the PLEA OF REASON, RELIGION, AND HUMANITY AGAINST WAR. Arguing that war was antithetical to human nature because people are not born with an innate proclivity to destroy, Erasmus believed that humans wish to love and serve their fellow man. A Christian humanist, Erasmus represented a minority view, considering that German theologian Martin Luther  had no problem with war as long as it was NOT carried out by the Church or against Christians. Luther made an exception even for Christians during the German Peasants War in the mid-1520s.   

A few decades later, Marx and Engels argued that war s an instrument of the elites trying to exert control over the masses at home and abroad. According to Marist thought, war is symptomatic of the class system in which the socioeconomic elites control the state and determine policy to advance their interests against the working class that does the actual fighting, killing and dying in war. A few decades after Marx and Engels, V.I. Lenin (Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism) argued that war is inevitable owing to the global struggle for markets between the hegemonic nation-states. This thinking makes sense if one considers that Lenin was a product of the Age of New Imperialism (1870-1914) that witnessed a series of regional conflicts ultimately leading to the First World War. 

If we accept that WWI led to WWII, then 19^th century wars of Imperialism were the genesis of 20^th century global wars. The Marxist-Leninist war theory includes social, economic, political and cultural factors, rather than isolating causes of war on human nature or environment as determining factors. As followers of the rationalist tradition that assumes human nature is prone to harmony rather than conflict, the Marxist school of thought dismisses the psychological factors that it sees as products of societal conditioning and symptomatic of the uneven conditions between social classes.    

In contrast to Marxist theory on war, there were 19^th and 20^th century thinkers mesmerized by war, depicting it as a mythological transcendent experience. Most of these thinkers came from the German militarist tradition that celebrates the warrior-hero as much in myth and folklore as in politics given that German unification came not as a result of diplomacy and  compromise , but war against Austria first and then France as a catalyst to rallying support behind Otto von Bismarck’s Prussian foreign policy. In The Will to Power and in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, F. Nietzsche indicates that war is the essence of human nature that allows humans to transcend the mediocrity of Christian pacifist morality. 

Nietzsche the existentialist thinker was focusing on the individual and the pursuit of the individual transcending experience through the kind of exercise of power. According to Nietzsche, this ideal existed among the pre-Socratics – for example, we read in Heraclitus that: One must know that war is common and justice is strife, and that all things happen by strife and necessity.  War is father of all and king of all: some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free.  This kind of realism (ethical realism) in the world of the constant becoming, Heraclitus demonstrates that the essence of being is change and that does not come harmoniously because even harmony is the result of opposing forces coexisting.  Heraclitus did not advocate war any more than Nietzsche, regardless of how the German philosopher’s views were twisted by the militarist racist Nazi regime. 

More important German thinkers than Nietzsche contributing to German, European and US militaristic psychology were Heinrich von Treitschke, Friedrich von Bernhardi and Karl von Clausewitz, the latter in the group by far the most celebrated among Western politicians, military analysts and fans of warfare.  A rationalist and realist coming out of the Age of Reason, Clausewitz argued that "War is the continuation of Politik (policy) by other means". We could assume that there is a sense of stark realism here because indeed where diplomacy ends war may indeed start because it is but an instrument of policy in the hands of those conducting diplomacy to achieve a certain goal. While this is a view that hard realists may accept as unavoidable, some could argued against his view that the interplay between national character and military functions defines the nation in the modern world. This Prussian militaristic view would leave a far reaching mark on Prussia and later Germany and it would define its history until the end of WWII.

 A contemporary of Bismarck and witness to the “Blood and Iron” route that Germany followed, Treitschke argued that if the duty of the state is to maintain relations with other states, than the bounds of the state are not confined to the sovereign territory. Ignoring the right of national sovereignty and right to exist under self-determination that war obviously upsets, he argued that armed conflict is a manifestation of a great society.   This kind of nationalism (the individual must submit to the duties of the state) as expressed in the age of Social Darwinism (blatant racism) and European colonialism in Africa and Asia represents the euphoria that Treitschke projected in his work and the spirit of nationalists.

Not too far from such views, Bernhardi was also a product of Prussian militarism, best known for his book, Deutschland und der Nächste Krieg where he argued that war is merely a function by which civilized nation-states express their true greatness. In fact, he had no regard for international treaties and believed that there was “divinity” in armed conflict between nations.  

Existentialism and War

Precursors to Existentialism are found in 19^th century Europe, varying in views from Soren Kierkegaard to F. Nietzsche.  After World War I when Europe was thoroughly devastated and the rationalism of the Enlightenment proved futile against the reality of mass destruction, Existentialism became popular. Anxiety and despair hovered over the European middle class that lost any sense of security as a result of the war, followed by the Great Depression. Existentialists merely reflected this sense of anxiety and despair, especially Jean-Paul-Sartre.

 Before WWI, the search for meaning was not questioned because religion for the traditionalists, science and technology for the modernists offered solutions, and for both sides there was an assumption of the Hegelian upward line of steady progress in civilization. All of it was destroyed by war and the Existentialists stepped in to make sense of the human condition, of the absence of dignity and security in society.  The “glory and honor” of WWI had resulted in total destruction and chaos where order was simply assumed as a given in Western Civilization that assumed itself superior to all others on the planet. Suddenly, nothing made sense, nothing was clear, as Albert Camus was trying to establish; everything including creative endeavors like art questioned, for if life is so cheap as to easily destroy it en masse, how can there be purpose. The Decline of the West (Oswald Spengler)reflected not only Hollow Men (T.S. Elliot), but a hollow civilization. 

 Late 20^th century existentialist thinkers have argued that war is a destructive human tendency, for it provides the illusion of meaning, honor and greatness, a transcending experience of the individual who identifies with the nation-state that is presumably eternal while the individual is finite. For existentialists, engaging in war where the object is to destroy other people and their property, presumably to conquer them and their territory, affords the individual militarist with numerous illusions that provide a sense of satisfaction for the self.

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             War can be a god-like experience because killing other people that the soldier has never met and has no motive other than ideological, entails constructing animosity inside the human mind that fills the void with a sense of high purpose.    

2.    
          War is the ultimate sense of adventure to feel like an animal hunted down and at the same time a hunter doing the hunting against the other to be killed. This reveals a sense of self-hatred and self-destruction as well as a sense of daring or trying to defy death thus testing finiteness of life.

3      War affords the illusion that by killing the other under legal cover the individual transcends atomistic goals because duty and service in the name of patriotism are eternal while the individual is temporary. In short, there is the illusion from ancient times to the present that eternity is somehow guaranteed through carrying out soldier duties – in conventional military force, or guerrilla type where the individual feels the same sense of inner reward. 

4.       Killing en masse indiscriminately, while enjoying legal cover under the legitimacy of the state at the individual and societal level, killing indiscriminately en masse affords the illusion of spiritual cleansing, removing evil and restoring good as though life is a myth of Barbarian tribes killing each other for the sake of achieving hero– worship status- Beowulf, Attila the Hun, etc. Deeply rooted in cultural values, the hero-soldier myth inculcated into the mind of the young man as a destructive machine reflects the sense of helplessness at the individual and societal level to the degree that salvation is sought through a hero-destroyer. 

5.       The supernatural element and the warrior-hero mentality invariably go hand-in-hand, as the warrior lives inside his own mind and has illusions of grandeur and believes that he has the power to ‘save’ the world by eliminating ‘enemies’ and making the world safe from ‘evil’, although the means – mass destruction through war -to achieve the goal are unquestionably evil. 

Conclusions

There is a legitimate philosophical and political question of whether war is as inevitable as the progress of science and technology that actually helps to make war possible in more destructive manner than ever.  Those who embrace the Freudian view, with Thomas Hobbes among others as precursors, that humans are irrational and fundamentally aggressive conclude that indeed there will always be wars until the end of the human species. These scholars argue that because humans are the only species that enjoys killing for sport, deriving pleasure from the pain and destruction of the other, this is a manifestation of the essential destructive core in human nature.   

On the other side, there is the rationalist camp beginning with John Locke as a precursor of the Age of Reason that denies human beings are innately evil and wish to cause harm to the other because reason dictates that leads to self-destruction.  In this camp, there are those who maintain that human nature is subject to conditioning by society, its culture and institutions.  If this is so, war is symptomatic of any given social and political structure. The only area of agreement between the rationalist school of thought and that of the Hobbes=Freud line is the pessimism about the end result, which is war is inevitable.  

Written in the 1860s, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace romanticizes the innocent common people and demonizes the elites for causing wars that plague the innocent. Representing a long-standing tradition among Russian intellectuals that deplored violence in any form and longed for harmony in society, Tolstoy believed that the way to change society was through a cultural revolution rather than a political one, that is to say, society can change through education the arts, and culture in general. As much as I find this solution desirable, I am pessimistic that anything but the solution Jean-Jacques Rousseau offers in dictating that people must be forced to be free makes sense.  In other words, there is only a political solution to war and it cannot be subject to an open debate. There is always a segment in society that profits from the war-machine industry, a segment that glorifies war for ideological reasons, a segment that is nationalistic, etc. Therefore, peace must be imposed upon a reluctant humanity that may choose otherwise.