An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation. Thorstein Veblen

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СКАЧАТЬ enlisting the community's moral convictions. The common man must be persuaded that right is on his side. "Thrice is he armed who knows his quarrel just." The grounds of this conviction may often be tawdry enough, but the conviction is a necessary factor in the case.

      The requisite moral sanction may be had on various grounds, and, on the whole, it is not an extremely difficult matter to arrange. In the simplest and not infrequent case it may turn on a question of equity in respect of trade or investment as between the citizens or subjects of the several rival nations; the Chinese "Open Door" affords as sordid an example as may be desired. Or it may be only an envious demand for a share in the world's material resources—"A Place in the Sun," as a picturesque phrase describes it; or "The Freedom of the Seas," as another equally vague and equally invidious demand for international equity phrases it. These demands are put forward with a color of demanding something in the way of equitable opportunity for the commonplace peaceable citizen; but quite plainly they have none but a fanciful bearing on the fortunes of the common man in time of peace, and they have a meaning to the nation only as a fighting unit; apart from their prestige value, these things are worth fighting for only as prospective means of fighting. The like appeal to the moral sensibilities may, again, be made in the way of a call to self-defense, under the rule of Live and let live; or it may also rest on the more tenuous obligation to safeguard the national integrity of a weaker neighbor, under a broader interpretation of the same equitable rule of Live and let live. But in one way or another it is necessary to set up the conviction that the promptings of patriotic ambition have the sanction of moral necessity.

      It is not that the line of national policy or patriotic enterprise so entered upon with the support of popular sentiment need be right and equitable as seen in dispassionate perspective from the outside, but only that it should be capable of being made to seem right and equitable to the biased populace whose moral convictions are requisite to its prosecution; which is quite another matter. Nor is it that any such patriotic enterprise is, in fact, entered on simply or mainly on these moral grounds that so are alleged in its justification, but only that some such colorable ground of justification or extenuation is necessary to be alleged, and to be credited by popular belief.

      It is not that the common man is not sufficiently patriotic, but only that he is a patriot hampered with a plodding and uneasy sense of right and honest dealing, and that one must make up one's account with this moral bias in looking to any sustained and concerted action that draws on the sentiment of the common man for its carrying on. But the moral sense in the case may be somewhat easily satisfied with a modicum of equity, in case the patriotic bias of the people is well pronounced, or in case it is reenforced with a sufficient appeal to self-interest. In those cases where the national fervor rises to an excited pitch, even very attenuated considerations of right and justice, such as would under ordinary conditions doubtfully bear scrutiny as extenuating circumstances, may come to serve as moral authentication for any extravagant course of action to which the craving for national prestige may incite. The higher the pitch of patriotic fervor, the more tenuous and more thread-bare may be the requisite moral sanction. By cumulative excitation some very remarkable results have latterly been attained along this line.

      Patriotism is evidently a spirit of particularism, of aliency and animosity between contrasted groups of persons; it lives on invidious comparison, and works out in mutual hindrance and jealousy between nations. It commonly goes the length of hindering intercourse and obstructing traffic that would patently serve the material and cultural well-being of both nationalities; and not infrequently, indeed normally, it eventuates in competitive damage to both.

      All this holds true in the world of modern civilisation, at the same time that the modern civilised scheme of life is, notoriously, of a cosmopolitan character, both in its cultural requirements and in its economic structure. Modern culture is drawn on too large a scale, is of too complex and multiform a character, requires the cooperation of too many and various lines of inquiry, experience and insight, to admit of its being confined within national frontiers, except at the cost of insufferable crippling and retardation. The science and scholarship that is the peculiar pride of civilised Christendom is not only international, but rather it is homogeneously cosmopolitan; so that in this bearing there are, in effect, no national frontiers; with the exception, of course, that in a season of patriotic intoxication, such as the current war has induced, even the scholars and scientists will be temporarily overset by their patriotic fervour. Indeed, with the best efforts of obscurantism and national jealousy to the contrary, it remains patently true that modern culture is the culture of Christendom at large, not the culture of one and another nation in severalty within the confines of Christendom. It is only as and in so far as they partake in and contribute to the general run of Western civilisation at large that the people of any one of these nations of Christendom can claim standing as a cultured nation; and even any distinctive variation from this general run of civilised life, such as may give a "local colour" of ideals, tastes and conventions, will, in point of cultural value, have to be rated as an idle detail, a species of lost motion, that serves no better purpose than a transient estrangement.

      So also, the modern state of the industrial arts is of a like cosmopolitan character, in point of scale, specialisation, and the necessary use of diversified resources, of climate and raw materials. None of the countries of Europe, e.g., is competent to carry on its industry by modern technological methods without constantly drawing on resources outside of its national boundaries. Isolation in this industrial respect, exclusion from the world market, would mean intolerable loss of efficiency, more pronounced the more fully the given country has taken over this modern state of the industrial arts. Exclusion from the general body of outlying resources would seriously cripple any one or all of them, and effectually deprive them of the usufruct of this technology; and partial exclusion, by prohibitive or protective tariffs and the like, unavoidably results in a partial lowering of the efficiency of each, and therefore a reduction of the current well-being among them all together.

      Into this cultural and technological system of the modern world the patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in the bearings. Its net contribution to the outcome is obscuration, distrust, and retardation at every point where it touches the fortunes of modern mankind. Yet it is forever present in the counsels of the statesmen and in the affections of the common man, and it never ceases to command the regard of all men as the prime attribute of manhood and the final test of the desirable citizen. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that no other consideration is allowed in abatement of the claims of patriotic loyalty, and that such loyalty will be allowed to cover any multitude of sins. When the ancient philosopher described Man as a "political animal," this, in effect, was what he affirmed; and today the ancient maxim is as good as new. The patriotic spirit is at cross purposes with modern life, but in any test case it is found that the claims of life yield before those of patriotism; and any voice that dissents from this order of things is as a voice crying in the wilderness.

      To anyone who is inclined to moralise on the singular discrepancies of human life this state of the case will be fruitful of much profound speculation. The patriotic animus appears to be an enduring trait of human nature, an ancient heritage that has stood over unshorn from time immemorial, under the Mendelian rule of the stability of racial types. It is archaic, not amenable to elimination or enduring suppression, and apparently not appreciably to be mitigated by reflection, education, experience or selective breeding.

      Throughout the historical period, and presumably through an incalculable period of the unrecorded past, patriotic manslaughter has consistently been weeding out of each successive generation of men the most patriotic among them; with the net result that the level of patriotic ardor today appears to be no lower than it ever was. At the same time, with the advance of population, of culture and of the industrial arts, patriotism has grown increasingly disserviceable; and it is to all appearance as ubiquitous and as powerful as ever, and is held in as high esteem.

      The continued prevalence of this archaic animus among the modern peoples, as well as the fact that it is universally placed high among the virtues, must be taken to argue that it is, in its elements, an hereditary trait, of the nature of an inborn impulsive propensity, rather than a product of habituation. It is, in substance, СКАЧАТЬ