Ruminations On The Centennial Of The Great War

      As the 100yr anniversary of WWI nears we can be sure to hear all the familiar platitudes about Americans defending freedom against aggression from our domestic media. Other nations will have plenty of cum laudes to heap upon themselves and everyone agrees that there is a wealth of personal heroism and sacrifice to celebrate. This is about all that the involved nations agree upon as they each have their own ideas of what exactly caused this dreadful conflict and who we can blame for it. It is somewhat incredible that such a vitally important event (many even blame it for WWII) could still after all these years defy explanation. It seems obvious that the main impediment to finding common ground is the continued necessity of using the Great War to support nationalistic narratives that have become essential to political ideologies. Untangling these threads is essential to understanding what went wrong with civilization and how to stop anything like it from happening again.
      A short piece in the WSJ illustrated some of the problems in setting down a comprehensive narrative that all the nations participating in the commemoration can agree upon, although they have all concurred that the message should be one of European “friendship and unity.” Serbians don't want to accept their share of the blame, Flanders is showboating to gain credentials as a principality worthy of independence, Germany is supposedly ignoring the event (I can't imagine why), Bosnian nationalists are praising Ferdinan's assassin as a hero, and the British have an internal struggle over whether to lionize or excoriate their generals. The succession of events that lead to the worst conflict ever seen on the planet are notoriously complex and many of the volatile issues then remain so now. Let us try and use the occasion to make explicit what the key factors were, politically, technologically, and psychologically. It may be that this inquiry is just as relevant today as it was 100 years ago. We would like to believe that this sort of thing can no longer happen on such a brutal scale, looking perhaps to the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) as a nuclear shield. Though it seems to be unlikely that any rational leader would initiate such a conflict, this certitude is no reason to become mentally lethargic and not seek other solutions, especially if we want to see a nuke-free planet.
On the technological advances that made WWI possible there is a wide concurrence of opinion. German military successes against France in the 1800s made it apparent that strategic changes would have to be made in any country that wanted to have a chance on the modern battlefield. Regarding the new German tactics Carroll Quigley writes: “ Moltke's great contribution was to be found in the fact that, by using the railroad and the telegraph, he was able to merge mobilization and attack into a single operation so that the final concentration of his forces took place in the enemy country, practically on the battlefield itself, just before contact with the main enemy forces took place.” In the age of mass armies the side that could launch an offensive on the partially-mobilized forces of the foe would have a clear advantage. Mobilization became practically equivalent to invasion and the ability to move from a state of armed crisis back to peace was hampered by the limits of communications and the necessity for detailed plans of an offensive nature. Echoes of this problem can be seen in today's headlines with NATO crying foul-play over Russian military exercises near the Ukrainian border in Europe, while in Asia North Korea complains about the stress the South's maneuvers are placing on their own army. In today's world a military training exercise can be turned into an offensive, resulting in armies training for war against each other at the same time on the same border; in the pre-1914 world this would not have been possible without actual invasions taking place since they lacked the flexibility of modern forces.

     Alliances evolved to reflect the dangerous state of affairs. With offensive action holding such a prominent place in their playbooks the signal for one nation to mobilize meant that all their allies also began to carry out their own offensive mobilizations. Quigley again: “It encouraged extremism, because a country with allies would be bolder than a country with no allies, and because allies in the long run did not act to restrain one another.” The vital alliances could only be maintained by giving wholehearted military support to one conflict or another, eventually this support was bound to be forthcoming at a synchronistic moment, as it did in 1914, even if political solutions were available.
     Another aggravating factor was the mass-media's new role in democratic regimes. Nationalistic feeling combined with cut-throat politics to hand election victories to demagogues of violence who displayed no qualities of dithering weakness for their domestic rivals to harp on. There were also increasing numbers of topics for discord among nations that had to become politically involved in commerce to compete in a global economy. Technologically, economically and politically humankind was obviously at its apex, but the great achievement of humanity were turning ugly and no one could agree why. Industrialization had already produced massive gains for the urbanites while it penetrated and destroyed localized old-school economies. The idealism of the previous century had whet the appetite of the industrialized world to reap the benefits that technology could offer in dominating the undeveloped world; in particular the rise of Germany and her attempt to establish colonies was destructive to the balance of power. Between the rise of Germany as an economic powerhouse, the fall of the Ottoman system, and the new economic perogatives in foreign policy; the tensions became more and more polarizing. Eventually France and Britain decided to work out their colonial differences so that France could focus on German power at home while the British could try and stamp out the emerging naval and colonial power of the Germans. Thus were the lines drawn.

     The cumulative psychological impact of the many changes facing the world had a poisonous effect on leadership. War seemed so inevitable that the real question was only “when?” As Quigley says, “The success of Bizmark's policy of 'blood and iron' tended to justify the use of force and intimidation in international affairs, and to distort the role of diplomacy so that the old type of diplomacy began to disappear. Instead of a discussion between gentlemen to find a workable solution, diplomacy became an effort to show the opposition how strong one was in... Metternich's old definition, that 'a diplomat was a man who never permitted himself the pleasure of a triumph,' became lost completely.” The prevailing mood of diplomatic “desperation” caused leaders to value a strong first-strike on an unprepared enemy to become more tempting than working things out at the conference table, since war would come what may.

     Any person's analysis of what exactly was the chief problem in this period says a lot about what their particular world-view happens to be. The world before the war can be compared to the ida of a “state of nature” of early political theory. Exactly what this state of nature was before political activity began determines the proper role of the state in the present. If we believe that this natural state was one of brutal conflict we shall accept the rule of a monarch as a lesser evil as Hobbes said. If we are nostalgic for nature, as Locke was, then the government must take on a minimalist approach. In the current discussion, whatever problems lead to WWI will most likely be blamed for present ills too. Did global capitalism reach the point of kill or be killed? Did bankers hijack the policies of England? Was it actually a manifestation of racial hatreds or religious differences?

     My own opinion tends towards 'all of the above” in this case. I think that historical analyses generally miss the mark by emphasizing one influence too highly over all the others. The flaw with the world-view that tries to minimize the faults to one specific area or another is that they do not grasp the full complexity of the developed world at that stage. Rather than looking at pre-war times as a less-developed stage of civilization I would argue that the world has in some ways been in stasis. The problems that led to the first world war are the same problems we face today, more or less. The 1800s were more modern than we usually realize and closer to today than we like to admit. Much of the technological foundation for modernity was already well-established even if it existed side-by-side with almost medieval ways of life. The rapid growth of American industry in the last century disguises this fact for U.S. Americans; we haven't been witness to the slow but steady displacement of the donkey by the car, rather we had the post-war capital at hand to rapidly achieve first-world living conditions.

      To see an illustration of what I mean look at the sequential rapidity of the two world wars. Although Europe was ravaged and progress was immeasurably retarded by the destruction that began in 1914 and the ensuing recession, we can still see that the standard of living in 1930s Europe was relatively advanced. That France and Germany were both able to generate massive military machines in such a short time speaks volumes about pre-war conditions. The relevant period of technological growth is quite long, but our appreciation of it is distorted by the fact that we undervalue 19^th century technology even though it was extremely effective.

     The “Agricultural Revolution” is one such technological development of great significance for understanding today's economic and political system. The ability to produce food for urban dwellers with a smaller agricultural labor force had several major impacts other than simply “allowing” cities to grow; along with specialization of the educated classes was a despecialization of the rural communities who had used their personal talents for subsidiary incomes. The new proletariat was not just unskilled people, it was also people whose skills were no longer needed. Pressured by lower commodity prices and mass-produced goods, the farmers could not hold on to what land they had gained since serfdom ended. The countries that had a longer period of time to evolve a skilled non-serf farmer handi-crafter class were the ones that gained the most capital from the concentration (or re-concentration) of land as the exodus to the cities intensified. Germany is a partial exception because they happened to have a knack for machines and the Jewish communities were a ripe fruit for liquidation into war-capital.

     New divisions of land created new societal problems in each country that followed a model of westernization. There is no such thing as a farm-owner (or serf) not having anything to do, but now machines had created legions of unemployed. One way to alleviate this is by colonizing, but the more practical solution is usually to find foreign markets for surplus goods. The London-based exchange network was extremely effective at balancing out trade deficits, but in the end the deflationary trend of the gold-standard caused recurrent banking crises. Quigley explains:
     “Another paradox of banking practice arose from the fact that bankers, who loved deflation, often acted in an inflationary manner from their eagerness to lend money at interest. Since they make money out of loans, they are eager to increase the amount of bank credit on loan. But this is inflationary. The conflict between the deflationary ideas and inflationary practices of bankers had profound repercussions on business. The bankers made loans to business so that the volume of money increased faster than the increase in goods. The result was inflation. When this became clearly noticeable, the bankers would flee to notes or specie by curtailing credit and raising discount rates. This was beneficial to bankers in the short run (since it allowed them to foreclose on collateral held for loans), but it could be disastrous to them in the long run (by forcing the value of the collateral below the amount of the loans it secured). But such bankers' deflation was destructive to business and industry in the short run as well as the long run,”

     The inevitable reaction to the increasingly unstable cycles of finance was nostalgia for the past; this manifested in nationalism, a sort of prequel to the idealization of pre-WWI days in the modern era. While we bicker in the present about what made life so great before the calamity of war shattered it, at the turn of the century the debate over “what went wrong” had a more geographical character. No one could say precisely why they thought things had been better before the small-timers were liquidated into capital for industrial investment; however that may be, there was a mistrust of technology and a reversion to racial idealization. If only the border of the state could return to the glory days and racial unity restored the good times would come again. This retreat into semi-racist ideology seems repugnant and illogical to we who were raised on slogans of “Never Again,” but in reality it is only another permutation of the attempt to understand why technological progress is not the boon we think it should be. Although the Romantic ethos survives where nationalism has (hopefully) fallen, the general revolt against modernity has common origins with our own societies struggle to come to grips with the prosperity and catastrophe of the last 200 years or so. Nationalism sought to reassert the individual by creating a closed sphere of blood-tied citizens who could fulfill their egoistic self-interest in common, this paradox being supposedly smoothed over by vague notions of racial harmony.

      This closed system resembles the dream of the U.S.S.R. and other socialist republics that believed they could realize their Utopia within the relatively closed circle of the revolutionary regimes, or at least that they could survive and thrive just long enough for the “rot” to spread to other barrels. But the communists were driven to this isolation by the victory of fascism in some countries and Anglo-American capitalism (or both) in others, both being by-products of nationalism. The original international communist movement was another attempt to make sense of history as a class struggle with a predictable trajectory that required industrialization so that the machines would grind down the cost of labor to virtually nothing. They were aware that the Romantics were aristocratic in nature and that their revolt against reason would only lead to a new formulation of capitalism with a totalitarian flavor. The capitalism that was produced had much in common with socialism, it was not based on conventional economic rules and did provide relief for the underclasses; this was seen as a way to preserve what was good from the past while improving it with controlled technology.

     The application of technology was a more contentious subject then than it is today (outside of hippy circles), it created divisions among classes that we tend to think of a being normally allied. The trade-unions had been invested in slowing the pace of technological implementation for years. They recognized that their specialized skills, which set them apart from low-wage laborers, would no longer matter if the gadgets were allowed to replace human skill as the most important factor in production. Set against the trade-unions (the petit bourgois) was the communist movement; they were the creation of the concentration of land ownership and the natural desire of business to drive down labor costs through competition for unskilled jobs. The concept of universal solidarity between skilled and unskilled labor was producing international organizations at odds with “national socialism,” the veneer of fascism. These anarchists and communists were sometimes quite violent and raised the fear of chaos in pre-war Europe at a time when statesmen should have been fearing organized warfare more. The Spanish Civil War even brought England into naval actions against the anarchists on the side of fascism, elucidating one of the reasons fascism was able to take hold int he first place: the Western Democracies were willing to tolerate it as long as its violence was directed against the frightening forces of populist organization.
     For centuries political thinkers had developed various philosophies with the intention of showing how the “state of nature” in which man interacted with other men sans the law, was properly replaced by a “social contract” of various forms depending on which type of government was favored by the philosopher. They all seemed to admit that the state of nature was better overall than the state of civilization, but the goal was to prove that law was a necessary evil. Whether or not humans ever did exist without some kind of government, and what this existence looked like, was conceded to be a mystery, but it was clear that once government did arise there would be no choice for communities other than to form one themselves in order to have efficient self-defense. This is the most common complaint leveled against the Spanish anarchists: their disorganization was such a detriment to the war against Franco that the Communist/Liberal government had to fight them first before they could launch a reasonable assault. They also hoped for aid from France or Britain seeing as they had a common foe, but they did not properly estimate the degree to which they themselves were a common foe as well. If the anarchists had not been betrayed and had won their war it would have caused not just political upheaval, but also philosophical realignment. Only strong modern states were supposed to be able to fight other strong modern states, without this justification who knows how far anarchism might have spread?

     The fall of Russia to revolutionaries during WWI has a similar influence in the basic world-view as passed down to us today. Thus embarked an era of experimentation in rationalistic communism as a solution to the system that had created such wars and modern nightmares. Whether this experiment or the US American experiment is the way to go has no been determined by force of arms yet, but the possibility of a sequel to the Great Wars is the backdrop psychologically of any attempt to understand the past or the future. As long as Mutual Assured Destruction is maintained we don't have to worry about that eventuality too much, energy can instead be focused into fixing the real issues that made WWI (and II by default) practically inevitable. Although the details have changed, the tendencies that made peace difficult can be observed in today's economics and politics. I have to recommend both Quigley's Tragedy and Hope and Russell's A History of Western Philosophy to get a sense of some of the issues that are recurring a hundred years later.  Both men wrote based on their experience of living through the periods, Russell during the 2nd War; maybe this is why his arguments for a world government are so compelling.