Is Capitalism the Cause of War ?
Property or Peace. By H. N. Brailsford. (Collancz. 5s.) Tins particular reviewer has always been an almost helpless —and very willing—victim of the. charm of style as well as of the substance of everything that comes from Mr. Brails- ford's pen, a pen which has given to the Socialist movement of Britain not only its most readable political literature but some of its most suggestive and informed.
This book also, is extremely readable and often suggestive, although it is in large part the elaboration of a very hackneyed theme, that " capitalism is the cause of war." Mr. Brailsford enlarges it : At the heart, not only of war, but of poverty and economic servitude within the nation is the system or institution of property, which must be abolished as the indispensable step to order and welfare. He will admit no compromise on that point. Gradualism as a method for the British Labour Party must be abandoned in favour of the immediate use of its power—to be achieved by persuasion not force—for the suppression of all private property in land, capital and means of production (p. 245). The League of Nations must regulate the flow of population throughout the world and allocate markets and raw materials.
The League has failed, he says, because it merely " repro- duced on a great scale the old-world police State, limited to the function of preserving order . . . as a king might call his quarrelling feudatories to their allegiance." Yet the economic task cannot possibly be undertaken at all until the "police State" exists. Without a' basis of political order no large-scale economic planning is possible at all. If that political order must arise, in the first instance, out of a voluntary co-operation between independent units, must it not begin with the purposes about which there is the greatest measure of agreement, rather than with those which provoke the greatest measure of disagreement ? After all, until the quarrelling feudatories were brought into some sort of agreement or common allegiance, no British State capable of organizing unemployment benefit, old age pensions, health insurance, free and universal education, could possibly have come into being ; and one can hardly' imagine feudal chiefs being brought into very active co-operation for the specific purpose of abolishing feudal privileges. Had the Reform Bill—or for that matter the Charter of 1848—embodied all of Owen's Socialism, it is quite certain we should not have got Parliamentary Reform, and extremely unlikely that we should have got the body of social legislation which we have.
Mr. Brailsford says : " War in tho modern world is an outgrowth of the system of property. When men will to banish war, they must abandon the exclusive and monopolist institution of property " (p. 216).
The effect of that argument in practice has been to ally organizations like the No More War Movement with the extreme Jingo forces, with Lords Beaverbrook and Rother- mere. All alike are equally opposed to Geneva. Which proves that " Capitalism " does not support Geneva with anything like the unanimity that it supports the apparatus of our own British Law, the Courts, police, Parliament. Does this mean that because Capitalism supports—and uses—those institutions, Socialists ought to oppose them ? That Socialism would have a better chance if Law Courts and police did not exist, and should therefore set about to destroy them ? It is not Socialism that would emerge out of the anarchy, any more than Socialism has emerged any- where in Western Europe out of the post-War chaos.
Capitalism, says Mr. Brailsford, is driven to war by the -needs for markets. Then capitalism must be impervious to the plainest experience, for post-War history shows that having WW1 your war you cannot use victory for the purpose of seizing markets. We were to " take over " Germany's trade. Where is it ? Since victory our trade has steadily declined ; Capitalism is more shaken, more precarious, than it has ever been in its history. Collection of debt then (or interest thereon), says Mr. Brailsford, is the purpose of military power. But as an instrument of debt collection it has proved just as inefficient as an instrument of trade. Germany announces that she is not going to pay even com- mercial debts. What do we propose ? Another war ? Another Ruhr invasion? The period since the War might
almost be called " The Era of Repudiation." The smallest and most powerless of States can indulge in it with impunity.
The American Navy is helpless to collect defaulted loans either from European or. South American States. Japanese competition is just now often cited as the sort of situation which "must inevitably " push Capitalist States to war. But assuming that we conquered Japan more completely even than we have conquered India, how would that help Lan- cashire in view of the fact that Lancashire capitalists have suffered far more from the industrialization of India (largely with the help of British capital) than it has from the com- petition of Japan ? (For every five yards of cotton lost to the Lancashire mills Japan only supplies one.) Manchuria may well prove Japan's.. India. Capitalist influences in America favour dis-Annexation of the Philippines. (Too much sugar.) Wall Street is more interested in Canada, a British " possession," outside the sphere of American Imperialism, that in the Caribbean. During the nineteenth century Britain invested far more in the United States than in the Empire ; and still retains financial interests in countries like the Argentine against which the British navy could never be used for purposes of " collection."
The assumption that Capitalism by its nature mast oppose the establishment of . the police State, a system of law, internationally, has little warrant in history.
When the American colonies of Britain broke away, they established a political relationship with one another, a political union, which, with the exception of one breach, has meant peace between them never likely again to be broken. The colonies of Spain established no such union ; drifted into independencies which have resulted in many and very mur- derous wars ; a militarism which has marked not only their relations with one another but has permeated their internal politics. Did the northern continent succeed in making a federal bond and peace between the States because it abolished property or Capitalism ? Is the warfare between the Spanish American States, their militarism, due to the presence of a capitalism which does not exist in the north ? Further : Suppose the efforts (mainly of men of property) to create a North American union had failed (as they very nearly did) and Pennsylvania had remained one nation and Ohio another. They would have fought, like the Spanish- speaking independent States. Because of property and Capitalism ? Property and Capitalism exist now, and they don't fight. Suppose the hazards of history had given us a United States of Europe, . as of America, and France and Germany occupied the position therein of Ohio and New Jersey. There would have been no war, though Capitalism
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