tailieunhanh - Luận án kinh tế - "Human and action" - Chapter 34

XXXIV. THE ECONOMICS OF WAR 1. Total War market economy involves peaceful cooperation. It bursts asunder when the citizens turn into warriors and, instead of exchanging commodities and services, fight one another. The wars fought by primitive tribes did not affect cooperation under the division of labor. | XXXIV. THE ECONOMICS OF WAR 1. Total War The market economy involves peaceful cooperation. It bursts asunder when the citizens turn into warriors and instead of exchanging commodities and services fight one another. The wars fought by primitive tribes did not affect cooperation under the division of labor. Such cooperation by and large did not exist between the warring parties before the outbreak of hostilities. These wars were unlimited or total wars. They aimed at total victory and total defeat. The defeated were either exterminated or expelled from their dwelling places or enslaved. The idea that a treaty could settle the conflict and make it possible for both parties to live in peaceful neighborly conditions was not present in the minds of the fighters. The spirit of conquest does not acknowledge restraints other than those imposed by a power which resists successfully. The principle of empire building is to expand the sphere of supremacy as far as possible. The great Asiatic conquerors and the Roman Imperators stopped only when they could not march farther. Then they postponed aggression for later days. They did not abandon their ambitious plans and did not consider independent foreign states as anything else than targets for later onslaughts. This philosophy of boundless conquest also animated the rulers of medieval Europe. They too aimed first of all at the utmost expansion of the size of their realms. But the institutions of feudalism provided them with only scanty means for warfare. Vassals were not obliged to fight for their lord more than a limited time. The selfishness of the vassals who insisted on their rights checked the king s aggressiveness. Thus the peaceful coexistence of a number of sovereign states originated. In the sixteenth century a Frenchman Bodin developed the theory of national sovereignty. In the seventeenth century a Dutchman Grotius added to it a theory of international relations in war and peace. With the disintegration of feudalism