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PEACE RESEARCH AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION* by Ekkehart Krippendorff 1. Introduction The beginnings of academic peace research in the early 1960s 'were characterized by a mixture of ideological voluntarism and methodological empiricism. A new value orientation, seeking to break out of the vicious circle of the preponderantly AngloSaxon positivistic social sciences that had stagnated, was proclaimed and with "peace" as its standard. It was no accident that it met with such quick and widespread approval. To avoid premature death by suffocation in fundamental theoretical discussion, which the thus- challenged social sciences sought, peace researchers avoided commitment to a binding peace concept. They consciously evaded the question of peace research's scientific place in the context of the social sciences while battling their way to respectability, armed with methodologically strict, almost incontestable empiricism. Yet barely ten years were to pass before the dangers of this double-edged research strategy for the coherence of the once "revolutionary" concept of early peace research became clear. As the axis of international politics moved from "East-West confrontation" to a policy of cooperation among industrial nations of both capitalist and communist origin, peace became legitimate foreign policy (Willy Brandt receives the Nobel Peace Prize). The provocative change of emphasis of the peace research of the late 50s and early 60s thus lost its significance for a reorientation of the social sciences - or rather, that standpoint was recognized and assimilated by the political establishments themselves. Peace research * first published as: Peace Research and the Industrial Revolution. Occasional Paper no. 3, The Johns Hopkins University, Bologna Center, 1973; 36 S.

by Ekkehart Krippendorff · 2019. 5. 12. · by Ekkehart Krippendorff 1. Introduction The beginnings of academic peace research in the early 1960s 'were characterized by a mixture

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  • PEACE RESEARCH AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION*

    by Ekkehart Krippendorff

    1. Introduction

    The beginnings of academic peace research inthe early 1960s 'were characterized by a mixture ofideological voluntarism and methodological empiricism.A new value orientation, seeking to break out of thevicious circle of the preponderantly AngloSaxonpositivistic social sciences that had stagnated, wasproclaimed and with "peace" as its standard. It was noaccident that it met with such quick and widespreadapproval. To avoid premature death by suffocation infundamental theoretical discussion, which the thus-challenged social sciences sought, peace researchersavoided commitment to a binding peace concept. Theyconsciously evaded the question of peace research'sscientific place in the context of the social scienceswhile battling their way to respectability, armed withmethodologically strict, almost incontestableempiricism.

    Yet barely ten years were to pass before the dangersof this double-edged research strategy for the coherenceof the once "revolutionary" concept of early peaceresearch became clear. As the axis of internationalpolitics moved from "East-West confrontation" to a policyof cooperation among industrial nations of bothcapitalist and communist origin, peace became legitimateforeign policy (Willy Brandt receives the Nobel PeacePrize). The provocative change of emphasis of the peaceresearch of the late 50s and early 60s thus lost itssignificance for a reorientation of the social sciences- or rather, that standpoint was recognized andassimilated by the political establishments themselves.Peace research

    * first published as: Peace Research and the Industrial Revolution. OccasionalPaper no. 3, The Johns Hopkins University, Bologna Center, 1973; 36 S.

  • was henceforth evoked, promoted, and subsidized by thegovernments. At the same time, as the unavoidableconsequence of the early evasion of theoreticalclarification and of unreflected empiricism, many so-cial scientists were now able to latch onto the newpeace research vogue without contradicting their owntheoretical and methodological premises: sociologists,political scientists, "international relationists", andeven (though to a lesser extent) economists could sellthe old book with a new cover. After all, everyone isfor peace, and for empiricallybacked research too.

    Recently, the topic of imperialism has moved to thecenter of the peace research debate (as the themes fordiscussion of the International Peace ResearchAssociationi.n1969 and 1970 demonstrate) in a renewedattempt to draw a dividing line and avoid the deadlyembrace of those traditional social sciences which hadjumped onto the bandwagon. However, considering theunclarified theory problem, it is not difficult topredict the outcome of this discussion. With the growingconsciousness among the social and political rulingelites in capitalist and communistic industrial nationsof the need for hierarchical stabilization of theinternational system (since the military, economic, anddiplomatic stabilization of the center or the top ofthe pyramid seems mainly to have succeeded), the themeof imperialism will become legitimized. Research whichjustifies the hierarchical dependence-structures willpass without contradiction under the aegis of peaceresearch because it promotes stability.

    These necessarily rough and polemically pointedgeneralizations, sketching the brief history of thediscipline, are intended as the basis for the assertionthat the fundamental discussion on content and methodin peace research is no luxury to be reserved for somefuture time. This debate belongs in the center ofdiscussion, and not on its periphery. We must demand areversal of priorities if peace research is tb remain trueto its own original program, namely to be a criticalscience: the formation of a theory of peace researchand a confirmation of its own substance are its mostimportant tasks. Method

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  • ology and empiricism must and can find their meaningonly within the framework of the former area. They mustderive from the clarification of substance and theory, notvice versa. As we have suggested, peace researchconsidered itself to be such a critical science at thevery beginning. However, it was more a form ofpolitical-moralistic dissent which could be relativelyeasily overtaken and rejected given changed politicalconstellations, than it was a theoretically founded andreflected dissent. But let us consider the claim tocritical science as a more fundamental one: namely scienceas the intellectual instrument for overcoming all forms ofhierarchical societal status quos which preserveinequalities; science as oriented toward rationalenlightenment about existing relationships, towardemancipation from all forms of indigenous dependency,towards the creation of more and more advanced forms ofequality. If we accept this definition of critical socialscience, then the question as to the nature of the presentsocial systems which must be overcome takes on centralimport,-.nce.

    The specific object of peace research is indisputably thepresent international system: its moral impetus is thesearch for preconditions for the elimination of thosestructural elements of the system which engender war andcollective destruction. It is not an unfairsimplification of the present consensus among peaceresearchers to reduce it to the following lowest commondenominator: the recognition that the latent, or manifest,collectively organized use of force represents a decisivestructural characteristic of the international system.The military organization of the international system,armaments, and the military articulation as well as thesolution, of social conflicts are not accidents, but ratherthe essence of foreign policy and international relations.As our point of departure and as the most importantguideline in peace research, we can take this consensusabout the international system as a "threat" or "feudal,system" (Boulding, Galtung), which must be criticallyovercome and replaced by an egalitarian barter system.However, a critical science needs more and qualitativelydifferent material than the knowledge of the mechanisms andthe techniques of

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  • This intended confirmation of peace research's actualobject of study - the international threat or feudalsystem - can be accomplished only through the seeminglyround-about reconsideration of the genesis of today'sinternational system. Only if the securing consensusover the reality of the international system isexpanded and deepened to a consensus over the structuralgenesis of the system as well, will peace research be ableto free itself from the helplessness and paralysis whichpresently condemn it to the empirically precise aposteriori analysis of one warlike conflict after another,deducing it from distortions of mutual perceptions orunfortunate incompatibilities. Then, and only then, aswe will try to show, can peace research imply a praxis ofqualitative change instead of mere curing of symptoms.

    2. Consequences of the Industrial Revolution

    The Industrial Revolution is the one archimedial pointfrom which we can develop a theory of the presentinternational system with any chance of success. In thewords of a leading social historian, the IndustrialRevolution "has been like in effect to Eve's tasting ofthe fruit of knowledge: the world has never been the same."(Landes 1969, p. 12.) Or, in another no less inequivocaland apodictic formulation: "The Industrial Revolutionmarks the most fundamental transformation of human life inthe history of the world recorded in written documents."(Hobsbawm 1969, p. 13.) Its pre-history belongs in thecenter of our analysis as far as is necessary, its historyproper - the last two centuries - as far as possible.As history it represents the unfolding structure of thepresent; and at the same time as an

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    power politics, characteristic of our present inter-national system, to enable the transition from theaggregate condition A to the aggregate condition B.Above all, it must first ascertain the logic andfunctionality of those mechanisms and techniques,clarify their origins and their dependence upon thoseinternational social structures which condition, produce,and constantly reproduce them. Otherwise, peaceresearch will only deliver irrelevant utopias or cure onlythe symptoms.

  • as yet uncompleted movement, it holds the history ofour future. History cannot here be written as therecording of chronological, identifiable events orprocesses: rather it must uncover the logic of this break inhuman development unprecedented in world history, theempirical history of which is external to that logic and thusnot essential. (Cf.Schmidt 1971, pp. 42 ff.) Just what isthis qualitative change of world society through the socialrevolution is the question that must be asked. We canrelatively easily demonstrate it quantitatively by the fol-lowing random examples (though surprisingly enough they havenot as yet been thematized for our problem area)

    - The radius of destruction of weapons remained de factoconstant throughout all of recorded history. It changedonly minimally with the invention of gunpowder; only withthe invasion of technology into the military sphere didthe curve leave the horizontal and shoot to great heights,reaching a maximum today which can hardly be raised.

    - While the number of warlike conflicts seems to havedecreased since, say, the 13th century (cf. Mushkat 1970,p. 248), the curve of war-deaths shows a sudden jump in thefirst third of the 19th century after centuries ofrelative stagnation: from less than 2 million until mid-century to considerably over 40 million a mere centurylater. (Russett 1965, p. 12 ff.)

    - We can chart an exceedingly dramatic and impressivedevelopment in the growth of world population. With certainfluctuations and deviations irrelevant here, it firstchanged from a slow and hardly discernible growth to thatexplosion, that avalanche, which is today viewed as anatural catastrophe. (See inter alia the graphs inDesmond 1964, p. 32.)

    - Or let us consider the explosive increase. in thespeed of communication, the "mobiletic revolution"(Russett 1967, p. 23). The transmission of news,transport of goods, personal travel, and, not least,military mobility had remained more or less constantthroughout recorded history. Then, with the inven

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  • tion of the clipper ship, the steamboat, the rail-road, automobile, airplane, and telegraph and tele-phone, all distances were rapidly reduced to thephysically conceivable"minimum.

    - While in the centuries prior to the IndustrialRevolution the production of goods (here calculatedvery roughly) on a world scale rose barely 0.1 per centper capita, we find in the last one hundred years anincrease of 2.6 percent per capita per annum. To put itdifferently and more dramatically, world productionsince the Industrial Revolution represents more than manhas produced in all recorded history taken together. (Cf.inter alia Dobb 1963, p. 9 ff.) Thus the economic historiancan correctly assert "the Englishman of 1750 was closer inmaterial things to Caesar's legionnaires than to his owngreat-grandchildren. 7"

    We could extend such a catalog of quantitative empiricaldata indefinitely to support our assertion that with theIndustrial Revolution (set down here withoutdifferentiation, as a kind of catchword) a qualitativebreak occurred. This was a rupture unprecedented insocial, economic, and also intellectual history and thusalso in politics; in relationships between groups,classes, and peoples; and international relations, whichare of particular interest to us here. A graphicrepresentation of those aspects and any number of otherpossible variables (urbanization, literacy-illiteracy,book production, scientific discoveries, number ofscientists) would result again in practically identicalcurves with only some short-term deviations and timelaps: level, only slightly rising or stagnating untilthe end of the 18th century, then suddenly jumping,becoming vertical in almost all cases in the last fiftyyears up till the present.

    Let us approach the analysis from that perspectivemost favorable for examining the problem area of specificinterest here - the international system. Somehow, theAge of Discovery - the fanning out of Venetian, Spanish,Portuguese, Dutch, English, and other adventurers insearch of exotic riches, faster trade routes, and slaves- lies in causal relation

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  • ship to the chronologically later manifest explosion ofall realms of life. This "somehow" must be sought inthe successive formation of a West European merchantBourgeoisie, the.economic way of thinking which it exuded,quickly infecting diplomats, royal houses, and statesmen.The growing need for cash among European monarchs -who, allying themselves with the bourgeoisie, had put downthe nobles and were preparing the way for the developmentof territorially integrated and increasingly rationallyadministrated states - had as a result "that in the 15thand 16th centuries, statesmen, secular and ecclesiastical,thought more of economic factors than they had previouslydone." (Cambridge Economic History, Vol.IV, p.323.) Herein certain parts of Western Europe in the 15th and 16thcenturies the symbiosis of political social power andeconomic productivity demonstrated already in the ItalianRenaissance though initially.without consequence begins;economic power becomes synonymous with the development ofpolitical and military power, and finally power inforeign policy. Here dynastic group conflicts begin tobe transformed into economic conflicts significantin.principle to the entire society. At the end of the16th century, for example, we find the first attempt (onthe part of Spain) to incite the population of another country(England) to overthrow their government through embargo -the prerequisite for such strategy being, of course, thatElizabethan England was already socially vulnerable dueto its dependence on international trade. With colonialdiscovery, takeover, and plundering to the benefit ofthe militarily partially superior (and in many respectsadministratively more disciplined and certainly moreunscrupulous) European invaders and those who sent them,.wefind the beginnings of world unity and global penetrationwhich was to reach completion by the end of the 19th.century.

    For the first time, the conflicts among an extremelysmall group of politically organized units, the newEuropean states, began to be world wars. And so theysince remained. Speaking of the Dutch wars ofindependence (1598-1669), which the Dutch bourgeoisielogically extended to the Hapsburg resources in theircolonies and along the trade routes,2 a historian haspointed out: "Since the Iberian posses-

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  • lions were scattered around the world, the ensuingstruggle was waged on four continents and' on. seven seas;and this seventeenth century contest deserves to be calledthe First World War rather than the holocaust of 1914-18which is commonly awarded that dubious honour" (C. R.Boxer, 1969, p. 106).

    At this time the development of the modern rationalbureaucratic state also begins, a modern European creation.(Weber 1956, p. 823 ff.) The genesis of this state is notonly closely linked to the rise of the early bourgeoisie.3

    At its cradle stood not only the "military-industrial-complex", which has falsely been discovered onlyrecently;4 this state also developed in the context of therapidly growing administrative expenses and richesaccumulated during colonization.. This modern state -without which no theory of international relationsthinks it could exist and which later gave us nationalism,the world wars, and today's pathological threat system -is both product and promotor of the early release of produc-tive forces and their expansive dynamics. Yet it is byno means a timeless, indigenous olitical form existingbeyond history or even recenf history.5

    With the West European expansion in the 15th,16th, and 17th centuries, world society also begins to growapart, divided into "poor" and "wealthy" nations, aprocess which has only recently been recognized in its fullsignificance. At that time the prerequisites werecreated for the development of underdevelopment in Asia,Africa, and Latin America, as well as for the rapid takeoffof today's developed nations themselves. Even though WestEurope as a whole was probably always a wealthier continentthan Africa or Latin America even before the IndustrialRevolution, we must point out that in the 17th century, say,the order of magnitude was still comparable. Today'sdramatic gap between developed and underdevelopedcountries remained relatively insignificant into the 19thcentury; the difference in niveau in culture, the military,political organization, and in economics was actually firstcreated in the course of colonialism, mercantilism, andimperialism and represents the price paid for theestablishment of world unity which was determined in itssubstance by the

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    expansive West European bourgeoisie. The disruption ofAfrican and South American political cultures is just asmuch a part of this process as, for example, thedestruction of flourishing textile industries in Indiaby weaker English competition.6 As late as 1819 a Frenchscholar could write: "in manufacturing, art, andindustry, China and Indostan, though inferior, seem to benot much inferior to any part of Europe" (CambridgeEconomic History Vol. VI/I,.p. 4). It would be false tolink the process of original accumulation - theprerequisite for the later breakthrough of thecapitalistic mode of production - exclusively or evenprimarily to the riches wrung out of the conquered colonialterritory, although they were quantitatively quitesignificant.7 It would also be false to place slave tradeand plantation economy at the basis of West Europeancapital accumulation, although this important aspect must notbe overlooked. (Williams 1966.) It is simply indisputablethat the capital resulting from plunder, exploitation andunequal trade, even if considered marginal to theeconomic rise of Western Europe, an the whole meantincomparably more to the victims of European expansion:namely, the total destruction of all development potentialthrough decimation of their resources as well as throughthe much more momentous destruction of their own culturesand socio-cultural infrastructures. (Polanyi 1957, p.159 f.)

    Therefore, historical reconsideration of the entireproblem of development is of pressing importance. Onlyby taking the trouble to backtrack can we avoid themisleading path down which much of the literature aboutdeveloping nations and development economy would leadus: the victory of the bourgeoisie and of thecapitalistic mode of production provided a prerequisitefor Europe's meteroic rise to master of the world. Europe'srise, however, was equally dependent on an international"vacuum" or the creation of such a vacuum, dependent uponan environment in which it could do as it pleasedmilitarily, economically, and politically. Europe'scapital accumula tion was one of trade capital; this wasbased not, or minimally, on inter-European trade, butrather on world trade. The great empires of the 16thcentury provided the decisive preconditions for thetransfor-

  • mation of money into capital through the new capital-istic mode of production which lives from export-man-ufacture. (Marx 1953, p. 410. )

    For the moment let us set aside the question ofwhy the qualitative breakthrough to the IndustrialRevolution in the narrower sense took place in England,8

    for this belongs to the field of comparative Europeansocial history. The irrevocable prerequisite for thissudden change toward self-sustaining economic growth -the most important characteristic of the IndustrialRevolution - was undoubtedly a worldwide foreign trade,within a formal or informal politically controlledempire. (Fischer 1968, p. 9.) "An increased dependenceon the rest of the world seems to be a condition ofeconomic growth for the e-, conomics based on privateenterprise" (Cambridge Economic History, Vol. VI/I,p.52). Since these preconditions no longer exist for the"Third World" countries, which were bowled over by thebeginnings of this development two to three hundredyears ago, it goes without saying not only that thedevelopment model of private enterprise offered ordictated to them with either real or assumed naivenessis excluded, but that economic growth in an alreadyoccupied, satiated world economy becomes a near hopelesstask under present conditions.

    The re-examination of th_t historic structures of theIndustrial Revolution in its international context isnecessary to the definition of what Johan Galtung, the mostprominent contemporary peace researcher, has called"structural violence": that veiled violence latent inall societal structures based on inequality. (Galtung1969.) This structural violence must be sought not onlyin the genesis of the modern state, i.e. inner-societally_(Krippendorff 1971), but equally much inglobal societal context since the beginning of thepresent era. Thus Karl Marx, who left no doubt as to theworld historical revolutionary character of the middleclass (cf. above all the Communist Manifesto),characterized the worldwide genesis of the capitalistmode of production as "dripping blood from all poresfrom head to toe". (Marx 1962, p. 788.) To some, this mayseem a politically agitatory, unscientific distortion ofthe

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  • truth, yet it is unfortunately all too true. Onlythe visible calculable figures are known, as for ex-ample the extermination of the whole indigenous popu-lation in the Caribbean from the arrival of Columbus in1492, (300,000) until when some 50 years later, only500 were left (Cambridge Economic History, Vol. IV, p.319); the number of unnatural deaths due to dislocation,slave transport, hunger, exploitation, and"pacification" crusades are inestimü,_ble. At the originsof this world unity, which was the product of economiccalculation and which became the vehicle of economicgrowth and the Industrial Revolution, stood overt andmanifest violence that sublimated itself to latentstructural violence only after having fulfilled itshelping role. Yet it can still be called up again andemployed to preserve the structures of dependence.

    Since peace research has received such a crucialimpetus from the counter-productive poss_bility of awarlike solution to socio-economic and political con-flict, it is obvious that war in its narrowest senseshould be included in this analysis. This phenomenon"war" should also support the assertion that a quali-tative leap took place in global societal developmentat the time of the Industrial Revolution. Complementingthe logic of the thesis developed here (thoughnecessarily rudimentary in its details), we find thatthe word "war" has by no means defined the samephenomenon under all historical circumstances: war atthe present stage of history is qualitatively differentfrom and thus incomparable to war in ancient China, inpre-colonial India, in the old imperial states, or inthe Middle Ages. The decisive turning-point from pre-industrial warfare to modern warfare can be set at thebreak-through of technology when the military sector took onhistorically unprecedented significance for economicgrowth; and, vice versa, when scientific-technicalinventions began to be used for warlike disputes betweenstates, inventions which themselves must be understood as.unctiorally dependent upon the socio-economic take-oEfof the West European societies. This symbiosis of tech-nology and armaments is most clearly demonstrated intoday's potential for total destruction. However, weusually overlook the fact that this symbiosis is a

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  • recent phenomenon first made possible by the appearanceof a revolutionary middle class in history, the modernstate, and the use of armaments as an instrument ofcapitalistic economic growth. (Cf. Nef 1963; Kidron1970.) Those who study war as a historical continum andsearch for highly problematical biological andanthropological roots (which does not exclude a subjectiveyet objectively helpless condemnation of war), areespecially apt to overlook this fact.9 This qualitativechange in war from a subordinate component of politicalinteractions in the pre-industrial era to the centralelement, the rational operative core of foreign policy andinternational relations (the deterrence system), in theindustrial age found its concrete expression in the changedconduct of war. Friedrich Engels, one of the mostimportant military scholars of his day, had alreadypointed out the inner connection between middle classemancipation and modern warfare. (Engels 1958, p. 218.) Itis no accident that this new form of warfare begins withthe French Revolution, the first bourgeois revolutionarystate, and finds its first culmination in the strategy ofbattles such as practiced at Magenta and Solferino (1859),Königgrätz (1866), and Sedan (1870) which concentratedall socio-economic resources on the "decisive battle."

    "In Western Europe until the first part of the 17thcentury, warfare was a way of life for considerablesections of society, its termination was for them acatastrophe, and its prolongation, official orunofficial, was the legitimate objective of everyman of spirit. Even in the 17th and 18th centuries,war, elaborate and formal as it had become, was anaccepted, almost indispensable part of the patternof society, and it was curtailed and intermittentonly because of its mounting expense. If warcould be made to pay, as it did for the Dutchmerchants in the 17th century and the English inthe 18th, then its declaration was as welcome asits terminati'on was deplored. (Howard 1971, p.204.)

    From this indigenous propensity of the modernstate for war and for self-realization through war10

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  • emerged not only the strategy of the "decisive battle",but also its ultimate atrophy as manifested in theFirst and Second World Wars (Wallach 1967).

    ...although military developments over the past100 years had established the principle, indeed thedogma of the "decisive battle" as the focus of allmilitary (and civil) activity, parallel politicaland social development had been making itincreasingly difficult to achieve this kind of"decision" ...And once war became a matter ofcompeting economic resources, social stability andpopular morale, it became too serious a businessto be left to the generals. Operations againbecame only one factor out of many ininternational struggle... (Howard 1971, p. 188ff.)

    The symbiosis of politics, economy, and social orderwith war as the omnipresent possibility and ultima ratiofor conflict resolutions characterizes, no matter whatthe concrete metamorphosis, national systems and theinternational system o our nearly 200 year old presentepoch.

    In order to produce relevant findings that will helptransform the system, peace research must penetrate theseinterconnections. These are, both in specific casesand in the general historical structural context, by nomeans simple but rather highly contradictory and complex.

    Let us summarize the argument thus far: we haveassumed that peace research reflects a contemporary"crisis-consciousness" and attempts to define thisconsciousness in scientific terms. Peace research thusrightly concentrates on the question of the transformationof the present international system and those elementssupporting it insofar as they involve use of the threatof organized military violence as a solution to social andinternational conflicts. In more closely defining thecrisis-character of the international system, weasserted and illustrated selectively that it is acontemporary phenomenon, the beginning of recenthistory in this context being set at the IndustrialRevolution; and

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  • that the latter marks a "qualitative break" with pre-vious history. The character of conflict specific tothe present cannot be understood with the aid of sup-posedly timelessly valid scientific laws, nor in termsof political categories which originated under pre-industrial conditions. Rather, it must be developed suigeneris from the genesis and structural logic of thatrevolutionary break itself. Thus, beginning peaceresearch with the social history of this IndustrialRevolution, with. the prehistory and evolution ofcolonialism and.imperialism, with the creation of themodern state in the context of a qualitatively new system ofproduction, with the intimate intermeshing of moderntechnological destructive potential with skyrocketingeconomic development (its prerequisite and at the same timeits function) is only seemingly a detour.

    3. Defining the Industrial Revolution

    Having reached this point, we must develop a moreconcrete definition of the substance of the IndustrialRevolution. Until now, we have only referred to itsconsequences for the system of international.relations.We must add that any definition must necessarily remaina limited one, developed for the purposes of our specificsubject matter only - a definition projected andconceived in terms of the subject of study, theinternational system.

    A more or less orthodox chronological history wouldbegin the Industrial Revolution in England in the finalthird of the 18th century, pointing out staggered phasesof several decades each in the course of its expansion toFrance, Germany, Italy, and in its own specific way tothe United States. Such a history would differentiate, toa certain extent with good reason, between revolutionarysocial changes in the 16th and 17th centuries, the rise ofthe bourgeoisie as a revolutionary class, the appearance ofan occasionally also religiously motivated economicattitude, etc., on the one hand, and the substitution ofmachines for humans in production, of manufacture andindustry for hand craftsmanship, of mechanical energy foranimal power on the other (the latter being the truecharacteristics of the Indus

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  • trial Revolution). This kind of differentiation would,and will, become relevant for us only in dealing withthe concrete analysis of the history of the internationalsystem, and in proving how its sociopolitical and militaryconflicts have depended on the inequalities andcontradictions developing at an international level inthis process.

    For our purposes, it will be necessary to stress theunity and inner logic of these two different streamswithin one process, which manifested itself as colonialexpansion, the formation of the modern state, the rise of amiddle class which broke through the static system ofEuropean feudalism, as an economic way of thinking, andfinally as the revolutionary liberation of the forces ofproduction. (Cf. inter alia Nef 1967; Kulischer 1928;Haussherr 1955.) It will not be necessary to go intothe "actual causes" of these upheavals in this connection,or why they occurred in Western Europe and not in Asia, forexamplell - questions which in the final analysis canonly be answered hypothetically and with (legitimate)speculation. In order to understand truly the essence,to get at the roots of the driving forces behind thedevelopment of the international system, we must stressthe dialectical relationship between territorialdiscoveries outside Europe and the European bourgeoisie,between world trade and the accumulation of capital amongcompanies doing trade, between colonialism and theformation of the modern state, between the control ofmarkets outside Europe and growth in European production,between the global policy (Weltpolitik) of individualEuropean countries and the Industrial Revolution.Neither the Industrial Revolution in its narrower sensenor the birth of the revolutionary middle class in thewidest sense are conceivable without their intercontext,the opening up and potential conquest of othercontinents.

    The Industrial Revolution as a part of the bourgeoisrevolution tends, therefore, to become identical with thecapitalist revolution. Our historical present is acreation of capitalism;.its various manifestations, notleast on the level of international or world politics arefunctions of the capitalist mode of production. Thiscapitalist mode of produc

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  • tion is in turn dialectically intermeshed with a newideological orientation, "the economic way of thinking",which is in turn the product of this innovative mode ofproduction and finds its specific expression in theprinciple of maximization of profits as the orientationpoint in social behavior. There is no doubt that atvarious moments in history under the most varyingsocial circumstances - e.g. in classical' Rome - therehave been enormous concentrations of wealth, ofcapital. However, wealth in the capitalist system, asdistinguished from all other forms of wealth, is not anend in and of itself, accumulated for purposes ofluxury, splendor, and consumption: it is surplus valuegenerating surplus value in the early stages ofaccumulation, indeed, admonishing renunciation of allsuch indulgences. "Accumulate, accumulate, accumulate!That is Moses and the Prophets", as Karl Marx put it.(1962, p. 621.) Bourgeois wealth - based on trade,colonial exploitation, or revolutionary forms ofagricultural production - is invested that it mayproductively multiply. 'It was the Industrial Revolutionin its narrow sense, i.e. the introduction of capital intomanufacture and then industrial production itself, whichmade first England, then Europe, the "workshop of theworld" and thus initiated the divergent development ofworld society into the rich and the poor nations.Profit maximization was the motive - by no meansunconscious - of those who financed the adventurer-discoverers of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, thosewho founded colonies, who created race problems in allcorners of the world with their slave trade, who sought anddefended more direct trade routes, who built fleets,created nation-states and nationalism, who calculatedwith wars and world wars to secure and increase whathad been accomplished and could even earn money on thepreparations, through armaments industry. Profitmaximization was and is the vehicle of progress in thecapitalist mode of production. Its concrete man-ifestations present themselves to us among other me-diated forms as world or international politics and asindustrial revolution.

    In the meantime, in the course of the last 200 years,these and other manifestations or forms of capitalism haveasserted their independence. An ana

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  • lytical effort, as always laborious, is necessary tocomprehend them as still being a function of the basiclaws of the bourgeois-capitalist revolution. This isespecially true of the histroically unprecedentedskyrocketing rise of economic growth which was causallylinked to the liberation of the productive forces. Tohave made the quantitative increase of Gross NationalProduct the axiomatic criterion of success among almostall contemporary political classes and elites -regardless of their different ideological orientationsas nationalist, "communist", "democratic", or "unallied"- demonstrates more than anything else the universalsuccess of capitalism. A sluggish or stagnating GNP isinterpreted in East and West, North and South as apolitical failure, as proof of an unhealthy society - oras a criterion of progress and cultural standards. Theattempt by the People's Republic of China in the courseof its Cultural Revolution (which was withouthistorical precedent and therefore dramatic and moving,nonetheless most likely condemned to failure, given thepresent international context) to question quality andthe social relevance of increased production has largelybeen either completely misunderstood or condescended toas naive Utopianism. A statement like the following oneby President Nyerere need not sound "false", i.e.utopian, just because it openly contradicts therealities of foreign determinations of the Tanzanianeconomy and the physical proximity of a Portuguesecolony, or, more important, because it goes against theonce specifically capitalistic, now universalized dogmaof economic growth as the natural goal of every policy,especially the policy of an "underdeveloped" country:

    Inherent in the Arusha Declaration, therefore, isthe rejection of the concept of national grandeuras distinct from the well-being of its citizens,and a rejection too, of material wealth for itsown sake. It is a commitment to the belief thatthere are more important things in -life than theamassing of riches and that if the' pursuit ofwealth clashes with things like human dignity andsocial equality, then the latter will be givenpriority... With our present level of economicactivity, and our present

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  • poverty, this may seem to be an academic point; butin reality it is very fundamental. So it meansthat there are certain things which we shallrefuse to do or accept, whether as individuals oras a nation, even if the result of them would givea surge forward in our economic development.(Nyerere quoted in Jenkins 1970, p. 41.)

    In the last few years, for the first time, we havetaken the first cautious steps towards developing a newconsciousness of the problems posed by a furtherdimension of the capitalist-initiated dogma of growthwhich takes the form of ecological threats to indus-trial societies (cf. Ehrlich & Ehrlich 1970; Foster1971), and the consequences for the future of the in-ternational system, for poverty, underdevelopment, andT;rarlike conflict, the outlines of which are only nowbecoming visible. The probability that the world'sphysical resources are simply not sufficient to raisethe poor societies to even approximately the materiallevel of today's industrial nations means that theextreme discrepancy between North and South will remaina permanent fixture of the international system, even ifthe wealthy - above all the capitalist - industrialsocieties should today declare an economic policy ofzero-growth - which is of course completely out of thequestion.

    The fourth of the essential characteristics of theIndustrial Revolution, expounded here for the purposeof our discussion, is the internationalism which hasbeen referred to repeatedly. Internationalism wasessential in more than one sense: First, one has torecognize the inner connection between the capitalistsocial revolution and the existence of a global, non-capitalist "vacuum" which represented the prerequisitefor its full development. Precisely this vacuum wasmissing for geographic (Cipolla 1969) or perhaps politicalreasons in the premature forerunners of capitalism in theItalian city-states as compared to the Spanish-Portuguese, Dutch, and the English world empires. Second,it is the capitalist mode of production itself,oriented toward profit maximization, by definitionexpansive, which is and must be internationalist; it"thustranscends the state and the na

    18

  • tion, although it must on the other hand assert itselfas a nationality to the outside world and at home mustorganize itself as a state." (Marx & Engels 1953, p. 33.)National encapsulation and internationalistic self-realization - the basic contradiction which above all ledto the two great-World Wars of this century - arestructurally connected through the concentration ofeconomic, military and organized political violence inthe metropolises. The history of the world becomes thehistory of Europe (including the US); the history of Europebecomes world history of the bourgeoisie, or in-otherwords: "this bourgeois society, the true hearth and publicsquare of history". (Marx & Engels 1953, p. 33.) It is the In-dustrial Revolution (in the narrow sense of the word) whichcreates the technical, physical prerequisites foruniversalization of the capitalist mode of production andthus,globalizes its inherent self-contradictions -internationalist dynamics and national politicalorganization, accumulation of capital and wealth in thehands of a few, and world-wide social poverty. (Polyani1957, pp..76, 130.) Economic crises while by no meansalways the direct cause of international political conflict(cf. inter alia Böhme 1968, p. 20 ff.), nonethelessconstitute the basic structural framework for national andforeign policy oriented toward avoiding such.crises.This, again is a specifically modern phenomenon: "Criseshave occurred in the true sense of the word only with theevent of industrialization and market expansion that havecharacterized the capitalist countries in the last 150years." (Flamant & Singer-Kerel 1970, p. 7.)

    Attempts, typical of the 20th century, to rationalizethe international system through international law, tolegitimize the sovereign natior.-states as the subject ofa binding universal code of law, including attempts tocreate a world organization based on parliamentaryprinciples (League of Nations, United Nations) - allderive from the bourgeois-capitalist conception oforder.

    Having reached this point in the outline of an analyticalframework for peace research, we might now meaningfullybegin again at the beginning - i.e. undertake a detailedqualified historical analysis of

    19

  • the structure of the international system as it de-veloped in a multitude of phases, self-contradictory andyet coherent. We would again trace the rise of themiddle class and the development of the capitalist modeof production in Western Europe as they manifestthemselves in foreign policy and the internationalsystem; but this time we would place special emphasison the inequalities and staggered developmental phaseswhich generated conflict. We would then not merelydistinguish between the various phases - the age ofdiscovery, early colonialism, mercantilism, informalfree trade empire, imperialistic colonialism,imperialistic anti-colonialism, etc. The Europeanconflicts at the turn of the 19th century, the "hundredyears' peace" (1815-1914), and the two World Wars wouldnot be written off as the "same old world conflict", butinterpreted more specifically and exactly as they existin direct connection with the sporadic and unequaldevelopment of capitalist industrialization in England onthe one hand, and on the continent and in the US on the oth-er. We could try to demonstrate that the social ten-sion and the upheavals which manifested themselves inthe various frustrated revolutions in Europe, each withits own reverberations outside Europe (e.g. LatinAmerica independence) can be traced directly back to theattempt of the elites and ruling classes - which werepartially feudal, partially already bourgeois, partiallybureaucratic - to catch up with the English. It wasGreat Britain which had established a tremendous lead inthe race for economic power; and by imitating them, thecompetitors introduced a capitalist-industrialrevolution from above - with particularly spectularsuccess in Germany and Japan.

    The collapse of Czarist Russia should also be in-terpreted in this context of world capitalism. Aboveall, however, the rise of the socialist Soviet Union andits survival as an organized contradiction to theimperialist international system would be seen as theresult of the failure of socialist. revolutions in thecapitalist metropolises themselves. Thus its existenceto this day would be viewed as an indirect manifestationof the only half-broken vitality of capitalism on aworld scale.

    20

  • We would have to show that the dramatic post-warperiod of decolonization, US leadership, and the rise ofThird World nations to subjects of the internationalsystem demonstrate the flexibility and adaptability ofthe capitalist industrial states to changed conditions.But at the same time, a new expression of organizedcontradiction of the capitalist world system in the formof revolutionary China has entered the scene and thusimpeded its political manageability.

    In short: we could try to isolate the various formsof the international system from its spontaneous, naivebeginnings to the structured, manipulated "UN formation"(the previously-mentioned "feudal" or "threat-system")without losing sight of its historical structural unityas the evolution, development, and self-realization ofcapitalism amidst all these differentiations andconverging contradictions.

    4. Concrete Applications

    This line of analysis will be developed at a later time.Here we shall conclude by mentioning examples ofpreliminary interpretations of three problems ofparticular interest to peace researchers. These shoulddemonstrate why they, like a multitude of other subjects forstudy. and topical conflicts, can be deciphered only in theframework of the concert of the system outlined here.This approach implies the analytical preparation of thecounter-strategies and practical solutions tailored forpolitical practice - which defines, indeed, the scientificidentity and the credentials to praxiS of peace research,about which all peace researchers agree in principle.

    As the first problem area, I have chosen militaryarmaments and the international arms race. This is aphenomenon which has, after all, provided the moralistic,naive impetus for peace research and the peace movementitself in the past. As the second problem area, I shallchoose the developing countries, or rather therelationship between underdevelopment, poverty, and theuse of force. This is a subject which has only recently,and therefore all the more intensely, come to the attentionof peace research.

    21

  • As a third area, I shall isolate a specific case whichfor years has been unsolved ans will remain so formany years to come, and which harbors to a particulardegree the potential of a world war: the Arab-Israeliconflict. One could, of course, have chosen Vietnam,Bangla Desh, 3iafra, or South Africa just as well.

    1) Armaments and the arms race appear to be as old aspolitical history: the cliche "si vis pacem para bellum"has become a permanent fixture of so-called commonsense., Should the historical critical approach of peaceresearch require further substantiation, it would lie inthe following assertion: only a careful review ofhistory will cure us of the false consciousness and theparalysis in political action which is fixated in suchstereotype beliefs.

    We have already mentioned the specifically new rolewhich military organization and armament played instimulating the development of capitalism,-at least incontinental Europe. The tl=esis that the modern bourgeoisstate bore the scar of the militaryindustrial complex atbirth will have to be critically examined anddifferentiated, but should nonetheless lead to a moreconcrete and more operational understanding of therelationship between states, class dominance, economy,and technology in the capitalist system. Thanks in greatpart to the revolutionary studies of Richardson, webegan to know much about the quantitative course of armsraces, as well as the perceptual aspects of arms races whichcan lead to ever-intensifying hostile attitudes andeventually to war.12 We also know about the (US)armaments sector and its inner-social and economicintermeshing, due not least to the alarm signalled byliberal economists since the 1960s. What by contrastare almost completely lacking are analyses of the socialprocesses through which armaments stabilize and supportthemselves domestically, and analyses of the function ofarmaments for "progress" as it was inaugurate and laterdefined by the capitalist revolution.

    Last but not least, we lack analyses of the sociallystabilizing function of armaments and the mili

    22

  • tary apparatus in those countries - like the FederalRepublic of Germany - where the military-industrialcomplcx plays no quantitatively important role.l4 Thisfoundation would enable us to grasp military autism,i.e. armament as removed from its original socio-economicbasis and following its own inner logic.

    On the one hand, there is no doubt that armament hasa different function in a system with a centrally-plannedeconomy (like the Soviet Union) than in the capitalistsystem. On the other hand, there is no doubt that withregard to the growing militarization of the internationalsystem, including arms trade with the Third World (cf.SIPRI 1971), such "socialist" armament scarcelydistinguished itself functionally or technologicallyfrom capitalist armament. Doubt does exist, however, asto whether such "socialist armament" is or has become justas inherent to the socialist system as capitalist armamentis to the capitalist system. The hypothetical answerwithin the interpretational framework developed herewould run as follows: technologically intensive armament inthe Soviet Union, linked to industrial potential andpotential for growth, is a function of the threat to thisfirst non-capitalist system, a threat which has existedfrom the moment the USSR/Russia broke away from thecapitalist world system. This kind of armament was forcedupon the USSR, and has in the meantime gained a degree ofindependence which has not yet been satisfactorilyanalysed. In the capitalist system, on the contrary,armament and economic growth, armament and thetechnological development have determined one anotherab initio; they are dialectically linked, even where thisleads to potentially self-destructive autism.Accordingly, one should compare the beginnings ofarmament and the formation of the modern state, of thearms race as motivated by domestic and power politics inthe capitalist system on the one hand,15 with thebeginnings of Soviet and now Chinese strategic armament onthe other hand - or the obviously externally-inducedarms race of,the nations of the Third World.

    To be sure, one could at first sight present con-vincing reasons as to why one should let "history re-main history", and in view of the acute threat

    23

  • through A, B, and C weapons, why peace research shouldconcentrate its efforts an developing mechanisms toprevent the outbreak of warlike conflicts, channellingthem through armaments control mechanisms. However, onecould object - and I feel one must object - that suchpreventive measures have already been practiced andbeen-institutionalized more or less competently, more orless successfully by a technologically schooled andqualified group of expert-diplomats; and they willcontinue to be perfected without ever being able to getat the roots of the problem. Such a practice-orientedpeace research would at best have servicing functions;more likely still, it would not even equal theintellectual qualification of the practitioners, of theinternational threat system, but merely follow in theirfootsteps. If critical peace research is to overcome thesystem itself, it must begin farther back in order to reachthe more ambitious goal. It must start earlier inorder to go farther.

    2) The same is true in principle of the problem ofunderdevelopment (the growing gap between rich and poorsocieties in general) and true of the increase inviolent conflict in poor countries in particular.McNamara, while still in his capacity as US DefenseMinister and thus perhaps as the first authority, assertedthat such a connection exists between the increase ofviolent conflict and poverty in the nations of theThird World (McNamara in Newsweek, 18 May 1966). Takinga broad scope and with a different cognition interest,Istvan Kende implied that a Third World War had alreadybroken out. (Kende 1971.) However, as Galtung has pointedout, peace research can claim the Third World problemarea as its own, not only because of the topicality ofactual outbreaks of violence: it must try to get to theirroots in social inequality whether or not suchinequalities lead to violent conflict in any givencase. In this sense, the development of underdevelopmentin the context of the international system represents acentral theme for peace research. (Galtung 1969.)

    Two aspects in particular must be analyzed here:First, this historically unique phenomenon, underde-velopment, must be interpreted in the context of the

    24

  • development of the capitalist world system itself andnot as some regrettable backwardness amongst the peo-ples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as compared tothe technological breakthroughs in Europe and America.Export of know-how - technical, administrative, as wellas political and economic organizational imitation - isonly feasible between structurally similar societies.This we have seen from the relationship betweenEngland, where the Industrial Revolution (in the narrowsense of the word) took place, and the Europeancontinent and the United States. The development ofthese European societies and the English "breakthrough"in particular are, however, themselves intimatelyintermeshed with the subordination of nonEuropeansocieties. More important, or rather more concretely,the capitalist model of development, examined in itshistorical origins, itself demonstrates the necessityfor open territories for expansion as the preconditionfor the possibility of a "take-off". From a historicalviewpoint, these relationships have today been clarifiedto a great extent; the consequences, however, remainunclarified. This would not only prohibit thestructural transferal of this capitalist model ofdevelopment, which as a rule is abstracted from theinternational context and reduced solely to allegedinternal processes of accumulation, to the rise of abourgeoisie of trade and industry as a stimulus todevelopment, to the accumulation of capital through asurplus-value (Mehrwert) producing working class, etc.Also, it would logically mean that the capitalist worldsystem qua capitalist system is structurally incapableof bringing the developing countries up to the level ofproductivity of the capitalist metropolises and theirstandard of living. Until now, peace research hasscarcely concerned itself with this global economicanalysis; even where it has begun to focus upon imperialismas a socio-political structural problem, it remains es-sentially static, socio-economically void of substance.(Galtung 1971b, p. 81 ff.) The preconditions for removingviolent conflicts between Third World societies, can besought through orly roundabout analysis of the reproductionmechanisms of the capitalist world system, and byovercoming this system at its centers.

    25

  • If, however, the as yet unsatisfactorily-foundedconjectures shou--d prove true, namely that the world'sexisting ~jhysical resources are insufficient toguarantee those living today (not to mention theexpected increased world population) even approximatelythe standard of living of the developed industrialnations, then the demands for far-reaching change ofthe capitalist mode of production (which, mentionedearlier, has subjugated even the non-capitalist SovietUnion, etc., to its pressure for uncritically forcedeconomic growth), will not be sufficient. This implies,moreover, the - likewise historically unprecendented -necessity to transfer production capacity away from thedeveloped centers. Indeed, it implies for them anegative economic growth.

    Second, underdevelopment and the political conflictswhich it produces will necessitate in peace research areflection over the problem of violence, a reflectionwhich instead of merely covering up the problem withwell-meaning pacifism, can differentiate betweenprogressive and repressive violence in this concretecase. The clearer it becomes that underdevelopment andthe capitalistic system, and thus violent conflicts inthe Third World and the capitalist world system, arecausally related, historically as well as structurally,the more unavoidable such reflection will become. Such adifferentiated reflection on the legitimacy of the useof force in any given case as a solution to socialconflict must get to the roots of the previous identityof peace research itself.

    3) Finally, I would like to sketch the interpre-tational framework developed here for the example ofthe Arab-Israeli conflict. Here I shall be orientingmy remarks to the so far (with reservations) mostproductive attempt of conflict or peace research tosubdivide this conflict into operational parts, and tomove an to synthesizing conclusions as to possiblesolutions - Galtung's article "Middle East and thetheory of conflict" (Galtung 1971a).

    Galtung rightfully assumes that the founding of theIsraeli state an Palestinian territory "can only

    26

  • be understood against a background of century-longtraditions of Western colonialism (and that) Zionismwould have been powerless if it could not operatewithin this. tradition. The establishment of Israelshould be seen as a consequence of Western imperialism, notonly as an instrument for continued imperialism" (p. 175).The principal weakness of the analysis which thenfollows -.unlike most others, clear and coherent - is thatthe historical opening remains purely rhetorical and isnot developed as the cardinal, archimedial point of theconflict. As Galtung himself says: "Now the question to beasked is not whether what happened in the past was a 'mistake'or not that is now an .academic question - but whatcan be done in the future to rectify the situation." (p.176.) This is precisely not an academic question. Thefounding of Israel must be traced back to thetransformation__of the Arab societies under the impact ofcapitalist expansion. One would have to go at least asfar back as the prevention of indigenous modernization,above all in Egypt, which in the 1830s under Mohammed Ali(Hobsbawm 1962) and again in the 1870s (Mommsen 1961)showed signs of developing into a kind of "Arab Japan".In the greater context of the systematic weakening oreven destruction of indigenous industrialization, theannexation of the Arab states into the economic strategicnetwork of the imperialist societies of Western Europe,of the playing-off of the first anti-colonialist nationalmovements against each other during World War I -against this background, the Balfour Declaration with allits consequences appears as but one pebble in an immensemosaic. The antagonism, which in the meantime crys-tallized around states - with Israel as a bridgehead -is, correspondingly, still functionally derived from theexpansive interests in domination and control on the partof the leading capitalist countries, in recent years aboveall of the US.

    That this policy proved counter-productive, since itopened the gate to the Soviet Union in the Middle East,complicates the situation and points out the constantpossibility that conflicts can take on a tacticalindependence of their own - without, however, touchingin substance upon the strategic perspective. Eventhose Arab states still militarily

    27

  • linked with the Soviet Union, above all Egypt, are"condemned" qua nation-state development to evolve abureaucratically organized national bourgeois socialorder and to develop economies which must muster con-siderable resources for a socially unproductive, parasiticmilitary apparatus. On the basis of this developmentmodel, they will necessarily have to remain underdevelopedas socio-politicc,l appendices of the capitalist worldsystem (Tibi 1969), independently of temporary militaryalliances. (El Rabadi 1970-71.)

    At the level of organization, or rather confrontation ofstates as outsiders have dictated it to the Arab people inthis specific form (the historical as well as futurealternative, Arab unity, has been perverted to become akind of sentimental, manipulable hope), there is no solutionto the conflict worthy of the name "solution", as Galtungrightly and with great precision in the language ofconflict resolution has pointed out.

    This approach evades, it does not grasp, and indeedis not able to grasp the level of social conflict, theclass analysis which enables us to see Egypt not as Egypt,Jordan not as Jordan, or Israel not as Israel, but rather asinternally divided social groups which are held togethermore (Jordan) or less (Israel) painstakingly as stableentities. To be sure, the loyalties of these groups andclasses appear predominantly nation-state oriented. Butit would be historically shortsighted and thustheoretically false, as well as politically self-defeating, for a peace research oriented toward long-termsolutions not to insist on the historical analysis, andhence on the strategic strengthening'of non-state,inter-social loyalties. "We can and we must restorethe class struggle to its old dignity", as IsaakDeutscher has put it.16

    The history of our present shows that bourgeoisinternationalism has always established itself throughthe state and hence must always bear theconsequences,of its own potential for military con-flict. In contrast, non-bourgeois, non-capitalistinternationalism contains the preconditions for o-vercoming the nation-state and the conflicts inher

    28

  • ent in that system.

    The example of the Soviet Union, or that of the Sino-Soviet conflict, demonstrates that such internationalismcannot move beyond preliminary stages, as long as itremains a process on the periphery of the internationalsystem. Thus, the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflictwill in the long run not be found in the Middle East.There it will at best and most probably end in an imposedpeace in the context of fragmentation andunderdevelopment. Rather, such a solution can be achievedonly through change in the historic and current center of thecapitalist world system.

    5. Final Remarks

    I would like to break off this train of thought atthis point. Of course, this analysis is in great needof expansion, deepening, differentiation, and betterfactual proof and naturally of correction, in itsconcrete execution on all points. Nor shall theimplicit conclusions for peace research as a criticalpractice-oriented science be explained beyond what hasalready been presented.

    In view of the lack of theory in peace researchemphasized in the beginning of this article, togetherwith the overemphasis on empiricism and "value-free"methodology, and in view of subjectively well-meaninguncritical pluralism of approaches amongst peace researchersthemselves, it seemed to me both necessary and timely toredefine the scope of peace research and thussimultaneously to expand it and to narrow it down. Thereseems to me no doubt or question as to the quantitativegrowth of peace research in the foreseeable future.However, without such a limited expansion and expandedlimitation, its qualitative growth is highly dubious.

    29

  • REFERENCES

    Berghahn, V. 1970: Zu den Zielen des deutschenFlottenbaus unter Wilhelm II, Historische Zeit-schrift No. 1.

    Böhme, H. 1968: Prolegomena zu einer Sozial - undWirtschaftsgeschichte Deutschlands im 19. und 20.Jahrhundert. Frankfurt.

    Boxer, C. R. 1969: The Portuguese seaborne empire,1450-1825. Knopf, New York.

    Brandt, G. 1966: Rüstung und Wirtschaft in derBundesrepublik.' Witten & Berlin.

    Cipolla, C. M. 1969: Velieri e cannoni d'Europa suimari del Mondo. Torino.

    Desmond, A. 1964: How many people have ever lived onEarth? in S. Mudd (ed.): The population crisis andthe use of world resources. Dr. W. Junk, TheHague.

    Dobb, M. 1963: Economic growth and underdevelopedcountries. International Publishers, New York.

    Ehrlich, P. R. & A. H. Ehrlich 1970: Population, re-sources, environment. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco

    Eisenstadt, S. N. (ed.) 1971: Political sociology.Basic Books, New York & London.

    El Rabadi, J. 1970/71: Nazionalismo e lotta di classein Egitto. Thesis, University of Bologna, Faculty ofPolitical Science.

    Engels, F. 1958: Ausgewählte militärische Schriften.Berlin.

    30

  • Fisher, W. (ed.) 1968: Wirtschafts- und sozialge-schichtliche Probleme der frühen Industrialisierung.Berlin.

    Flamant, M. & J. Singer-Kerel 1970: Modern economiccrises and recessions. Harper & Row, New York.(Translated from the French.)

    Forster, J. W. 1971: World dynamics. Wright Allen,Cambridge, Mass.

    Galtung, J. 1969: Violence, peace and peace research,Journal of Peace Research 6, No. 3.

    Galtung, J. 1971a: The Middle East and the theory ofconflict, Journal of Peace Research 8, No. 3-4.

    Galtung, J. 1971b: A structural theory of imperial-ism, Journal of Peace Research 8, P'o. 2.

    Haussherr, H. 1955: Wirtschaftsgeschichte derNeuzeit. Weimar.

    Hobsbawm, E. J. 1969: Industry and empire. PelicanBooks, London.

    Hobsbawm, E. J. 1962: The age of revolution, 1789-1848. Mentor Books, New York.

    Horkheimer, M. 1967: Anfänge der bürgerlichenGeschichtsphilosophie. Frankfurt/Main.

    Horowitz, D. 1969 (ed.): Strategien der Konter-revolution. Darmstadt.

    Howard, M. 1971: Studies in war and_ peace. Viking,New York.

    Jenkins, R. 1970: Exploitation. MacGibbon & Kee,London.

    Kehr, E. 193,0: Schlachtflottenbau und Parteipolitik.Berlin.

    Kende, 1. 1971: Twenty-five years of local wars,Journal of Peace Research 8, No. 1.

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  • Kidron, M. 1970: Western capitalism since the war.London.

    Krippendorff, E. 1970: The state as a focus of peaceresearch, PRS (I) Papers XVI.

    Kulischer, J. 1928: Allgemeine Wirtschaftsgeschichtedes Mittelalters und der Neuzeit. Munich & Berlin.

    Landes, D. S. 1969: The unbound Prometheus. Cam-bridge University Press.

    Leith, C. K. 1970: World minerals and world politics.(1931) Kennikat Press, Port Washington, New York.

    Mandel, E. 1967: Die Marxsche Theorie der ursprünglichenAkkumulation und die Industrialisierung der DrittenWelt, in Folgen einer Theorie - Essays über "DasKapital" von Karl Marx. Frankfurt.

    Marx, K. 1962: Das Kapital. (Marx-Engels Werke, Bd.23) Berlin.

    Marx, K. 1953: Grundrisse der Kritik der PolitschenÖkonomie. Berlin.

    Marx, K. & F. Engels: Communist manifesto.

    Marx. K. & F. Engels 1953: Die deutsche Ideologie.Berlin.

    Mommsen, W. 1961: Imperialismus in Aegypten. Munich &Vienna.

    Mushkat, M. 1970: The small states and research intoaspects of war and peace. IPRA Proceedings, 3rdGeneral Conference, Vol. I. Van Gorcum, Assen

    Nef, J. U. 1963: War and human progress. W. W.Norton, New York.

    Nef, J. U. 1967: The conquest of the material world.Meridian, Cleveland & New York.

    Polyani, K. 1957: The great transformation. BeaconPress, Boston.

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    Russett, B. M. 1967: Trends in world politics.Macmillan, New York & London.

    Schmidt, A. 1971: Geschichte und Struktur. Munich.

    Sombart, W. 1913: Krieg und Kapitalismus. Munich &Leipzig.

    Stockholm International Peace Research Institute: Thearms trade with the Third World. Stockholm, NewYork, London.

    Tibi, B. 1969: Die arabische Linke. Frankfurt/Main.

    Wallach, J. L. 1967: Das Dogma der Vernichtungs-schlacht. Frankfurt/Main.

    Weber, M. 1956: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 2.Halbband. Tübingen.

    Williams, E. 1966: Capitalism and slavery. CapricornBooks, New York.

    Wittfogel, K. A. 1924: Geschichte der bürgerlichenGesellschaft. Berlin.

    Wittfogel, K. A. 1932: Die natürlichen Ursachen derWirtschaftsgeschichte, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaftund Sozialpolitik 67. Tübingen.

    Wright, Q. 1964: A study of war. University ofChicago Press.

  • NOTES

    1. Landes 1969, p. 5. Or one could take the calcu-lations of Leith 1931 (p. 4) which show that moreminerals have been consumed since 1900 than in theentire history prior to 1900; that world goldproduction from 1910 to 1930 was just as great asin the 400 years since the European discovery ofAmerica; that world copper production in 1929 wasdouble the entire world copper production of allof history up to the 19th cen= tury, etc.

    2. Hakluyt's advice to the Hapsburg's enemies: "Strikehim in the Indies, you strike him in the apple ofhis eye."

    3. Illustrated by Horkheimer using the example ofItaly and Machiavelli (Horkheimer 1967).

    4. Compare for example Sombart 1913.

    5. Compare Krippendorff 1970. As a useful anthology,Eisenstadt 1971.

    6. The level of socio-,cultural development of non-European societies was thoroughly equatable orsimilar to that of the West European societies upuntil the threshold of the Industrial Revolution.This was worked out as a universal historicalprocess for the first time by Wittfogel 1924.

    7. Compare the summary of the literature and somedata in Mandel 1967, p. 76 ff.

    8. Compare Hobsbawm 1969. In my opinion, he ismost comprehensive on this topic.

    9. As, despite impressive research efforts, doesWright 1964.

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  • 35

    10. Compare also the heroization of war as somethingspecifically modern: Nef 1963, p. 307 ff.

    11. In my opinion, still the most convincing attempt:Wittfogel 1932, p. 466 ff.

    12. The literature an this topic is so abundant andso well-known that specific references aresuperfluous.

    13. Nef is still the only example.

    14. Brandt 1966 is still the only analysis of itskind. Cf SIPRI 1971.

    15. Since Kehr 1930, it is well-known that the con-struction of the German navy - decisive for theoutbreak of World War I - was not undertaken be-cause of a foreign threat to Germany, but ratherbecause of domestic, social-political reasons.Lately, compare Berghahn 1970, p. 34 ff.

    16. At a teach-in at the University of California, .Berkeley, 1967. In Horowitz 1969.

  • SUMMARY

    Having quantitatively grown so fast, peace researchurgently needs to clarify its research object and todissociate itself from other approaches. A discussionof theory is not luxury. The international system, withits threat of total or partial destruction which providesthe general framework of peace research, must be recognizedas a phenomenon of recent history. It is the product ofthe Industrial Revolution and the capitalist mode ofproduction. Retracing this system to its historicgenesis enables us to expose the roots from which thedecisive conflict potential of modern times - the modernstate, the arms race, the discrepancy between rich and poorcountries, non-capitalist countries as components of thecapitalist world system - have developed.

    Unless we reduce historically conflicts of the momentto their recent contemporary structure rooted in thecapitalist revolution, peace research will only be ableto cure symptoms. Today we are historically still in theepoch of the capitalist revolution of the (European) 17thand 18th centuries. It must be transcended, overcome, ifwe are to create conditions for the possibilities ofcircumstances in which conflicts are no longer warlike,i.e. mediated by states but rather articulated and carriedout as social conflicts by the agents directly concerned.

    36