Chapter 11. Liberty And Peace

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LIBERTY AND PEACE

THE TIME MAY HAVE COME when we can again search more freely for the root-cause of peace without being met automatically with charges of being a "pacifist." If pacifist means embracing the objective of peace, it should be no disgrace to be a pacifist.

Unfortunately, there are those who find in war and deadly conflict a form of amusement suited to their tastes. These remarks are offered to those who are in search of a maximum of peace, by honorable means, in the hope that they may find stimulation in that search.

CONFLICT, whether in its larger form of "war" or in one of its lesser forms, will exist increasingly as liberty is curbed.

This assertion is offered as a hypothesis. If it be correct, it means that the route to peace is to increase liberty among individuals throughout the world; and there is no other means. If it be correct, any combination of force by whatever means and under whatever excuse will generate conflict in one or another of its forms, and will most likely end in the worst form of all — war.

War, banditry, mutiny, insurrection, riot, rebellion and murder are all forms of conflict differing in size. The various forms of conflict may also differ in other respects, not here of concern. Some conflicters may wear uniforms whereas others wear more conventional clothes. Some conflicters may wear official badges or insignia, some may receive medals for proficiency in conflict, and others may be given handcuffs for having participated — if caught by the right persons. Some may be elevated in office and in esteem because of their participation, whereas others may be demoted and disgraced. It all depends on the nature and form of the conflict; on whether or not it has been legalized; on whether both participants are within one nation or not; and on other differences. But all forms of conflict describe the absence of peace, and if the objective is to have a maximum of peace, there must be a minimum of conflict in any of its forms.

Conflict is a major occupation in the affairs of the world. One study reports that one form — war — has engaged the major countries of Europe for about half the time since the year 1500.¹

Another study gives an estimate of 59 million persons who have died because of conflict in all its forms during the last century and a quarter.² About four-fifths of this total number died as a direct result of the larger wars, which is the major cause of death in conflict, even though wars are few in number. Murders and the other lesser forms of conflict, though highly numerous, have accounted for only about one-fourth of one per cent of all the deaths from all causes in the world during this period.

These figures suggest the importance to peace of preventing the processes whereby conflict amasses into the larger affairs. Much better, perhaps, would be to endure the greater frequency of small conflict rather than to suffer the consequences of less frequent but more devastating major conflicts, if conflict in some form is unavoidable and if even the smaller ones must be endured as safety valves.

Many persons can be induced to fight some distant “enemy” they do not know, over some issue they do not understand, while in the abundant company of kinsmen who likewise do not know what the grandiose affair is all about. People are much less inclined to engage in conflict with an “enemy” who is their next-door neighbor, where the issue is clear to both parties; this form of dispute is much more likely to be settled out of conflict, peacefully.

Government is the official manager of every major conflict. This is a strange situation when viewed purely from the aspect of conflict. It seems strange that a government compels the citizens to participate in large-scale conflict, but punishes them for engaging in certain minor forms of conflict.

The conduct of all the activities of government is of the nature of conflict if, as Richardson defines it, conflict means “malice aforethought.” This is because government is engaged in enacting laws and punishing the violators; it engages in processes of force and compels support of all its operations by the citizens. It is engaged in repression, and imposes processes of force on those who come under its edicts. The voluntary acts of persons do not involve conflict, and do not require the enactment of government in order to be performed.

So war means conflict built on conflict and is, in a sense, conflict pyramiding itself. Perhaps that is why war is, by all odds, the most serious form of conflict.

It is no coincidence that large-scale wars are the product of dictatorships, or of the acts of aspiring dictators. In its earlier stages of growth, the dictator’s grasp for more power results mainly in internal conflict. Later it bursts its seams and becomes external conflict. Government of the scope and design of a liberal government, as previously defined, would seem to be engaged in an unavoidable degree of conflict; and so, to that extent it serves as an agency for maximizing liberty and minimizing conflict. But when government expands beyond that size and scope, where a maximum of liberty exists in society, the total of conflict is thereby increased.

THE HYPOTHESIS has been given that conflict will exist increasingly as liberty is curbed. Or, conflict is the result of the loss of liberty.

Stated another way, liberty and peace are to one another as cause and effect. Is this true?

If liberty were complete, and if a person restricted himself to what is properly his concern, how could there be conflict except perhaps as a pantomime for purposes of amusement? What would there be to fight about if liberty were universal?

Violation of liberty, and nothing else, is the basic cause of conflict. The violation of liberty may affect either the person or his property; it may be in the form of either a loss of liberty or the threat of a loss, real or imagined. Under any of these conditions, man’s will to be free impels him to strike at that force which is infringing on his liberty or threatening to do so.

The initiative of joining conflict may be taken by one who, in the act of “aggression,” attempts to take liberty away from others; Genghis Khan and those who captured slaves in Africa were both of this type. Or the conflict may occur in the process of regaining lost liberty through “rebellion,” against the yoke of already-lost liberties; the French and American Revolutions were of this type. Or the conflict may be an “offensive defense,” designed to strike at the assumed future aggressor first, before he strikes; this is aggression despite any attempt at rationalization of it as being “wise strategy”; the presumed intent of the “enemy” can never be proved in advance of his act of aggression; many national conflicts fall in this class, and it is to be noted that most of the wars of history were “defensive” wars, as written into each country’s own records of history. Conflict in all its sizes and forms, not just wars, originates in one or another of these settings of lost liberty.

The real crime against liberty does not, as we have seen, always occur at the time when the conflict started, because the conflict may be a rebellion against a loss of liberty at a much earlier time. The actual conflict in such instances is started by the oppressed in order to regain his previously-lost liberty. They are rebellions against the yoke of unbearable and illiberal power. Such was the setting of Patrick Henry’s famous words in 1775:

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

One may question, however, whether the lost liberty of chains and slavery, or the encroachment of unwanted power in any of its forms, is fairly to be termed peace.

The original loss of liberty leading to rebellion has been, in most instances, accomplished by the oppressor through seemingly peaceful and lawful means; Edmund Burke said that it occurs “under some delusion.” The victims in these instances, because of either ignorance or “tolerance,” had allowed their rights under liberty to erode until finally, in a panic of realization, violent rebellion breaks out in the hope of regaining the lost liberty. The basic cause — liberty lost in an earlier day — tends to become obscured by the furor of the conflict.

“Meeting power with power” and “balance of power” are concepts with wide appeal in international affairs. Threats of force are used as the excuse for enlarging a counter-force, and vice versa until the inevitable conflict is abandoned because of sheer exhaustion rather than from settlement of its underlying causes.

The same argument thus used in international affairs has also been used in “industrial warfare.” It is argued that the power of unions must be increased to meet the threatening power of business, or that the power of business must be increased to meet the threatening power of the unions, or that the power of government must be built up to meet the threat of one or both of these.

The basis for this method of meeting a threat to peace probably is the notion that size and might are synonymous. It is the belief that an increase in size means proportionately greater concentration of power, which becomes might in proportion to its increase in size. This belief then leads directly to greater and greater concentrations of authority for “defensive purposes.” Concentration of authority means loss of liberty without fail, because authority cannot reside in two places at the same time. Completing the circle, then, leads one to the questionable conclusion that peace is to be found in the abandonment of liberty. Any such conclusion is confronted with the conflicting evidence of Hitler and Mussolini, and of many others throughout history.

The belief that size and might are synonymous sounds plausible until one ponders certain questions. Why does large size so often meet defeat at the hands of that which is lesser in size? Why did dinosaurs become extinct under competition with lesser forms of life, rather than to grow ever larger and larger over the ages? And “trees do not grow to the sky.” Why can microbes kill forms of life impressively larger than they are, without entering into any authoritarian combine with that as its express purpose? Why have all the great aggregations of power of the famous conquerors of history fallen of their own weight to an opposition that derives its strength from something other than mere size? Why was Gandhi’s passive resistance and Christ’s method of “attack” so effective? We cannot deny that a form of might resides in size, but size is not might per se. There appears to be some form of inherent weakness in size and aggregations of power, which tends to cause their downfall.

Perhaps the problem of peace should be approached from a new and unconventional direction.³ On the record, at least, the solution would seem to lie elsewhere than in the methods that have been tried again and again without even a semblance of success. What is more, the customary means of trying to remove a difficulty by the use of force and power seems always to demoralize those who adopt it; observing this may have suggested to Bentham his definition of war, as “mischief on the largest scale.” It may explain why human reason seems to go on furlough, for the duration of serious conflict and in many instances thereafter. It may explain why both sides of most wars seem to come out as losers.

Perhaps the only route to peace is to increase liberty by breaking up each and every source and form of power, to the greatest possible extent and by peaceful means prior to its inevitable eruption into conflict. There must be substituted for the conflict of power a code of justice whereby the enemy of liberty becomes, not certain persons or certain nations in their entirety, but only those acts of any person or of any nation which violate the liberal design of society. Once this concept has been grasped, the words of Thomas Paine, when he said that one who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his own enemy from oppression, comes to have a new beauty of meaning. The futility of wholesale conflict as a defense of liberty then becomes clear.

Personalizing the enemy of liberty makes it impossible to come to grips with the true enemy, which is an act of the person. One act of a person may be in violation of liberty, and that is the enemy; all the other acts of that person may be in harmony with liberty. To personalize the enemy of liberty in this way is as though a surgeon, who has been engaged to cope with a malignant growth, were to personalize his enemy and kill the patient as his professional duty; if this procedure be wrong in surgery, can it be right in civil and international affairs?

In like manner, we are prone to personalize and nationalize the enemy of liberty, so that in the ensuing war the object becomes that of trying to kill the patient — those who are lovers of liberty within that nation as well as those who are violators of liberty, all of whom have been conscripted into the enemy’s armed forces indiscriminately.

This line of thought offers no panacea to a quick certainty of world peace. But to whatever extent this analysis is correct, there is no panacea or shortcut to peace. If the object be peace, how can it be attained by the use of force in attacking, indiscriminately, that which is liberty along with that which is not?

When we consider the deep-seated desire of persons for liberty, and when we note the relationship between liberty and peace, could wars occur except as the power to drive a whole nation into war comes to be vested in the hands of one or a few persons — perhaps even someone in a foreign “friendly nation”? That person may have motives entirely different from the persons they are presumed to be serving. He may be overmindful of the personal glories of war.

History reports in glowing terms of the glories of war and of victory. Emblazoned on the pages of history are the names of those who happened to have been the political leaders during the pageantry and historic din of sacrificial conflict. But in many instances those who thus acquire historic recognition are merely engaged in reaping the bitter consequences of their own past mistakes, which caused the destruction of the underpinnings of liberty so that conflict resulted.

Largely unsung and unrecorded are the truly great whose wise and timely acts stopped the makings of the aggression at their source, and who in this way prevented major wars. Their greatness, we may trust, is safely recorded in more important places and in a manner more substantial than mere popularity and common renown, more permanently than statue and shrine, in forms where human errors of judgment cannot tarnish or pollute the greatness. The most deserving glories of peace are to be found in the calm of battles not fought, and in the personages of those who prevented them from being fought.

¹ Q. Wright, A Study of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942).

² Lewis F. Richardson, “Variation of the Frequency of Fatal Quarrels with Magnitude,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, Dec., 1948.

³ See: Chang Hsin-hai, “The Moral Basis of World Peace,” The Annals, Vol. 258 (July, 1948), 79-89.