Reith Lectures - War and Humanity

[aeolium]

Two very good lectures so far by Margaret Macmillan on the topic of war, not evading the role of war in advancing political, social and technological progress (perhaps the single greatest agent of change in human history?) I liked her book on the Great War, The War That Ended Peace, and she has a very fluent and attractive style even when dealing with issues of great complexity.

She made a good point near the end of today's lecture, about the nature and motivation of those who fight, concerning the importance of comradeship in providing motivation even in conscripted armies. My grandfather, who was in the RAMC in the first world war, never talked about it ("You don't want to know about that, gel/boy" he would say when that was exactly what we wanted to know), but his children thought that he was always seeking to recreate in peacetime life the close camaraderie he had experienced in the war.

[DracoM]

Well, I'm probably totally out of step here, but what she seems to be saying is so uncontroversially obvious, I can't see it takes us forward, or does much to illuminate what surely we already know?

I've listened carefully, and at the end I keep thinking 'erm........is that it? So, what's new?'

[aeolium]

Well, I'm probably totally out of step here, but what she seems to be saying is so uncontroversially obvious, I can't see it takes us forward, or does much to illuminate what surely we already know?

I've listened carefully, and at the end I keep thinking 'erm........is that it? So, what's new?'

I disagree. I thought what she had to say about the excitement and attraction of war, and how it was necessary to understand that, was a useful counterpoint to the now accepted conventional view of the awfulness and incomprehensibility of war; as in her illustration of how views towards the Great War changed from those at the time, and in the decade following, compared with the attitudes towards it after the Second World War. There was an obvious exhilaration and anticipation of conflict in the early part of the Great War, a feeling of necessary cleansing from the dirt and tedium of bourgeois and industrial life - as can be seen in art from that period, the seduction of the primitive (e.g. Rite of Spring). I suppose all of that is known, but it still needs to be confronted and accounted for.

[Serial_Apologist]

I veer towards DracoM's assessment. The global bourgeoisie are in despair that Thatcherism's attack on working class people and reliance on consumerism and privatisation has shorn capitalism of moral legitimacy, and in turning against each other are psyching up the footsoldiers to be. It seems clear to me that with the present worldwide establishments not even prepared any more to defend the global system they set up to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone and all else -capitalism destroying itself as someone recently quoted elsewhere on this forum - they're almost sleepwalking us all into WW3, and these talks are just part of the softening up process. I'm reminded of Jules Henry's speech "Social and Psychological Preparation for War" at the 1967 Dialectics of Liberation Congress at the Roundhouse, the paperback of some of the speeches including that one I possess as a reminder of wiser times too easily forgot. Making it seem like it's all down to our essentially beast-driven competitiveness is part of the script including that it's non-PC to critique religions. Can anybody seriously imagine such a series being contemplated at any time between, let's say, 1946 and 2006, when such thoughts of war as in any way or circumstances in the "developed world" legitimate would have been thought beyond the pale?

[aeolium]

they're almost sleepwalking us all into WW3, and these talks are just part of the softening up process.....Making it seem like it's all down to our essentially beast-driven competitiveness is part of the script including that it's non-PC to critique religions.

That's just not the case - have you listened to any of the lectures?

Can anybody seriously imagine such a series being contemplated at any time between, let's say, 1946 and 2006, when such thoughts of war as in any way or circumstances in the "developed world" legitimate would have been thought beyond the pale?

Yes, of course. What more important subject to try to understand when whole civilisations have been destroyed throughout history through the agency of war. The idea that merely discussing and seeking explanations for a phenomenon are in some ways justifications for it is completely ludicrous.

[Serial_Apologist]

That's just not the case - have you listened to any of the lectures?

I listened to the opener last week, in which MacMillan [sic] basically set out the intellectual co-ordinates for the series as a whole, with growing frustration and a sense of depression, thinking, do we really, at this worrying time, need a series which seeks to legitimise war on human nature grounds? - and switched on this morning, only to switch off after five minutes, reminded of the glibly matter-of-fact tone and rapid pace in which the talk was being delivered, as if it mattered not whether or not one accepted its premises or conclusions. And I thought, do I really have to sit through another 4 hours of this to have to explain why it is just more of the same in different emperor's clothes? At least previous Reith Lectures have generally been delivered with a tone of conviction that said, this is the BBC living up to its mission to educate and enlighten as opposed to just regurgitating the status quo, whatever the subject. Listen, because you may not have heard arguments, ideas or research such as this presented before, and you might be won over. Rather as with this very forum!

Yes, of course. What more important subject to try to understand when whole civilisations have been destroyed throughout history through the agency of war. The idea that merely discussing and seeking explanations for a phenomenon are in some ways justifications for it is completely ludicrous.

Past whole civilisations cannot be compared with the forces that bind and divide today, however. One can always single out or amass evidence pointing to the causes of past wars, none of which can be transferred in general terms to the present, other than for purposes of falsification and mythologising.

What differentiates the present from past war preparatory situations is that people as a whole were once much more tied to locale, told to believe in a natural order of humanity maintained from the top, fed us-and-them propaganda and otherwise kept in the dark. Today we live in an age of instant news and communication, one in which, based on multicultural everyday experience, namely the idea of common humanity, out-trumps essential differences, which then have to be conjured up in order to assign enemy characteristics and substitute exclusivity to secure compliance when the crunch comes, thus obscuring the real pretexts for war, which are based on power, position, money, and access to information (read propaganda) control and dissemination.

[DracoM]

[Richard Tarleton]

Past whole civilisations cannot be compared with the forces that bind and divide today, however. One can always single out or amass evidence pointing to the causes of past wars, none of which can be transferred in general terms to the present, other than for purposes of falsification and mythologising.

Really?

What differentiates the present from past war preparatory situations

What makes you think we're in a war preparatory situaton,, S_A? Between who?

....thus obscuring the real pretexts for war, which are based on power, position, money, and access to information (read propaganda) control and dissemination.

Whose power, position and money are we talking about here, S_A? In other words, who is going to be initiating the next war?

I haven't been listening, I'm hoping to be able to read transcripts which I find preferable.

Listening to the trailers, I thought her starting thesis was that a propensity to war is part of the human condition, rather than an aberration.

The idea of war to occupy territory has to a great extent ceased to be a problem (Yuval Noah Harari), as wealth is to a large extent not in a form that can readily be siezed, occupied or carried off, existing to a great extent in the form of intellectual property (though he does not take account of Crimea, and the threats to Baltic countries, Putin being a throwback). The Middle East an exception because wealth is still in holes in the ground. China can achieve world domination without actually invading anybody.

[Serial_Apologist]

Really?

What makes you think we're in a war preparatory situaton,, S_A? Between who? Whose power, position and money are we talking about here, S_A? In other words, who is going to be initiating the next war?

This isn't yet clear, Richard. But there is an atmosphere abroad for war and has been, especialy since Trump was elected. Trump personnifies an economic philosophy predicated on the idea that it is better to have inter-competing states than ditto multinational companies, and like many myths it is built on old capitalist foundations which focussed support for wealth creation around state and property. Nation-based companies, the raison d'être of all those national self-determination movements of 19th century Europe, were superseded by multinational monopolies of no loyalty to the nation state, thus rendering legitimising patriotic state ideologies redundant in all but rhetoric - fascism representing the claim by one part of the political establishment to reasert its legitimacy in the teeth of capitalism's potential denouement, supported by the originally legitimising state's armed wing. Similarities in today's situation, in which recession follows on evermore speedily from recession and the once-trusty middle classes are the new exploited, are striking historically: it would only take a match - French fishermen asserting their rights to fish post-Brexit in re-declared "British waters" as an example - to "force" politicians into defensive action: but for such action to proceed depends on ideologically "priming" populations into collective mindsets prepared to OK to such action as being made necessary. The primer consists in all the pressures impingent on an economic system in crisis with no end in sight, when the opposite was long promulgated as the free world's" answer to totalitarianism.

Listening to the trailers, I thought her starting thesis was that a propensity to war is part of the human condition, rather than an aberration.

Which is precisely a point I would argue against.

[Richard Tarleton]

Which is precisely a point I would argue against.

I think anthopology has a lot to teach us here - see for instance Part 2 of Jared Diamond's The World Before Us

[richardfinegold]

I disagree. I thought what she had to say about the excitement and attraction of war, and how it was necessary to understand that, was a useful counterpoint to the now accepted conventional view of the awfulness and incomprehensibility of war; as in her illustration of how views towards the Great War changed from those at the time, and in the decade following, compared with the attitudes towards it after the Second World War. There was an obvious exhilaration and anticipation of conflict in the early part of the Great War, a feeling of necessary cleansing from the dirt and tedium of bourgeois and industrial life - as can be seen in art from that period, the seduction of the primitive (e.g. Rite of Spring). I suppose all of that is known, but it still needs to be confronted and accounted for.

I really enjoyed MacMillian's book on WW1 and the sequel on the Peace Conference. I think that the point of the camaraderie amongst soldiers is very important. Many of the moist militant Nazis, including Hitler, were social misfits that finally found a congenial environment during wartime and then believed that wars were necessary to build the "Community of the Volk". Nor is this an attitude that was unique to Nazis during the interwar period. In my country the Spanish American War was largely started by a handful of individuals that felt they had missed out on the "glory" of the American Civil War 9Theodore Roosevelt, for example) and needed to prove their manliness. Imperial Rome thrived on the strength of the camaraderie of soldiers in Arms and the bonds that were created.

[Serial_Apologist]

I really enjoyed MacMillian's book on WW1 and the sequel on the Peace Conference. I think that the point of the camaraderie amongst soldiers is very important. Many of the moist militant Nazis, including Hitler, were social misfits that finally found a congenial environment during wartime and then believed that wars were necessary to build the "Community of the Volk". Nor is this an attitude that was unique to Nazis during the interwar period. In my country the Spanish American War was largely started by a handful of individuals that felt they had missed out on the "glory" of the American Civil War 9Theodore Roosevelt, for example) and needed to prove their manliness. Imperial Rome thrived on the strength of the camaraderie of soldiers in Arms and the bonds that were created.

It's not that I disagree, but I would argue that contrary to Ms MacMillan's claims as to inborn response propensity to the challenges of war, it was sociopolitically determined circumstances of war that framed, brought about, and shaped such congenially fraternal (or whatever) bondings - not, as she contrives, war situations being in and of themselves as effective as, or even better at achieving such bonding, than peacetime societies - based on the principle that we all have much more in common to generate solidarity and depth of empathy worth defending than the divisive social and political realities, the outward expressions of given social orders which it should be solidarity's objective to question and finally do away with.

[Richard Tarleton]

based on the principle that we all have much more in common to generate solidarity and depth of empathy worth defending than the divisive social and political realities, the outward expressions of given social orders which it should be solidarity's objective to question and finally do away with.

Wishful thinking, I think, S_A - you can date the start of "war" from the start of farming, as opposed to hunter-gathering, when the notions of settled communities, property, boundaries etc. came into being. Basically, people have evolved to live in communities of a few hundred, at most. War will disappear when it becomes redundant, for the reasons Harari suggests. Only it probably won't, because of population increase, population shift, pressure on finite resources......

[Serial_Apologist]

Wishful thinking, I think, S_A - you can date the start of "war" from the start of farming, as opposed to hunter-gathering, when the notions of settled communities, property, boundaries etc. came into being. Basically, people have evolved to live in communities of a few hundred, at most. War will disappear when it becomes redundant, for the reasons Harari suggests. Only it probably won't, because of population increase, population shift, pressure on finite resources......

Well we haven't done too badly in the west for 70+ years, although it could be commented that the west has exported its wars to other parts of the world, where it was not "economically expedient" to export our self-enlightened ways. But this is part of the point I'm trying to make, namely that wars never have generalisable causes, there are always easily understandable and specific reasons for them. They are terrible and wasteful and leave long-term scars of recrimination on successive generations with no say; that comradeship is described as a welcome by-product is obscene, to me. Heroism, perhaps, we can speak of in different terms; but again, war should not be seen as a welcomed opportunity for its manifestation.

[aeolium]

It's not that I disagree, but I would argue that contrary to Ms MacMillan's claims as to inborn response propensity to the challenges of war, it was sociopolitically determined circumstances of war that framed, brought about, and shaped such congenially fraternal (or whatever) bondings - not, as she contrives, war situations being in and of themselves as effective as, or even better at achieving such bonding, than peacetime societies - based on the principle that we all have much more in common to generate solidarity and depth of empathy worth defending than the divisive social and political realities, the outward expressions of given social orders which it should be solidarity's objective to question and finally do away with.

But Prof MacMillan is a historian, not a journalist or a propagandist. Her professional duty is to look at the evidence and draw conclusions from it, and that is what she is doing in these lectures, and in her books where she has been an expert in the modern history of international relations. She is not concerned with whether her conclusions are unpalatable, merely whether they are supported by the evidence. Apart from the two major conflicts of the C20, there have been literally hundreds of smaller wars in that century, including many since 1945. Surely seeking to understand war in all its manifestations is a worthwhile enterprise.