Reith Lectures - War and Humanity

[Richard Tarleton]

From the perspective of the Bolshevik Revolution, as a good Trotskyist (or what remains of one!) I and others of my political ilk would argue that the socialisation of the means of production and distribution achieved by the Russian revolution was an advantage to humanity as a whole, worldwide, inasmuch as it deprived western capitalist interests of a large territorial area from expansion and exploitation, and, potentially, allowed for lessons to be learned from its consequences.

S_A, I find this notion so grotesque - we're talking about a process which resulted in about 60 million dead in the Soviet Union, through famine and purges - that I don't think there's a single premise we could agree on, for the purposes of this discussion. I wasn't actually asking you about the pluses and minuses of the Russian Revolution, but about the occupation of a number of separate sovereign states by Russian in the closing stages and aftermath of WW2. They weren't the Eastern Bloc until Stalin had occupied them. The alternative to Roosevelt and Churchill acquiescing in this was war between the western allies and Soviet Russia in 1945, which wasn't really an option. Re your final para, your reference to your jazzer scientisits talking about how the "Eastern Bloc" countries could "be developed" speaks volumes - presumably, to a good Trotskyist, whether or not the people concerned had a say in this was immaterial. We know what happened when they did eventually decide for themselves.

I think we're talking about alternative realities, not to say parallel universes, here. In the interests of hostly politeness I'd better stop

[Serial_Apologist]

S_A, I find this notion so grotesque - we're talking about a process which resulted in about 60 million dead in the Soviet Union, through famine and purges - that I don't think there's a single premise we could agree on, for the purposes of this discussion. I wasn't actually asking you about the pluses and minuses of the Russian Revolution, but about the occupation of a number of separate sovereign states by Russian in the closing stages and aftermath of WW2. They weren't the Eastern Bloc until Stalin had occupied them. The alternative to Roosevelt and Churchill acquiescing in this was war between the western allies and Soviet Russia in 1945, which wasn't really an option. Re your final para, your reference to your jazzer scientisits talking about how the "Eastern Bloc" countries could "be developed" speaks volumes - presumably, to a good Trotskyist, whether or not the people concerned had a say in this was immaterial. We know what happened when they did eventually decide for themselves.

I think we're talking about alternative realities, not to say parallel universes, here. In the interests of hostly politeness I'd better stop

My points in answer to yours were in the post you have signally failed to address. A shame, as I've always had respect for you.

[Richard Tarleton]

My points in answer to yours were in the post you have signally failed to address. A shame, as I've always had respect for you.

Likewise, S_A. I always think it's helpful to know where people are coming from, in any discussion. I read history at university, specialising in 19th and 20th C - my inspiration in Russian history was Harry Willetts, never missed one of his lectures. My landlord for my last two years as an undergraduate was an Czech Jew who'd been brought up in Prague (his father was Prague's leading gyneacologist - who once famously said to a student after a training session on a dummy "Well, you've killed the baby, you've killed the mother, why don't you take an axe and kill the father as well" My friend left Prague in the nick of time in 1938, and was of course never able to go back. I remember his reaction to the Prague Spring in 1968. But there we are.

[Serial_Apologist]

Likewise, S_A. I always think it's helpful to know where people are coming from, in any discussion. I read history at university, specialising in 19th and 20th C - my inspiration in Russian history was Harry Willetts, never missed one of his lectures. My landlord for my last two years as an undergraduate was an Czech Jew who'd been brought up in Prague (his father was Prague's leading gyneacologist - who once famously said to a student after a training session on a dummy "Well, you've killed the baby, you've killed the mother, why don't you take an axe and kill the father as well" My friend left Prague in the nick of time in 1938, and was of course never able to go back. I remember his reaction to the Prague Spring in 1968. But there we are.

I always try and put forward a rounded context to any opinion held, since people ask one to amplify what it is one means, and this requires background, which some are reluctant to give. I would no longer take one sentance or paragraph from anothers carefully thought out position and use it to diss the whole than I would accuse all Chritians for being responsible for child abuse. My own background precludes me from being an apologist for anything under the Soviet system - the thread is about benefits and disbenefits, and both east and west have threatened war, rhetorically at any rate, and in doing do have propagandised the supposed benefits of their respective world viewpoints, as have I my very different understandings. My background however is the liberation philosophies of the 1960s, and harder a place would be difficult to find in which to locate authoritarians or excuse makers for suffering - which I would think to be pretty obvious from the profile I've expounded all the time I've been on this forum. But anyway, it's for others to judge.

PS - interesting to see from an online history of his university college (St Anthony's) that Willetts and his team were by no means the uncritical anti-Soviet propagandists I might have been led to believe by Richard's tirade above!

[Richard Tarleton]

Back to the actual lectures. I’ve now read the first two, highlighter to hand (I wish these had been invented when I was revising, 50 years ago...)

She makes the anthropological hunter gatherer/farmer point I raised in #13. I agree, Steven Pinker too optimistic.

Her points about war and society, and how the organisation of society both protects against it and makes it easier, are well enough made if unexceptional. The management of resources necessary for (e.g.) a navy, the growth of statistics…the style of fighting determined by what sort of society you are...all fine.

But, I found myself picking holes in one or two of her arguments. She says how the American and French Revolutions shifted the status of people living in a particular country from being subjects to being citizens – and how wars in the 18th C and before were wars of the rulers. But (and she doesn’t mention Napoleon until he crops up in questions at the end of the second lecture) what were Napoleon’s wars, if not wars of the rulers, in the first instance Napoleon? They were not merely to defend France, but to conquer large tracts of Europe. This wasn't the people's idea, it was Napoleon's. If there was a people’s war at this time, it was the insurrection against Napoleon in Spain.

And General Moltke the First was being disingenuous in talking about the shift from cabinet wars to people’s wars, and “the passions of the peoples” – rubbish! This idea rightly ridiculed in a later (I think Lowe) cartoon where the politicians (wolves) are telling the peoples of the world (sheep) how they (the politicians) had been unable to control the peoples' warlike instincts. Germany’s Kaiser, Chancellor and general staff engineered 3 wars against their neighbours in 50 years (1866, 70, 1914) – greatly facilitated of course by organisation (see above) which meant mobilisation (in 1914) once started couldn’t be stopped,by either side.

So only a ß+ for the first lecture. A ß - - for the second one. The Thatcher jibe was an unworthy cheap shot. The undisciplined French revolutionary army of 1792 did not last long – Napoleon again not mentioned. And his army may have been a citizen’s army, but it was a professional one, there was conscription, and it was still a rulers’ war. The questions went on far too long – better to have a longer, more rigorous, lecture.

[DracoM]

I also began taking the odd note in the 2nd Lecture and gave up - for much the reasons you offer.
This Forum thread alone raises so many questions about her assertions and conclusions, and indeed the assumptions and lacunae.

[DracoM]

I also began taking the odd note in the 2nd Lecture and gave up - for much the reasons you and others offer.
This Forum thread alone raises so many questions about her assertions, conclusions, assumptions - and lacunae.

[aeolium]

But, I found myself picking holes in one or two of her arguments. She says how the American and French Revolutions shifted the status of people living in a particular country from being subjects to being citizens – and how wars in the 18th C and before were wars of the rulers. But (and she doesn’t mention Napoleon until he crops up in questions at the end of the second lecture) what were Napoleon’s wars, if not wars of the rulers, in the first instance Napoleon? They were not merely to defend France, but to conquer large tracts of Europe. This wasn't the people's idea, it was Napoleon's. If there was a people’s war at this time, it was the insurrection against Napoleon in Spain.

But it does seem to me that the move from the C18 professional armies to the huge citizens' armies created by levée en masse (and leading to conscription or other forms of impressment in other countries) does mark a fundamental change in unleashing sometimes unpredictable forces which rulers found difficulty in controlling. And remember that Napoleon was not really in charge until the 18th Brumaire in 1799, several years after war had been declared by the French revolutionary state in 1792. The Napoleonic wars were not wars chosen by the people, but Napoleon was created and sustained by the Revolution and would have been only too aware how others before him had been created and destroyed by that power. If his wars were so unpopular, why was he allowed to return from Elba?

And General Moltke the First was being disingenuous in talking about the shift from cabinet wars to people’s wars, and “the passions of the peoples” – rubbish! This idea rightly ridiculed in a later (I think Lowe) cartoon where the politicians (wolves) are telling the peoples of the world (sheep) how they (the politicians) had been unable to control the peoples' warlike instincts. Germany’s Kaiser, Chancellor and general staff engineered 3 wars against their neighbours in 50 years (1866, 70, 1914) – greatly facilitated of course by organisation (see above) which meant mobilisation (in 1914) once started couldn’t be stopped,by either side.

Against that, here is Christopher Clark, from his book Sleepwalkers, about the problematic role of the press and public opinion in the leadup to 1914:

"This haze of uncertainty [about the meaning and origin of press articles] meant not only that embassy officials had to be vigilant in trawling the press, but also that adverse published comment on foreign governments could give rise on occasion to feuds, in which two foreign ministries skirmished through the pages of the inspired press, in the process stirring public emotions in ways that could be difficult to control (my italics). The British and the German foreign offices were typical in the tendency of each to overstate the extent to which public opinion was controlled by the other government....Press feuds could spring up spontaneously, without government involvement. It was widely acknowledged by the governments that slanging matches between chauvinistic newspaper editors could escalate to the point where they threatened to poison the atmosphere of international relations." (Sleepwalkers, p 235 in the Penguin edition)

I think that the age of total war with citizen or conscripted armies, initiated from the period of the Napoleonic Wars, did fundamentally alter the nature of diplomacy and war. The deployment of nationalist sentiment, backed up by a chauvinist press, brought into international relations new elements which were much less amenable to control by the rulers.

[vinteuil]

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... I was looking forward to these Reith Lectures - there was an interesting interview with her in The Times which was particularly promising. Like others here I have been disappointed. I think it is telling that there has been more food for thought in the various contributions to this Thread than has so far been provided by her Lectures...

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[subcontrabass]

The questions went on far too long – better to have a longer, more rigorous, lecture.

There have been several changes in format over the years - not necessarily all for the better. In the earliest years there were six lectures of thirty minutes duration, all delivered in a studio purely for the audience listening at home. The number of lectures was later reduced to five. Then in 2002 there was the move to the current format, with talks (hardly meriting the title of "lecture") of around 15 to 20 minutes duration, in front of an "invited audience", with follow up questions from selected members of that audience facilitated by a presenter. The number of sessions was later reduced to the present four.

All these changes seem to me to indicate a "dumbing down" of the original concept, overlaid with the BBC's misconceived process of providing "balance".

[aeolium]

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... I was looking forward to these Reith Lectures - there was an interesting interview with her in The Times which was particularly promising. Like others here I have been disappointed. I think it is telling that there has been more food for thought in the various contributions to this Thread than has so far been provided by her Lectures...

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I think it should be recognised that it is hard to pack in both argument and detail into five half-hour lectures (given that an equal amount of time is allowed for questions & presenter introduction) on such a wide-ranging subject; and also that these are lectures to generalist, not specialist, audiences. I think one ought to allow the lecturer to complete the full series before rushing to judgement.

That it is a subject worthy of discussion within the Reith Lectures format, and that the lecturer is sufficiently qualified to give the lectures, should not in my view be in question, whatever the merit of the lectures as a series.

[aeolium]

There have been several changes in format over the years - not necessarily all for the better. In the earliest years there were six lectures of thirty minutes duration, all delivered in a studio purely for the audience listening at home. The number of lectures was later reduced to five. Then in 2002 there was the move to the current format, with talks (hardly meriting the title of "lecture") of around 15 to 20 minutes duration, in front of an "invited audience", with follow up questions from selected members of that audience facilitated by a presenter. The number of sessions was later reduced to the present four.

All these changes seem to me to indicate a "dumbing down" of the original concept, overlaid with the BBC's misconceived process of providing "balance".

Actually, the format has changed again for the present series, with 5 lectures being given, each of around 30 minutes duration, with around 25 minutes for questions. Arguably the balance is still wrong and that it should be 40-45 minutes for each lecture, but at least it is not as bad as it has been in recent years.

[Richard Tarleton]

I think it should be recognised that it is hard to pack in both argument and detail into five half-hour lectures (given that an equal amount of time is allowed for questions & presenter introduction) on such a wide-ranging subject; and also that these are lectures to generalist, not specialist, audiences. I think one ought to allow the lecturer to complete the full series before rushing to judgement.

That it is a subject worthy of discussion within the Reith Lectures format, and that the lecturer is sufficiently qualified to give the lectures, should not in my view be in question, whatever the merit of the lectures as a series.

Agreed on all points. I shall be listening to, or rather reading, the rest of the series with great interest, though like others I daresay I'll continue to mark her essays as she hands them in

[vinteuil]

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... on perhaps a happier note - today sees possibly the end of one of the most pointless wars or recent history - the Ethiopian/Eritrean conflict which started in 1998 and which has seen the deaths of at least 80,000 people in a scrap over a few kilometres of arid sparsely populated desert land. The leaders of Ethiopia and Eritrea met today to sign a peace treaty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrean%E2%80%93Ethiopian_War

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https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2018/07/09/l-erythree-et-l-ethiopie-mettent-fin-a-l-etat-de-guerre_5328543_3212.html

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[aeolium]

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... on perhaps a happier note - today sees possibly the end of one of the most pointless wars or recent history - the Ethiopian/Eritrean conflict which started in 1998 and which has seen the deaths of at least 80,000 people in a scrap over a few kilometres of arid sparsely populated desert land. The leaders of Ethiopia and Eritrea met today to sign a peace treaty.

Although they also signed a peace treaty in 2000. It's much easier to sign a treaty than keep a peace....

Another forgotten war (or series of wars) is that in the Democratic Republic of Congo since the mid-1990s, which has resulted in the deaths of millions through conflict, disease and famine, and led to the displacement of nearly 2 million:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13286306

Listening to the third in the Reith Lectures series this morning, I sensed why there has been some dissatisfaction with them, in that the lecturer's theme is such a wide one - essentially the history of war and its impact on humanity - that she cannot but come to very generalised conclusions. She marshals her facts and arguments well over a wide range of conflicts - she is definitely a fox and not a hedgehog in Isaiah Berlin's sense - but I wonder if it would not have been better to have focussed on perhaps two examples of conflicts, an international one (like the Great War) and a civil war (like the Spanish Civil War), which has been the predominant type of conflict since 1945. Ranging so widely across history can result in a loss of focus.