THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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the Junker, war and the Samurai. Spencer's* sociology calls on the full armour of its so­called theory of evolution to prove that war solely belongs to the primitive and
feudal state of society, to constraint, tutelage, and strangely also to otherwise scarcely feudal centralization. Whereas it is in keeping with the most special interests of
the industrial period to eliminate superannuated militarism like a foreign body — war is the ultima ratio of kings, not of the bourgeois. Therefore the deportment of
Spencer's sociology released the white dove from debit and credit, or at least from credit; peaceful competition, as they used to say, unites the business offices. It was
thus on this basis, under the direction of England and an earlier North America, that bourgeois pacifism spread. Well­meaning and vague, short­winded and composed
of misunderstandings of itself, and also having been useful as a quasi ‘peace in our time’, for the purpose of tolerating and indeed promoting Hitler. For capitalism is
certainly not the sort of lamb it was made out to be by the Spencer­sociologists, and risks do not frighten the entrepreneur when the destruction of competition is the
goal. Even alleged militarism as such, which had survived in Germany and Japan from a pre­capitalist feudal past, would have declined long ago to a showpiece if it had
not had the freshest imperialist mandate behind it precisely in these two countries. So war and peace are no opposites any more in the age of monopoly capitalism; they
both stem from the same business, precisely from this, modern war itself comes from capitalist peace and bears its ghastly features. The fight for marketing areas, and
competition fighting by every possible means, are written into capital, hence it cannot keep any eternal peace, hence imperialisms necessarily form the explosive
atmosphere of a permanent pre­war period, and the declaration of war itself (recently it can be lacking too) becomes mere release. Only a sentimental, then a slovenly,
then a roguish idealism can therefore water the plant of peace on bourgeois master­heights; it conceals here only the preparations for attack, si vis bellum, para pacem,
if you want fascism, speak about freedom. Indeed the very civilian spirit has become so identical with big bombers in late capitalism that only imperialism, as the last
capitalist phase, has brought war to the perfection that is called total. The diverse Wall Street wars are total not merely because they by no means occur only between
armies any more but because they choose, with particular heroism, what is defenceless as a sacrifice. The full churches and women and children had not been terrified
of the armies of knights, but they find no mercy from the fury of the
* Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), English sociologist who anticipated much of Darwin's theory of evolution.