An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation. Thorstein Veblen
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dealings with aliens, whether at home or abroad; security of investment and trade, and vindication of their citizens before the law in foreign parts; and, chiefly and ubiquitously, furtherance and extension of the national trade into foreign parts, particularly of the export trade, on terms advantageous to the traders of the nation.
The last named of these advantages is the one on which stress is apt to fall in the argument of all those who advocate an unfolding of national power, as being a matter of vital material benefit to the common man. The other items indicated above, it is plain on the least reflection, are matters of slight if any material consequence to him. The common man—that is ninety-nine and a fraction in one hundred of the nation's common men—has no dealings with aliens in foreign parts, as capitalist, trader, missionary or wayfaring man, and has no occasion for security of person or property under circumstances that raise any remotest question of the national prowess or the national prestige; nor does he seek or aspire to trade to foreign parts on any terms, equitable or otherwise, or to invest capital among aliens under foreign rule, or to exploit concessions or take orders, for acceptance or delivery; nor, indeed, does he at all commonly come into even that degree of contact with abroad that is implied in the purchase of foreign securities. Virtually the sole occasion on which he comes in touch with the world beyond the frontier is when, and if, he goes away from home as an emigrant, and so ceases to enjoy the tutelage of the nation's constituted authorities. But the common man, in point of fact, is a home-keeping body, who touches foreign parts and aliens outside the national frontiers only at the second or third remove, if at all, in the occasional purchase of foreign products, or in the sale of goods that may find their way abroad after he has lost sight of them. The exception to this general rule would be found in the case of those under-sized nations that are too small to contain the traffic in which their commonplace population are engaged, and that have neither national prowess nor national prestige to fall back on in a conceivable case of need,—and whose citizens, individually, appear to be as fortunately placed in their workday foreign relations, without a background of prowess and prestige, as the citizens of the great powers who are most abundantly provided in these respects.
With wholly negligible exceptions, these matters touch the needs or the sensibilities of the common man only through the channel of the national honour, which may be injured in the hardships suffered by his compatriots in foreign parts, or which may, again, be repaired or enhanced by the meritorious achievements of the same compatriots; of whose existence he will commonly have no other or more substantial evidence, and in whose traffic he has no share other than this vicarious suffering of vague and remote indignity or vainglory by force of the wholly fortuitous circumstance that they are (inscrutably) his compatriots. These immaterial goods of vicarious prestige are, of course, not to be undervalued, nor is the fact to be overlooked or minimised that they enter into the sum total of the common citizen's "psychic income," for whatever they may foot up to; but evidently their consideration takes us back to the immaterial category of prestige value, from which the argument just now was hopefully departing with a view to consideration of the common man's material interest in that national enterprise about which patriotic aspirations turn.
These things, then, are matters in which the common man has an interest only as they have a prestige value. But there need be no question as to their touching his sensibilities and stirring him to action, and even to acts of bravery and self-sacrifice. Indignity or ill treatment of his compatriots in foreign parts, even when well deserved, as is not infrequently the case, are resented with a vehemence that is greatly to the common man's credit, and greatly also to the gain of those patriotic statesmen who find in such grievances their safest and most reliable raw materials for the production of international difficulty. That he will so respond to the stimulus of these, materially speaking irrelevant, vicissitudes of good or ill that touch the fortunes of his compatriots, as known to him by hearsay, bears witness, of course, to the high quality of his manhood; but it falls very far short of arguing that these promptings of his patriotic spirit have any value as traits that count toward his livelihood or his economic serviceability in the community in which he lives. It is all to his credit, and it goes to constitute him a desirable citizen, in the sense that he is properly amenable to the incitements of patriotic emulation; but it is none the less to be admitted, however reluctantly, that this trait of impulsively vicarious indignation or vainglory is neither materially profitable to himself nor an asset of the slightest economic value to the community in which he lives. Quite the contrary, in fact. So also is it true that the common man derives no material advantage from the national success along this line, though he commonly believes that it all somehow inures to his benefit. It would seem that an ingrown bias of community interest, blurred and driven by a jealously sensitive patriotic pride, bends his faith uncritically to match his inclination. His persuasion is a work of preconception rather than of perception.
But the most substantial and most unqualified material benefit currently believed to be derivable from a large unfolding of national prowess and a wide extension of the national domain is an increased volume of the nation's foreign trade, particularly of the export trade. "Trade follows the Flag." And this larger trade and enhanced profit is presumed to inure to the joint benefit of the citizens. Such is the profession of faith of the sagacious statesmen and such is also the unreflecting belief of the common man.
It may be left an open question if an unfolding of national prowess and prestige increases the nation's trade, whether in imports or in exports. There is no available evidence that it has any effect of the kind. What is not an open question is the patent fact that such an extension of trade confers no benefit on the common man, who is not engaged in the import or export business. More particularly does it yield him no advantage at all commensurate with the cost involved in any endeavour so to increase the volume of trade by increasing the nation's power and extending its dominion. The profits of trade go not to the common man at large but to the traders whose capital is invested; and it is a completely idle matter to the common citizen whether the traders who profit by the nation's trade are his compatriots or not.6
The pacifist argument on the economic futility of national ambitions will commonly rest its case at this point; having shown as unreservedly as need be that national ambition and all its works belong of right under that rubric of the litany that speaks of Fire, Flood and Pestilence. But an hereditary bent of human nature is not to be put out of the way with an argument showing that it has its disutilities. So with the patriotic animus; it is a factor to be counted with, rather than to be exorcised.
As has been remarked above, in the course of time and change the advance of the industrial arts and of the institutions of ownership have taken such a turn that the working system of industry and business no longer runs on national lines and, indeed, no longer takes account of national frontiers,—except in so far as the national policies and legislation, arbitrarily and partially, impose these frontiers on the workings of trade and industry. The effect of such regulation for political ends is, with wholly negligible exceptions, detrimental to the efficient working of the industrial system under modern conditions; and it is therefore detrimental to the material interests of the common citizen. But the case is not the same as regards the interests of the traders. Trade is a competitive affair, and it is to the advantage of the traders engaged in any given line of business to extend their own markets and to exclude competing traders. Competition may be the soul of trade, but monopoly is necessarily the aim of every trader. And the national organisation is of service to its traders in so far as it shelters them, wholly or partly, from the competition of traders of other nationalities, or in so far as it furthers their enterprise by subvention or similar privileges as against their competitors, whether at home or abroad. The gain that so comes to the nation's traders from any preferential advantage afforded them by national regulations, or from any discrimination against traders of foreign nationality, goes to the traders as private gain. It is of no benefit to any of their compatriots; since there is no community of usufruct that touches these gains of the traders. So far as concerns his material advantage, it is an idle matter to the common citizen whether he deals with traders of his own nationality or with aliens; both alike will aim to buy cheap and sell dear, and will charge him "what the traffic will bear." Nor does it matter to him whether the gains of this trade go to aliens or to his compatriots; in either case equally they immediately pass beyond his reach, and are equally removed from any touch of joint interest on his part. Being private property, under modern law and
All this, which should be plain without demonstration, has been repeatedly shown in the expositions of various peace advocates, typically by Mr. Angell.