The World in Chains: Some Aspects of War and TradeMavrogordato, John
Philosophy
The World in Chains: Some Aspects of War and Trade
Mavrogordato, John
Profiteering; War -- Economic aspects
For it is just as the sphere of morality is unduly restricted and fails
to correspond to the needs of humanity, that, on the political plane,
the unduly restricted sphere of government has never been extended to
include all the interrelations of industrial citizenship. Capitalism is
a survival of the penultimate stage of political development, as war is
a survival of the penultimate stage of morality.
The attempts both spasmodic and continuous to extend the sphere of
government, which now begin to affect nearly all serious legislation,
must remain incomplete without an analogous and indeed corollary
expansion of the moral system which will involve the obsolescence of
war.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 31: This seems to apply to all belligerent states. Certainly
very little sanity finds its way into Germany except through the pages
of _Vorwaerts_. It is therefore humiliating to be told that _Vorwaerts_
has a much larger circulation than any socialist paper in England.]
CHAPTER III
Hinc usura uorax auidumque in tempora fenus et concussa fides et
MULTIS UTILE BELLUM.
Lucan, I, 181.
Individuals are constantly trying to decrease supply for their own
advantage.--_Fabian Essays_, 1889, p. 17.
Sec. 1
Trade during the War
Trade during the war seems to have had a remarkably good time. In the
first year of warfare I began to collect a few facts in support of what
then seemed the paradoxical view that war was, in essence if not in
origin, a very profitable capitalistic manoeuvre; a view deduced from
the opinion I had formed _a priori_ of the nature of all modern
warfare.[32] Instead of a few corroborating voices I found testimony
abundant in every paper I picked up, besides the live evidence received
in private letters and conversations. This pamphlet being rather
philosophic than statistical, I have taken the easy course of printing a
selection of these testimonies, crude and undigested, in an appendix--a
cold storage of facts and figures that allows me to repeat with a quiet
conscience that trade is booming. The greater the war, apparently, the
greater the profits. In the words of the _Manchester Guardian_:--
The first full calendar year of war has been a period of
unparalleled industrial activity and, generally speaking,
prosperity in this country. Heavy losses and bad times have been
encountered in a few important industries, but these are balanced
by unprecedented profits made by a large variety of industries,
whether directly or indirectly affected by the war.[33] ... But it
would be a mistake to suppose that, while war manufactures
prospered, all other
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 32: See, for instance, my article "A Footnote to the Balkan
War," published in the _Asiatic Review_ for July 1, 1914. This opinion
is there expressed in the following words which I still think
substantially true, though one or two phrases are rhetorically
exaggerated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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