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"war" from the concrete types of social systems which wage wars. The
units and epochs in terms of which he generalizes about war are so
grand and cloudy that all historical specificity is swallowed; and the
generalizations can only be empty in their formality: "Civilizations have
been built up by war but have eventually disintegrated through war."
Closely associated with this lack of a manageable classification of
societies is the lack of any theory of the internal compositions of social
structures. This permits such statements as: " ... empires have seldom
proved economically profitable for the population of the home country."
The loose term, "population," hides the problem, which has to do with
the correspondence within a society of economic strata and power posi·
tions. And the British Empire has stood for several centuries as disproof
of the assertion that imperialism will " in the long run" not help
capitalism, but will lead to "state socialism and militarism." However,
Professor Wright: "States at war have tended to become socialistic and
socialistic states have tended to be at war." It is as if Great Britain, at
war since the fall of 1936, has become an outpost of socialism and non·
capitalist Russia has been plotting world war since 1917.
Economic, political, and psychological spheres are never interwoven
into the operations of specific types if society. Because of this
it
is
impossible to see the causes of wars which lie in the diffusion of power
within societies. Professor Wright's operative notion of how to find the
causes of wars is to search for
all
the conditions which may, after all,
influence their occurrence and to quote everybody's opinion, apparently
in the conviction that the number of quotations are in proportion to
proof. For example, he takes six wars, from the Mohammedan conquests
through World War I, and tries to induce from them "the causes of war
in general." The conclusion is that, different as they all were, they all
undoubtedly had "idealistic, psychological, political, and juridical
causes." These "four types of causes of war" may also be classified
according to their "relative objectivity, concreteness, and historicity."
The ideological reasons advanced and accepted for war are important
indices to those variously interested in the war. Each group may have
its own reasons. The consequent ideological competition is part of the
political exploitation of the fact of war. This is going on now in terms of
"post war plans"; everybody has one, and collectively they legitimate
participation in the war on the part of differently placed groups. Pro–
fessor Wright's confusion of the causes, motives, and ideologies of war
is illustrated by a statement in which he is attempting to minimize the
economic structure: "That economic factors are relatively unimportant
in the causation of war was well understood by Hitler who said: 'One
does not die for business, but for ideals.'" Such confusion of ideology
and motives with the casual analysis of war obscures the simple fact
that what men die for is not always what causes their death.
C.
WRIGHT MILLS
