No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2017
Introductory. At this time nearly all serious minds are preoccupied with the problem how, after the European war, peace may be most effectively promoted and maintained. Thoughts are turned toward the question what is the best international system for the sustenance of higher international justice—a revitalized Concert of Europe, or of the world, or some new application of the “balance of power” principle. There are those who consider the “balance of power” doctrine to have outlived its usefulness, and to have shown itself productive of mischief; others would retain or reconstruct existing alliances in a form more efficacious for the preservation of international peace. Statesmanship will have to face many other difficult problems of international relationship after the war, and internationalists will be impelled to give a greatly increased share of their attention to the sanctions of international law and to the political conditions essential to its maintenance and development. Such questions call for an understanding of aspects of the life of the international community that are now much more strongly accentuated than they were before the war, and that can scarcely fail to attract scientific study to factors in the general situation the importance of which till recently was underrated. These practical problems demand in some degree philosophical study of the structure of the international community; as pure science precedes applied science, the communal life of States must be analyzed before light can be thrown on the issues of practical statecraft. The question how international force is to be organized, so as to render most effective aid to the cause of justice, presupposes for its satisfactory solution an inquiry into the actual constitution of the international society. States, moreover, can wisely order their future only by acting with full knowledge of the lessons of history. The interpretation of history is a necessary point of departure for the statesman and the publicist, if they are to offer sound proposals for practical action. But one is powerless to extract any meaning from history without understanding the social processes of which conspicuous historical events are but the surface manifestations. One must read history in the light of political science to grasp its meaning. Thus we are led inevitably, as a preliminary to any practical program, or to any interpretation of recent history, to the task of surveying the actual distribution, transformation, and organization of international force, and of stating in analytical terms the relation between these processes and the maintenance of international right—that is, order and justice. The conceptions of international force and of international power are so closely related as to be almost identical, but in this investigation we prefer the concept of force as something more positive and more tangible than power, which is latent force, or that which may develop actual force. For this reason the propositions here elaborated apply equally to the organization of international power—to the establishment of that authority through which the supremacy of law is effectuated and secured.
1 The World’s Legal Philosophies, Boston, 1912, 407.
2 “Moral force,” in this discussion, is used in the sense of coercive activity animated by a moral purpose, as distinguished from an arbitrary or passionate impulse; moral force is thus the opposite of brute force, and is synonymous with righteous or spiritualized force.
Many discussions of the element of force, in social life, are clouded by a vague terminology. It would be less confusing if writers, when they meant brute force or arbitrary force, always employed a more specific term than “force” in a general sense.
The distinction between the kinds of force is more important than that between the modes of its exercise. Moral force, legal force, and arbitrary force, for example, are different kinds of force. All varieties of compulsion may operate externally, upon the physical person, or merely internally, upon the will. The fear of physical consequences may be quite as effective in procuring obedience to the force-agent as an actually suffered external compulsion. After the primary division between the varieties of force, a subdivision can thus be made between physical or external force and psychical or internal force.
3 Throughout this paper “force” is used in the ordinary mechanical sense of compulsion or pressure, or the agency exciting such pressure, not in the sense of a metaphysical entity supposed to cause social phenomena. “Social force,” as here conceived, is thus clearly distinguishable from that other concept of “social force” which has been criticized, perhaps properly, as unscientific. See “The Social Forces Error,” by Hayes, Edward Cary, American Journal of Sociology, xvi, 613 (Mar. 1911)Google Scholar.
4 So far as the writer is aware, the literature of social science offers no extended and scientifically thorough treatment of the subject.
5 “Wenn wir fragen: giebt es denn überhaupt ein Völkerrecht? so treten uns zwei einander widersprechende, aber gleich unhaltbare extreme Anschauungen vom internationalen Leben der Staaten entgegen. Die eine, naturalistische [ihr gegenliber steht die ebenso falsche, moralisirende Auffassung der liberalen Theorie], als deren Hauptvertreter wir Machiavelli schon kennen gelernt haben, geht von dem Satze aus: der Staat ist Macht schlechthin, er darf Alles thun, was ihm nützlich ist; er kann sich also an kein Völkerrecht binden, seine Stellung zu anderen Staaten bestimmt sich rein mechanisch nach dem Verhältniss der Kräfte. Diese Anschauung kann man nur von ihrem eigenen Standpunkt widerlegen. Man muss ihr zunächst zugeben, dass der Staat physische Macht ist; will er das aber einzig und allein sein, ohne Vernunft und Gewissen, so kann er sich auch nicht mehr im Zustande eigener Sicherheit behaupten. Auch die Naturalisten geben zu, dass den Staat den Zweck hat, Ordnung im Inneren zu schaffen; wie kann er das, wenn er nach Aussen sich an kein Recht binden will? Ein Staat, der grundsätzlich Treu und Glauben verachten wollte, würde bestandig von Feinden bedroht sein und also seinen Zweck, physische Macht zu sein, gar nicht erreichen können. Das bestätigt die historische Erfahrung; auch Maohiavelli’s Ideal des Fürsten, Cesare Borgia, fiel schliesslich selber in die Grube, die er Anderen gegraben hatte. Denn der Staat ist nicht physische Macht als Selbstzweck, er ist Macht, um die höheren Güter der Menschen zu schiitzen und zu befördern. Die reine Machtlehre ist als solche völlig inhaltlos, und sie ist unsittlich darum, weil sie sich innerlich nicht zu rechtfertigen vermag.”—Treitschke, Politik, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1899, ii, 542.
6 Tarde thus expresses his general law: “Les pouvoirs divisés d’abord et hostiles, se sont centralisês pour se diviser de nouveau, mate d’accord entre eux.” Les Transformations du Pouvoir, Paris, 1899, 200.
7 “Wohl zeigen alle wahrhaft grossen politischen Denker einen Zug cynischer Menschenverachtung, und wenn sie nicht zu stark ist, hat sie ihr gutes Recht. Grade wer von der menschlichen Natur nicht Unmögliches fordert, wird die genialen Kräfte, die trotz aller Gebrechlichkeit und Bestialität in ihr ruhen, erwecken.” Treitschke, ii, 545.
8 In one of his earlier essays, “Ueber die wissenschaftlichen Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts,” Hegel first developed the thought that war is necessary and useful. Ziegler, , “Hegels Anschauung vom Krieg,” Archiv für Rechts- und Wirthschaftsphilosophie, vi, 88 (Oct. 1912)Google Scholar.
Ziegler connects this thought with “the conception of the people as a moral totality or individuality.” “ Die Beziehung von Individualiät zu Individualitat ist entweder die positive des ruhigen, gleichen Nebeneinanderstehens im Frieden oder die negative des Ausschliessens der einen durch die andere im Krieg. Beide Beziehungen sind notwendig, weil im Begriff selbst gegeben.”
Long afterward Hegel returned to the subject in his “Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts,” when he wrote: “Ewiger Friede wird häufig als ein Ideal gefordert, worauf die Menschheit zugehen müsse. Kant hat so einen Fürstenbund vorgeschlagen, der die Streitigkeiten der Staaten schlichten sollte, und die heilige Allianz hatte die Absicht, ungefähr ein solches Institut zu sein. Allein der Staat ist ein Individuum, und in der Individualiät ist die Negation wesentlich enthalten. Wenn also auch eine Anzahl von Staaten sich zu einer Familie macht, so muss sich dieser Verein als Individualität einen Gegensatz kreieren und einen Feind erzeugen.” Quoted by Ziegler, op. cit.
Hegel, for whom “individuality” has the meaning of our term “ethos,” thus believed in war as a necessary means of resolving the opposition between ethea. But his view laid an excessive, dogmatic emphasis on the dialectical necessity of such intense oppositions in the actual world. The actual oppositions may not be so pronounced as to make war inevitable, and it is wrong to suppose that harmony is never to be established between them without violence. If for “war” the broader notion of strife in general, whether peaceful or violent, be substituted, Hegel’s view can be accepted as properly indicating the necessity of opposition and the inevitableness of strife as a means of securing harmony and universality in the spiritual world.
9 “La défaite des armées ne produit une véritable annexion morale et sociale du peuple vaincu et la formation d’une sociétê plus large qu’autant qu’elle a été ou précédée ou suivie, soit chez le vaincu, soit chez le vainqueur, de la diffusion d’idées nouvelles qui sont devenues communes aux deux.” Tarde, Les Transformations du Pouvoir, 60.
10 See Tarde’s General Law, note 6, ante.
11 “The active forces of humanity cannot be permanently repressed. New tendencies and ambitions will ferment in the old channels, and will not rest until they have found their fulfillment in one way or another; unless, indeed, overpowering forces oppose them, which then leads to severe oppression. In any case, it will come to a contest of forces in order to prove whether the abilities contained in the nation are adequate to overcome the obstacles. As has been elsewhere emphasized, this is the most important obstacle to universal world peace, and the last stronghold of war can never be destroyed until a method is found of settling such differences in a suitable way. We have still far to go to reach this point, and our concern at present cannot be to abolish wars but to restrict and limit them to a great extent.” Kohler, , Philosophy of Law, translated by Albrecht, Adalbert, Boston, 1914, p. 301 Google Scholar.
12 “Eh bien, substituer de plus en plus a la rivalité, a la mutuelle limitation, á l’equilibre instable des pouvoirs, soit au dedans de l’État, soit même au dehors, leur harmonisation croissante, n’est-ce pas là que tend l’élaboration politique en tout pays moyennant des luttes et des guerres, des alliances et des traites sans nombre? Oui, mais, pour atteindre ce but, il n’est pas possible ici de laisser les choses suivre leur cours et d’attendre du fonctionnement même de la concurrence une certaine harmonie, ce qui a lieu souvent dans la sphère économique. Â force de rivaliser et de se heurter, les travaux parviennent un jour ou l’autre à s’accorder en ce bas degree d’harmonie que realise la réciprocité de leur emploi, l’aide mutuelle qu’ils se prêtent pour leurs buts multiples. Les pouvoirs ne sauraient s’harmoniser de la sorte, car ce rapport n’existe pas pour eux. De la deux conséquences importantes: la nécessité de la centralisation pour mettre fin aux difficulties de la politique intérieure, et, en vertu des mêmes raisons, la nécessité des grandes agglomerations d’États pour résoudre les problémes anxieux de la politique extêrieure.” Tarde, Les Transformations du Pouvoir, 204.