Capitalism put an end to systematic warfare

There are still wars. But war is no longer the only way for producers to compete with each other.

In the long run, societies that could produce food and weapons efficiently won the most wars. Assyrian warship from Nineveh, 700-692 BC, Wikimedia Commons 

Last week I wrote about why pronatalism really is a good idea: Because high-tech society is worth defending.

But why is high-tech society worth defending? Except for all the marvelous things it has created, like Substack and icecream, I think the foremost reason is: because it has evolved a way to expand and develop without making war. 

That is a new and astonishing thing. For most of the history of humanity, war has been the main vehicle of group selection. But war comes with great costs, so a way to obtain human progress without waging war is a truly remarkable thing. 

All for one

Human evolution is a tug-of-war between two forces: The struggle between individuals and the struggle between groups¹. Without group selection, the egoists or nepotists inevitably win (this assumption is also a fundamental assumption in Peter Turchin's theories). Whenever a group has been victorious in its area, a selection for egoists within that group has begun. When the selection for egoistic behavior goes too far, the group in question gets attacked by less egoistic, better coordinated neighbors, wiping out a substantial share of the recently evolved egoist memes and genes. 

That way, the ultimate vehicle for group selection was, and is, war. War is a gigantic test of the ability of a society: How much destructive power can it produce compared to its neighbors? How well can it coordinate that destructive power? The societies that could achieve the best combination at any given moment became the winners.

Sometimes, organization was more important than production. For much of history, nomadic cattle herders have threatened, attacked and even conquered more advanced sedentary agricultural populations. Although the herders produced little, they were mobile and at times very well organized and coordinated. For thousands of years, herder populations attacked agriculturalists. Sometimes very successfully: They took over empires and 4000 years ago they conquered much of Europe and became the ancestors of most of today's northern Europeans.

Still, when the herders-turned-professional-warriors won, the herders could do little more than becoming sedentary themselves. Although herders could cause turmoil and genetic change, eventually the struggle stood between sedentary societies with advanced production apparatuses. The Vikings that conquered Normandy or the Mongols that conquered China could replace the former upper class with themselves. But when they became the new upper class, they had an ordinary upper class job: To make their subjects produce as much food, arms and trained warriors as possible, in order to match the capacity of surrounding societies.

As technology got more advanced, the herders more and more lost their edge. Throughout history, the mobility of herders stood against the fortifications and heavy arms of sedentary populations. When fortifications got better and heavy arms got heavier, the herders lost more and more of their military opportunities.

Survival of the diligent 

As long as societies have existed, there has been a slow underlying productivity struggle between them. The societies that produced the biggest surplus that could be used for military purposes won over the societies that could spare less resources for their armed forces. The result was a slow but steady evolution toward better production. Better producers outcompeted worse producers, because better producers could produce more arms and soldiers.

It went rather slowly. Many other factors than productivity were at play: Social cohesion, military strategy, motivation to make war. But productivity was one factor and slowly, societies allowing and encouraging its citizens to be productive won at the expense of societies that did less so.

The evolution of technology probably mostly happened through group evolution rather than through individual evolution. On the individual level, stealing is much more efficient than producing. Individuals who produce things are always under strong pressure from individuals who steal things other people produce. Producers are a bit like herbivores that do the hard and tedious job to extract the calories from coarse plant matter. Warriors are more like carnivores that steal the result of the work in concentrated and often very effective attacks.

Within human societies, the human carnivores dominate the human herbivores. In very primitive societies, human herbivores can scarcely exist: Every man needs to be his own warrior. In somewhat more advanced societies, the human herbivores are kept like cattle. Confined to certain places and certain roles, they are allowed to live, reproduce to some extent and do their thing. But they are mostly denied freedom. They produce the calories, but the warriors hold the reins.

Let the best cattle win

In those types of society, direct competition is between the warriors. The warriors who can survive, protect their human cattle and who can conquer land with new human cattle win the game. Indirectly, different groups of human cattle compete with each other. Those who feed their protectors the best can produce the most protectors per land unit and per capita. If their protectors happen to be good warriors, it is a match made in heaven. 

The more freedom and resources the human cattle are allowed, the more productive they get. Any surplus that is left to the human cattle can be reinvested in better production means. In summary, the less human cattle are treated like cattle, the more they can produce. The evolution toward such favorable conditions for producers goes slowly, because there is an opposite pressure as well: The overlord who immediately pressures his serfs to their physical limit stands a good chance of winning all short-term victories. For conditions to improve for producers, several things needed to happen: There had to be extended periods of peace, large entities with peaceful interiors and freak occurrences of overlords who got the idea that human cattle can be treated better than cattle. But over the centuries, when all that actually happened, it allowed production to improve. When war eventually arrived, societies where such investments had been made tended to win. 

Set the cattle free

The Western world eventually got so far on that path that the cattle were let loose and were allowed to take the lead. After a certain level of development it turned out that the herbivores were much more important than the carnivores. The quality of the weapons made a bigger difference than who wielded them. 

Societies that could build jet fighters always obliterated societies that could not build jet fighters. No matter how fierce the warriors in the latter group were. In time the herbivores of the jet fighter societies realized they could do just fine without exploitative carnivores. They could use the resources previously spent on their carnivore protectors to accumulate capital and develop skills which made them even more formidable producers. The superiority over old-style warrior societies grew exponentially. 

With their powers set free, war increasingly came to be a struggle between engineers. From the two world wars, the societies that can produce bombs, planes, tanks and drones have dominated the world. Those weapons are formidable at destroying things. If used without heavy restraints, they will cause great damage to both human life and capital. 

No longer sensible 

Before capitalism, war was a bit like football. That's an exaggeration, but it was much more like football than modern wars. Launching an attack now and then was costly. But not as costly as now, when destruction power is much greater. It also had a clear upside: More land for an ever-expanding population, more subjects for the warrior class. So pacifism was not considered a virtue. A little war now and then between political units was expected. Those who completely abhorred all fighting were seen as cowards deemed to be devoured by braver neighbors.

With that kind of mindset, the peoples of Europe entered World War 1 with enthusiasm. The mass destruction that followed showed that the enthusiasm was misplaced. The first big war of the 20th century revealed that in a high-tech society, all sides lose from unbridled war. Even the winner. For that reason, the norms shifted to completely avoiding wars between high-tech societies. 

Two hundred years ago, attacking one's neighbors once in a while was business as usual. Now, doing so is considered a sign of (mass) psychosis. It can be done, but it is objectively stupid. Few people discuss whether Napoleon Bonaparte invaded his neighbors out of insanity. Many people discussed whether Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine out of insanity. Two hundred years ago, invading a weaker neighbor was seen as the most normal thing a leader could do: Because that was what countries did by then. They mostly do not do that by now, except when someone loses it. 

High productivity caused two phenomena:

1. Very efficient weapons with great destruction power

2. Productive forces that are easy to destroy and difficult to steal. Modern production is based on skilled labor and intricate organization. The least unwillingness from the side of the workers risks causing great productivity losses. 

The combination makes war unprofitable. Before capitalism, land was the most valuable and scarce resource. Land is difficult to destroy but not that difficult to conquer. Under capitalism, the main resources are machinery and equipment and, above all, human labour. Both are easy to destroy and hard to catch. The result is war with great destructive power and slim chances of any profit at the end of the day. 

Competition still

Before capitalism, wars were the main way for producers to compete with each other. There were few other ways for craftsmen in one political unit to compete with craftsmen in other political units. The market economy changed that. It allowed producers to compete directly, without exploiting protectors deliberately killing each other as intermediaries. With the market economy, there is a direct pressure to increase productivity that doesn't involve killing as many humans as possible.

The end to systematic warfare brought on by the market economy is for social evolution what embryo selection could be for genetic evolution: It is evolution minus the indescribable suffering that normally accompanies it. Evolution is a law of nature. Regardless of what people think of it, it will go on. Whenever there is a way for evolution to operate without great levels of cruelty, it is a great leap forward for the human race. A leap forward worth defending. 

1. Some people say that group selection is an “unnecessary concept”, because kin selection is enough. In humans, that is obviously not true. At times in human history, belonging to the right group has been more important than any other property. When invaders from Eastern Europe, known in modern times as Yamnaya or Indo-Europeans, entered Europe about 4000 years ago, they replaced almost the entire population of the British isles. They replaced almost all the breeding males on the Iberian peninsula as well. Not because every individual invader was more fit than every individual of the native population. But because the invading team won.