Henry George's Perspective on War and Peace

• Author: ALANNA HARTZOK
• Published date: 01 October 2012
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1536-7150.2012.00855.x
• Date: 01 October 2012

CAUSES OF WAR

Henry George’s Perspective on War

and Peace

By ALANNA HARTZOK*

ABSTRACT. This essay examines Henry George’s perspective on war

and peace. With justice added to the foundation in the way that Henry

George proposes, the conditions of inequality and conflict that lead to

war will no longer prevail. George saw that trade prohibitions fur-

thered elite rule, militarization, and a worldview of “them” versus “us.”

George’s great contribution was to see how these big issues of War

and Peace bore directly upon the constellation of rules governing the

relationship of people to planet, humans to humus, earthlings to earth.

Social arrangements not based on the fundamental and equal human

right to the earth lead inevitably to a gross imbalance of political

power and thus to government corruption, odious public debt, war,

and preparations for further war. Although he warned us of what

might befall the United States if it took the imperialist path, George

seemed hopeful that the highest and best moral purpose of our nation

would prevail. The paper concludes with an assessment of contem-

porary devices that protect the interests of the few over the many—

subsidies, the ballooning national debt, the ever-widening wealth

gap, megacities, and the full-spectrum-dominance objective of U.S.

imperialism.

Introduction

“We propose to readjust the very foundation of society.” Thus stated

Henry George (2006: 254) in Progress and Poverty. With justice added

to the foundation in the way that George proposes, the conditions of

inequality and conflict that lead to war will no longer prevail. Humans

will relate to one another in just, generous, and cooperative ways. War

would be an unthinkable relic of a distant dark past.

*Alanna Hartzok is Co-Director, Earth Rights Institute, Scotland, PA.

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 71, No. 4 (October, 2012).

© 2012 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

George (2006: 276) did not see war and preparations for war as

separate from conditions of economic injustice. Rather he saw these

perversions of morality and truth on a continuum, much like an initial

mild bellyache turns into agonizing paroxysms leading to death by

food poisoning: “Conflict includes not only war or preparation for

war; it encompasses all mental power expended seeking gratification

at the expense of others, and resisting such aggression.”

To George seeking gratification at the expense of others meant the

private appropriation of land rent, the monopolization of industry, the

subjugation of workers, odious public debt, the domination of women

by men, and tariffs and other policies that limited the freedom to trade.

The ensuing concentration of wealth and power led to ever greater

degrees of organization of lethal force (George 2006: 281):

This unequal distribution of wealth and power, which grows as society

advances, tends to produce greater inequality. Then the idea of justice is

blurred by habitual toleration of injustice....As collective power grows,

the ruler’s power to reward or punish increases. From the necessities of

war on a large scale, absolute power arises. The masses are then mere

slaves of the king’s caprice....When society has grown to a certain point,

a regular military force can be specialized.

He traced the origination of early human tribal conflicts to the

diverse natural conditions from which came differences in “language,

custom, tradition, religion” from which “prejudice and animosity arise”

(George 2006: 278). Warfare than becomes “a chronic and seemingly

natural relation of society to each other. Power is depleted in attack or

defense, in mutual slaughter and destruction of wealth or in warlike

preparations.” In the same paragraph he states that “[p]rotective tariffs

and standing armies among the civilized world today bear witness to

how long these hostilities persist.”

Trade

The greatest part of George’s writings on war and international conflict

are to be found in his book Protection and Free Trade (George 1992).

Of course George (2009) was well aware of the problem of land

grabbing as detailed in Our Land and Land Policy with its focus on

the Mexican land grants and the railroad land grants. But issues of

Henry George’s Perspective on War and Peace 939