There’s no root cause of war, but capitalism reduces conflict

First of all, it can be stated that even on the basis of pure statistics, the thesis of war-mongering capitalism does not stand up to scrutiny. With the rise of capitalism 200 years ago, the frequency of wars did not increase; it significantly decreased.

I would like to devote this chapter to an examination of three wars by way of example: the First and Second World Wars and the Iraq War of 2003. I will pursue the question of the extent to which these wars were “capitalist wars,” that is, were triggered exclusively or predominantly by capitalist interests.

Before we turn to these examples, however, I would like to present some of the findings of war and conflict research. For many years, a majority of researchers maintained that democratic countries do not wage war against each other, or at least very infrequently.482 Some researchers qualified this finding somewhat and applied it only to democracies that also happen to be developed, industrialized nations. But overall, there was broad consensus on this finding, and the thesis was tested statistically by forming so-called dyads, pairs of states. These dyads represent the units of investigation to examine how often and for what reason such states engaged in military conflict with each other.

There was and is no agreement among researchers as to why democracies rarely—or perhaps never, given a narrow definition of democracy—wage war against each other.483 The German sociologist Erich Weede, who has conducted extensive research on these issues, stated in 2005 that “the danger of conflict is particularly low in dyads where both states are governed democratically and trade significantly with each other or are otherwise economically interdependent.”484

Since throughout history most democratic states have, at the same time, been capitalist and most capitalist states have, at the same time, been democracies, it has never been easy to decide which is more important for peace: whether a country had a democratic order or whether it had a capitalist system. As I said, both have typically existed simultaneously, although there have always been exceptions. Chile under Pinochet, for example, was capitalist but a dictatorship. Today, China, too, is increasingly adopting features of capitalism, but it is still a dictatorship.

In 2007, the American political scientist Erik Gartzke published an extensive empirical analysis in which he explored precisely this question: Which plays the greater role in ensuring that there are fewer wars: democracy or capitalism? Gartzke analyzed dyads from 1950 to 1992 and examined a total of 222 wars.485 He employed metrics for all of the countries to show to what extent they were democratic (politically) or capitalist (economically). Using these ratios, Gartzke then applied a regression analysis relating to whether or not the country was engaged in a military conflict. He concludes: “This study offers evidence suggesting that capitalism, and not democracy, leads to peace.”486

In a further study in 2010, Gartzke and Joseph Hewitt also analyzed military conflicts from 1950 to 1992, this time examining only those conflicts “that elicit decisions from a state’s highest ranking foreign policy leaders.” Conflicts that may have resulted “from clashes between frontline forces not directly authorized by leading officials” were not considered.487 This analysis once again focused on the question of whether a country’s democratic political order or its capitalist economic order was more likely to prevent military conflicts. Once again, the result was that capitalism, not democracy, was the most important factor in the absence or reduced frequency of military conflicts. Gartzke and Weede agree “that it is economic development and market freedoms, rather than political liberty, that precipitate interstate peace.”488

Supporters of the theory of “capitalist peace,” however, have different answers as to why capitalism results in less frequent conflicts. On this point, Weede more strongly emphasizes the factor of countries’ interdependence through trade relations, while Gartzke believes that financial market integration is more important for peace than trade.

The topic of trade and war is not new. The British manufacturer and political campaigner Richard Cobden (1804–1865), a leading champion of the free trade movement, was at the same time a committed pacifist and emphasized the importance of trade and mutual economic dependence in preventing war. “I believe,” Cobden writes, “that the desire and the motive for large and mighty empires, for gigantic armies and navies, for those materials which are used for the destruction of life and the desolation of the rewards of labour, will die away.”489 Gartzke, on the other hand, argues that trade plays a more ambivalent role in preventing war: “Economic development, financial markets, and monetary policy coordination all arguably play a more critical role in promoting peace.”490

In 2018, Weede questioned the methodological validity of studies that conclude that trade does not play a decisive role in whether military conflicts become less likely and “if all of these shortcomings are avoided, then almost all studies support the proposition ‘peace by free trade.’”491 Thus, states that are closely linked by trade are significantly less likely to engage in military conflict with one another.

Although researchers are still debating which characteristics of capitalism play the greatest role in ensuring that there are fewer military conflicts between capitalist states,492 at least researchers such as Weede and Gartzke have presented convincing arguments to support the view that capitalism and not democracy is the decisive factor. “Since democracy depends on capitalism or economic freedom as well as the prosperity generated by it, the democratic peace becomes a mere component of the capitalist peace.”493

Regarding the frequently cited counter-argument of the First World War, in which capitalist countries (including Germany on one side and France and Great Britain on the other) fought each other, Weede argues that trade dependencies were weaker between France and Germany (who fought against each other) than was the case between Great Britain and France (who did not go to war with each other).494 “As far as trade linkages were concerned they were strongest where least needed—between Britain and France, between Britain and the United States, between Germany and Austria-Hungary. These pairs ended up on the same side of the war.”495

For me, there is another, more fundamental argument that holds more weight: Of course, capitalist countries can also wage wars against each other, and the First World War is just one example of this. Researchers working on the theory of “capitalist peace” have analyzed long lists of military conflicts and then examined whether the countries involved were capitalist or not. However, in my opinion, this method alone does not lead to a satisfactory conclusion. First of all, it is possible for capitalist countries to wage war against non-capitalist countries, and above all, it is conceivable that countries whose economic system is capitalist do wage war against each other—but for reasons that have nothing to do with their economic systems. For by no means is capitalism always ultimately responsible when countries with capitalist economic systems wage war against each other. After all, decisions relating to war and peace are not made by capitalist entrepreneurs, but by politicians, that is, states. In Marxist theory, of course, the state under capitalism is always only an agent and executor of the interests of big business—an argument I refuted in Chapter 5.

From my point of view, it is necessary to analyze and determine for each specific conflict whether and to what extent representatives of the business class exerted a decisive influence in the run-up to the outbreak of war or whether politicians allowed their actions and policies to be directed by business interests. Taking the First World War as an example, I will show that this was not the case and that leading representatives of the business communities in both Germany and Great Britain were opposed to military action and war.

Obviously, there are a number of reasons why countries wage wars. Alongside economic considerations, geopolitical reasons can also play a role; sometimes wars are the result of the escalation of diplomatic threats and ultimatums that lead to a military conflict by accident rather than design. The nations of Europe “slithered into war” as a result of blunders and accidents, explained Britain’s First World War Prime Minister David Lloyd George. In some cases, rulers use wars to divert attention from conflicts at home, and in centuries gone by, a common motive for waging war was a ruler’s need or thirst for prestige. And of course—in earlier centuries even more so than today—religion played a role. Wars have multiple causes and a handbook of theories of war contains ten chapters on anthropological, biological, psychological, socio-psychological, political, geopolitical, social, economic, ecological, and theological theories of war.496