War: Democratization's Friend or Formidable Foe?

Who could forget Edwin Starr's intense Motown hit War, with its refrain "War...good god y'all, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing, nothing! Say it again y'all?"

A large focus of our course was to ask the question of how wars actually created the modern British State, especially its welfare system. Of course, Britain is not alone; wars have shaped all modern nations. I'd like to share with you just a little overview of how wars, not the Church, have shaped the British State since the so called "Glorious Revolution," the point in history when the Church's influence began to be suppressed.

War: Democratization's Friend or Formidable Foe?

The annals of history are replete (ad nauseam) with, as St. Matthew would have it, "wars and rumors of wars," and indeed, albeit surprisingly and perhaps lamentably, most modern social systems (i.e., democratic nations) are to a large degree direct bi-products of warmongering. This is what Charles Tilly, the late sociologist, means when he claims that "war made the state, and state made the war." That is, many democratic ideals, often ignored as inalienable rights to the modern citizen's mind, were born in and from conflict and prolonged strife. Over the last four hundred years Great Britain, with her ever-broadening government and struggle for democratic socialism, is certainly no exception, for she has been at war more than a dozen times since 1689.[1] These wars, predictably of course, produced sweeping changes in the everyday lives of her citizens; however, some were actually exceptionally efficacious. "One consequence of European warfare from the Renaissance to World War II was an increase in the size and power of the central governments," says Bruce Porter.[2] And with this "size and power" governments can, when properly developed, swiftly come to the aid of her citizenry. After all, who can deny that healthcare, education, defense, and clean water are bad things, no matter how they emerged?

War and its emotional baggage is no stranger to the British state. It can even be said that if there is any cohesive binding that truly encapsulates modern British history, then warfare must be that agent. Wars, historically speaking, are ubiquitous to the British psyche. The pressing question, however, is not whether or not war is a fundamental part of British cultural identity, but whether these wars are actually, as Deborah Dwork's capricious title suggests, "Good for Babies and Other Young Children?" Could it be that one of life's most dreaded events, one that has notoriously been called "hell" by its most vehement detractors and even claimed millions of innocent lives, actually be a viable raison d'être for the polity of the modern democratic state?

Despite what Porter calls, "a reluctance to confront the military lineage of the modern state,"[3] there are more than a few reasons why Dwork's hypothesis may in fact be the case.

Consider the rise of the modern British State, its social services and ever-growing government sector. At the dawn of the sixteenth century, English citizenry were only somewhat, that is loosely, entitled to one state-sponsored benefice: some kind of protection from invading armies. Even this "protection" often failed to actually secure the English people from being at risk from invading forces within and outside the realm. Otherwise, to speak of the state per se was to speak of the monarch and his or her political grip upon the their supposed and oft flaunted "god-given" dominion. It was not until the latter half of the eighteenth century that "the state" was "shorthand for the three branches of the central government - King, Lords, and Commons."[4] Even then, the state was restricted to what Phillip Harling calls a "Fiscal-Military State," which was characterized by "an age of imperial rivalry [that] ensured the traditional military function of the state would dominate all others."[5] Today, however, people speak of the British state not so much as a military empire in the strictest sense, but as a global, predictable, and democratic social unit providing a vast array of goods and services to all, even the "least", of her citizens. Bruce Porter describes a modern state as:
an apparatus of power, a set of institutions - the central government, the armed forces, the regulatory and police agencies - whose most important functions involve the use of force: the control of territory and the maintenance of internal order.[6]

To speak of the British State in modern parlance is to ponder state provided social security, national health care, education, and a host of other goods and services and simultaneously ask from whence it all came.[7] What a difference a few centuries makes! Though there are dozens of examples to accentuate the rise of the modern British state as one born out of the trenches of modern warfare, one way to make sense of it all is to consider the longterm consequences of just three hinge points of British history: the so called "Glorious Revolution," World War I, invariably dubbed The Great War that would end all wars, and World War II's Beveridge Report. Consider these epochs as proper litmus tests for Dwork's claim. Was war, despite its crude reputation, really good for democratization?

The so called "Glorious Revolution" was not a "bloodless revolution" as some history books would have it. This is a minor, but telling point. It was a deadly militaristic episode from its inception; William of Orange set sail for England with 15,000 men, who if need be would instantly kill at their leader's command.[8] Skirmishes in Scotland were deadly, and some rioting in rural hamlets saw bloodletting between acrimonious Catholics and Protestants as well. History would be foolish to forget that the militaristic overthrow of Catholic King James II was due only to Parliamentary support of the invading Dutch army, led by William of Orange. The entire episode, an effective coup de tête to be sure, is redolent with events, primarily armed in nature, that paved the way for the modern democratic British state to come into life. For it was in the seventeenth century that Parliament's ability to use force to get its way sowed the seeds for subsequent state services. And these services, ableit paltry in comparison to modern times, really first emerge in the form of militaristic means, or what Harling calls the "Fiscal-Military State." It was Parliament, after all, (say Parliament three times until it sticks) that actually invited, even begged, William to invade and usurp their own king's "god-given" power.

After William and Mary's ascendency to the throne, Parliament, by a host of measures, gained incredible strength and vigor, and that momentum, though it has been tested, has yet to be reversed in any real sense. Parliament, from the first days of its tangible strength, knew that wars were costly not only in terms of human losses, but also by all monetary measures. The most important aspect of Parliamentary strength of the era was the ability to levy taxes, which of course allowed the British to create the most nascent phases of what would later be the war machine of Great Britain's colonial expansion. Similarly, at the same time power quickly shifted from the King to King and Parliament assembled. No longer was one man making decisions and legislating solely from the vicissitudes of the crown, but now many, mostly landed gentry, could shape public policy and opinion. Harling reminds us, "by 1690, the only discretionary power that the king still enjoyed over the legislative actions of Parliament was the royal veto."[9] This is the birth of the modern British State. Without the Glorious Revolution, true democratic ideals (i.e., a sturdy and functioning Parliament heeding the vox populi) could have never been born on the British Isles.

Later, functioning again as that effecient "wartime bureaucracy," Parliament, according to Bruce Porter, would:
[Direct] the whole of [the] vast effort, using extraordinary, and often extralegal, wartime authority to tax, regulate, confiscate, ration, conscript, and otherwise mobilize the resources to wage the contest.[10]

World War I was such a time, yet when the war ended, the state's power and sway did not revert to pre-war levels. Instead, the exact opposite happened. The state, largely out of guilt for the thousands of widows and orphans that were a direct consequence of the war, felt, as Harling posits, "that social security was a right to which the state owed to its patriotic and longsuffering citizens" (italics mine).[11] After all, more than 1.6 million British soldiers were killed or wounded, and even simple logic dictates that someone must take care of them.[12] The state was to become that caretaker. More than caring for the "least among" them, the Great War tested the ceiling of government expenditure and involvement in the daily lives of its citizens. The citizens, by way of taxation no less, witnessed a four-fold increase in government spending during the war.[13] But after the war, British citizens did not abandon many of the government's grips on them. The Prime Minister of the day, controversial Lloyd George, saw fit to create four new government bureaus, "the Ministries of Labour, Shipping, Pensions, and Health."[14] Many average citizens saw that the government, those elected by them (well, at least most of them), could serve their interests, and they were subsequently willing to pay for it in the form of some of the highest taxes in Europe.

World War II, examined in terms of a slow march towards a welfare state, is World War I simply writ large. Harling reminds us:
By the late 1930s, the social services provided by central and local government in Britain were arguably more extensive than anywhere else in the world. But they were not nearly as extensive as they would become after World War II.[15]

Thanks largely to the ubiquitousness of the Beveridge Report coupled with the fact it was the polar opposite approach to government than the opposing nations, the social services provided to British citizens after World War II were certainly "more extensive" than ever before. Harling describes the Report as:
calling for full employment, a free national health service, family allowances, and the abolition of poverty through comprehensive social insurance with benefits to be paid as a statutory right.[16]

These clarion calls for "rights" were juxtapositioned amidst the backdrop of a nation's enquiries into how to deal with the consequences of economic turmoil and yet another long and painful war. The British answer was clear: give the state more power to provide social services, not just the ability to wage war effectively. And directly as a consequence of war, provide it did. Harling writes:
the goal [of post World War II governments] was to establish a decent minimum for all Britons that was more or less in line with the rising standard of living. Generally speaking the welfare state met that goal, and in doing so provided more services to far more citizens that the British state had ever done before.[17]

At the dawn of a new decade in the twenty-first century, Britain, perhaps more than ever and thanks chiefly to the hostility and fallout of wars, continues to extend its grip into the public sector. The image of the government reaching down is perhaps appropriate at this juncture.
All of this analysis leaves an obvious question lingering: can the modern British State and its apparent "march to utopia" be stopped, or at least slowed? Can it be rolled back in some fashion sans another full-blown war? Who would really want to reduce the state's place in modern Britain, save a few token Tories? Is it even fair to compose these queries? Alas, these are all very valid questions to ask as post-modernity, especially as more socialist nations continue to demand more goods and services from their governments. But can the state really continue to grow, or has it reached its apex? Some, of course, would say it certainly has. Nevertheless in the end analysis, make no mistake, Tilly's claim coupled with Dwork's conjecture, stands with solid fortitude and great might, much like the social democracy of the United Kingdom itself. The state does, after all, offer British citizens a good shot at becoming and staying "healthy, wealthy, and wise." And this, even it means an occasional war or two, could never be a bad thing.
[1] Harling, Phillip 41
[2] Porter 2
[3] Porter XIX
[4] Harling 11
[5] Harling 218
[6] Porter, p. 6
[7] Harling, p. 222
[8] Harling, p. 14
[9] Harling, p. 13
[10] Porter, p. 2
[11] Harling, p. 220
[12] Harling, p. 134
[13] Harling, p. 134
[14] Harling, p. 138
[15] Harling, p. 154
[16] Harling, p. 155
[17] Harling, p. 174