Eric Carlton - Militarism: Rule without Law

Dont speak to us of laws we carry swords.

Pompeius Magnus (Pompey)

In all societies there are rules governing conduct both between social groups and between individuals who comprise those groups. These rules may or may not be codified; they are formally or informally formulated so as to ensure some measure of uniformity, regularity and predictability of conduct between members. Arbitrary behaviour only leads to social disruption and instability, and cannot therefore be institutionally condoned. There will, of course, be infringements, so all societies have sanctions which can be applied or ordered to deter and to punish deviant behaviour. Social control, then, denotes the processes which ensure that individuals conform to the norms of the group. Interests vary, so various control mechanisms operate to resolve conflicts of interest and, where possible, to promote an acceptable degree of social harmony. It follows that control implies regulation and social adjustment which may be brought about by different means. Therefore, any consideration of militarism must involve some discussion of both the persuasive and coercive forms of control.

Norms are observed either because they have been passively internalized, and may thus have become part and parcel of an individuals make-up, or they may be actively inculcated, say by educational institutions, so that they too become part of the individuals personality. They may be questioned from time to time, but by and large norms come to be seen as that which is done in any particular society. But we are also interested in the ways in which norms/rules can be enforced. So in order to analyse the nature of social control in a little more depth, we must distinguish between types of control, their functions, the means or agencies whereby they are transmitted, and not least the ways in which control is implemented.

For simplicity of analysis, we can say that in general terms control is mediated via the familiar socialization agencies, namely, the family, educational institutions, peer groups, and in developed societies the media which can have such a pervasive influence. This, in turn, is reinforced by politico-legal codes, custom, and depending very much on the society in question moral and religious precepts which try to anchor compliance to certain kinds of believed intrinsic good, or to interpretations of the will of the gods. All can be and have been effective in ensuring correct types of social behaviour. To summarize, control can be physical in that it is brought about by repressive methods. Or it can be material in so far as it is utilitarian and economic in its operation. Or it can be symbolic and normative in that it is backed by ethico-religious imperatives which operate in different societies in different ways at different times.

Underlying the whole issue of control is the problem of social order. Why do societies cohere? Is society natural? Why is there not social chaos? And how is this order achieved? To reiterate, social order requires mechanisms which ensure measures of unity and cooperation in order to resolve inevitable conflicts of interest. The military for good or ill is just one of these mechanisms. This raises the philosophical question of to what extent are the possibilities for unity and cooperation within the capacity of human beings to achieve? The optimistic view which has been transmitted through Rousseau and Marx (and, it may be added, much modern educational theory) is that goodness is part of the human potential. It is society which is the corrupting agency, therefore the individual must free him/herself from the influence of society by changing society. On the other hand, there is the pessimistic (realistic?) view associated with such diverse sources as the Bible, Hobbes and Freud, that individuals are inherently egocentric, unsocialized animals who need society to force them into measures of conformity and cooperation. Hence the necessity of control mechanisms in various forms.

There is a view that control is necessarily a repressive thing, and that it comes about as part of a conspiracy to ensure that people do as they are told. Conspiracy theorists go so far as to suggest that various social institutions were contrived for this very purpose. Think, for example, of education. This is a ubiquitous social practice whether in simple exemplar forms or in the highly sophisticated forms which we find in developed societies. Does anyone really suppose that some time in the remote past some individuals planned education to be a means of keeping people in their places? True, at various times in various places education may have functioned like this, but this does not mean that it was contrived for this reason. Function and purpose are not the same thing.

However, this may not apply to the military which is surely designed to implement mechanisms of control. Ultimately everything depends upon this. But a number of factors condition the mode and the intensity of implementation.

Dimensional factors. Here we are concerned with the problems which arise in relation to the scale of the society in question. It almost goes without saying that a small-scale tribal society with largely undifferentiated institutions and relatively simple social arrangements needs much less to maintain control than a highly differentiated centralized system which requires elaborate procedures. Where there are large barely manageable groups, as, for example, in pre-1935 Ethiopia (i.e. before the Italian invasion), control could only be achieved by the formation and utilization of state forces and even then control was by no means assured.