Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/91

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 79

factors in every conflict. War is a coarse and uncertain way of violently re-establishing the economic equilibrium. It is evident that every variation in the frontiers of a society affects, and is affected by, its own internal organization as well as by that of neighboring societies. In primitive and uncivilized society the technique of taking a territory and its inhabitants by force would seem to be an easier and more expeditious way than that of assimilation. War supplies a lack of resources at once by the conquest of territory, by the subjugation of the inhabitants, as well as by the taking of booty. Modern wars as well as those of ancient times have very often been caused by internal diffi- culties. The great service rendered by socialism and by soci- ology has been to set forth, as the thing first to be desired, the solution of internal social questions, and to show that upon this depends Ihe solution of international problems, and, as a result, the settlement of boundary disputes.

War is one kind of solution. Proudhon realized that ; but he was only emphasizing this point in his reaction against the fra- ternal idealism of his time. War is perhaps a provisional and crude solution in case of attack, but it is a solution, not only barbarous, but childish.

The present study is exclusively devoted to the philosophy of exterior limits of society, but it has been necessary to show that these exterior limits always affect, and are affected by, the inter- nal organization and molecular composition of the social group.

While between peaceful societies the frontiers tend to disap- pear, to be transformed into means of communication and inter- nal exchanges, both material and ideal, yet between military societies they tend toward greater prominence and to take on the most repulsive and insuperable forms, either natural or artificial, or even purely conventional. But all this is in vain. Any bound- ary however strong and high, is not an absolute obstacle. As a fixed line it symbolizes equilibrium. Such a line will remain permanently fixed only so long as the equilibrium does not change; but the equilibrium is always changing. From the social point of view, inequality between social groups is as much the aim of war as the establishment of an international equilibrium.