The primary cause of war is the unequal distribution of property

Let us fix our attention, for a moment, upon the alteration of principles and habits that immediately grows out of an unequal distribution of property. Till it was thus distributed, men felt what their wants required, and sought the supply of those wants. All that was more than this was regarded as indifferent. But no sooner is accumulation introduced than they begin to study a variety of methods, for disposing of their superfluity with least emolument to their neighbour, or, in other words by which it shall appear to be most their own. They do not long continue to buy commodities before they begin to buy men. He that possesses, or is the spectator of, superfluity, soon discovers the hold which it affords him on the minds of others. Hence the passions of vanity and ostentation. Hence the despotic manners of such, as recollect with complacence the rank they occupy; and the restless ambition of those, whose attention is engrossed by the possible future.

Ambition is, of all the passions of the human mind, the most, extensive in its ravages. It adds district to district, and kingdom to kingdom. It spreads bloodshed and calamity and conquest over the face of the earth. But the passion itself, as well as the means of gratifying it, is the produce of the prevailing administration of property. It is only by means of accumulation that one man obtains art unresisted sway over multitudes of others. It is by means of a certain distribution of income that the present governments of the world are retained in existence. Nothing more easy than to plunge nations, so organized, into war. But, if Europe were at present covered with inhabitants all of them possessing competence, and none of them superfluity, what could induce its different countries to engage in hostility? If you would lead men to war, you must exhibit certain allurements. If you be not enabled, by a system already prevailing, and which derives force from prescription, to hire them to your purposes, you must bring over each individual by dint of persuasion. How hopeless a task by such means to excite mankind to murder each other? It is clear then that war, in all its aggravations, is the growth of unequal property. As long as this source of jealousy and corruption shall remain, it is visionary to talk of universal peace. As soon as the source shall be dried up, it will be impossible to exclude the consequence. It is accumulation that forms men into one common mass, and makes them fit to be played upon like a brute machine. Were this stumbling-block removed, each man would be united to his neighbour, in love and mutual kindness, a thousand times more than now: but each man would think and judge for himself.

William Godwin (1756–1836)

from An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)


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