Perhaps "power and prestige" are the manifestations of the zeitgeist that I'm guessing is created by a capitalist society. The US has been claiming that oil was not the motivation for Iraq, but security and bringing "democracy" to the region were. Even if these arguments are window dressing they wouldn't be offered if they didn't resonant with the general public in the US.
I usually try to tie everything back to economics, so many religious wars I think could be shown to be based upon the desire to acquire land or riches, while the religious part was the window dressing of the day. But I really can't believe that the Franco-Prussian war, or WWI and WWII were about France or Germany trying to gain lasting economic advantage over the other. That's why I said they were about "nothing". You are free to call this "power and prestige" if you like.
And, as I said elsewhere, even if this behavior is not unique to capitalist societies, capitalist societies are the dominant ones these days and are the one starting new wars, so it is worthwhile discussing why. Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
I've never been a big fan of economic determinism. I don't see why we should privilege the desire for wealth as somehow more real, more fundamental, than other motivations. It's a legacy of Marx, I guess, to think of non-economic factors as a superstructure, as something that in the end is only an outgrowth or mask for materialist factors. I don't see it. Religion, nationalism, power - personal or collective - all seem to me to be quite powerful forces. When it comes to understanding behaviour, real is whatever people believe to be so. Then again all such motivations overlap with one another.
capitalist societies are the dominant ones these days and are the one starting new wars, so it is worthwhile discussing why
But don't we have to find out first whether capitalist societies wage war more or less often than other societies? If we can't find variation across time, then why should we look for any causal link between the two?
I guess the hardest is to make a distinction between waging war often and causing massive destruction. Capitalist societies have indeed caused mass destruction in the past two centuries but modernization seems more responsible for the increase in scale than capitalism per se, as Mazower would argue. But do they wage war more often than before? And even if they do, couldn't it be argued that the cold war world order has silenced lots of conflicts in the name of a bigger one, only to let them explode later? (I take 1948 as the beginning of the capitalist era you want to examine, but maybe you disagree with that) Rien n'est gratuit en ce bas monde. Tout s'expie, le bien comme le mal, se paie tot ou tard. Le bien c'est beaucoup plus cher, forcement. Celine
