Commentary
Military society in the evolution of capitalism
What Herbert Spencer failed to take into account is that such regression does not occur against the institutions of capitalism, but is supported and backed by them. The overbearing weight of military society is transforming democratic doctrine into little more than an artifact.
In the 19th century, Herbert Spencer, a British philosopher and sociologist, developed a theory of social change based on principles analogous to those of biological evolution. In his rather crude and simplistic evolutionary scheme, Spencer distinguished between two main types of society: military society, characterized by hierarchical control, centralization of power and subordination of the individual to the state for purposes of war, and industrial society, which represents a more advanced stage, based on the free market and economic specialization.
Military society is organized according to an authoritarian model, with a strong centralization of power in the hands of a few, rigid discipline and a hierarchical structure similar to that of an army. It is, so to speak, a “society of total institutions,” based on the principles of the asylum and prison world described by Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman in his Asylums (1961).
Moreover, at the political level, it is based on totalitarianism as Hannah Arendt defined it in her work The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and, therefore, also on the erasure of the distinction between public and private space.
In totalitarianism, the state appropriates the private sphere, controlling every aspect of individual life; the concept of individual autonomy is nullified and granular surveillance prevents the protection of spaces of personal freedom. Spencer argues that this type of society is characteristic of the most primitive stages of social evolution, in which survival depends on the ability to defend oneself and conquer resources.
The naivete of Spencer's view comes with viewing the transition from military to industrial society as a natural evolutionary process, linked to economic and technological development. According to his idea, military society limits freedom, while industrial society promotes social diversification and market self-regulation. Ideologically, Spencer was a strong advocate of individualism and opposed state intervention and centralized control, which he saw as forms of regression toward the military model.
At the same time, however, he warned that wars and economic crises could lead to instances of regression toward military structures.
What he failed to take into account is that such regression does not occur against the institutions of capitalism, but is supported and backed by them. We see this very clearly today. The road is quick from war to the war economy, and then to the militarization of society. Many developments are taking place in the same direction: Ursula von der Leyen's statements that countries will be able to derogate from the Stability and Growth Pact to increase public spending on defense, the willingness to bend technological investments and those on artificial intelligence to the purposes of the military industry and “for defense,” the spread of regional courses aimed at training people for “radiological and nuclear emergencies” (as is happening in the Lombardy region), the suppression of protests and social conflict through the establishment of “red zones” in cities, or the extension of the powers of intelligence agencies to universities and research institutions, with the introduction of mandatory collaboration and exemptions from the right to privacy.
Furthermore, the rush toward a military society today is taking place in a capitalism in which the role of technology is much more powerful and pervasive than in the past. A techno-capitalism of surveillance and concentration of ownership, with the direct seizure of political power by economic power, without any further intermediation and without even bothering to pay fealty to democratic rituals and language, as Mario Ricciardi recently pointed out in il manifesto. The overbearing weight of military society is transforming democratic doctrine into little more than an artifact to be studied as part of an archaeology of Western institutions.
The march towards a military society does not diminish the prominence of the threat of war; on the contrary, it increases the likelihood of normalizing war, of not only making it more likely, but reconstructing its cultural legitimacy and reinserting it into everyday common sense. This is a remarkable change of phase – not just a symbolic turn, but a substantial one, which puts us face to face with historical regress.
Not only does history have no inherent direction or hope to offer us – something that we had been doubting for some time – but the worsening of prior conditions is now an entirely plausible outlook. Therefore, from a political point of view, we must take note of this fact: if opposition to war hasn’t offered sufficient motivation to guide voters’ choices, the rejection of military society and its consequences cannot fail to do so.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/la-societa-militare-stadio-evolutivo-del-capitalismo on 2025-02-20