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Why Men Fight
“The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be to promote all that is
creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that centre around possession.”
Bertrand Russell
“Russell is one of the most profound thinkers of the modern age.”
The New York Times
Routledge Classics contains the very best of Routledge publishing over the past century or so,
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Why Men Fight
Bertrand Russell
London and New York
First published in 1916
by George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
First published in the Routledge Classics in 2010
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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© 2010 The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-86469-7 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 10: 0–415–48738–2
ISBN 10: 0–203–86469–7 (ebk)
ISBN 13: 978–0–415–48738–2
ISBN 13: 978–0–203–86469–2 (ebk)
Le souffle, le rhythme, la vraie force populaire manqua à la réaction. Elle eut les rois, les trésors, les
armées; elle écrasa les peuples, mais elle resta muette. Elle tua en silence; elle ne put parler qu’avec le
canon sur ses horribles champs de bataille. ... Tuer quinze millions d’hommes par la faim et l’épée, à
la bonne heure, cela se peut. Mais faire un petit chant, un air aimé de tous, voilà ce que nulle
machination ne donnera. ... Don réservé, béni. ... Ce chant peut-être à l’aube jaillira d’un c ur simple,
ou l’alouette le trouvera en montant au soleil, de son sillon d’avril.
MICHELET
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ix
PREFACE xix
1 The Principle of Growth 1
2 The State 24
3 War as an Institution 46
4 Property 69
5 Education 91
6 Marriage and the Population Question 108
7 Religion and the Churches 128
8 What we can do 146
INDEX 163
INTRODUCTION
This book is recognized by scholars and laymen alike as Russell’s most important contribution to
political philosophy. Written as the losses in the Great War were becoming more and more appalling,
he intended to replace what since 1914 he had come to believe was the outmoded nineteenth-century
liberalism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Late in 1915 and early in 1916 Russell advanced
a theory of politics based “upon the belief that impulse has more effect than conscious purpose in
moulding men’s lives”. He stood by the ambitious analysis developed in the Principles for most of his
life, claiming that the book was the “least unsatisfactory” expression of his “own personal religion”.1
Russell’s ideas took form first as a series of lectures in London early in 1916 on “Principles of Social
Reconstruction” and were published in book form under the same title on 13 November 1916. The
British edition went through thirteen impressions up to 1954 until a second edition appeared in 1960;
the second edition was issued in four impressions, with the last coming in 1989. In America the book
was first published in January 1917 under the title Why Men Fight. It went through eight impressions
up to 1971.
Little in Russell’s pre-war political experiences had prepared him for the eagerness with which his
fellow citizens went to war and became even more militant as the conflict intensified. Thus, in mid-
1915, he embarked upon a wholesale re-examination of the theoretical foundation of politics by
analysing the roots of social, intellectual and emotional behaviour which, he argued, take their origin
either in destructive or possessive impulses or in constructive or creative impulses. For Russell, the
key to a healthy society was to fashion family relationships, education and political institutions in such
a manner as to promote the development of creative impulses.
These arguments took Russell away from his traditional political values, for up to the outbreak of
hostilities he had been a Liberal with a strong streak of the mid-Victorian Radicalism which he had
imbibed at Pembroke Lodge. There is some evidence before the war indicating that Russell had
thought about modifying the rationalism of the liberal tradition in favour of a psychological theory of
impulse. He had been particularly impressed by two writings by the American philosopher, William
James, which appeared in 1913 in a posthumous collection of his essays and addresses. The first was
his famous essay “The Moral Equivalent of War” and the other a speech given in American, titled
“Remarks at the Peace Banquet”. Both argued that most people needed an enemy and wanted war as a
release of their vital energies. But James reasoned that since progress demanded peace it was
imperative that the enemy not be human. The war reawakened Russell’s interest in James and in the
question of the psychological roots of aggression. Indeed, as early as October 1914 the Jamesian
influence was evident when Russell wrote his essay “Why Nations Love War” for Norman Angell’s
periodical, War and Peace. Later, in Principles of Social Reconstruction, Russell referred to James
directly:
His statement of the problem could not be bettered; and so far as I know, he is the only writer who has
faced the problem adequately. But his solution is not adequate; perhaps no adequate solution is
possible.2
Before 1914 Russell had also been introduced to Bernard Hart’s The Psychology of Insanity with its
Freudian emphasis on unconscious impulses. Despite such reading, Russell does not appear to have
read any of Freud’s works before the end of the war.
Russell initially advanced his ideas on reconstruction in a series of eight lectures presented at the
Caxton Hall in London between 18 January and 7 March 1916. The idea for such a lecture series arose
out of Russell’s turbulent year-long association with D. H. Lawrence. Both men were horrified by the
carnage of the war and what they viewed as its relentless irrationality. Both independently became
convinced that the injustices and repressions in modern society had created such deep unhappiness
that people needed war to relieve their frustrations. Lady Ottoline Morrell knew Lawrence and
admired his novels with their exploration of the emotional springs of aggressive behaviour. She was
also well aware that her former lover, Russell, was wrestling with the same issues of why people
sought violent solutions to personal and national problems. Since she was convinced that the two men
had so much to offer the world, she arranged for them to meet in February 1915.
Atfirst Russell and Lawrence were completely mesmerized by each other and proceeded to plan a
major lecturing tour of Britain in the autumn of 1915 with a view to converting the masses to a new
understanding of morality. But by the spring of 1915 the deep differences in values and temperament
between them had led Lawrence to launch a furious personal assault upon Russell and to mock his
ideas as shallow and insidious. He condemned Russell as a bloodless rationalist with a secret desire
for violence, while Russell came to see Lawrence as a forerunner of fascism. Although deeply shaken
by Lawrence’s indictment, Russell soon recovered his equilibrium and pressed ahead on his own with
the lecture scheme.
He contacted C. K. Ogden, the anti-war editor of The Cambridge Review, who agreed to advertise
the lecture series and to assist in organizing it. Russell enjoyed giving the lectures and they were well
received by the mostly sympathetic audiences of intellectuals, pacifists and radical politicians. In a
letter to Lady Ottoline, Lytton Strachey captured the excitement many of them experienced:
Bertie’s lectures help one for they are a wonderful solace and refreshment. One hangs upon his words,
and looks forward to them from week to week, and I can’t bear the idea of missing one—I dragged
myself to that ghastly Caxton hall yesterday … and it was well worth it. It is splendid the way he
sticks at noth-ing—Governments, religions, laws, property, even Good Form itself—down they go
like ninepins—it is a charming sight! And then his constructive ideas are very grand; one feels one
had always thought something like that—but vaguely and inconclu-sively; and he puts it all together,
and builds it up, and plants it down solid and shining before one’s mind. I don’t believe there’s anyone
quite so formidable to be found just now upon this earth. (16 February 1916)3
These lectures, it is well to remember, were given (and some months after published as presented)
before the war had reached its most destructive stages. Certainly by early 1916 all hopes for a rapid
end to the conflict had faded as, particularly on the Western Front, the struggle had bogged down into
the grinding attrition of trench warfare. Just as Russell gave his lectures, the Germans embarked upon
their protracted Verdun offensive in an attempt to kill so many Frenchmen as to force a surrender. And
on 1 July 1916 the British Army began its own offensive on the Somme, launching what was to be the
bloodiest campaign in the country’s history. Moreover, Russell advanced his views on “reconstruc-
tion” before the ideological stakes in the war were to become much greater with the outbreak of the
Russian Revolution in March 1917 and the American intervention in April of the same year. It is
understandable, therefore, that Russell’s suggestions on “reconstruction” were often very general. As
he admitted:
The civilized world has need of fundamental change if it is to be saved from decay—change both in
its economic structure and in its philosophy of life. … As soon as it has become clear what kind of
change is required, it will be possible to work out its parts in more detail. But until the war is ended
there is little use in detail, since we do not know what kind of world the war will leave.4
Russell claimed that much of what he wrote for his lectures and the subsequent book was spontaneous,
even stating in his Autobiography that the book had “a framework and formula, but I only discovered
both when I had written all except the first and last words”.5 Russell is somewhat misleading here, for
the drafts of his syllabus of lectures and of his chapters demonstrate the coherence of thought he
possessed throughout the period of composition.
Russell’s belief that he had a moral obligation to do all in his power to stop the war was reinforced
by the success of these lectures. For throughout 1914 and early 1915 he had for the most part protested
against the war in isolation, as even when he was part of an organization, notably the Union of
Democratic Control, he believed that the other members were too intimi-dated to confront directly the
rabid nationalism spread by corrupt elites. Then the combination of the lectures and the passage of
conscription legislation provided a new focus for his anti-war activity. Within a fortnight of finishing
his last lecture, Russell was working with the No-Conscription Fellowship, not only to combat
conscription but to campaign in the country against the war.
News of the nature and success of the lectures also enhanced Russell’s reputation in America where
many of his writings critical of the war had been received with interest. Indeed, as early as January
1916 Professor Woods of the Harvard Philosophy Department had extended Russell an invitation to
take up an appointment at the University for 1917, during which he would lecture on philosophy and
politics. By March 1916, after Woods had looked at a copy of the lecture series, he told Russell that
the President of the University was delighted that he would be lecturing on politics and presenting a
fresh approach.
Meanwhile events transpired that ensured the publication of the lectures. Through Ogden’s well-
placed advertisements of Russell’s syllabus, Stanley Unwin, the Managing Editor of the newly formed
firm of George Allen & Unwin Limited, read about the plan. Without having heard a word of any of
the lectures, he wrote to Russell on 29 November 1915, asking for permission to publish them in the
form that they were to be delivered. Unwin had been impressed with Russell’s anti-war articles in The
Atlantic Monthly. Since Russell was one of the most vilified of the dissenters against the war, Unwin
demonstrated independence—and business shrewdness—in seeking out a writer who was now
regarded as a pariah by most of the other British publishers despite his reputation as a lucid writer of
essays. Russell repaid Unwin by sending the typescripts of the lectures to him and by making Allen &
Unwin his major publisher for the rest of his life.
The book was published in November 1916 in Britain and in January 1917 in the United States
where the title was changed, without Russell’s approval, to Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing
the International Duel by his American publisher, the Century Company. It appeared to enthusiastic
reviews from progressive and left-wing readers, serious if often critical analysis from many
philosophical reviewers and uniformly hostile and dismissive receptions from the conservative, pro-
war press. A sample selection underlines this verdict. The Radical Charles P. Trevelyan spoke for the
Union of Democratic Control when he claimed late in 1916 that “in all”, Russell was “revolutionary
but always con-structive”. After this book, “political thinking will begin again on a new scale” and
