[An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation by Thorstein Veblen]@TWC D-Link bookAn Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation CHAPTER II 23/47
Property rights have displaced community of usufruct; and invidious distinctions as between persons, sub-groups, and classes have displaced community of prestige in the workday routine of these peoples; and the distinctions between contrasted persons or classes have come to rest, in an ever increasing degree, directly or indirectly, on invidious comparisons in respect of pecuniary standing rather than on personal affiliation with the group at large. So, with the advance of the industrial arts a differentiation of a new character sets in and presently grows progressively more pronounced and more effectual, giving rise to a regrouping on lines that run regardless of those frontiers that divide one community from another for purposes of patriotic emulation.
So far as it comes chiefly and typically in question here, this regrouping takes place on two distinct but somewhat related principles of contrast: that of wealth and poverty, and that of master and servant, or authority and obedience.
The material interests of the population in this way come to be divided between the group of those who own and those who command, on the one hand, and of those who work and who obey, on the other hand. Neither of these two contrasted categories of persons have any direct material interest in the maintenance of the patriotic community; or at any rate no such interest as should reasonably induce them to spend their own time and substance in support of the political (patriotic) organisation within which they live.
It is only in so far as one or another of these interests looks for a more than proportionate share in any prospective gain from the joint enterprise, that the group or class in question can reasonably be counted on to bear its share in the joint venture.
And it is only when and in so far as their particular material or self-regarding interest is reenforced by patriotic conceit, that they can be counted on to spend themselves in furtherance of the patriotic enterprise, without the assurance of a more than proportionate share in any gains that may be held in prospect from any such joint enterprise; and it is only in its patriotic bearing that the political community continues to be a joint venture.
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