A State of War Continues to be Profitable to the Governing Class and to Officials Administering the Army

The fact that war has become useless is not, however, sufficient to secure its cessation. It is useless because it ceases to minister to the general and permanent benefit of the species, but it will not cease until it also becomes unprofitable, till it is so far from procuring benefit to those who practice it, that to go to war is synonymous with embracing a loss. . . .

Every State includes a governing class and a governed class. The former is interested in the immediate multiplication of employments open to its members, whether these be harmful or useful to the State, and also desires to remunerate these officials at the best possible rate. But the majority of the nation, the governed class, pays for the officials, and its only desire is to support the least necessary number. A State of War, implying an unlimited power of disposition over the lives and goods of the majority, allows the governing class to increase State employments at will — that is, to increase its own sphere of employment. . . . a State of War continues to be profitable both to the governing class as a whole, and to those officials who administer and officer the army. . . .

But while the State of War has become more and more profitable to the class interested in the public services, it has become more burdensome and more injurious to the infinite majority which only consumes those services. In time of tranquility it supports the burden of the armed peace, and the abuse, by the governing class, of the unlimited power of taxation necessitated by the State of War, intended to supply the means of national defense, but perverted to the profit of government and its dependents. The case of the governed is even worse in time of war. . . .

The human balance sheet under a State of War thus favours the governor at the expense of the governed.

—Gustave de Molinari, The Society of Tomorrow: A Forecast of Its Political and Economic Organisation, trans. P. H. Lee Warner (London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1904), 168-170.