ABSTRACT
Warlords consolidated ever larger populations under their rule, until whole cities were formed into autonomous communities under a single ruler or ruling family. Force employed to hold large groups together may be viewed as one or another form of internal strife, civil war, oppression, or simply social control. The social Darwinist approach to war, then, suggests that violence and large-scale killing are simply the ugly but inevitable by-products of cultural evolution. War is the means by which societies are “selected” by the environment for survival; peace is a loser’s strategy. Thus the Marxian view regards war as the result of the imperialism that is inevitable in a capitalist economy. Betty Reardon uses the term war system to refer collectively to the integration of all of social life under the ethic of oppression and domination. Society can work to reduce war directly through economic, political, and cultural change—which will likely result in a reduction in the war socialization of boys.
