ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at all instances of conflict between nations. Before these encounters between rival parties occur, widespread preparations are conducted in the form of armament, of the accumulation of equipment and food, of the establishment of communication routes, and requiring a huge amount of collective energy. It suggests that collective human energy is turned into work that cannot be transformed, of its own accord, back into human energy in an amount equal to the work conducted; this is an expression of the law of dissemination of energy or entropy in the supraorganic world. The manufacture of one product or another requires a certain amount of energy; the end product, however, does not provide the means for the recovery of the energy expended on its manufacture. The product must be turned into a commodity and sold, in other words energy must once again be spent on it in the form of its exchange, through sale, for money.
