Franco Fornari’s hypothesizes (1974) that war represents a “voluntary destruction of previously accumulated reserves of human capital,” an activity performed with the intention to “sacrifice a certain number of lives.”
Norman O. Brown states (1959) that archaic gift-giving (the potlatch being an example) is “one vast refutation of the notion that the motive of economic life is utilitarian egoism.” Archaic man gives because he wants to lose: “the psychology is self-sacrificial.” The need to produce an economic surplus is connected with the sacred: “Gifts are sacred and the gods exist to receive gifts.”
During the First World War, the “gift” of millions of lives was offered to the reigning god, the nation state. |