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Gaston Bouthoul and the war phenomenon
Gaston Bouthoul and the war-phenomenon
Jerónimo Molina Cano 1
Summary : Gaston Bouthoul, inventor in 1942 of the ne-
Holocaustism «polemology» and pioneer of sociology
of the war, founder in 1945 of the Institut Français
of Polémologie, he is still an unknown sociologist
acid and barely studied. His demographic investigations
graphs of the 20s and 30s, period during which
occupies a respectable position in the environment of René
Worms, Gaston Richard and the Institut International de
Sociology, they direct their work towards research
of the presumed causes of wars. From that
moment, war constitutes a phenomenon for him
social like any other. Because of its cyclical nature
or its repetitive forms, the "war phenomenon"
1 Professor of Social Policy at the University of Murcia. Doctor
in Law (Complutense). Master in Public Administration (Institute
University Ortega y Gasset). Director of the magazine Empresas políticas
(2002-2010). Author of Julien Freund, politics and politics (Madrid 2000),
Wilhelm Röpke and the Third Way (Pamplona 2001), Social Policy in History
(Murcia 2004), Röpke (Rome 2006), Epitome of Social Policy (Murcia 2007),
In the hair of a comet called Ernesto Giménez Caballero (Valencina de
the Conception 2008, Nothing in the hands (Valencina de la Concepción 2013)
and numerous articles and notes on the Spanish School of Law
politician (Francisco Javier Conde, Jesús Fueyo, Rodrigo Fernández-Carvajal,
etc.) and political realism (Carl Schmitt, Raymond Aron).
DOI: 10.9732 / P.0034-7191.2014v109p197
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approximates biological processes. The 70s are
the golden age of polemology. The publication
of two magazines - Guerres et paix et Études polémolo-
giques -, of numerous treaties and various essays
of sociology of war or the development of a network
international collaboration contributes, undoubtedly,
to the scientific institutionalization of polemology.
The paradigm of polemology is eclipsed without
since 1980, coinciding with the death of
Bouthoul. This work intends to offer some
keys to contemporary understanding of Gaston
Bouthoul and his work.
Palavras-chave : Bouthoul. Sociology of war.
Polemology Irenology
Abstract : Gaston Bouthoul, even though he is the in-
ventor of the neologism «Polemology», founder of the
French Institute of Polemology, pioneer of sociology of
war and a very talented researcher for the high scien-
tifical divulgation, is a little-known and rarely studied
sociologist Along the twenties and thirties, when I've
holds a prominent position in the enviromment of
René Worms, Gaston Richard and the International
Institue of Sociology, he points their work towards the
alleged causes of wars, understanding war as another
social phenomenon Due to its cyclical or periodic
nature, the war-phenomenon approaches the biologi-
cal processes The 1970s was the golden age of polemo-
logy The publication of two journals -Guerres et paix
and Études polémologiques-, several treatises and
essays on the sociology of war and the development
of an international network of contributors helped, no
doubt, to the scientific institutionalization of polemo-
logy The Bouthoul's polemological paradigm eclipses
after 1980, coinciding with the sociologist's death. In
this paper we offer some keys of Bouthoul's thought.
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Keywords : Bouthoul. Sociology of war. Polemology
Sociology of peace.
1. War and demography
The study of war from a realistic point of view,
even sociological, it is the complete opposite of a discipline
magical He is aware of this Gaston Bouthoul, scholar
of polemology (polemology ), a special sociology of
the war whose method differs from that of the States
majors and that of historians. Postponed financial-
by institutes of a pacifist vocation, much more
popular among a public frightened by the horrors of
the great European wars of the twentieth century, Bouthoul, fun-
donor of the Institut Français de Polémologie , he did not disguise his
surprised to find that "in a world like ours,
in which there is an overabundance of institutes of all kinds, cancer and
of the infectious coryza, the economic situation and the
grasshopper invasions, there is not even the embryo of
an organism destined to observe [the war], calamity
more onerous than all the others together » 2 .
The Bouthoulean polemology is a «scientific sociology
tific of wars ", devoted to the study of their causes
presumed, their periodicity and their forecast and prevention.
Bouthoul justified the coinage of neologism since
«Science of war» is mostly synonymous with strategy
gia, discipline cultivated in military schools. In the opinion of
Bouthoul, war is one of the essential chapters of all
dynamic sociology, however, many obstacles
They have opposed their scientific configuration. The biggest impediment
ment for the scientific understanding of the war phenomenon
2
BOUTHOUL, 1962, p. 203
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has been what the French sociologist used to call "the pseudo-
evidence of the war ». Because of its proximity to all,
there is no human being who directly or indirectly does not have
experience or news of it (children's games, literature and
arts in general, particularly cinema in the last century;
mass media, military conscription and
weapons service), the war seems anchored in the conscience
as "the most immediately perceptible of all the fe-
social phenomena » 3 . But for what reason you have to brag
that wars and all their annexes and effects constitute
a transparent reality? It would be, in that case, the only one of the
social facts with a similar nature, therefore oblivious to
the sociological and scientific elucidation, required by all
others.
The last explanation of this anomalous situation is the
Bouthoul finds an immemorial taboo sacralizing the
war as "the hour of truth of the peoples", as a
mystique of heroism that spilled blood prevents questioning
nar. In this way, the scientific study of wars hurts
the self-love of man: for objectivity applied to
«The great historical convulsions that intoxicate him with
the illusion of being able to shape destiny and build history ",
would show that these, the wars, are nothing but "pure fe-
social phenomena, as well as economic crises » 4 . A
social fact more among others. But even when they do not
repairs of this order operate other obstacles that cancel
well-meaning efforts to respond to the challenge
from the war. It is now a diverse genre of problems
more, related to the "minimal effort path" 5 . A) Yes
happens, says Bouthoul among other scientific files
3
BOUTHOUL, 1991, p. 8
4
BOUTHOUL, 1948, p. 238.
5 BOUTHOUL, 1991, p. 14
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or pseudoscientific, moral or political, with the «illusionism
legal "or belief in the thaumaturgic power of Law
international and the prohibitionist movement of war
rehearsed at the Interberllum . A direct consequence of
This movement is what Günter Maschke calls "autodes-
International Law " 6 . The war has known
many limitations, these are called "theory of war
just, "as in Christian thought, or jus ad bellum and jus
in bello , as in European people's law. But one thing
it is the recognition of war as something given ( donnée ),
transcendental reality according to the general experience of the
humanity that admits certain limitations or dimensions
in the terminology of one of his scholars, Carl Schmitt, and
quite another the contemporary claim to prohibit
its exercise ( ius contra bellum of the League of Nations,
of the Briand-Kellogg Pact, etc.) or even turn it into a
crime 7 .
If prohibiting war has not helped, neither
the assimilation of war to a
private matter or, from a therapeutic point of view, its
pathological consideration. Is the balance of the
pacifism? How many wars has he conjured? It has not been,
rather, a polemogenic, highly aggressive doctrine
when she becomes a lawyer for a specific war to end
with war, with all wars? Of pacifism, in its
different variants imprecatory, querulous and aggressive,
Bouthoul says it was a refuge from magical thinking.
Bouthoul's scientific program aims to
sing the war phenomenon, desacralizing at the same time
peace and politics. In this sense, his attitude is the
6
MASCHKE, 2006, pp. 15-26.
7
SCHMITT, 1979. Id. , SCHMITT, 2006.
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tificadora of the political realist. "Elucidating is exorcising" 8 . By
the siege of the Bouthoulean polemology pass not only
conflicts and current wars, but also wars and
revolutions of the last two centuries, studied by him
conscientiously together with the history of wars in other
civilizations, particularly the ancient ones (Greece and Rome)
the orientals (China and Japan). The originality of Bouthoul
is to apply to the political analysis of wars a
unusual demographic perspective, according to which wars
they are periodic phenomena, that is, recurrent
according to certain rhythms, whose social functionality is to provoke
demographic relaxation through the elimination of
surplus of human lives, particularly of males
young people, and the destruction of economic value. If this is so, ra-
Bouthoul area, it is expected that one day, when it
the end of scientific formalization, anticipate its outbreak
and its function can be realized (demographic relaxation) by
less painful means 9 .
In the framework of political analysis, the thinking of
Bouthoul moves towards the demographic analysis of the phenomenon
meno-war, which certainly displaces the politics of
primary or central position that is usually recognized in the
political alism (Carl Schmitt, Raymond Aron, Julien Freund,
Gianfranco Miglio, Panajotis Kondylis, etc.) 10 . In the absence of a
univocal criterion, every list of realistic writers has to
be broad and, as for the inclination and style of each,
personal vicissitudes or literary genres of choice, ne-
Caesarian heterogeneous 11 . Political realism, a lineage that
Kautilya inaugurated, author in the IV century a. C. of the oldest
8
BOUTHOUL, 1946, p. 223
9
Cfr. COUTAU-BÉGARIE, 2010, pp. 3-19.
10 On political realism: CAMPI, 2002. ORO TAPIA, 2012, pp. 15-46.
11 See the authors mentioned by GAMBESCIA, 2012.
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of the known political treaties 12 , it is not a historiography,
but a knowledge entailed in political time par excellence,
the unstable present of the arrow that forms the body of the
LX company of Saavedra Fajardo 13 . So they can and should
mention the names of contemporary authors of this
lineage or related to it, although it would be untimely
according to the purists of Political Science 14 .
The demographic aspects of one of the events
central political actors, far from detracting political interest from the
that of Bouthoul, they enhance it, because it presents political history
of war in a new light. All in all, as PP points out
Portinaro in his essay on political realism, "the research
the cause of war is the first bank of
tests for every thought that wants to distinguish between
the reality and appearance of politics » 15 .
Bouthoul's polemological thinking has been forged
in three anvils: grand'fureur, grand'peur, grand'pitié 16 , the
three stages through which inexorably slides the opinion
public when facing the war. «If you want peace, prepare the
war ", said a traditional rule of prudence. «If you want
res la paz, pronounce beautiful speeches »is a pacifist motto. The
Bouthoul's affirmation "If you want peace, know the war
ra »constitutes, instead, the figure of a new pacifism,
functional or, in short, scientific; only this, in his opinion, is the
true pacifism.
12 KANGLE, 2003.
13 FAJARDO, 1999.
14 I will point out only five of the newest , four European and one American, of
work and personality very different: Angelo Panebianco, Dalmatio Negro,
Günter Maschke, Alain de Benoist and Gonzalo V. Massot.
15 PORTINARO, 1999, p. 32
16 BOUTHOUL, 1946, p. 183
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2. Gaston Bouthoul: thought and war
The polemologist Gaston Bouthoul was born in the city of
gypsy from Monastir, in the former French Protectorate of
Tunis, on May 8, 1896. He is the son of an industrialist of the
Tunisian bourgeoisie of Jewish origin, Moïse Bouthoul,
of the Usines Bouthoul , and of Clémence Secmama. Nothing
it is known about him until after the Great War, except that
Once he is sent by his father to Switzerland to continue studies
and thus avoid military conscription 17 . He obtains the degrees
in Law and Letters by the Sorbonne, university in which
She has a PhD in Legal, Political and Economic Sciences in
1924 with a thesis on La durée du travail et l'utilisation des
loisirs 18 Two years ago he presents the mandatory secondary thesis
Ria, entitled Étude sociologique de variations de la natalité dans
les faits et la doctrine 19 . In the meantime, he marries a woman
refined, Betty Vera Helfenbein, writer, painter and friend
of literati and intellectuals, in whose circles he introduces him.
Bouthoul aspires to an academic career at the University
France, but doubts between the political economy and the
Demography. Of the first one he is particularly attracted to the study
Statistic of the economic crises and the cycle. The studies
pioneers of Albert Aftalion 20 , of whom he is assistant in the Fa-
Paris law, on periodic shaking
of prices and production impresses him vividly;
so much so that very soon it becomes known scientifically
17 On the biography of G. Bouthoul you can consult the information, not
always coincident, collected by CARRÈRE in MONTBRIAL; KLEIN,
2006, pp. 68-69; MOLINA, 2007, pp. 117-128; MOLINA, 2008, pp. 269-273;
MOLINA In: YOUNG (Ed.), 2010, t. I, pp. 200-201; MONTAGNON, 2012,
pp. 9-14.
18 BOUTHOUL, 1924.
19 BOUTHOUL, 1922.
20 AFTALION, 1913, 2 t.
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by projecting intuitions on demographic trends
of the Aftalion methodology for the study of fluctuations
of the markets. But the university cursus honorum
for an intellectual stranger to the normal planet was then
in France a sea of almost insurmountable difficulties. With
everything, professed for some years as Assistant Professor
in the doctorate courses of the Faculty of Law of
Paris. Sponsored by statistician Fernand Faure publishes
various studies in the Revue politique et parlamentaire , al
time that founds and directs the Revue d'Afrique , consecrated to
the French colonial cause and published quarterly from
1928 to 1939, completing a series of nineteen numbers.
Act at the same time as a lawyer, exercise that never
will leave
3. The heroic age of Sociology
Bouthoul, cultivator of a neomalthu demography
siana 21 , reproach that nevertheless rejects always, is con-
pours into one of the most active young people in René's environment
Worms, factotum of the institutionalization of sociology
French intersection 22 . Since 1922, the year of his entry into
Sociology Society of Paris, collaborates in the Revue Inter-
National of Sociology . In his pages he publishes dozens of
book reviews of sociology, demography, law, politics
or economy and also his first original works, in
those who manifest their interest in encyclopedic sociology
says that, however, begins to eclipse in the academy
French In this context of profound transformation of
the lines of force of a sociology that had dominated
Gabriel Tarde, R. Worms and Émile Durkheim, calls attention to
21 BOUTHOUL, 1935.
22 MUCCHIELLI, 1998.
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the sharp contrast of style and theme between the Raymond
Aron de La sociologie allemande contemporaine 23 , and the journey-
Ria de Bouthoul. While in Aron new advertisements are announced
courses for sociology, the encyclopaedism of Bouthoul
seems to record a sociology that has been
without roots, petrified in the paradigms of the vast
intersecting sis. It is true that the divergence will be accused
much more from 1945 24 . All in all, in 1970 the name
and the work of Bouthoul are recorded in an anthology
French of contemporary sociologists, next to Georges Gur-
vitch, Georges Balandier, Alain Touraine, Pierre Bourdieu and
the own Aron 25 . It is true that after his death just
he is already remembered outside the academic circles in which
the sociology of war or the quarterfinals is cultivated
deras of some European or Spanish-American armies.
His theoretical contribution to sociology is simply ignored.
However, his work on dynamic sociology and
social change or the study of mentalities are worthy of
study: Bouthoul incoa a sociology of time ( sociologie
du temps ), expression that Bouthoul is the first to use
in France to present a theory of social rhythms 26 .
In 1928 he is elected treasurer of the International Institute
of Sociology, actively participating in the new stage
of the institution founded by Worms and promoted
since the death of this by Gaston Richard, dissident of
the Durkheimian school and yet a professor at the
university fief of Bordeaux. The presence of Richard in
23 ARON, 1933.
24 Cfr. BOUTHOUL, 1958 and ARON, 1967.
25 DUVIGNAUD, 1970, pp. 232-234.
26 I owe this information to Jean-Marc Ramos, a sociologist at the University
Paul Valéry of Montpellier.
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the Faculty of Letters bordelesa explains that Bouthoul, who
want to make a university career, get a new
Doctorate, this time in letters, in alma mater Girondina 27 .
Bouthoul, member of the Le free examination lodge , at least
At the beginning of the 1930s , it began at that time
to be resented by the phenomenon of war, social fact or thing , in
Durkheim's sense, that despite the enormous diversity
The study of their causes is characterized by the
recurrence of its demographic effects: all war supposes
always a bleeding of human lives. Participate Bouthoul
in the tenth and eleventh congresses of the Society
International Sociology dedicated to the study of causes
of the wars (1930) and that of the forecast of the
same (1933). A part of his research on
causes and periodicity of wars, perhaps the essential
that period of his work, contextualized by the study of
movements of the population, is published shortly before the
of World War II: «Sur les fonctions présumées
et the périodicité des guerres » 29 . But Bouthoul, notwithstanding the
scarce implantation of sociology at the French University
ceases in the 30s, does not leave aside his academic vocation and
he works in an ambitious general sociology treatise that
will print corrected and completed in 1946 30 and in a manual
Social Psychology 31 , a discipline that has taught since 1935 in the
School of Social Studies (EHSS). That same year
27 Main thesis: BOUTHOUL, 1930a. Secondary thesis: BOUTHOUL, 1930b.
28 Its connection with Freemasonry does not seem questionable, although it is only
can be provided as evidence the authorship of the summary of several meetings held
his lodge on the secular ideal: BOUTHOUL, 1931. On the other hand, Bouthoul was
fond of esotericism, science fiction and secret societies.
29 In BOUTHOUL, 1939, pp. 161-174.
30 BOUTHOUL, 1946a,
31 BOUTHOUL, 1937.
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publishes his most important work of the pre-war: The population
dans le monde 32 , which, due to his neo-Malthusian position 33
with the French pro-natalist sentiment that, shortly after,
it will be crystallized in the Family Code of 1939.
During the Drôle de guerre Bouthoul it is mobilized, sus-
depending on their demographic work and on the mutation of
the mentality in the French colonies, which then occupy
Much of his time at the École Nationale de la France
d'Outre-Mer (ENFOM), directed by Robert Delavignette.
Demobilized after the Armistice he leaves Paris and
installs in the department of the maritime Alps. Commo
caused by the "brutal affective shock" of June 22,
1940 and convinced of the failure of conventional pacifism,
who will devote, in the postwar period, an important part of
his work, enters the Resistance at the hands of his friend René
Laporte, former director of the Revue de Paris , in which
Bouthoul lavishes himself in the Interbellum . In 1942 it begins to
give definitive form to the scientific study program of
wars, for which he will invent a neologism ( Polémolo-
gie ). As soon as the war is over, he returns to Paris, takes up the
professional performance of the legal profession and collaborates in the Revue
of Défense nationale and in other magazines of greater diffusion and
of generalist cultural topics 34 . Its fundamental purpose of
study is since then the war phenomenon .
4. The polemological paradigm
The Institut Français de Polémologie begins its walk-
hard, the crossing of the desert, towards 1945, counting on the
32 BOUTHOUL, 1935.
33 To put it all, Bouthoul is rather a neo-Malthusian critic of Malthus .
34 A bibliography in fieri of the French polemologist in MOLINA, 2009, pp. 49-
77
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collaboration of Louise Weiss, pacifist well known for her
activism and the launch in 1930 of the Nouvelle École
of the Paix 35 . The reasons for its foundation have to do with
the profound emotional impact of World War II and
the enormous moral depression that ensued in the postwar period.
Unlike other war conflicts - I had known
He also the Great War - the unconditional surrender of
Germany in 1945 does not unleash the euphoria that could be expected
after so much suffering, not even in the abode of
the winners. The postwar euphoria is, in his opinion, one of
the psychological states characteristic of the definitive cessation
of hostilities, but this time it was nullified by the
of a new general conflict, close and inevitable
36 Research on the war phenomenon, initiated by
Bouthoul in 1931, acquires his fundamental intuitions
before the war, particularly with the study of
war series of the history of France, England and Greece
classic From this, he deduces the secular rhythm of movements
of the population: approximately every century there is a
war of great magnitude, moment of turning of the curve
of population growth 37 . More limited conflicts
take place, on the other hand, in the term of a generation,
between 30 and 40 years It is understood that with these results, that
the author will abandon and resume his work on several occasions
low. «The matter was so unpleasant and the conclusions that
I was getting so afflictive that I ended up suspending
again my investigation » 38 .
35 G. Bouthoul and L. Weiss distance themselves in the 70s. In his memoirs, six
voluminous tomes, Weiss barely dedicates a form to remember
Bouthoul. See WEISS, 1976, pp. 72-73.
36 BOUTHOUL, 1948, p. 215
37 BOUTHOUL, 1938, t. I, pp. 63-70; BOUTHOUL, 1958b
38 BOUTHOUL, 1970a, p. 9.
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For more than a decade Bouthoul works almost on
lonely. His polemological doctrine interests at first
to the Ministry of Defense, although the controls seem to give
soon on the side after publishing a few collaborations
his in the Revue de Défense nationale . But the isolation
intellectual does not dent his will and concentrates on reworking,
from the perspective of the population explosion, its study
of 1935 on La population dans le monde . The result is a
new book, The surpopulation dans le monde 39 , in turn revised
later. Bouthoul does the same with other books, whose
ideas guides reiterates frequently, perhaps as a mechanism
of personal vindication in an environment if not necessary-
hostile mind, yes, of course, of thick silence. What I call
maba "the test of deaf ears" (indifference and disinterest
unanimous in the face of indisputable evidence) is for him
a piece of evidence of enormous value, superior, as he believes,
to the rejection of the same data or idea after an argument
allegedly scientific.
This atypical sociologist, survivor of the time of
heroic sociology, prior to its institutionalization and
university generalization, nevertheless gains thousands of
readers with their brief treatises received in the collection
"What the hell?", Reissued up to twenty times as
throughout the 60s and 70s 40 . Most of the work of
Bouthoul dedicated to scientific divulgation, without this
denomination means to attribute a demerit, it comes,
reworked, of his great sociological trilogy: Volume I of the
39 BOUTHOUL, 1958b.
40 Histoire de la sociologie (1950), 9 editions; Les mentalités (1952), 5 editions;
La guerre (1953), 6 editions; Biologie sociale (1957), 3 editions; Sociology of
the politique (1965), 3 editions; and La Paz (1974). Of one or the other of these books
There are translations into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, English, Catalan, Turkish,
Japanese, Arabic or Chinese. This, using a term of the bureaucratic language
contemporary, can give an idea of the international "impact" of their work.
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I tried sociology , already mentioned; Volume II, dedicated to
dynamic sociology 41 ; and Les guerres. Elections of polemic-
42 , originally conceived as the second volume of the
work. Les guerres , translated into Italian, Greek and Spanish,
both in Argentina and in Spain 43 , it is one of the
two classics of the subject and strut of the so-called «School
French of polemology » 44 . In its definitive edition of 1970
there are no changes other than the addition of a tenth
part on «Problems, development and research of
Polemology » 45 . An abbreviated version of it does
accessible to a wider audience 46 .
The Institut Français de Polémologie is during all those
years little more than an academic label without content. Uni-
will have a relatively autonomous activity, in
independent part of the efforts of its founder mediated
and to the 1960s, when unexpectedly, thanks to
General Lucien Poirier, gets the placet from the Prosecution Center
of the Ministry of the Army, as well as
a research contract with funding
sufficient to maintain a minimum administrative structure
trative, support an international documentation center
and edit their magazines, to which they will dedicate themselves in body
41 BOUTHOUL, 1954. In the original 1951 plan this volume read as
third.
42 BOUTHOUL, 1951.
43 Significantly, the River Plate and Spanish translations were
promoted by the major states of the Argentine and Spanish armies.
The Treaty of Polemology was also considered a useful reading
for the officiality by the Uruguayan Army Staff. Cfr. CAGNI,
2009, pp. 99-105. BAQUER, 1984, pp. 31-53.
44 Along with that of FREUND, 1983. On the French sociology of war («Les
forerunners français de la sociologie militaire ») see the monographs
of FORGET, 2001 and FORGET, 2002.
45 BOUTHOUL, 1991.
46 BOUTHOUL, 1960b.
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and soul: Guerres et paix (1966-1970) and Études polémologiques
(1970-1992). With these publications, organs of expression
of the bouthouleano polemological paradigm that reached
important print runs (3000 copies), Bouthoul and a few
cos collaborators, military (General René Carrère, Colonel
Jean-Louis Annequin, Colonel Pierre Valat-Morio) and civilians
(Hervé Savon, Hélène Faup, Éric Muraise, Julien Freund),
work to consolidate the polemology in the table of
social sciences, in hard competition with irenology 47 and
called sociologies of the peace of the consecrated institutes
to Peace Research . These, already before the appearance of Guerres
et Paix , had federated, under the ideological patronage and
of UNESCO, at the International Peace Research
Association (IPRA) 48 .
In journals directed by Bouthoul it is institutionalized
and fixes the scientific structure of the polemology, while
discipline is progressively opening up to new problems and
approaches, avoiding the unilateralism of the explanations of the
war phenomenon based primarily on causation
demographic and economic and attending to psychological factors
gicos ( complexes belígenos ). Terrorism, political violence
and other unprecedented forms of violence (taking hostages,
hijacking of planes, microconflicts); the nuclear mutation and
disarmament; postcolonial conflicts and genocides; the
sociobiology and geopolitics; the student protests of
May 68; the planetary mutation of mentalities; the
pollution and the evolution of the Quaternary sector; tourism, the
feminism, the aging of the population or the Olympism
as factors of polemological relaxation or accidents of
traffic as a recent expression of mechanical aggressiveness
They appear in their pages, bringing the spectrum closer
47 Term coined by the Belgian Catholic journalist Paul MG Lévy.
48 UNESCO, 1965.
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from polemology to a general sociology of conflict
(conflictology), perhaps overflowing the original conception 49 .
Bouthoul's scientific activism also finds a
important channel of communication in the collection «Guerres
et Paix », directed by him and published by Hachette. In her
only three volumes appeared: L'infanticide différé
(1970), by Bouthoul; L'homme furieux (1970), by Faust Anto-
nini; and Du cannibalisme au génocide (1972), by Hervé Savon,
work with which the 50 collection is abruptly interrupted .
Bouthoul also multiplies its presence in everything, kind of
international sociological conferences, congresses and forums,
stimulating the creation of peer institutes in France
and in other countries 51 and linking to the headquarters of Paris a wide
49 Same opinion in FREUND, 1981, p. 33. Cf. CARRERE, 1974, pp. 81-88;
id, 1974, pp. 101-109; [S. a.,], 1975, pp. 68-70.
50 The issue addressed by Savon - the genocides - is extremely
delicate, because it does not face it from the perspective of crime categories
and moral or criminal intentionality and responsibility, but as
sociologist, for whom "the express will to destroy is much less
important that for the moralist ». «For the sociologist, and a fortiori
for the polemologist, [...] the object of the investigation is not the wills
nor human intentions, often sinuous and sometimes
incomprehensible, but the structure that makes probable, even ineluctable,
the genocide ». SAVON, 1972, p. 26
51 Julien Freund founded the Institut de Polémogologie in Strasbourg , support
institutional framework for a sociology of conflict, with a broader spectrum than
the sociology of the Bouthoul wars. The Italian Institute of Polemology
of Milan is organized by the psychiatrist Franco Fornari. Bert Röling, judge
of the Tokyo Tribunal for war crimes, founds the Polemogisch
Instituut de Gróninga. General Victor Werner, for his part, creates and directs
the Center de Sociologie de la Guerre , of the Free University of Brussels. The
Association for the polemological studies of Madrid seems to have a
purely nominal existence at the end of the 70s. The Institute "Víctor
Seix "de Polemología de Barcelona joins the current for some time
French polemic, although the ideological and scientific incompatibility
Between that and this one they were notorious. A good example of that anomaly was
the Spanish translation of Sauver la guerre ( Save the war ). This title,
absolutely consistent with the theory of functional pacifism, should
GASTON BOUTHOUL AND THE WAR-PHENOMENON
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214
national or international network of corresponding 52 , policy
started in the 1960s. The 1970s was
for that, truly, the Golden Age of polemology.
The appearance of Guerres et paix opens a stage in
the one that his scientific and literary constancy consecrates to Bouthoul
as a successful sociologist and writer. Of course, he had dowries
literary and a great ability to invent formulas and
shocking definitions, with the nerve of aphorism. Here and
there leaves them sown: the war is a deferred infanticide ,
an emigration to the hereafter , an organized homicide , maybe a
psychic epidemic , a collective hallucination ; the civil war, the
demographic relaxation of the poor ; kill the man, not the weapons ;
the provoked birth brings organized mortality ; and lots
others Acuña also notions as «Quaternary sector»,
more scientifically accurate. The quaternary is a sector of
destructive or polemological activities, not taken into
account for Jean's conventional trichotomical classification
Fourastié and Colin Clark: primary, secondary and
tertiary. The term proposed by Bouthoul in the 50s,
despite the growing importance of the military structure-
industry in the second half of the 20th century, it has no
eco 53 . But Bouthoul's success was more social or mundane
what academic Attested by the Prix Littéraire International de
la Paix (International Literary Prize for Peace), «destined
to serve the sacred cause of Peace » 54 , attributed to Bouthoul
in its second edition of 1962 by Sauver la guerre . As well
the Montyon Prize of the French Academy, of 1971, for
L'infanticide différé . Both distinctions of a literary nature-
embarrass his pacifist editors of 'Víctor Seix' to the point of
pour it into Spanish like Avoid War , thus altering the true meaning
of the work. Cfr. BOUTHOUL, 1970b.
52 Luis Díez del Corral was the corresponding Spanish of the Institute.
53 BOUTHOUL, 1957, pp. 75-79 and other places.
54 PRIX LITTERAIRE INTERNATIONAL OF LA PAIX, 1962.
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ria, not scientific, data that should be kept in mind,
is a sure sign of the limited scientific journey of the
polemology from an institutional sociological perspective.
Despite the academic difficulties that plague him,
the French academic system has been and is very reluctant not to
accept the theses of bouthoulena polemology, but even
to discuss them 55 , their collaborations appear in magazines
of the high French culture ( La Nouvelle Revue
Française , La Table Ronde ), even in other publications -
eccentric with respect to the academic system- such as Planète
(1961-1968) by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, dedicated
to esoteric and science fiction themes 56 , or the ephemeral Janus
(1964-1968), edited by Robert Laffont and that, in a way,
seems to anticipate some issues from the refereed publications
of the Nouvelle droite , particularly Nouvelle école .
Bouthoul adjusts accounts with the pacifist movement
in Lettre ouverte aux pacifistes , a superb filiphica against
the pacifist ideology and against the supposed science of peace,
a "charlatanism" that "camouflages political commitments" 57 .
Bouthoul, although he lacked weight reasons for his
criticism, sometimes expressed so summarily that no
is exempt from misunderstandings 58 , accuses on those pages
55 A doctoral thesis on Bouthoul, ideologically unclassifiable intellectual,
In France, it constitutes academic suicide. Leaving aside the controversy
between the demographer (populacionista) Alfred Sauvy and (the neo-Malthusian)
Bouthoul on the "population optimum", rather secondary, there is no
French sociological literature a reception neither partisan nor critical of
the work of the founder of polemology. A recent publication maybe
has marked an inflection in France: KLINGER, 2007. In Spain there are two
Merit publications: SUANCES, 2000, pp. 57-91, and MOLINA, 2009a,
with contributions from Piet Tommissen, M. Klinger, Hervé Savon (hand
right of Bouthoul in the Institut ), Vincent Porteret and Pascal Hintermeyer
among other.
56 Planète came to have in 1965, counting the different editions in German,
Spanish and other languages, a total circulation of five hundred thousand copies.
57 BOUTHOUL, 1972, pp. 139 and 180
58 "The main activity of pacifists during the last thirty years
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216
the restlessness due to the scientific isolation to which the
Lieutenants of the Sociology of Peace and Peace Research ,
Johan Galtung. From the doctrine of this sociologist
Norwegian used to say Raymond Aron, who, on the other hand,
he never seems to have seriously interested in Bouthoul,
which is an intellectual by-product of Marxism-Leninism 59 .
Bouthoul does not believe in the existence of true pacifists,
for all those who know feel nostalgia for violence.
Therefore, traditional pacifism, not scientific or non-functional,
has become one of the biggest obstacles to the
peace. According to his friend Julien Freund, the four great imperatives
dimentas of peace are pacifism; the papal encyclicals,
particularly those of Pope John XXIII and Paul VI,
considered «Popes of peace»; the Nobel Peace Prize;
and the UN 60 .
During his last decade Bouthoul concentrates on
the refinement of a methodology and terminology
own, at the service of a discipline that runs the risk of
remain petrified in their sociological doctrine, prior to
World War II, the demographic causality of the
wars As he points out, just after the war, in the
conclusion of Huit mille traités de paix , the urgency of the
problem of the population and the need to propose measures
of "demographic disarmament" must come before development
of the polemological paradigm 61 . Why not a «demography
directed "( démographie direée ) if there is a" direct economy "
gida »( économie direée )? In the balance by nuclear terror
of the Cold War, in the alteration of the functionality of the
has consisted of painting pigeons and signing manifestos. " G. Bouthoul, 1972,
p. 91
59 ARON, 1977, p. 268
60 G. Bouthoul, 1972, pp. 21 and 91. Cf. FREUND, 1970, pp. 194-225.
61 BOUTHOUL, 1948, p. 247
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conventional wars and, by the mid-70s, in the
development of computing finds the necessary stimulus
to renew his scientific project.
The application of information technology to the treatment of
data is a technique that Bouthoul expects a lot, such
too much time: particularly the novation of a science
that maybe she was born already old. No less are the espe-
ranzas deposited in its methodological arsenal, reworked
continuously since 1945: explosive structure; indices
of bellicosity and demographic relaxation; percentages
painkillers; barometers and polemological fronts; complex
beligens; conjunctures and motivations; areas
beligens, etc. A part of that program is developed in
Guerres et paix and Études polémologiques , whose «Chronicles of the
global violence »reflect" day by day and month by month "the situation
of international aggression 62 , with a view to accumulating
the data that allow us to make anticipatory guesses about
the evolution of events and the transition of
a context of peace to another of war and vice versa. Mass
criticism of this statistical information, to a certain extent
extension and complement of previous studies such as
by Quincy Wright 63 , Lewis F. Richardson 64 and David Singer
and Melvin Small 65 , serves as the basis for the two major
Tigations developed by a research team
of the Institut Français de Polémologie directed by Bouthoul: the
analysis of the three hundred and sixty-six "armed conflicts
older »registered between 1740 and 1974 66 and the study of
62 Especially Études polémologiques , from number 1 (July 1971) to
the 23 (December of 1978).
63 WRIGHT, 1964.
64 RICHARDSON, 1960.
65 SINGER; SMALL, 1972.
66 BOUTHOUL; CARRÈRE, 1977.
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218
interactions between war and civilization, because these exist
although they are less obvious than those expressed in the
History of States and Empires 67 . Along with magazines,
whose study is essential to calibrate the effort
of its founder to consolidate the polemological paradigm,
These two investigations complete the scientific content of
an organism that from November 1979 to January 1980
He joined the Fondation pour les Études de Défense Nationale ,
with a view to ensuring the "continuity and continuity of
French Polemology », and that in fact ceased its activity
shortly after the death of Bouthoul, happened in Paris
on December 15, 1980 68 .
In the posthumous number of Études polémologiques ,
they publish some unpublished letters and notes of their founder.
One of them, dated April 3, 1979, seems his last
note on «Polemology, its genesis, its program
and his role » 69 . Bouthoul leaves unfinished a book about Psy-
cho-sociologie de la violence collective . Your scientific testament
is in a collection of polemological essays
published in May 1976. It is found, refined,
his anti - fascist sociology of the 70s wars , the epitome of his
doctrine about the war phenomenon.
67 BOUTHOUL; CARRÈRE; ANNEQUIN, 1980.
68 The Institut Français de Polémologie was integrated into the Fondation , small CN
RS that during the 1980s absorbed various scientific bodies for
avoid their disappearance, with effect from July 1, 1980. The address
was entrusted to General Carrère and the attached address to Christian
Schmidt, from the University of Paris-Dauphine.
69 BOUTHOUL, 1981, p. 14
70 BOUTHOUL, 1976. This work, for its detachment olympique , constitutes a
optimal introduction to the study of polemology.
JERÓNIMO MOLINA CANO
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