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<title>D.8 What causes militarism and what are its effects?</title>
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<h1>D.8 What causes militarism and what are its effects?</h1>
<p>
There are three main causes of capitalist militarism.
</p><p>
Firstly, there is the need to contain the domestic enemy - the oppressed
and exploited sections of the population. As Emma Goldman argued, the
military machine <i>"is not directed only against the external enemy; it
aims much more at the internal enemy. It concerns that element of
labour which has learned not to hope for anything from our institutions,
that awakened part of the working people which has realised that the war
of classes underlies all wars among nations, and that if war is justified
at all it is the war against economic dependence and political slavery,
the two dominant issues involved in the struggle of the classes."</i> In
other words, the nation <i>"which is to be protected by a huge military
force is not"</i> that <i>"of the people, but that of the privileged class; the
class which robs and exploits the masses, and controls their lives from
the cradle to the grave."</i> [<b>Red Emma Speaks</b>, p. 352 and p. 348]
</p><p>
The second, as noted in the section on imperialism, is that a strong
military is necessary in order for a ruling class to pursue an aggressive
and expansionist foreign policy in order to defend its interests globally.
For most developed capitalist nations, this kind of foreign policy
becomes more and more important because of economic forces, i.e. in order
to provide outlets for its goods and capital to prevent the system from
collapsing by expanding the market continually outward. This outward
expansion of, and so competition between, capital needs military force
to protect its interests (particularly those invested in other countries)
and give it added clout in the economic jungle of the world market. This
need has resulted in, for example, <i>"hundreds of US bases [being] placed
all over the world to ensure global domination."</i> [Chomsky, <b>Failed
States</b>, p. 11]
</p><p>
The third major reason for militarism is to bolster a state's economy.
Capitalist militarism promotes the development of a specially favoured
group of companies which includes <i>"all those engaged in the manufacture
and sale of munitions and in military equipment for personal gain and
profit."</i> [Goldman, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 354] These armaments companies ("defence"
contractors) have a direct interest in the maximum expansion of military
production. Since this group is particularly wealthy, it exerts great
pressure on government to pursue the type of state intervention and,
often, the aggressive foreign policies it wants. As Chomsky noted
with respect to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Empires are costly. Running Iraq is not cheap. Somebody's paying.
Somebody's paying the corporations that destroyed Iraq and the
corporations that are rebuilding it. in both cases, they're getting
paid by the U.S. taxpayer. Those are gifts from U.S. taxpayers to U.S.
Corporations . . . The same tax-payers fund the military-corporate
system of weapons manufacturers and technology companies that bombed
Iraq . . . It's a transfer of wealth from the general population to
narrow sectors of the population."</i> [<b>Imperial Ambitions</b>, pp. 56-7]
</blockquote></p><p>
This "special relationship" between state and Big Business also has
the advantage that it allows the ordinary citizen to pay for industrial
Research and Development. As Noam Chomsky points out in many of his
works, the <i>"Pentagon System,"</i> in which the public is forced to subsidise
research and development of high tech industry through subsidies to
defence contractors, is a covert substitute in the US for the overt
industrial planning policies of other "advanced" capitalist nations,
like Germany and Japan. Government subsidies provide an important way
for companies to fund their research and development at taxpayer expense,
which often yields "spin-offs" with great commercial potential as consumer
products (e.g. computers). Needless to say, all the profits go to the
defence contractors and to the commercial companies who buy licences to
patented technologies from them, rather than being shared with the public
which funded the R&D that made the profits possible. Thus militarism is
a key means of securing technological advances within capitalism.
</p><p>
It is necessary to provide some details to indicate the size and impact of
military spending on the US economy:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Since 1945. . . there have been new industries sparking investment and
employment . . In most of them, basic research and technological progress
were closely linked to the expanding military sector. The major innovation
in the 1950s was electronics . . . [which] increased its output 15 percent
per year. It was of critical importance in workplace automation, with the
federal government providing the bulk of the research and development
(R&D) dollars for military-orientated purposes. Infrared instrumentation,
pressure and temperature measuring equipment, medical electronics, and
thermoelectric energy conversion all benefited from military R&D. By
the 1960s indirect and direct military demand accounted for as much as
70 percent of the total output of the electronics industry. Feedbacks also
developed between electronics and aircraft, the second growth industry of
the 1950s. By 1960 . . . [i]ts annual investment outlays were 5.3 times
larger than their 1947-49 level, and over 90 percent of its output went
to the military. Synthetics (plastics and fibres) was another growth industry
owning much of its development to military-related projects. Throughout the
1950s and 1960s, military-related R&D, including space, accounted for 40
to 50 percent of total public and private R&D spending and at least 85%
of federal government share."</i> [Richard B. Du Boff, <b>Accumulation and Power</b>,
pp. 103-4]
</blockquote>
As another economist notes, it is <i>"important to recognise that the
role of the US federal government in industrial development has been
substantial even in the post-war period, thanks to the large amount
of defence-related procurements and R&D spending, which have had
enormous spillover effects. The share of the US federal government
in total R&D speanding, which was only 16 per cent in 1930, remained
between one-half and two-thirds during the postwar years. Industries
such as computers, aerospace and the internet, where the USA still
maintains an international edge despite the decline in its overall
technological leadership, would not have existed without
defence-related R&D funding by the country's federal government."</i>
Moreover, the state also plays a <i>"crucial role"</i> in supporting
R&D in the pharmaceutical industry. [Ha-Joon Chang, <b>Kicking Away
the Ladder</b>, p. 31]
</p><p>
Not only this, government spending on road building (initially justified
using defence concerns) also gave a massive boost to private capital
(and, in the process, totally transformed America into a land fit for
car and oil corporations). The cumulative impact of the 1944, 1956 and
1968 Federal Highway Acts <i>"allowed $70 billion to be spent on the
interstates without [the money] passing through the congressional
appropriations board."</i> The 1956 Act <i>"[i]n effect wrote into law the
1932 National Highway Users Conference strategy of G[eneral] M[otors]
chairman Alfred P. Sloan to channel gasoline and other motor
vehicle-related excise taxes into highway construction."</i> GM also
bought-up and effectively destroyed public transit companies across
America, so reducing competition against private car ownership. The
net effect of this state intervention was that by 1963-66 <i>"one in every
six business enterprise was directly dependent on the manufacture,
distribution, servicing, and the use of motor vehicles."</i> The impact
of this process is still evident today -- both in terms of ecological
destruction and in the fact that automobile and oil companies are still
dominate the top twenty of the Fortune 500. [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 102]
</p><p>
This system, which can be called military Keynesianism, has three advantages
over socially-based state intervention. Firstly, unlike social programmes,
military intervention does not improve the situation (and thus, hopes)
of the majority, who can continue to be marginalised by the system,
suffer the discipline of the labour market and feel the threat of
unemployment. Secondly, it acts likes welfare for the rich, ensuring
that while the many are subject to market forces, the few can escape
that fate - while singing the praises of the "free market". And, thirdly,
it does not compete with private capital -- in fact, it supplements it.
</p><p>
Because of the connection between militarism and imperialism, it was
natural after World War II that America should become the world's leading
military state at the same time that it was becoming the world's leading
economic power, and that strong ties developed between government,
business, and the armed forces. American "military capitalism" is
described in detail below, but the remarks also apply to a number of
other "advanced" capitalist states.
</p><p>
In his farewell address, President Eisenhower warned of the danger posed to
individual liberties and democratic processes by the <i>"military-industrial
complex,"</i> which might, he cautioned, seek to keep the economy in a state
of continual war-readiness simply because it is good business. This echoed
the warning which had been made earlier by sociologist C. Wright Mills (in
<b>The Power Elite</b>), who pointed out that since the end of World War
II the military had become enlarged and decisive to the shape of the
entire American economy, and that US capitalism had in fact become a
military capitalism. This situation has not substantially changed since
Mills wrote, for it is still the case that all US military officers have
grown up in the atmosphere of the post-war military-industrial alliance
and have been explicitly educated and trained to carry it on. Moreover,
many powerful corporations have a vested interest in maintaining this
system and will be funding and lobbying politicians and their parties
to ensure its continuance.
</p><p>
That this interrelationship between corporate power and the state expressed
by militarism is a key aspect of capitalism can be seen from the way it
survived the end of the Cold War, the expressed rationale for this system:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"With the Cold war no longer available, it was necessary to reframe
pretexts not only for [foreign] intervention but also for militarised
state capitalism at home. The Pentagon budget presented to Congress a
few months after the fall of the Berlin Wall remained largely unchanged,
but was packaged in a new rhetorical framework, presented in the National
Security Strategy of March 1990. Once priority was to support advanced
industry in traditional ways, in sharp violation of the free market
doctrines proclaimed and imposed on others. The National Security
Strategy called for strengthening 'the defence industrial base'
(essentially, high-tech industry) with incentives 'to invest in new
facilities and equipment as well as in research and development.' As
in the past, the costs and risks of the coming phases of the industrial
economy were to be socialised, with eventual profits privatised, a
form of state socialism for the rich on which much of the advanced
US economy relies, particularly since World War II."</i> [<b>Failed States</b>,
p. 126]
</blockquote></p><p>
This means that US defence businesses, which are among the biggest
lobbyists, cannot afford to lose this "corporate welfare."
Unsurprisingly, they did not. So while many politicians asserted
a "peace dividend" was at hand when the Soviet Bloc collapsed,
this has not came to pass. Although it is true that some fat was
trimmed from the defence budget in the early 1990s, both economic
and political pressures have tended to keep the basic
military-industrial complex intact, insuring a state of global
war-readiness and continuing production of ever more advanced weapons
systems into the foreseeable future. Various excuses were used to
justify continued militarism, none of them particularly convincing
due to the nature of the threat.
</p><p>
The first Gulf War was useful, but the quick defeat of Saddam showed
how little a threat he actually was. The Iraq invasion of 2003 proved
that his regime, while temporarily helpful to the Pentagon, was not
enough of a menace to warrant the robust defence budgets of yore now
given that his military machine had been smashed. This did not, of
course, stop the Bush Administration spinning the threat and lying
to the world about (non-existent) Iraqi "Weapons of Mass Destruction"
(this is unsurprising, though, given how the Soviet military machine
had also been hyped and its threat exaggerated to justify military
spending). Other "threats" to the world's sole super-power such as
Cuba, Iran, Libya and North Korea are equally unconvincing to any
one with a firm grasp of reality. Luckily for the US state, a new
enemy appeared in the shape of Islamic Terrorism.
</p><p>
The terrorist atrocity of 9/11 was quickly used to justify expanding
US militarism (and expanding the power of the state and reducing
civil liberties). In its wake, various government bureaucracies
and corporations could present their wish-lists to the politicians
and expect them to be passed without real comment all under the
guise of "the war on terror." As this threat is so vague and so
widespread, it is ideal to justify continuing militarism as well
as imperial adventures across the global (any state can be attacked
simply be declaring it is harbouring terrorists). It can also be used
to justify attacks on existing enemies, such as Iraq and the other
countries in the so-called "axis of evil" and related states. As
such, it was not surprising to hear about the possible Iranian
nuclear threat and about the dangers of Iranian influence even
while the US military was bogged down in the quagmire of Iraq.
</p><p>
While the Bush Administration's doctrine of <i>"pre-emptive war"</i>
(i.e. aggression) may have, as Chomsky noted, <i>"broken little
new ground"</i> and have been standard (but unspoken) US policy
from its birth, its does show how militarism will be justified
for some time to come. [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 85] It (and the threat of
terrorism which is used to justify it) provides the Pentagon with
more arguments for continued high levels of defence spending and
military intervention. In a nutshell, then, the trend toward
increasing militarism is not likely to be checked as the Pentagon
has found a sufficiently dangerous and demonic enemy to justify
continued military spending in the style to which it's accustomed.
</p><p>
Thus the demands of US military capitalism still take priority over the
needs of the people. For example, Holly Sklar points out that Washington,
Detroit, and Philadelphia have higher infant death rates than Jamaica or
Costa Rica and that Black America as a whole has a higher infant mortality
rate than Nigeria; yet the US still spends less public funds on education
than on the military, and more on military bands than on the National
Endowment for the Arts. [<i>"Brave New World Order,"</i> Cynthia Peters (ed.),
<b>Collateral Damage</b>, pp. 3-46] But of course, politicians continue to
maintain that education and social services must be cut back even further
because there is "no money" to fund them. As Chomsky so rightly says:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"It is sometimes argued that concealing development of high-tech
industry under the cover of 'defence' has been a valuable contribution
to society. Those who do not share that contempt for democracy might
ask what decisions the population would have made if they had been
informed of the real options and allowed to choose among them. Perhaps
they might have preferred more social spending for health, education,
decent housing, a sustainable environment for future generations, and
support for the United Nations, international law, and diplomacy, as
polls regularly show. We can only guess, since fear of democracy
barred the option of allowing the public into the political arena,
or even informing them about what was being done in their name."</i>
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 127]
</blockquote></p><p>
Finally, as well as skewing resource allocation and wealth away from
the general public, militarism also harms freedom and increases the
threat of war. The later is obvious, as militarism cannot help but
feed an arms race as countries hurry to increase their military might
in response to the developments of others. While this may be good for
profits for the few, the general population have to hope that the
outcome of such rivalries do not lead to war. As Goldman noted about
the First World War, can be, in part, <i>"traced to the cut-throat
competition for military equipment . . . Armies equipped to the
teeth with weapons, with highly developed instruments of murder
backed by their military interests, have their own dynamic functions."</i>
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 353]
</p><p>
As to freedom, as an institution the military is based on the
<i>"unquestioning obedience and loyalty to the government."</i> (to quote,
as Goldman did, one US General). The ideal soldier, as Goldman puts
it, is <i>"a cold-blooded, mechanical, obedient tool of his military
superiors"</i> and this position cannot be harmonised with individual
liberty. Indeed, <i>"[c]an there be anything more destructive of the true
genius of liberty than . . . the spirit of unquestioning obedience?"</i>
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 52-4] As militarism becomes bigger, this spirit of
obedience widens and becomes more dominant in the community. It
comes to the fore during periods of war or in the run up to war,
when protest and dissent are equated to treason by those in power
and their supporters. The war hysteria and corresponding repression
and authoritarianism which repeatedly sweeps so-called "free" nations
shows that militarism has a wider impact than just economic
development and wasted resources. As Bakunin noted, <i>"where military
force prevails, there freedom has to take its leave -- especially
the freedom and well-being of the working people."</i> [<b>The Political
Philosophy of Bakunin</b>, pp. 221-2]
</p>
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