D.

8 What causes militarism and what are its

effects?
anarchism.pageabode.com /afaq/secD8.html

There are three main causes of capitalist militarism.

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 "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." In other words, the nation "which is to be protected by a huge
military force is not" that "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." [Red
Emma Speaks, p. 352 and p. 348]

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, "hundreds of US bases [being] placed all over the
world to ensure global domination." [Chomsky, Failed States, p. 11]

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 "all
those engaged in the manufacture and sale of munitions and in military equipment for
personal gain and profit." [Goldman, Op. Cit., 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:

1/7
 "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." [Imperial Ambitions, pp. 56-7]

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 "Pentagon System," 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.

It is necessary to provide some details to indicate the size and impact of military spending
on the US economy:

"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
2/7
 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." [Richard B. Du Boff, Accumulation and
Power, pp. 103-4]

As another economist notes, it is "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." Moreover, the state also plays a "crucial
role" in supporting R&D in the pharmaceutical industry. [Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away
the Ladder, p. 31]

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 "allowed $70 billion to be spent on the
interstates without [the money] passing through the congressional appropriations board."
The 1956 Act "[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." 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
"one in every six business enterprise was directly dependent on the manufacture,
distribution, servicing, and the use of motor vehicles." 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. [Op. Cit., p. 102]

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
3/7
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.

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.

In his farewell address, President Eisenhower warned of the danger posed to individual
liberties and democratic processes by the "military-industrial complex," 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 The Power Elite), 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.

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:

"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

4/7
 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."
[Failed States, p. 126]

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.

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.

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.
5/7
While the Bush Administration's doctrine of "pre-emptive war" (i.e. aggression) may have,
as Chomsky noted, "broken little new ground" and have been standard (but unspoken) US
policy from its birth, its does show how militarism will be justified for some time to come.
[Op. Cit., 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.

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. ["Brave New World Order," Cynthia Peters (ed.), Collateral
Damage, 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:

"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." [Op. Cit., p. 127]

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, "traced to the cut-throat
competition for military equipment . . . Armies equipped to the teeth with weapons, with
6/7
highly developed instruments of murder backed by their military interests, have their own
dynamic functions." [Op. Cit., p. 353]

As to freedom, as an institution the military is based on the "unquestioning obedience and

loyalty to the government." (to quote, as Goldman did, one US General). The ideal soldier,
as Goldman puts it, is "a cold-blooded, mechanical, obedient tool of his military superiors"
and this position cannot be harmonised with individual liberty. Indeed, "[c]an there be
anything more destructive of the true genius of liberty than . . . the spirit of unquestioning
obedience?" [Op. Cit., 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, "where military force prevails, there freedom has to take its leave -- especially the
freedom and well-being of the working people." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin,
pp. 221-2]

7/7