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War is just f**king wrong
Jacobs, Ron
http://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/16/war-is-just-fkin-wrong/Date Written: 2018-04-16 Publisher: CounterPunch Year Published: 2018 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX22202 Jacobs explains the underlying capitalist imperative of waging war. Abstract: - Excerpt: There is no such thing as a good war, especially not in 2018. History, both recent and otherwise, has proven this statement. No war in the past seventy years has made the world a better place. In fact, in most cases those wars have made the world more dangerous. Furthermore, these wars—most of them waged by the United States and its clients—have wreaked environmental destruction, made life even more difficult for those who have little to begin with, and created an economy whose very existence not only demands but depends on the waging of and preparation for war and more war. In other words, a permanent war economy. According to most commentators on the subject, the term "permanent war economy" was first discussed in detail by Edward Sard in a 1944 article in Politics magazine. (Politics, 1:2 (February 1944), pp. 11–17, writing as W. Oakes.) His understanding of the phenomenon was that this type of economy is a form of military Keynesianism. In other words, it is a way to transfer wealth from the working classes to capital by means of government taxation. He further argued that developing a permanent war economy was the only way contemporary capitalism could survive. As any reasonable thinker would acknowledge today, not only has capitalism survived, its reach is so ubiquitous there is essentially no alternative to its deadly but profitable presence. Subject Headings |