Imperialism and the Logic of War Making

[Hogeye]

Here's an excerpt from an article on Mises.org called Imperialism and the Logic of War Making.

The king and his court, elected politicians and their bureaucratic and special-interest allies, the dictator and his party apparatchiks — these are historically the tax-consumers and, not coincidentally, the war makers. War has a number of advantages for the ruling class. First and foremost, war against a foreign enemy obscures the class conflict that is going on domestically in which the minority ruling class coercively siphons off the resources and lowers the living standards of the majority of the population, who produce and pay taxes. Convinced that their lives and property are being secured against a foreign threat, the exploited taxpayers develop a "false consciousness" of political and economic solidarity with their domestic rulers. An imperialist war against a weak foreign state, e.g., Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, etc. is especially enticing to the ruling class of a powerful nation such as the United States because it minimizes the cost of losing the war and being displaced by domestic revolution or by the rulers of the victorious foreign state.

A second advantage of war is that it provides the ruling class with an extraordinary opportunity to intensify its economic exploitation of the domestic producers through emergency war taxes, monetary inflation, conscripted labor, and the like. The productive class generally succumbs to these increased depredations on its income and wealth with some grumbling but little real resistance because it is persuaded that its interests are one with the war makers. Also, in the short run at least, modern war appears to bring prosperity to much of the civilian population because it is financed in large part by money creation.

We thus arrive at a universal, praxeological truth about war. War is the outcome of class conflict inherent in the political relationship — the relationship between ruler and ruled, parasite and producer, tax-consumer and taxpayer. The parasitic class makes war with purpose and deliberation in order to conceal and ratchet up their exploitation of the much larger productive class.

...

Thus, a permanent state of war or preparedness for war is optimal from the point of view of the ruling elite, especially one that controls a large and powerful state. Take the current US government as an example. It rules over a relatively populous, wealthy, and progressive economy from which it can extract ever larger boodles of loot without destroying the productive class. Nevertheless, it is subject to the real and abiding fear that sooner or later productive Americans will come to recognize the continually increasing burden of taxation, inflation, and regulation for what it really is — naked exploitation. So the US government, the most powerful mega-state in history, is driven by the very logic of the political relationship to pursue a policy of permanent war.

From "The War to Make the World Safe for Democracy" to "The War to End All Wars" to "The Cold War" and on to the current "War on Terror," the wars fought by US rulers in the twentieth century have progressed from episodic wars restricted to well-defined theaters and enemies to a war without spatial or temporal bounds against an incorporeal enemy named "Terror." A more appropriate name for this neoconservative-contrived war would involve a simple change in the preposition to a "War of Terror" — because the American state is terrified of productive, work-a-day Americans, who may someday awaken and put an end to its massive predations on their lives and property and maybe to the American ruling class itself.

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A political oligarchy that rules and exploits a large and productive economy need only get its hands on sufficient monetary funds in order to obtain the men, material, and maintenance necessary to carry out its war plans. Furthermore, an ever expanding supply of money and credit also boosts the morale of the civilian population by distorting economic calculation and creating the temporary illusion that war brings prosperity. ...

However, the initial stages of war inflation must eventually give way to crisis and depression. The reason is that war entails a massive consumption of capital because of the diversion of real resources from production for present and especially future civilian needs — that is, the maintenance and replacement of capital goods — to production for immediate military purposes. The productive class only becomes aware of the enormous destruction of its real income and wealth when inflation ceases and the ensuing crisis and recession reveal the true costs of the war, aside from its physical destruction of lives and property.[16]  At this point the bitterly disillusioned and demoralized producers begin to realize that their own interests are not identical with those of their imperialist rulers. ...

For example, the current US war on Iraq is estimated to have cost roughly $346 billion from its inception in 2003 until the present.[18]  During this time, the change in the Adjusted Monetary Base (MB), which is completely controlled by the Fed and represents the "seigniorage" or inflation tax that the government realizes from money creation, has been about $137 billion. But the rate of growth of MB has steadily declined from mid-2002 from 10 percent to below 5 percent currently. This is reflected in a decline in the rates of growth of broader monetary aggregates such as MZM, M2, and M3. Yet at the same time, US Federal Government debt has ballooned by nearly $2 trillion since March 2003, expanding the total debt accumulated since the inception of the American Republic by over 30 percent! How has this flood of new debt been financed if not by money creation?

The answer is by borrowing from foreigners. In March 2003, foreign investors held about $1,286.3 billion of Federal government debt. By June 2006, foreign investors were holding $2091.7 billion of the debt, an increase of $805.4 billion or over 40 percent of the increase of the total debt since March 2003.[19]  In other words, foreigners have by and large financed the US imperialist adventure in Iraq, greatly mitigating the economic burden of the war borne by US taxpayers and consumers — at least until foreigners refuse to absorb any more US debt. At this point increased taxation and more rapid money creation must be resorted to in continuing to finance the war as well as the interest payments on the outstanding debt.

In the meantime, an interesting issue to contemplate is whether an aroused and disgruntled taxpaying class has any means at its disposal short of violent revolution for putting an end to the never-ending series of imperialist wars sucking the lifeblood (accumulated capital) out of the economy and consuming its real wealth and income.

[Hogeye]

There can be no successful Vietnamization in Iraq - standing up more and better Iraqi army and police units and handing control over to them - when all we're doing is arming and training more recruits for the civil war that clogs the streets of Baghdad with the corpses of the victims of a Sunni-Shia bloodbath.

What we need to do is what none of the commissions and their reports dared to suggest: Begin withdrawing American forces from Iraq right now. Not in 2008. Not after the American death toll has crossed 5,000. Not just in time for a presidential election.

If you worry about the future of Iraq, don't. It will remain what it's always been: a violent, angry land of warring tribes only occasionally beaten and bludgeoned into submission by a homegrown despot like Saddam Hussein. - Joseph Galloway, Leave Iraq Now; Don't Wait until 2008 Election Day