Capitalism and War: Is there a connection? Without question, the answer to this question is yes.
There are several reasons for this: the most fundamental of which is that capitalism promotes materialism. Not materialism in the philosophical sense of the term which argues that consciousness and will are determined by our material surroundings, but materialism in the popular sense of the term, which elevates consumption and material comfort over the value of other human beings, the environment, and over spiritual values more generally.
Capitalism, a profit based system, is built on a foundation of materialism. It must promote materialism in order to generate the profits requisite to the capitalist firm’s survival. It cannot escape materialism, it is saturated in it, it is dependent upon it. Due to this requirement, unnecessary consumption is promoted. This promotes war. How?
When material consumption is elevated beyond our basic needs, we begin to view people as tools in our quest for more consumption. Employers seek lower wages and a reduced health and safety environment. Governments, under pressure from capitalists’ firms, seek to reduce healthcare and retirement benefits. Consumers shop for the best prices regardless of the work and pay conditions of the producers of the goods and services which we consume. Workers are viewed as mere inputs into the production framework, factors of production, not valuable spirits with souls who have vital roles in the health of the body of humanity. This undermines the value we place on individual human life, and makes their destruction, in war, more acceptable.
This is deemed ok because under capitalism our personal consumption is the overriding objective in life, not the welfare of our brothers and sisters. Having diminished the value of human life, when it is time to go to war, there is less resistance to participation in the act of state murder, as the value of human life has already been diminished in our daily quest for ever more consumption.
There are other considerations as well, of course. War is seldom sold as an economic quest. It is generally packaged as “democracy promotion” or other such nonsense, which is weird when one considers that war is the least democratic act of all. This would argue, however, that soldiers go to war over their genuine concern for humankind, which, no doubt, is the situation for many soldiers. But when one considers that humanity has already been diminished, that humans are viewed as mere tools in the production process, this makes participation in the act of war an easier task.
Capitalism is built on competition, rather than the humanistic value of cooperation. Under competition, one’s gain at the expense of another’s loss is deemed acceptable, indeed, even glorious. This supports the warrior ethos, it makes war acceptable as a tool towards the achievement of a nation’s goals.
Firms operating in the competitive environment of capitalism are forced to reduce cost in order to out-compete fellow competitors. Medium and large sized firms look to the developing world for lower cost labor and natural resource markets. Capitalist firms from other nations do likewise and this leads industries and firms from various nations bumping into each other as each tries to gain a position within the developing market. This competition for resources ignites friction between nations, enhancing the move towards war.
This is evident in the U.S. military actions in the middle-east where control over oil is deemed requisite to the successful functioning of the western capitalist economies. It is evident in the U.S. support of Taiwan against China’s claims of sovereignty over the island nation, as Taiwan’s dominance in the area of chip manufacturing and its provision of these chips to U.S. firms is deemed vital to U.S. global economic dominance.
The competitive nature of capitalism is built into its accounting structures. These structures communicate the economic well-being of the capitalist firm without consideration of the firm’s activity on the broader community through its impact on the communities spiritual values or its environmental impact.
For example, Hollywood’s constant production of ever more violent content, simply because it sells better, is the result of accounting requirements which demand higher profits, relative to other Hollywood firms, in order to attract the capital investment necessary to sustain the firm’s existence. The constant production of items of consumption which appeal to our baser instincts, the result of the firm’s accounting requirements, diminishes the attainment of the higher spiritual values of cooperation and love for our fellow human beings and supports the ethos necessary for war.
There are those who will counter that socialist nations also go to war. This argument fails because the world has yet to experience a socialist nation. Socialism is democracy, it pushes power downward, towards the people, not upwards towards a ruling elite. Autocratic or authoritarian regimes are better referred to as “state capitalist” regimes, rather than socialist. So long as the forces of capital, through a ruling elite or a vanguard party, dominate labor, the system is capitalist. When labor controls capital, then socialism will exist.
A socialist nation has not yet existed because socialist efforts are undermined by reactionary capitalist forces which force the socialist effort into authoritarian measures. When the aspiring socialist governing body resorts to authoritarianism, however, it loses its socialist character. It is no longer a socialist endeavor.
In sum, capitalism’s elevation of personal consumption relative to the welfare of fellow human beings, the competitive nature of the capitalist enterprise, the competitive need for lower cost resources, the requisite profit requirements of the private firm, all work in conjunction to support the war effort.
Competition, the thing we so revere in the west, is at the root of war, and much else which ails us: competition cannot be wedged away from capitalism, they are one.
To move away from capitalism will require a spiritual evolution toward a cooperative spirit, and a mindset which is genuinely concerned about the welfare of all human beings. This is difficult to achieve when firms are subject to accounting structures which promote overconsumption and, as a result, diminish the value of human life.
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