Recently, I published an essay on this Page entitled: “Capitalism and War”. It argued that the competitive nature of capitalism, along with its materialistic value system, naturally ends in war.
Capitalism operates in the realm of competition. Competition is worshiped, the victor is glorified, there is little sympathy for the loser. In the economic context, the competition for individual wealth and income is more highly valued than is the communal well-being. This elevation of individual material well-being relative to the general human welfare, naturally leads towards war, as the value of human life has been diminished relative to one’s personal ambitions, in economics, and as would follow, in the ideological realm as well.
No greater example could be found than in current day Venezuela. The administration, despite some nonsense about fighting drug smuggling, has made clear it is in Venezuela for the oil, and to achieve repayment for previously unpaid-for nationalized U.S. assets, and, of course, to kick-out the Chinese, Russians, and Iranians.
So the U.S. flies 150 military aircraft into Venezuela, seizes the president and his wife, and kills 100 people in the process. It’s the “100 people in the process” that is deeply troublesome. One hundred lives may seem minuscule when one considers the industrial-sized slaughters of Gaza and Ukraine; but it’s 100 lives willingly taken in exchange for an economic, material, gain–a diminishment of human life relative to the material. It is more than a willingness to sacrifice life, it is also a structural demand of the expansionary needs of profit dependent capitalist firms for low cost resources.
This is how capitalism leads to war: It’s the willing sacrifice, or offering, of life, to the gods of excessive material well-being. War is also a structural outcome: the result of the needs of profit-dependent capitalist firms to expand into geographic regions with low cost resources, often in competition with other imperialist powers. This is very much on display in Venezuela today.
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