The Permanent War Economy Doesn’t Benefit Workers
Advocates of “military Keynesianism” present it as a boon for the working class. In reality, it diverts resources away from social provision while building up a military-industrial complex with a vested interest in aggressive wars that never cease.
Workers adjust a metal sheet on a Titan missile assembly line at the Glenn L Martin Company in Colorado, June 23, 1960. Founded by American aviation pioneer Glenn Martin, the company later evolved into Lockheed Martin. (Library of Congress / Interim Archives via Getty Images)
In 1944, writing from a position at the heart of the wartime state, Marxist economist Ed Sard made an astute and even uncanny prediction: “We are now being prepared to recognize as a legitimate economic activity peacetime expenditures for war of a sizable nature. Herein lies the real importance of the psychological preparations now under way for World War III.”
In these sentences, Sard anticipated not only the paranoid atmosphere of the Cold War decades but the emergence of the postwar military-industrial complex. For the first time in the nation’s history, permanent war-production industries became a significant feature of the peacetime economy.
Militarization, whether overt or more subtle in its operation, infused all aspects of American life. Just as Sard predicted, the state no longer needed a hot war to justify its investment in the war machine.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.