To make more money, more and more aspects of life must be pulled into capital. This is why we see everything in civilian life being commodified, including food, housing, land and water. And this is why corporations take over many military functions. A given corporation now in charge of what was once a governmental job…
Congress does not exercise effective oversight of the military-industrial-congressional complex. The average congressperson is clueless about the intricacies of war, espionage, and peace. The average congressperson on Armed Services or Intelligence committees is more aware, but their views are carefully circumscribed by a capitalist imperative for profit and the information that armed bureaucracies selectively divvy…
War corporations are spread across the United States. The top war industry hubs in the U.S. are Huntsville, Alabama; greater Boston; greater Tampa, Florida; the Dallas-Fort Worth region; southern California; and the corridor stretching from northeast Virginia, through Washington, to Baltimore (consistently home to the wealthiest counties in the country). The U.S. war industry profits…
Capitalism — the economic system by which a relatively tiny group owns the machinery and factories and enriches itself through hoarding the workers’ surplus value, transforming the natural world into goods and services — is inherently destructive, exploitative, and polluting. The theoretical physicist Albert Einstein summarized the problem in the May 1949 issue of Monthly…
I know, I know: President Joe Biden has announced that our combat troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by 9/11 of this year, marking the 20th anniversary of the colossal failure of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to defend America. Of course, that other 9/11 in 2001 shocked us all. I was teaching history…
While war corporations, or so-called “defense contractors,” make billions in profits, Wall Street is the ultimate beneficiary of today’s nonstop wars. The prosaic nature of war profiteering—far from the work of a shadowy cabal—is precisely why the collusion is so destructive and should be outlawed. The U.S. ruling class deploys the military for three main…
