MIA > Archive > Draper > Militarization
From Labor Action, Vol. 13 No. 50, 12 December 1949, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
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With the accompanying article, Labor Action begins a series of articles on the militarization of America based upon the mountain of factual data assembled by a committee of well-known liberal and labor leaders, the National Council Against Conscription. A thick pamphlet published by the council, New Evidence of the Militarization of America, came out in February of this year, under the sponsorship of leading figures of the NCAC. These include: Pearl Buck, Louis Bromfield, Albert Einstein, Victor Reuther, Ray Lyman Wilbur (former secretary of interior), W.S. Townsend (president of CIO transport service union), Robert Gordis (ex-president, Rabbinical Assembly), W.J. Millor, S.J. (president, University of Detroit), C.S. Johnson (president, Fisk University), James G. Patton (president, National Farmers Union), and others. The factual data, quotations, etc., are from this pamphlet, unless otherwise noted. Editorial comments and conclusions are solely those of Labor Action. – Ed. |
“A marked trend toward military control over American life and institutions has developed as an aftermath of the Second World War.”
With this opening sentence, the National Council Against Conscription launches its factual summary of what is actually happening in the United States at the same time that the government poses as the protector of freedom and democracy in the world. It will be possible in this series only to hit the high spots of its fully documented study.
The NCAC pamphlet continues: “Never before in American history has the military establishment” had so much money to spend, so many officers or ex-officers in important civilian government posts, so much influence in the formulation of foreign policy, or such an ambitious publicity department as it does today. Never before have we seen such careful plans being prepared for control of labor and industry, nor such widespread influence exercised in the field of public and higher education as is true now.”
Introducing its summary “of the published evidence of military control of the U.S.,” the NCAC pamphlet first fixes attention on the “military mind.” One citation will be enough:
“A high ranking officer” in the American army, according to a newspaper columnist, said: “The army always expects war, which is what civilians can’t understand though that is what you pay us for. You expect peace. When Germany and Japan quit, you throw your hats in the air – and turn the future over to the diplomats. We had our sights on the next war long before we got to Tokyo.
“‘War with Russia?’
“‘Who else? Not with Russia because Russia, is Russia but because she is the potential enemy. It happens to be the army’s business to work out our defenses against the rest of the world. Russia happens to be the only power – for the time being, at least – that could take us on.’” (Page 5–6)
The attitude which reeks from this statement is, of course, nothing new for militarism. Somebody once said that if the military had their way, they would fortify the moon to repelan invasion from Mars. At the time, this was supposed to be a semi-humorous exaggeration. In our own days of the marvels of science, we find a feature article in Life magazine discussing in utmost seriousness precisely this possibility – except that the projected “fortification of the moon” (or, in the magazine feature, of space ships) has the more down-to-earth purpose of international rather than interplanetary warfare.
The attitude is nothing new, but what is new is the tremendously heightened control of all aspects of American life by the same minds which produce such statements. They are no longer merely fire-eating colonels yearning for a little blood and thunder from the sidelines, but – “statesmen.”
A peep at the total picture is assembled by the NCAC under fifteen subject headings.
The military budget of the U.S. has risen to figures so stupendous that its proportions appal even its sponsors.
In 1947 about 32 per cent of the federal budget (about $12.5 billion) was appropriated for the army, navy and coast guard and another $8.39 billion for agencies related to the military. In the 1948 budget more than $10 billion or 37 per cent of the budget was appropriated for the three services plus $7.8 billion for related agencies – bringing the total to 66.3 per cent of the budget;
In 1949, there was a large increase. The total sum available to the military will be more than $20 billion in the fiscal year.
The total appropriations for military and related agencies were $23,973,020,015 or 62 per cent of the total budget. The appropriations for 1949 are only a beginning, since contracts and program are authorized which will require even more money in subsequent years. Beardsley Rumi’s estimate is at least $30 billion a year.
As a result, the nation’s economy is at the mercy of. the military. In contract with the above figures, here are Truman’s estimates for budget expenditures in his August 15, 1948 statement: for social welfare, health and security – a little over $2 billion; for housing and community facilities – less than a third of a billion; for education and general research – only $86 million.
“The concentration of so many billions in the production of military materiel inevitably means less production of consumer goods. Those consumer goods that are produced are in greater demand; the prices rise, and we have inflation. A former head of OPA, Paul Porter, told a Senate Banking Committee in August 1948 that the current military spending program was one of the chief contributing factors to mounting inflationary pressures.”
The speaker of the House of Representatives made the point when, speaking of the federal aid-to-education bill, he said: “We can’t do anything on bills that will require money until we find out what the military requirements are and, then, the state of our finances.” (Washington Post, April 4, 1948.)
About a month later, the press reported:
“The military preparedness program has been given top priority in Congress by Republican leaders. Enactment, of the draft and passage of money supply bills for rearmament are considered more important than all pending ... social reform measures on the calendar ... As a result such expensive proposals as federal aid to education, public health assistance, federal subsidies for public housing, and similar measures are to be dropped in the House despite Senate approval.” (Cecil Dickson, Knickerbocker News, Albany, May 11, 1948.)
These effects are neither automatic nor regular in their application. The United States is the wealthiest country the world has known; it has a tremendous belt of fat around its belly unlike the older and dried-up capitalisms of Europe. The anti-social tendencies arising from militarization of the economy are fought by the labor movement, and as long as labor fights all the effects of militarization are slowed up – but only slowed up.
Meanwhile, the outsize military spending program has the apparently beneficial effect of counteracting the forces inherent in the profit system leading to economic depression and crisis, “just as it was the outbreak of the Second World War which substituted mass slaughter for apple-selling. As the magazine Business Week said on April 24, 1948: “an intensive armament program would have much the same effect on the domestic economy as a shooting war. It is the size of the military budget and the size of the army – not the shooting – that puts the pressure on the country’s economic life.”
Instead of catastrophic crash and crisis (à la 1929), it sets forces into motion which, while tending to counteract acute depression, replace it with a chronic and permanent drain upon the economy. as a whole, only to lead eventually to the far more acute crisis of war itself.
Last updated on 25 February 2023