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From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 52, 27 December 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
There will be no peace – this is the gist of the report released Dec. 16 by the Eberstadt Committee. The document is of unusual significance since it outlines the basic ideas of the
capitalist ruling clique on the future of the United States and who they intend to run the country.
The Eberstadt Committee was set up by the Hoover Commission on the Reorganisation of the Executive Branch of the Government. It is an advisory body whose sole function is to consider the fundamental problems now facing the capitalist class in militarizing the United States.
The head of this committee is Ferdinand Eberstadt, a prominent New York investment banker and former partner of Dillon. Read & Co., the Wall Street firm which has furnished such key figures to the Washington hierarchy as Secretary of Defense Forrestal.
The committee’s report is based on the following premise:
“The people of the United States have in the past thought and acted upon the assumption that peace is the normal condition of national life ... History, unhappily, has failed to sustain this comforting view ...”
In the opinion of the committee, therefore, from now on war will be the normal condition of national life. This view stands in direct contradiction to the propaganda issued by the spokesmen of the capitalist class in World War I and W0rld War II. They assured the people, that America entered these conflicts to make the world safe for democracy and to bring “four freedoms” to the earth. Enduring peace, they promised, would follow victory.
The capitalist rulers, of course, did not believe this propaganda. They used it deliberately to cover up their imperialist aims in the two conflicts.
Now they openly proclaim the inevitability and “normality” of war. This does not mean they will bare their sordid aims in the war they are openly preparing. They will continue to lie and try to gull the working people into serving as cannon fodder. The Eberstadt report itself is written under the propagandistic formula of preparing America for "defense” against aggression.
What this basic premise about the inevitability of war does reflect is the monstrous growth of militarism in the United States. A specific grouping is developing in power and influence, the military caste. Its thinking on national affairs starts from the premise of the certainty of war. Presumably written under civilian auspices, the Eberstadt report affirms this Prussian-minded view.
With the expansion of militarism, the danger of totalitarianism increases. Wall Street, of course, does not oppose a police state in principle. At present, however, it prefers the forms of democracy.
This question is discussed in the Eberstadt report, indicating that the problem of democratic forms versus the police state has already risen in the inner ruling circle.
Considering the advisability of setting up a “military state” in America, the report declares: “Civilian control over military affairs involves some cumbersome and dilatory procedures and may even lead to serious technical mistakes; yet military power freed from civilian control would lead to even more serious mistakes – perhaps irreparable ones.” Consequently the report lays down as one of the "basic criteria” that “civilian influence must be dominant in the formulation of national policy.”
This is an admonition to the military caste that all final decision shall remain in the hands of Big Business.
Within this framework, the Eberstadt Committee is concerned with increasing the efficiency of the military establishment, of cutting out duplication and waste, and of centralizing authority. It envisages one overall command, a body apparently patterned on the German General Staff, an institution long admired by American militarists. However, since this is not feasible present, it is set as a goal to be achieved by “evolution.”
Another problem touched on in the report is the impoverishment of America due to the enormous cost of World War II and the preparations for World War III. “The history of past plenty must yield to the cold realities of present facts,” declares the report, “we can no longer attain a reasonable degree of national security unless the philosophy of waste yields to a philosophy of economy.”
The Nazi militarists put this thought more succinctly: “Guns before butter.” The recognition that America’s fat is gone means that from now on, the capitalist rulers will press more and more impatiently for the lowering of the living standards of the working people. The demand for efficiency on the part of the military will be coupled with a demand that the workers tighten their belts and speed up production.
The Eberstadt Committee declared that the “most disturbing aspect” of the preparations for war is the “enormous cost” of building the military machine.
While other aspects may be more disturbing than the cost, it is no exaggeration to say the price is high. Before World War I the cost to each person in the United States, for military expenditures was $2.25 a year.
In 1938 the cost jumped to $8. Today the cost each year to every man, woman and child in America is $100.
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Last updated on 30 March 2023