Greg Nowell wrote:
> First, in the last great
> capitalist war, against Iraq, the capital destruction
> was insignificant from the point of view of
> jump-starting stagnant capitalist economies.
This is silly. I have no educated opinion on the overall topic here, but it is clearly silly to call the war against Iraq "a great capitalist war." In fact, only two conflicts qualify: the two "world wars." Iraq, like Vietnam, the "Spanish-American War" (particularly the U.S. aggression in the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico), the Mexican War were wars of (imperialist) policy, not wars kindled by deep divisions among the leading capitalist powers, as was the Great War and its successor.
It is marxism (rather fundamentally so I would assume) that a major crisis of the capitalist system must eventuate in a massive destruction of capital to ground a new recovery. But of course war is not the only means of such destruction, and I doubt that either World War was triggered even remotely by the intent to destroy capital. But they did anyhow.
In fact Woodie Guthrie caught up the results of the Great War in of of his songs on Sacco and Vanzetti, "The Flood and the Storm." But surely no marxist has ever claimed that the U.S. created WWI to bring about the results Guthrie "celebrates."
Carrol