Let me clarify what I think Sweezy says, because "military spending is essential to continued prosperity" is not quite correct. I was trying to make a point counter to the contentions of Doug and Jay that such spending was a "pathology in accumulation" that wastes the surplus, implying this was a bad thing. But I went a bit overboard. Let me try another brief summary, that I hope is a bit less of a distortion (all summaries distort to some extent). Sweezy concluded that (1) way too much surplus is generated than can be profitably invested, (2) alternative uses have to be found that are both reliable--reasonable assurance of their continuing at a helpful pace--and do not much threaten profitably (for one thing, this severely limits "social" spending which would better the lot of common labor, thus weakening the reserve army and all that implies for the class struggle) and (3) military spending is the best choice: it makes profits for contractors and paves the way in many ways for further profitability. It's the best choice, whose elimination would require severe adjustments, but it is not essential.
Now, Rob, it's often difficult to detect sarcasm in the written word. Do I notice a bulge in your cheek?
A few thoughtlets in response to yours.
>If Sweezy were right, we'd have a world in which money chases its tail in
>the money and stock markets.
I don't know what you mean exactly or how this follows from military spending. If I get it, though, seems like that's what we have.
> And we'd expect apparently gratuitous
>belligerence from the militarily powerful and strategically unwarranted
>investment in military technology.
This we have in spades. And global arms sales by US merchants that exacerbate conflicts, providing profits for defense firms, and more opportunities for capital to rebuild the mess and solidify its domination. As we see happening now.
> We'd also expect the urgent
>commodification of the formerly uncommodified (to introduce new options for
>relations conducive to accumulation - such as in the replacement of public
>services by 'free market' relations and the replacement of women's
>'unproductive' role of yore by way of integrating those women into the
>commodity sector - not a few, unsurprisingly, as carers, cleaners, and sex
>workers for the double-income middle class.
I'm really slow. It took me to about here to see that you were fleshing out the case that Sweezy begins.
> Oh, and as thorough a
>colonisation as possible of what we used to call culture - the constitutive
>manifestation of which, communication, would then be redefined as
>quantifiable and [centrally] controllable data).
Yes, this certainly smooths the way for capital's global adventures.
> We'd expect investment
>growth in niches only - where the potential demand of the currently monied
>might be tapped - and stagnation in the province of more prosaic sectors.
Uneven development has many causes, to which military spending contributes significantly.
Nice list. I'll bet you could take 20 minutes and come with another one, things being intertwined as they are.
>And Rakesh wrote:
>
>>In this sense the traditional image of a highly exploited deskilled
>>proletarian on a sped-up assembly line may become anachronistic, leaving
>>Babbage and Taylor behind (so Kenny and Florida among others argue, contra
>>Braverman). Will the problem be less the exploitation of an increasingly
>>sophisticated industrial working class than the leaving behind of the mass
>>of humanity which is not able (it is oft implicitly claimed) to function in
>>an increasingly sophisticated computer mediated work environment. As the
>>banality goes, those who may have been able to work quick may not be able
>>to work smart. In this family of claims I think you will notice important
>>elements of the dominant ideology.
>
>Well, I know Castells has said exploitation is passe. Exclusion is the
>phobic phenomenon du juour for him. Does this not imply that the ensnaring
>of the unexploited into capital relations might now count as progressive?
>I'm confused. Even if that did follow, do Rakesh's speculations not also
>imply that capitalism doesn't particularly need or want the excluded?
They are needed as part of the reserve army. And capital needs a lot of unproductive labor to grease the machinery and help reproduce social relations. That part of the working class continues to expand. And because its wages are not exchanged directly with capital, but instead with revenue (its labor does not directly produce surplus value), these people often are more oblivious to their exploitation, making more difficult working class consciousness. (Just another example of the why the expansion of unproductive labor is quite congenial to capital.)
But if the question is would capital prefer to lop off some of the "excluded" beings, the answer would still be yes. The US prison population, particularly those on death row, and the recent urban laws harassing street people being only the most stark examples of that desire. Some people probably are useless to capital, and their existence, in capital's eyes, serves only to exacerbate social problems.
> So
>then we'd have a systemic need for more accumulation possibilities (eg by
>tapping the second and third worlds - eg drawing China into the WTO) in
>direct contradiction with a systemic tendency to rely on an ever smaller
>and more elite proletarian fragment (eg China, with its many impoverished
>primary and secondary industrial workers far outweighing its effective
>demand, looking more the harbinger of excess capacity and underconsumption
>than a promising new node in the global complex of accumulation relations).
>
>
>That would seem a fairly immediately significant contradiction, no?
It's the same contradiction that is always there, but on an expanded scale, I think. But is the change merely quantitative, or, as you suggest, perhaps qualitative?