"The leftist dogma that it doesn't matter which wing of the 'ruling class,' the capitalists, wins out in the end is refuted by this reality. Capitalism, per se, doesn't breed war: indeed, laissez-faire requires quite the opposite. And don't think the ordinary capitalist profits from war: this privilege is reserved for those with the right government connections.
"The very real economic harm done by war - the cost in wasted wealth, as well as wasted lives - could pull the US, already mired in a sharp recession, into a full-fledged depression. The stock market is not going to like World War III - and neither will most Americans once they realize that all this talk about nothing ever being the same again means economic catastrophe. The Vietnam War drained the life out of the US economy during the late sixties and early seventies, and the financial shock of a prolonged Mideast conflict could well be far worse. In the end, the markets are vehemently antiwar - a phenomenon that must mystify Noam Chomsky to no end."
I'm certainly no Noam, but most things mystify me to no end which is probably why I teach for a living.
Citizen Raimondo seems to have mislaid his copy of Schumpeter. Isn't the point of being an ordinary capitalist to have the right connections and besides aren't they all the generals, general dynamics, general electric, general motors, general mills, general foods, connecticut general who don't do so badly in wartime?
In any event, markets are many and amoral and one bugger's waste is another's windfall. Loathe as I to employ a vocabulary emphasizing the ruling class, I always thought that in times of war the ruling class is at it's most visible. And isn't the greatest threat to a thriving economy any impediment that keeps me from my appointed rounds in Walmart? That I might be reluctant to shop has more to do with my actual or imminent unemployment and that may have little to do with war - the layoffs were coming anyway. War, indeed, gives employers a tad more cover.
Dennis Breslin