By the guts of capital, Carrol doesn't mean a well-defined agenda lobbied for by business groups. Given capitalism as a mode of production, though, it is inevitable that there will be an empire (or empires, as in the past), waging war or taking other bellicose actions almost constantly. Even the most sophisticated analysis of capitalism as a mode of production (looking at trends in profit rates, regimes of regulation, etc.), however, cannot possibly predict that the empire will be making war (as opposed to taking some other action) on Iraq in particular (as opposed to some other nation) or explain why it wants to make war (as opposed to taking some other action) on Iraq in particular (as opposed to some other nation) even after it becomes clear that it will be doing so.
In which year after, say, 1898 did the USG fail to wage any war or take any bellicose action? How about after 1945? Capitalism --> Imperialism --> One War or Another Almost All the Time.
Tim O'Brien, a Vietnam veteran, writes in "The Things They Carried": "It was the great American war chest -- the fruits of sciences, the smokestacks, the canneries, the arsenals at Hartford, the Minnesota forests, the machine shops, the vast fields of corn and wheat they carried like freight trains; they carried it on their backs and shoulders -- and for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry." That's a memorably literalized metaphor for the burden of the Empire -- its congealed dead labor powering its constant war-making -- on the backs and shoulders of the working class. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>