Bulletin
N° 682
Subject: ‘WAR IS THE HEALTH OF
THE STATE’ : DISOLVING THE CRYSTALIZATION OF CLASS
CONSCIOUSNESS IN A SOLUTION OF HEATED NATIONALISM, CONCOCTED BY ‘THE NATIONAL
SECURITY STATE’.
6 February 2016
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
I was recently discussing with my American Studies
undergraduates the formation of social classes in society. It goes back, of
course, to ancient history and the “cradle of civilization” in the Tigris
Euphrates River Valley. The early city states such as Ur and Babylon of
Mesopotamia were a product of civilization, which was born with “the
agricultural revolution” (with the domestication of plants, and later animals,
around the time irrigation technology was invented), and this development gave
rise to permanent settlement which depended on surplus production of food for storage
throughout the year (which meant that workers were now capable of producing
more than they needed for consumption). From this, specialized social classes appeared, classes of people who could live in society
without producing food. Thus the military and the priest classes evolved out of
this new technology, and their purpose was to protect the population that was
producing the food. The first NATIONAL SECURITY STATE was born more than 5000
years ago.
The military, from the first, was quick to adopt new
technologies. Most notably, was the wheel, which archiologists
think was inspired by the potter’s wheel, which had been around for a thousand
years before some genius applied the principle of a circular device turning on
an axis for making pottery to the idea of wheels attached to a plank to make a
transportation vehicle. This we are told occurred in Sumeria
around 3200 B.C. By contrast, the Egyptians possessed the potter’s wheel as
early as 2700 B.C. but did not use the wheel for transport until about 1700
B.C. and it is thought that the idea was not an invention (the Egyptians did
not “re-invent the wheel” but simply copied it from the impressive Mesopotamian
war machine and used it for transportation purposes, displacing slave
labor. (For an interesting and systematic discussion of the role of the
military in the evolution of civilization, see Michael Mann’s four-volume study, The
Sources of Social Power.)
“Civilization is a
double-edged sword,” remarked one student during this discussion. “We live longer and healthier lives, but at a
price, too.” This paradox is nowhere more apparent than in 20th
century wars, where class struggle has directed science and applied technology
in the direction of defending the nation-state at all costs. The development of
poison gas during the First World War, and the development of the Atom bomb during
the Second World War, and the development of the Hydrogen bomb during the Cold
War are significant illustrations of this dynamic. If national wars were not
launched periodically, and new weapons of mass destruction developed routinely,
what would happen to our civilization, which from the start is based on
minority ownership and control of the means of production and class
exploitation? Eric Hobsbawm points out in his
book, On
History, how civilization produced barbarism.
There are
several reasons why the First World War began the descent into barbarism.
First, it opened the most murderous era so far recorded in history. Zbigniew Brezizinski has recently
estimated the ‘megadeaths’ between 1914 and 1990 at
187 million, which –however speculative—may serve as a reasonable order of
magnitude. I calculate that this corresponds to something like 9 per cent of
the world’s population in 1914. We have got used to killing. Second, the
limitless sacrifices which governments imposed on their own men as they drove
them into the holocaust of Verdun and Ypres set a sinister precedent, if only
for imposing even more unlimited massacres on the enemy. Third, the very
concept of a war of total national mobilization shattered the central pillar of
civilized warfare, the distinction between combatants and non-combatants.
Fourth, the First World War was the first major war, at all events in Europe,
waged under conditions of democratic politics by, or with the active
participation of, the entire population. Unfortunately democracies can rarely
be mobilized by wars when these are seen merely as incidents in the
international power-game, as old-fashioned foreign offices saw them to be. Nor
do they fight them like bodies of professional soldiers or boxers, for whom war
is an activity that does not require hating the enemy, so long as he fights by
the professional rules. Democracies, as experience shows, require demonized
enemies. This, as the Cold War was to demonstrate, facilitates barbarization.
Finally, the Great War ended
in social and political breakdown, social revolution and
counter-revolution on an unprecedented scale.
This era of breakdown and revolution
dominated the thirty years after 1917. The twentieth century became, among
other things, an era of religious wars between a capitalist liberalism,
on the defensive and in retreat until 1947, and both Soviet communism
and movements of the fascist type, which also wished to destroy each
other. Actually the only real threat to liberal capitalism in its
heartlands, apart from its own breakdown after 1914, came from the right.
Between 1920 and Hitler’s fall no regime anywhere was overthrown by communist
or socialist revolution. But the communist threat, being to property and social
privilege, was more frightening. This was not a situation conducive to the
return of civilized values. All the more
so, since the war had left behind a black deposit of ruthlessness and violence,
and a substantial body of men experienced in both and attached to both. Many of
them provided the manpower for an innovation, for which I can find no real
precedent before 1914, namely quasi-official or tolerated strong-arm and killer
squads which did the dirty work governments were not yet ready to do
officially: the Freikorps, the
Black-and-Tans, the Squadristi. In any
case violence was on the rise. (p.256-257)
Dominic Selwood’s recent article, The
man who invented poison gas: a horror story, provides a biographical description
of the Polish-born physical chemist, Fritz Haber, who worked for the
German war machine in WW I. Haber was denounced by the young German scientist, Albert
Einstein at the time, before he himself engaged in military contracts to
develop another weapon of mass destruction.
We see again and again in
the laboratory of history how class
struggle is held over the ‘bunsen burner’ and
dissolved into fratricide, by fusing the heated solution of nationalist
ideology with the national security state acting as a catalyst.
The 8 items below
will inform readers how our class-divided civilization –or what remains of
it—has once again turned towards war and militarism to produce investment
opportunities. Many of you might find the 6th item below
particularly interesting, as it discusses how school children are being turned
into cannon fodder for future capitalist wars, by learning to submit to orders
from above rather than learning to discuss their real human needs with their
peers.
Francis
Feeley
Professor of American Studies
University of Grenoble-3
Director of Research
University of Paris-Nanterre
Center for the Advanced Study of American
Institutions and Social Movements
The University of California-San Diego
a.
Eastern Europe Cautiously Welcomes Larger U.S. Military Presence
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/world/europe/eastern-europe-us-military.html?_r=0
by
Rick Lyman
“We appreciate President Obama’s decision to boost
funding for an increased U.S. military presence on the territory of NATO’s
front-line allies,” the Czech Defense Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The U.S. is the leader of the Atlantic alliance and has an indispensable role
in making its collective deterrent sufficiently robust and credible.”
===========
b.
The Obama
administration says it will propose quadrupling what it spends on its troops and
training in Europe as part of the U.S. military's accelerating effort to deter
Russia
===========
c.
Israel Key Link
in Exporting ISIS Oil
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=15244
Vijay
Prashad says that ISIS oil is smuggled through Turkey
to Israel and is a major source of ISIS funding
===========
d.
Obama Is Pressed to Open Military Front Against ISIS in Libya
by
Eric Schmitt
===========
e.
Why The
‘Sultan of Chaos’ Is Freaking Out
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/331279-erdogan-syria-aleppo-turkey/#.VrOMeHTEDDk.facebook
by Pepe
Escobar
===========
f.
Why Is My Kindergartner Being Groomed
for the Military at School?
by Sarah Grey
===========
g.
Syria's
Enemies Seek Face Saving Escalation Measures
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44146.htm
by Moon Of Alabama
===========
h.
From: BBlum6@aol.com
Sent: Friday, 5 February, 2016
Subject: Anti-Empire Report, February 5, 2016
Anti-Empire
Report, February 5, 2016
http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer143.html