Walt Byars wrote: What are some good Marxist books or articles on the origins of ww1 and ww2? <
I can't think of any, but I have some ideas (see below).
For the former, isn't the idea that the LTRPF caused capitalist
nations to need to have foreign markets. However, they would rather have exclusive trading relations with other nations, so they entered into colonial relations with other ocuntries rather than neoliberal free trade or what ever. And then the cpaitalist nations fought amongst themselves over who would have which colonies? < in my analysis of the origins of the Great Depression of the 1930s (see the first PDF file at http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine/papers.htm#gd), I apply a version of Bukharin's analysis of early 20th-century imperialism. It doesn't center on the falling rate of profit as much as the unity of economic and political forces on the national level to form "national capitals" that engaged in economic-political-military competition on the international level. The old regime was of British hegemony (and British-run liberal free trade, what might now be called "neoliberalism" but wasn't "neo" yet). This was disrupted by uneven development as exemplified by the rise of the national capitals called Germany, the US, and Japan.
I have no idea about Marxist discussions of ww2's origins, although I
do know a bit about the rise of fascism. < in some ways, the basis for ww2 was a lot like that for ww1 except that Britain had lost its hegemony and the US hadn't grabbed the baton yet. In some ways ww2 was a "do over" for ww1. Many see the time between the two world wars as merely a truce. Of course, the way in which Germany lost ww1 was one basis for fascism there. -- Jim Devine / "The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods." -- John Maynard Keynes. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm
