-Caveat Lector-
EXCERPT:
"In one of the great ironies of modern war history, the first Bush
administration waged war, it said, to keep Iraq from withholding
its oil resources from world markets. The US then proceeded to
enforce a decade of sanctions that withheld most of Iraq's oil
reserves from the market (thereby increasing prices and profits for
US firms).
"We are somehow not permitted to say this, but the solution to Iraq
is at hand. Repeal sanctions immediately. Trade with Iraq. Oil
prices would fall dramatically. Hatred of the US would abate. The
plight of Iraq could no longer be used as exhibit A in terrorist
recruitment drives. The only downside, of course, is that US
companies connected to the Bush administration would not be the
owners of the oil fields, but instead would have to compete with
other producers in supplying consumers with oil."
A Capitalist War?
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Some people dispute the claim that the US attack on Iraq is motivated -
at least in part - by the desire for Iraq's oil. What can we say about
them? They may be hopelessly naive about the public sector in general.
Some of the same people who are pleased to finger greed and avarice as
the root cause of all accounting problems on Wall Street are loath to
consider that similar impulses might inspire politicians and bureaucrats
as well.
It could also be that those who deny an oil connection aren't reading the
newspapers. After all, it was the New York Times that carried no less
than two large articles on Iraq's oil resources in its prominent "Week in
Review" section (November 3), one of which contained a map of reserves.
The reporter noted: "112 billion barrels of proven reserves is also
something nobody can overlook. Iraq's `ability to generate oil' is always
somewhere on the table, even if not in so many words."
Or consider the MSNBC story that ran on November 11, "Iraqi Oil, American
Bonanza?," which says: "Iraq's vast oil reserves remain a powerful prize
for global oil companies. Such a massive rebuilding effort represents a
huge opportunity for the companies chosen to tackle it. It's unlikely
that American firms will be left empty- handed if the U.S. follows
through on threats of military action."
What does oil have to do with the Bush administration? The MSNBC reporter
gives the reader that information too: "American oil companies are also
hoping to benefit from the industry's unusually strong ties to the White
House. President Bush, himself the former head of a Texas oil company,
has pursued a national energy policy that relies on aggressively
expanding new sources of oil. Vice President Dick Cheney is the former
CEO of oil services giant Halliburton. National security adviser
Condoleezza Rice is a former director of Chevron."
Was Lenin Right?
The connection between the war on Iraq and the desire for oil raises an
important ideological consideration. Millions of college students are
taught the Leninist idea that capitalist economies are inherently
imperialistic. This is supposedly because exploitation exhausts capital
values in the domestic economy, and hence capital owners must
relentlessly seek to replenish their funds through grabbing foreign
resources. It takes war to avoid the final crisis of capitalism, in this
view.
College students might be forgiven for thinking there is some basis for
this in the real world. In American history up to the present day, the
onset of war tends to track the onset of economic doldrums. Might war be
just the ticket to revive a moribund capitalist class? Recall that it was
then-secretary of state James Baker who said the first Iraq war was all
about "jobs, jobs, jobs." The line between the owners of capital and the
warfare state has never been that clean in American history, and it has
arguably never been as conspicuously blurred as it is today.
The view that sustaining capitalism requires aggressive war is usually
said to originate with V.I. Lenin as a way of rescuing Marxism from a
serious problem. The problem was that capitalism was not collapsing in
the 19th century. It was growing more robust and more productive, and the
workers were getting richer, not poorer - all facts that weighed heavily
against the Marxist historical trajectory. The Leninist answer to the
puzzle was that capitalism was surviving only thanks to its military
aggression. The prosperity of the West originated in blood.
Capitalist Imperialism
But was Lenin really the originator of the theory? Not at all. The
capitalists beat him to it. As Murray N. Rothbard explains in his History
of Money and Banking in the United States (2002), the idea began with a
group of Republican Party theoreticians during the late Gilded Age, who
were concerned that the falling rate of profits would end up crippling
capitalism and that the only salvation was a forced opening of foreign
markets to US exports. These were the brain trusters of Theodore
Roosevelt, who ended up heralding US aggression against Spain in 1898.
The fear of falling profit stemmed from the mistaken embrace of the
theory of David Ricardo that the rate of profit is determined by the
stock of capital investment. In fact, the rate of profit, over the long
run, is determined by the rate of time preference in society. All else
being equal, as savings rise, profits fall, which doesn't at all spell
disaster for capitalism. It could in fact be an indication of a robust,
competitive economy in which no business interest can count on a sure
thing in the marketplace.
But the theorists of imperialism didn't believe it. Economist Charles
Conant developed the theory in a series of essays beginning in 1896,
including "The Economic Basis of Imperialism" which appeared in the North
American Review in 1898. In this piece, Conant argued that there is too
much savings in advanced countries, too much production, and not enough
consumption, and this was crowding out profitable investment
opportunities for the largest corporations.
The best way to find new consumers and resources, he said, is to go
abroad, using force, if necessary, to open up markets. He further said
that the US industrial trusts then dominant on the landscape could be
useful in promoting and waging war. This would further cartelize American
industry and increase profits. Hence, said Conant, "concentration of
power, in order to permit prompt and efficient action, will be an almost
essential factor in the struggle for world empire."
Yes, that sounds exactly like the version of reality given to us by
Lenin, only the judgment is reversed. While Lenin found imperialism for
profit morally wrong, Conant found it praiseworthy, an inspiring plan of
action. Indeed, many of his contemporaries also did. Boston's US Investor
argued that war is necessary to keep capital at work. An "enlarged field
for its product must be discovered," and the best source "is to be found
among the semi-civilized and barbarian races."
By the turn of the century, this view had largely caught on in the
economics profession, with even the eminent theorist John Bates Clark of
Columbia praising imperialism for providing American business "with an
even larger and more permanent profit."
Today's Profits of War
Today the same creed is captured in the pithy if chilling mantra of the
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman: "The hidden hand of the market
will never work without a hidden fist" (The Lexus and the Olive Tree, p.
464). Lenin himself couldn't have said it better. Joseph Nye of Harvard
fleshes out the point: "To ignore the role of military security in an era
of economic and information growth is like forgetting the importance of
oxygen to our breathing."
Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute puts a different spin on the same
line. His goal in Against the Dead Hand is to convince military
imperialists that international trade can be an important ally in the
fight for global dominance. Instead of seeing trade across borders as the
extension of voluntary exchange among individuals, he sees global trade
as a weapon to use against foreign states that do not conform to the DC
ideal. In Lindsey's view, foreign trade, managed by the US through
treaties and bureaucracies, is merely a way to wage the fight against
terrorism "with maximum effectiveness."
Historian Robert Kagan is even more brutally clear: "Good ideas and
technologies also need a strong power that promotes those ideas by
example and protects those ideas by winning on the battlefield."
So there you have it: if you want to use a cell phone, you have to be
willing to send your son to die for the US imperium in a war against
Iraq! And if you do lose your son in battle, know that this was necessary
in order to shore up US domination of the world economy. This is the
creed of the global social democrats who champion both military and
economic globalization.
How far we've come from George Washington's "great rule of conduct for
us, in regard to foreign nations": extend commercial relations but avoid
political connections. He continues: "Harmony, liberal intercourse with
all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even
our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither
seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the
natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the
streams of commerce, but forcing nothing."
Peace and Freedom
With the communists and capitalists agreeing that war and profit are
mutually dependent, how is a believer in peace and freedom to respond?
While war can result in profit for a few, it is not the case that the
entire system of a free economy depends on such wartime profiteering.
Indeed, war comes at the expense of alternative uses of resources. To the
extent that people are taxed to pay for armaments, property is diverted
from its most valuable uses to purposes of destruction.
Indeed, the idea that commerce and war are allies is a complete
perversion of the old liberal tradition. The first theorists of commerce
from the 16th century through the 18th century saw that a most
meritorious aspect of commerce is its link to freedom and peace, that
commerce made it possible for people to cooperate rather than fight. It
made armaments and war less necessary, not more.
What about the need to open foreign markets? The expansion of markets and
the division of labor is always a wonderful thing. The more people
involved in the overarching business of economic life, the greater the
prospects for wealth creation. But force is hardly the best means to
promote the cooperative and peaceful activity of trade, any more than it
is a good idea to steal your neighbor's mower to improve lawn care on
your block. Bitterness and acrimony is never good business, to say
nothing of death and destruction.
In any case, the problem in Iraq is not that Iraq is somehow withholding
its oil from the market. For ten years, and even before the first war on
Iraq, its oil supplies have been available to the world. In one of the
great ironies of modern war history, the first Bush administration waged
war, it said, to keep Iraq from withholding its oil resources from world
markets. The US then proceeded to enforce a decade of sanctions that
withheld most of Iraq's oil reserves from the market (thereby increasing
prices and profits for US firms).
We are somehow not permitted to say this, but the solution to Iraq is at
hand. Repeal sanctions immediately. Trade with Iraq. Oil prices would
fall dramatically. Hatred of the US would abate. The plight of Iraq could
no longer be used as exhibit A in terrorist recruitment drives. The only
downside, of course, is that US companies connected to the Bush
administration would not be the owners of the oil fields, but instead
would have to compete with other producers in supplying consumers with
oil.
Well, so be it. The idea of free enterprise is that everyone gets a
chance, and no one industry or group of producers enjoys special
privileges. Through competition and cooperation, but never violence, the
living standards of everyone rise and we all enjoy more of the life we
want to live. It's not hard to understand, except in the corridors of the
Bush administration, where theorists have linked arms with Leninists in
the belief that war is always good, and always necessary, for business.
###
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute
in Auburn, Alabama, and editor of LewRockwell.com. This article is
reprinted with permission from the December 16, 2002, issue of The
American Conservative. Copyright 2002 by The American Conservative. All
rights reserved.
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
