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Is Peace Possible Under Capitalism?
part two
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by Anne Winkler-Morey, W A M M
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Editor’s Note: This is the second of a two-part series by Economist Karen Redleaf. See the May issue of worldwideWAMM for Part One—Underlying Concepts.
The short answer to “is peace possible under capitalism?” is no. But I don’t imagine that any reader who has been thinking about the concepts presented in Part 1 and waiting patiently for my thoughts on the topic of peace under capitalism will want to settle for the short answer.
Before delving deeper I should warn readers that the ideas presented here are my own, and hence potentially radical. I am drawing conclusions based on what I was taught when I studied Economics, some of which I shared with readers in Part 1 of this article. But these are conclusions I draw on my own, because in all my years of study, peace was never discussed. This is especially ironic, since the classic example of a pure public good has always been national defense. Our government writes blank checks to purchase the tools for making war—powerful armed forces and the weapons systems they utilize to beat our enemies into submission—leaving taxpayers the bill.
Even today, when government services are being slashed across the board and the most basic notion that the government has the responsibility to care for the citizenry is under attack, national defense remains sacrosanct. Actually, the term national defense is offensive to me. I don’t believe that waging war on the planet and its inhabitants can make us safer. The whole idea seems to me like military madness, which I am against.
Part 1 of this article started with several definitions. I discussed neoliberalism abroad and market fundamentalism at home. It occurs to me that the market fundamentalism we live under in the United States may just be neoliberalism coming home to roost. For decades now the United States has acted through institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to force debtor countries to privatize national assets, cut social spending, and focus their economic energy on export industries.
All over the world small farmers have been forced off their land, out of a subsistence way of life and into the dreaded market economy. The same thing is happening here. Around the world, public services have been cut in the name of saving much needed dollars. That is also happening here. Rules governing “free trade” punish governments which attempt to promote autonomy by subsidizing certain critical industries. There is one exception—national defense. Sound familiar?
It is difficult to imagine the market providing peace. Even if we accept that the market does a good job of providing private consumption goods, we know from Part 1 of this article that lots of things we want and need don’t fit into the private consumption good category.
Peace is not a private consumption good. Peace is not really a public good either; however, peace is closely tied to many public goods.
Peace activists are familiar with the phrase, “if you want peace, work for justice.” A functioning justice system is a public good. A functioning education system is a public good. A functioning health care system is a public good. A functioning infrastructure capable of providing food and water to everyone is a public good. A functioning democracy is a public good.
We learned in the first part of this article that private markets don’t produce or, at least, under produce public goods. We’ve already seen the tradeoffs around the world and we are starting to see them at home as well. Around the world, Structural Adjustment Programs force market ideology on defenseless populations. Market ideology says switch your agriculture to cash crops for export. Governments comply. Farmers go broke. People starve.
Market ideology says drug patents are intellectual property and property rights must be respected and protected. People get sick. There is no money for medicine. People die. All around the world the very means for survival are being sold off for cash. The cash is being used to service debt and ironically to purchase weapons. The irony is that weapons are needed to defend against citizens who fight because their means for survival are being stolen by their governments. And their means for survival are being stolen by their governments to get cash for weapons. Weapons manufactures get rich. The prospects for peace diminish.
Even as the prospects for peace diminish the importance of working for peace grows. We know from the discussion of externalities in Part 1 that under extreme capitalism not enough peace work will get done. Why? Because there are positive externalities associated with peace work which the market cannot take into account. When I work for peace I am not the only one who benefits. Everyone benefits whether they express support or contempt for the work that I do. Future generations benefit even though they have no way to compensate me. The market fails to compensate me for the full value of my work. In fact, the market fails to compensate me at all.
Market fundamentalism tells me that the only benefit of working for peace is the pay I receive for doing this work. If that were true I would do zero peace work because that is how much it pays. Even if I take intangible compensation into account, market ideology says that I should only work up until the point where personal effort equals personal satisfaction. Market ideology does not allow me to calculate the full value of my work to myself, my supporters, my detractors, future generations, and our planet. Fortunately for me, my supporters, my detractors, future generations, and our planet those of us who work for peace don’t care what market ideology tells us.
Is peace possible under capitalism? The short answer is no. But the answer doesn’t matter because there is a more important question. Is survival possible without peace? For me, the answer to that question is also no. So I have to keep working for peace. |
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Video Resources
You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train
Howard Zinn
Following his early days as a shipyard labor organizer and bombardier in World War II, Zinn became an academic rebel and leader of civil disobedience in a time of institutionalized racism and war. His influential writings shine light on and bring voice to factory workers, immigrant laborers, African Americans, Native Americans and the working poor.
More info - click here
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© 2006 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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