Socialism Or Something Else?  

Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating communal ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by equal opportunities for all individuals, with a fair or egalitarian method of compensation. The only socialist communities are religiously based. In practice, both Soviet and Chinese Communism were captive states which were neither communistic nor capitalistic. What is occurring in America has nothing to do with socialism, it’s anti-capitalism.

Anti-capitalism describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose capitalism. A major anti-capitalism movement is fascism which is characterized by a corporatist approach to economics – the elimination of the autonomy of large-scale capitalism and private ownership of major industry and the subordination of the economy to the needs of the state while preserving private property. Fascism upholds the private ownership aspect of productive capital and the means of production, but “regulated to ensure that benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual.” As Hitler explained in Mein Kampf, "the attitude of the State towards capital would be comparatively simple and clear. Its only object would be to make sure that capital remained subservient to the State" and also made a clear distinction between "capital which is purely the product of creative labor and ... capital which is exclusively the result of financial speculation." Bennito Mussolini suggested "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

Fascism rabidly embraces those social-cultural practices that can be used to divide a society and to create the image of the threatening outsiders. For fascism to gain national acceptance there is a need for “the threat,” “the other.” There is the need for perpetual war together with perpetual internal threats, to provide the logic for the merger of state and corporate power.

- Do you really believe the absurd lengths to which airline passengers are harassed serve any useful purpose other than a communal exercise in reinforcing “the threat?”

- Do you really believe holding over 300 individuals in Cuba for years without classification as either combatant or criminal serve any purpose but to remind us that “the other” is so horrible that we can’t even classify them so we can dispose of them?

- Do you really believe that for all our sophisticated intelligence gathering equipment, we can’t find and isolate one man, in need of routine dialysis, hiding in a primitive, remote region of Asia yet we can see and analyze atomic level heat, light and sound fluctuations on remote planets?

- Do you really believe there is a general prohibition against praying in school and that if some small child sitting at a school desk whispers a pray s/he will be expelled or otherwise punished?

- Do you really believe that if you play Led Zepplin records backward you can hear the devil?

- Do you really believe government workers go around sand-blasting religious symbols off of public buildings and cemetery headstones?

- Do you really believe communism was ever a larger threat in the U.S. than fascism was and is.

We were warned, warned continually:

In 1912 by Admiral Jackie Fisher as he was cashiered

In 1934 by Major General Smedley Butler in his testimony before the McCormack-Dickstein Congressional Committee

In 1935 by Major General Smedley Butler in his book War Is a Racket

In 1936 by Daniel Guerin in his book Fascism and Big Business

In 1944 by F.A. Hayek in his book The Road to Serfdom

In 1956 by C. Wright Mills in his book The Power Elite

On January 17, 1961 by President Eisenhower’s in his Farewell Address to the nation

By Seymour Melman:

-in 1962 in his book Disarmament; Its Politics And Economics.

-in 1965 in his book Our Depleted Society

-in 1970 in his book The Defense Economy

-in 1970 in his book Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War

-in 1971 in his book The war economy of the United States; readings on military industry and economy

-in 1983 in his book Profits without Production

-in 1985 in his book The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline

By Chalmers A. Johnson

-in 2004 in his book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

-in 2004 in his book The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic

-in 2007 in his book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.

And, we were warned:

The Bob Dylan song "Masters of War" was written about the military-industrial complex.

The Eugene McDaniels song "Headless Heroes" is also about the military-industrial complex. It is famously rumoured that Spiro Agnew contacted Atlantic Records to have the album containing the song discontinued.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address is featured at the beginning of the 1991 film JFK.

The Eisenhower farewell address footage is used in a trailer for the video game Army of Two.

A select portion of the Eisenhower speech is included in the song "End of Days (Part 2)" by the band Ministry on their final studio album The Last Sucker.

The Rage Against The Machine song "Bulls on Parade" alludes to the military-industrial complex. (Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes... What we don't know keeps the contracts alive and moving)

Sci-fi series Ghost in the Shell uses the term frequently to describe the economic state of certain countries in their future setting. Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG also portrays attempts to create a military-industrial complex in Japan by means of coup d'état.

The video game Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots uses the concept of the military-industrial complex holding up the world's economy by the money made through constant fighting.

In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four it is explained that the endless wars fought in it were solely for economic reasons very like the military-industrial complex.

The Matthew Reilly novel Scarecrow has as its major antagonists a group of leaders of a worldwide military-industrial complex, hellbent on starting a worldwide war to increase its profits.

The video game Civilization Revolution contains the Military-Industrial Complex as one of its wonders, which you can build after discovering The Corporation.