War! What is it good for?

[chaska]

Something, absolutely.

http://www.geocities.com/nowar_buttheclasswar/index.html#top

War is good for forging national unity. War helps to both create new nation states and submerge class and other conflicts in an existing nation-state. Nationalism always tries to make the dispossessed and exploited, who make up most of the population, identify with their exploiters and so perpetuates this inhuman society. War is good for national liberation rackets, which can use a war situation as a way of bargaining with world powers in conflict with the local ruling powers and each other. War is good for polarising arbitrary groups of human beings into enemy camps, which allows various gangs of rulers to exploit them more effectively. War is thus a boon for nationalist, islamist, democratic, fascist, "communist" governments and would-be governments.

War is good for mopping up the surplus population. In the last war against Iraq only a handful of US and British troops were killed but up to 200,000 Iraqi soldiers were massacred. Many of these were Kurds or other people the regime wanted to punish. They were press-ganged and put in the front line. Both the Iraqi regime and the Allies collude in the wholesale slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people surplus to the economies' requirements. As the development of the world economy and technology throws more people into permanent or semi-permanent unemployment war provides a useful way of managing these impoverished masses.

War is good for generating fear. Like the periodic moral panics over refugees, gypsies, child abuse, the war on drugs, and the reporting of violent crime, war is a way of terrorising the general population. War is good for turning our fears into racism, further repression and surveillance. War is good for making us feel happy with our lot and accepting more sacrifices. War is good for suppressing class struggles such as the firefighters' strike.

War is good for generating fatalism. Faced with the apparent 'inevitability' of warfare people adopt the view that nothing can be done and despair of the possibility of collective struggle. This reinforces the fatalism towards starvation and suffering and the fatalism about the need to work and the inevitability of the economy. War is good for religion. Religion is a way of reinforcing national identities. War is good for god - religious rackets always profit from war. War is good for charities and NGOs, who promote capitalist development in the name of feeding the starving.

War is good for particular sectors of the economy, such as arms production and the media. War is good for the economy in general. Investment in armaments and other war preparations are often undertaken as a policy of stimulating demand, as in the US now. And it modernises and restructures sectors of the economy as obsolete plant and infrastructure is blown to bits and reconstructed on a more profitable basis. And it creates war refugees who'll work for almost nothing. And it enables social spending to be cut without anyone complaining too much. And we could go on ...

War is good for justifying peace. In peace time millions of people are killed and maimed each year in industrial "accidents" and journeys to work. Even without these deaths and injuries capitalist society is the denial of the possibility of a social humanity. Capital is the shattering of the world into nations, classes, and individuals to aid a self-expanding exploitation, mutating human creativity into waged-work. What we need is a community of struggle (such as when workers take collective action e.g. a strike) and a struggle for world human community. A revolution centred on the proletariat, for a classless society beyond economy. For a truly human life, for a life worth living.

[BOSSHOG]

1. Hopefully

we will soon be able to say that War was good for putting the republican party in permanent minority status.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. In other words, absolutely nothing.

[Greeby]

3. War is good for the Generals.........

.......General Motors, General Dynamics and General Electric

[chaska]

4. Good one!

[Gotthardbahn]

8. Generals

You forgot General Mills. And General Motors, being almost in Chapter 11, really doesn't count. In fact, it might disprove your point.

= Gotthardbahn =

[Gotitdone]

5. Something

Also ending slavery in the United States and nazi death camps in
Europe.
The use of violence is not inherently evil. If someone is willing to use violence to accomplish their goals how can they be stopped without the use of violence?

In democratic nations we have checks and balances that usually prevent wars that are not just. If you as a citizen of Nazi Germany were to publicly dissent you would be executed. The war had to be ended by the Allies using violence. Can you see any other alternative?
Here we have a voice to end the unjust wars.
We must use it.

[newyawker99]

7. Hi Gotitdone!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Gotthardbahn]

6. War!

The proletariat? Denial of the possibility of a social
humanity? Oh please...what rubbish

War put an end to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. War - a
cold version - put an end to the Soviet Empire and,
ultimately, the Soviet Union. War put Napoleon out of
business. I could go on, but think you get the point. 

[Codeblue]

9. Same rubbish

all pro-violence say when defending their almighty war.

Yeah, war may have ended those horrible regimes true. But if those regimes hadn't started unjust wars in the first place...see? War was good for the upper class, defense companies, dictators and on and on in those cases.

Because of war, millions and millions of people around the world died, for nothing basically. Nazis started a war to kill people, consolidate their power, rule the world. Japan started a war to subjugate China. In both cases, the proles were not the beneficiaries.

So basically, war isn't good for much of anything.

[Gotthardbahn]

10. Re: Same rubbish

In response to your second paragraph: Well, obviously! IF Nazi Germany hadn't made war in Europe and IF Japan hadn't sought an empire by means of war, if, if, if, then sure, there wouldn't have been need of war. But the reality was that both nations DID start wars and a response was required, unless you wanted to live under the swastika or the rising sun. Get real.

War MAY have ended these regimes? HUH? The last time I looked, both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had been consigned to the dustbin of history. You may not be aware that both nations had their butts handed to them in 1945.

The proles? I repeat...oh please.

= Gotthardbahn =