On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 10:26 PM, Carrol Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
> But capitalism (crudely personified here) _does_ want a "friendly climate > for business," and it is _not_ just left governments that often fail to > provide such a friendly climate. And when a government fails to provide > such > a climate (for any reason) _discipline_ becomes necessary. Hence the > endless > war being waged by the U.S. And hence the stationing of u.s. troops in > some > 80+ nations around the world. Raghu's argument is almost a pure example of > vulgar Marxism. > Perhaps. My earlier argument had a bit of overstatement. But I don't buy the idea that the Iran war-mongering is driven by considerations of capitalist class-interest. I still think there is an element of plain old power-lust and megalomania among elements of the ruling elite, as well as interest-group politics (as Jim says), and these cannot be so easily reduced to a single catch-all explanation like capitalist class interest. Capitalists are often *responding* opportunistically to wars and other situations rather than driving them. I think it has by now been pretty conclusively established that Exxon and Halliburton were not pushing for the Iraq war though they certainly tried to profit from it after the fact. -raghu.
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