The Autonomous Military Power: An Economic View

I begin with some reflections on the state of economics in our time and the social purpose of a subject with which I have been associated for some 60 years. That it is, or should be, the purpose of economics to explore and illuminate the reality of economic life will surely be accepted. There can, most will agree, be no other. Yet economics fails sadly in its pursuit of this purpose. A large and socially critical part of all economic production lies outside the range of economic concern, and so also does a very important part of present-day international trade. With respect to the latter, where a wise and intelligent use of resources is most urgent — where it is a matter of life or starvation and death — nearly all economic analysis evades the problem. That, of course, is the arms trade to the poor countries of the planet: a trade that denies people the first essentials of survival and supports the most egregious of human slaughter. But economics also stands largely aside from the allocation of resources to military purposes in the affluent world, and especially in the USA. To this I turn first. I deal here with matters on which I have spoken elsewhere, and which I have previously urged. Plagiarism in scholarly discourse is rightly condemned. A certain tendency to restatement of personal beliefs must, however, be forgiven.