Eisenhower and the Military Industrial Complex
President Eisenhower, in his outgoing address (listen below), warned the world about the threat of a military industrial complex. Eisenhower, a WW2 general, worried that the military industry would soon exert undue power and influence over government. Each time you turn on the news, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, you will find a retired general commenting on the war in Ukraine, the strategies, and the failed strategies. Here, we invite you to listen again to Eisenhower’s address to the nation and the world. Consider the facts: the U.S. is spends more on the military than any other nation? Ask yourself a simple question: why? And who are we protecting?
In his new book, The British Left and the Defence Economy: Rockets, Guns and Kidney Machines, 1970–83, Keith Mc Loughlin argues that “Forty years before COVID-19, socialists in Britain campaigned for workers to have the right to make ‘socially useful’ products, from hospital equipment to sustain the NHS to affordable heating systems for the impoverished elderly. This movement held one thing responsible above all else for the nation’s problems: the burden of defence spending. In the middle of the Cold War, the left put a direct challenge to the defence industry, the Labour government and trade unions. The response it received revealed much about a military-industrial state that prioritised the making and exporting of arms for political favour and profit.”
