Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Race to Destruction
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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welfare programs.” These would be “Truman’s answer to a fundamental
problem that would emerge as soon as military spending slacked off—
the problem of making the business boom go on indefinitely under its
own steam.” 86 As income is redistributed, new popular elements enter
into the formation of policy and new social and economic structures
arise. This outcome being intolerable, the state must confine its
intervention in the economy to subsidizing military production. In short,
state intervention in the economy is fine, even necessary, but only if it is
conducted in such a way as to enhance existing power and privilege,
hence through the military system.
This analysis in fact understates the businessman’s case for military
spending, which is not simply a matter of arms production, but of
support for the advanced sectors of the economy quite generally. The
development of computers, for example, has largely been a product of
state intervention through the military system and remains so today;
development of the current “fifth generation” computers is financed by
the Pentagon, the Department of Energy (which is responsible for
nuclear weapons) and NASA, largely a military-related enterprise, and
these will be the prime users in the early phases at least. The military
system provides an optimal means to compel the public to subsidize the
costly programs of research and development, leaving private industry to
reap the profits during this phase and later, if commercial applications
become possible. It amounts to a system of forced public investment, of
public subsidy and private profit, with little interference with the
businessman’s prerogatives.
The SDI program is a dramatic example. “The real importance of Star
Wars is only tangentially related to national defense,” Robert Reich
observes, “But the consequences for national economic development will
be profound.” In fact, the system is likely to be harmful to national
security, as noted earlier, a matter of little concern to planners. “The