Swords into plowshares: military conversion for the 1990s

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Jan, 1994 by Judith Braffman-Miller

IN HIS Farewell Address of Jan. 7, 1961, Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation that "the Military Establishment, not productive of itself, necessarily must feed on the energy, productivity, and brain-power of the country, and if it takes too much, our total strength declines." He further pointed out that, during every year of the 1950s, the fresh capital resources delivered over to the Department of Defense (DOD) exceeded the accumulated net profits of all U.S. corporations. This trend--noted more than 30 years ago--continues to the present.

From 1946 to 1980, DOD budgets added up to more than two trillion dollars; the budgets for 1980-88 were even higher. Hence, the war-oriented institutions of America have enjoyed an extraordinary degree of both political and economic leverage by way of their control of finance capital. During the first two years of the Reagan presidency, defense research and development soared to $31,000,000,000, while civilian R&D plummeted by $3,000,000,000 to $14,000,000,000.

About 120,000 persons make up the Central Administrative Office of the US. military-serving industrial system, head-quartered in the Defense Department. This office is analogous to the most lofty decision-making mechanism in a major company. It boasts numerous and sundry divisions and plants, and creates general policy, determining the primary management of its main subdivisions. The DOD's Central Administrative Office, with its nearly 40,000 prime contractors, is the largest of its kind in the US. economy. It even may be the most enormous on the planet. America's war-oriented institutions have organized the most immense of all existing labor forces under the control of a single management. The R&D divisions of the Defense Department and its kindred offices gobble up 70-75% of the total R&D budget of the Federal government.

Yet, most economists argue that defense spending has a negative impact on investment, inflation, employment, balance of payments, industrial productivity, and economic growth. Some have gone so far as to describe the economic influence of defense as overwhelmingly negative, and there is general agreement that, if defense funds were delivered over to other civilian or commercial areas of the economy, it would stimulate investment and increase economic growth.

In August, 1981, a study was released by a group of 27 government experts appointed by the Secretary General of the UN in 1978 to examine the relationship between disarmament and development. It found that, for market economies, such as in the U.S., stagflation--the state of concurrent inflation and rising unemployment--may be worsened dramatically by heavy national military spending. The main purpose of the study was to investigate the theory that a balanced, acceptable pattern of global economic and social development was tied to disarmament.

According to Seymour Melman, professor emeritus of industrial engineering at Columbia University, if "the present trend of US. military buildup continues, if the intense use of the capital for the Pentagon prevails, it is entirely likely that the competence of the US. industry will be destroyed. . . . The way to change this situation is to begin converting the plants now producing military related goods to civilian production. This would allow the workers to continue producing, but to do so on civilian rather than military related products."

Melman describes military conversion as "the alteration of research facilities, factories, bases, and related facilities from military to civilian uses." The idea is not a new one. A half-century ago, at the end of World War II, industries involved in military production easily were altered to meet the demands for post-war civilian goods. In the mid 1970s, peace movements and independent research groups expressed their premise for military conversion in terms of technical possibility and political practicability.

Yet, the defense conversion of the 1990s will be strikingly different from what was called "reconversion" at the end of World War II. Fifty years ago, factories that had switched from civilian to military production during the war simply reconverted back to their former civilian ways when it was over. They were readily able to reapply their old machines to their former civilian functions. The old, familiar workforce that had been there before the war was available after it to turn out old, familiar products; get raw materials from old, familiar suppliers; and sell to old, familiar markets. The situation today is different. Factories and laboratories producing military goods and services came into being strictly for that purpose. They have no civilian past to go back to. A sizeable number of the current labor force have spent their entire working lives in military-serving operations.

This is because, since the end of World War II, the US. and the former U.S.S.R. primarily organized their own national economies, as well as those of their satellite and client countries, around the major focus of ever-growing military production. Thus, the two superpowers created a global war economy.