This essay was first published in the Palestine Chronicles 2006 03 02 and is copyright protected.

Not to be published without consent of the author.

Eisenhower warned of the industrial-military complex and its rise to prominence in the American political scene. But long before that, business and war have been mutually beneficial to one another. In Part XI of Imperial Perspectives, the relationship between business and war is looked at from Clausewitz’ point of view.

XI Clausewitz on Business

Reading Carl von Clausewitz, unless one is fully inebriated by the study and concepts of war, is singularly boring. His book On War, published in 1832, is apparently highly influential within the circle of ‘military philosophers’ and is undoubtedly still studied at military colleges today. There are elements of truth hidden in his writing, one of the most oft referred to is "It is of course well known that the only source of war is politics -- the intercourse of governments and peoples . . .. We maintain . . . that war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means.” There are arguments about what Clausewitz really intended by this comment, but the truth, as it sometimes is with basic statements, is simply the obvious: that war is part of the “intercourse of governments and peoples.”

Whether this need be so from a political-philosophical view, or from a religious view, or extending itself into a more modern Darwinian view, is, at the moment, irrelevant to the realistic requirement of empires in particular to use war as a necessary means of sustaining the empire. War then, is not only diplomacy, it is also business, not just the business of building and equipping military forces, but business ‘as usual’, an inseparable piece of the equation that maintains empires, old and new, in their endeavours abroad. It is war that has built and sustained our current lifestyle of mass consumption and ecological waste. It does not necessarily have to be that way, but certainly has proven to be an expedient means of dealing with recalcitrant natives of other territories that are unwilling to see the kindness and goodness of our self-righteous altruism applied to extracting their wealth. It is war that has sustained the corporations over the centuries as they have grown from Royal Charters to supra-national entities that operate beyond the sphere of most national governments and hold many others in their thrall. It is war that creates the ultimate possession of private property.

Corporate Property

Business as expressed through corporate capitalism is much more than the free flow of currency, goods, and services – it also requires the control and ownership of property from which to create the wealth that moves inexorably upwards to the elite and powerful through a variety of trade and government rules made mainly by the elites themselves. This ownership of property is, in turn, much more than simple possession of a piece of land although that is the basis of all empirical power. As corporations – and empires - become more sophisticated with their rules and regulations, ‘property’ has become defined as much more than a territory.

Property brings with it certain rights as defined by law or defined by the conqueror who becomes the law. A corporation becomes the ‘person’ who owns those rights and has the rights and privileges of a person, but conveniently becomes invisible when that corporation is involved with some aspect of illegality, whether with environmental, criminal, or business law. Along with the property, the superficial features of the landscape, ownership gives rights in varying degrees in different jurisdictions, to the resources under and, in the case of water, flowing through that property and ultimately for our modern era, control over the airspace above it (and maybe one day, space itself).

Beyond these physical features, corporate property includes the transportation and communication networks. Large conglomerates control most of the variety of media, therefore controlling the slant of the news and, through advertising, controlling the purchasing habits and lifestyles of the targeted audiences. The physical plant of manufacturing is mainly owned by large corporations, in spite of different governments’ advocacy that ‘small business’ is the heart of the economic system. The lax rules afforded big business during the Second World War caused a large shrinkage in the number and diversity of manufacturing enterprises after the war.

Personnel Property

It is not often considered that labour can be owned, but the American Empire was founded with that being part of the whole as slaves were bought, sold, and bartered like any other commodity. But beyond that, while money and investments and trade items are free to search the globe for the cheapest production source, labour is generally prohibited from searching the globe for the richest paying area. It is argued that labour is free to come and go, to quit work and seek it elsewhere and thus is within the limits of ‘free’ market supply and demand. But the average person, by necessity requires certain items for the basics of food, shelter, and clothing and is therefore obligated to seek work, often limited in supply and often limited by financial reasons to be within the abilities of their region to provide.

Migrant workers were common in the Dirty Thirty’s but were also treated with disdain and violence by police, strike breakers, and corporate owners. Labour is not free to move - other than the Filipino maids and Mexican farm workers that are imported legally and illegally to provide labour cheaper than local people will accept. Contrary to that, labour is often forced to move within the empirical sphere as industrialization and wealth creation force peasants and small landowners off their fields and into the cities, as has happened in many African countries and in South America, or, as occurred with Korean labourers under Imperial Japan, were forced into areas of industrial labour. As the ‘globalized’ economy has strengthened for the corporations, labour has become another resource that is essentially under their control, with the means of production always seeking the lowest paying, least safe and healthy, lowest security labour area. Labour can now be bought and sold for the lowest available price.

Owning the global commons

Finally, while ownership of intellectual ideas has generally been accepted through copyright and patent laws, intellectual, scientific, cultural, and environmental aspects are also becoming part of private property. Corporations are patenting genetic codes, and the information that may or may not lead to breakthroughs in health research. Individual plants and animal stocks are having their genetic information owned and controlled by companies that use contracts on harvesting, seed planting, and all aspects of cultivation that keep the farmer almost as an indentured servant to the company, at the same time increasing the susceptibility of the environment through loss of wild genetic stock.

The general trend in the push for a full capitalist neo-liberal market agenda is that anything can be commodified and turned into private property for profit, from the essentials of water to the future potential of genetic chemistry. The global commons, consisting of water, air, agricultural land, wilderness species of plants and animals, and the environmental and genetic value that still remains largely hidden within them, is being grabbed up by large corporations, supported by a government that supports itself and the corporations with what could be an overwhelming military force.

Corporate democracy

There is and always has been something inherently wrong with the idea of a non-democratic corporation seeking maximum profit and then also trying to reflect the truest ideals of democracy. Owners and shareholders of large corporations are concealed and screened by a “legally provided corporate veil. The whole system is posited on manipulation and coercion, and the obfuscation of how the privileging of one minority - the wealthy – is incompatible with liberal-democratic theory.”[1] Thomas Friedman is a major pundit of globalization and market liberalism as defined by the successes of large American corporations; his analysis of global technology and trade patterns may be technically correct but is mainly an exclamation of hubris bordering on jingoism for the American way. His telling comment on the true democratic and liberal value of this globalization is in his identification that “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist,” reflecting his belief in the use of force to maintain the American dream/nightmare.[2]

Robert Kagan, whose “transcendent importance” and the “continual perfection” of the American empire are the height of hubris, recognizes that it is a myth that America has ever been isolationist, that the “Expansion of territory and influence has been the inescapable reality of American history.” He accepts the Euro centric view of the original colonies “threatened on all sides by…an untamed wilderness.” In his limited view, America is the world leader through belief in its own principles, yet accepts the logic that the language of military power is all, the only language others might understand.[3] It would follow by extension then that an American principle is that military power is business as usual. For Kagan, Friedman’s fist is not hidden. For both, business, war, and empire work together.

Business as usual

The pattern, although defined differently by different sets of laws and rules as monarchies, governments, and their associated institutions changed, has been consistent. Corporations are part and parcel of the political process, and therefore are part and parcel of “the intercourse of governments and peoples.” This in turn makes it possible to modify Clausewitz’s statement to reflect the reality of empire that the only source of war is business corporations and that war is simply a continuation of business. In North America, this began from the very start – in spite of Kagan’s myopic view - as “Our western predecessors dispossessed indigenous people who lived in territories that they, the Westerners felt the need to exploit; they slaughtered the people and destroyed their ancient cultures in the unabated search for material wealth. They pillaged and ravaged natural resources and animal life as if there would be no tomorrow.”[4]

The “other means” that Clausewitz refers to are the use of superior armaments, germ warfare, genocide, environmental destruction, terror and torture, usurpation of land and resources, either backed up by, directly supported by, or covertly aided by the U.S. military through each stage of its developing empire.

Its time to get back to business.

[1] Glasbeek, Harry. Wealth by Stealth Corporate Crime, Corporate Law, and the Perversion of Democracy. Between the Lines, Toronto, 2002. p. 241.

[2] Friedman, Thomas L. The Lexus and the Olive Tree - Understanding Globalization. Anchor Books (Random House), New York, 2000. p. 464.

[3] Kagan, Robert. Of Paradise and Power - America and Europe in the New World Order. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2003. p. 86-90.

[4] Glasbeek, ibid. p.2-3.