Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky by Noam Chomsky & John Schoeffel & Peter Mitchell

Author:Noam Chomsky & John Schoeffel & Peter Mitchell [Chomsky, Noam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781595585882
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2002-01-31T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

Teach-In: Evening

1. For discussion in the U.S. business literature of the need for continued military spending and the danger posed by alternatives to it, see footnotes 9 and 10 of this chapter.

On the general role that military spending plays in the U.S. economy, see the text following this footnote in U.P., and footnotes 3, 4, 7, 8, 9 and 10 of this chapter.

2. On the similar economic effects of civilian and military spending, see for example, Paul Samuelson, Economics (Seventh Edition), New York: McGraw, 1967. An excerpt (p. 767; emphasis in original):

Before leaving the problem of achieving and keeping full employment, we should examine what would happen if the cold war were to give way to relaxed international tension. If America could cut down drastically on her defense expenditures, would that confront her with a depression problem that has merely been suppressed by reliance on armament production? The answer here is much like that given in Chapter 18 to the problem of some future acceleration of automation. If there is a political will, our mixed economy can rather easily keep C + I + G [C = consumption, I = investment, G = government spending] spending up to the level needed for full employment without armament spending. There is nothing special about G spending on jet bombers and intercontinental missiles that leads to a larger multiplier support of the economy than would other kinds of G expenditure.

John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967, pp. 230–231 (adding that, to have the same effect, the civilian spending “would have to have somewhat of the same relation to technology as the military spending it replaces”).

3. Public funding of the development of computers and other advanced industries -- and the role of the Pentagon system in the U.S. economy more generally -- is an extremely important topic, which also is discussed at length in chapters 7 and 10 of U.P.

For sources on the Defense Department’s role in fostering high-technology industries, see for example, Kenneth Flamm, Targeting the Computer: Government Support and International Competition, Washington: Brookings Institution, 1987, especially ch. 3 (on the crucial role of the Pentagon in the computer industry); Laura D’Andrea Tyson, Who’s Bashing Whom?: Trade Conflict in High-Technology Industries, Washington: Institute for International Economics, 1992. An excerpt (pp. 88–90):

In its early years, up to 100 percent of the [semiconductor] industry’s output was purchased by the military, and even as late as 1968 the military claimed nearly 40 percent. In addition, there was a derived defense demand for semiconductor output from the military’s large procurement of computer output throughout the 1960s. Direct and indirect defense purchases reduced the risk of investment in both R&D and equipment for semiconductor producers, who were assured that a significant part of their output would be sold to the military. The willingness and ability of the U.S. government to purchase chips in quantity at premium prices allowed a growing number of companies to refine their production skills and develop elaborate manufacturing facilities. .

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