All the posturing of the right-wing and far-right political movements, and now of a section of the left, against "we can't accommodate all the world's misery," reveals that all these fine people will end up wanting a salvific war.
The war against the poor, the war against the surplus populations who are already starving in Sudan and Gaza... The deportations organized by the supremacist Trump in California, using the Guantanamo prison in Cuba.
This permanent war against the destitute is taking another turn with the preparations aimed at bringing all ongoing conflicts into the great cauldron of world war.
We have just learned that 32 NATO countries will meet in The Hague on June 24 and 25, 2025, with the agenda being the hyper-militarization of these countries. NATO Secretary General Rutte made it clear that achieving these goals would require unprecedented military spending:
"We will need significantly higher spending. That's the basis of everything."
The basis of everything for the arms trusts, which demand that states serve as a financial pump to operate their industry of death. We are thus once again confronted with what Rosa Luxemburg explained in her text: militarism: a field of action for capital. From the beginning of her article on militarism, Rosa Luxemburg explains:
"Militarism has yet another important function. From a purely economic point of view, it is a privileged means for capital to realize surplus value; in other words, it is a field of accumulation for it." » (The Accumulation of Capital, Rosa Luxemburg, Maspero Edition, Militarism: The Field of Action of Capital, p. 123.)
What Rosa Luxemburg emphasizes in her text on militarism is that the state, through taxes, removes a portion of surplus value from the working class,1 which, instead of being spent on subsistence, will allow the arms industry to operate at full capacity. This is ultimately what is currently happening internationally, except that the working class has considerably diminished in number in Europe and the USA, so it is the entire population that will be subjected to all kinds of levies. The French state being the European champion in this regard, only traditional levies will not be enough to finance war production; credit will have to intervene. It's now official: the European Central Bank (ECB) will invest €800 billion for Europe's rearmament. The same ECB explains that the planned increases in defense spending in the Eurozone could revive concerns about the debt of certain states if they are not accompanied by sufficient growth. However, according to Rutt, this is not enough; more sacrifices will be required because the Russians and their allies are ready to challenge NATO within five years. Meanwhile, Israel has just struck hard against Iran.2
The agenda for financing the Arms Trusts:
control of public spending, which would imply unprecedented cuts in certain areas (notably social benefits and the civil service);
a tax increase (the necessary increase would represent a rise of nearly 2 percentage points in VAT each year for five years);
An increase in the employment rate, particularly among young people, the least skilled, older workers, and women (the employment rate would need to increase by 4.7 percentage points in five years, representing an increase of approximately 1.9 million jobs);
The use of European financing, via joint debt at the European Union level.
In Brussels, Rutte explained that 3.5% should be spent simply to achieve the agreed military capabilities and objectives. But overall, at least 5% was needed to prepare for war.
We were well aware of this scenario of frenzied militarization before the Second World War:
The United States, as during the First World War, would attempt to remain neutral while operating its arms industry to fuel the conflict. Thus, the Lend-Lease program was established, a war on credit. This law of March 11, 1941, authorized Roosevelt to sell war material deemed vital to the country. As we have noted, the crisis of 1929, then that of 1936, had revived the risk of mass unemployment, with the consequence of insurrectional movements that had to be nipped in the bud by exporting the surplus of unemployed people into the war.
The surprise attack by Japanese militarism on the Pearl Harbor naval base on the island of Hawaii would reveal some gray areas of the US establishment. Roosevelt was long accused of being informed of the Japanese attack and of having only moved the aircraft carriers. Wanting to enter the war to create outlets for private industries, he had to raise new taxes and have Congress accept this war budget. Congress almost unanimously accepted entry into the war against Japan. In return, on December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
The consequences for families were not long in coming: conscription (compulsory military service) was passed on December 20, 1941, making all Americans between the ages of 20 and 40 eligible for military service. In order to convert the peacetime economy into a war economy, the General Maximum Act was passed (blocking inflation and significantly increasing income tax) to finance arms orders. This tax policy was reinforced by the Revenue Act in October 1942. During the years 1941 to 1944, war production, that is, weapons and tools of war, were produced in industrial quantities. The United States built 171,257 combat aircraft and 1,200 warships.
Rosa Luxemburg's predictions about the role of militarization in the economy were once again confirmed:
Now we see that indirect taxes extorted from workers, if used for the production of war materials, offer capital a new field of accumulation. In practice, based on the indirect tax system, militarism fulfills these two functions: by lowering the standard of living of the working class, it ensures, on the one hand, the maintenance of the organs of capitalist domination, the standing army, and, on the other hand, it provides capital with a privileged field of accumulation. 1
The country where this militarization is most caricatured is North Korea and its repeated famines.
In conclusion
The militarization of the world economy demonstrates that capitalism is at an impasse, that of the limits of its expanded reproduction. Indeed, the situation is such that war budgets will cause state debt to explode, and the tax burden will become unsustainable for populations who will have to bear the burden of militarism. Germany, NATO's second largest contributor, is rearming extensively. Its war budget exceeds anything the country has seen since the war. With the €100 billion "special fund" for 2022 and the adoption this year of an additional €1 trillion fund, annual military budgets are exploding. While key politicians, both in government and opposition, are calling for military spending to reach 5% of GDP, the ruling class is openly preparing for total war. The Bundeswehr (the German armed forces) would fully equip all army divisions and brigades and invest massively in the air force and navy. He called this project a generational "Kraftakt" (Herculean effort). Within the EU, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and France have public debt exceeding 100%. In France, increasing defense spending from the current 2% to 3.5% by 2030, as announced by Paris, would represent €120 billion per year, double the current level. This is a significant challenge, given that the country has the highest public deficit in the eurozone (5.8%) and a high debt level (113% of GDP). In France, as elsewhere, these investments could stimulate the economy if made within the European Union, but they also risk adding to public finances already weakened by the aftereffects of the pandemic and rising borrowing costs. Great Britain, for its part, is part of the AUKUS pact, concluded in 2021 between it, the United States, and Australia. Prime Minister K. Starner has just delivered a veritable declaration of war, confirmed by a preliminary report from the British Strategic Defense Review, conducted by an external body, which includes 62 recommendations providing for the armed forces to move to a state of "war readiness." "We will build at least six new munitions factories in the UK, creating 1,000 jobs. We will produce thousands of new long-range weapons in the UK to strengthen European deterrence by supporting the creation of nearly 100 additional jobs. We will defend our homeland by investing in missile defense systems to better protect our islands. We will create a hybrid Royal Navy, bringing together drones, submarine warships, and aircraft, to ensure surveillance of the North Atlantic and beyond," the Prime Minister stated. The government will also propose £1 billion (€1.2 billion) for a new CyberEM command to boost operations.
Cyber and digital capabilities, as well as £1.5 billion in additional funding to repair and renovate armed forces accommodation. These investments should contribute to achieving the UK's target, unveiled earlier this year, of increasing defense spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2027 and 3% in the next parliamentary term.
G.Bad June 14, 2025 Traduction ordinateur
NOTES
1 "The transfer of a portion of the working class's purchasing power to the state means a corresponding reduction in the working class's participation in the consumption of subsistence means."
2--Several loud explosions were heard during the night of Thursday, June 12, 2025, to Friday, June 13, 2025, in Iran, particularly in the capital, Tehran. In the aftermath, an Israeli military source reported that the Jewish state had targeted several Iranian nuclear facilities. Anticipating a response from the Islamic Republic, the Israeli Defense Minister declared a state of emergency in the country.
3--Ultimately, the deterioration of the normal conditions for labor renewal causes a deterioration of the labor force itself, a decrease in output and average labor productivity, and thus threatens the conditions for the production of surplus value. But capital will only feel these results much later, so it initially does not take them into account in its economic calculations. These results are only felt in the hardening of the workers' defensive reactions.
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