Some food for thought from George Orwell's '1984'...
Does anything really ever change?
The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.
Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do
with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial
society.
From the moment when the machine first made its
appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human
drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had
disappeared.
If the machine were used deliberately for that
end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated
within a few generations.
And in fact, without being used for
any such purpose, but by a sort of automatic process - by producing
wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute - the machine
did raise the living standards of the average human being very greatly
over a period of about fifty years at the end of the nineteenth and the
beginning of the twentieth centuries.
But it was also clear
that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction -
indeed, in some sense was the destruction - of a hierarchical society.
In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat,
lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a
motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most
important form of inequality would already have disappeared.
If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction.
It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the
sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly
distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged
caste.
But in practice such a society could not long remain stable.
For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass
of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become
literate and would learn to think for themselves.
And when once
they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the
privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away.
In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.
To return to the agricultural past, as some thinkers about the
beginning of the twentieth century dreamed of doing, was not a
practicable solution.
It conflicted with the tendency towards
mechanization which had become quasi-instinctive throughout almost the
whole world, and moreover, any country which remained industrially
backward was helpless in a military sense and was bound to be dominated,
directly or indirectly, by its more advanced rivals.
Nor was
it a satisfactory solution to keep the masses in poverty by restricting
the output of goods. This happened to a great extent during the final
phase of capitalism, roughly between 1920 and 1940.
The economy
of many countries was allowed to stagnate, land went out of
cultivation, capital equipment was not added to, great blocks of the
population were prevented from working and kept half alive by State
charity.
But this, too, entailed military weakness, and since
the privations it inflicted were obviously unnecessary, it made
opposition inevitable.
The problem was how to keep the wheels
of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world.
Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in
practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour.
War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere,
or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be
used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run,
too intelligent.
Even when weapons of war are not actually
destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending
labour power without producing anything that can be consumed.
A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships.
Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any
material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another
Floating Fortress is built.
In principle, the war effort is
always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after
meeting the bare needs of the population.
In practice, the
needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that
there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is
looked on as an advantage.
It is deliberate policy to keep
even the favored groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a
general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges
and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.
By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party lives an austere, laborious kind of life.
Nevertheless, the few luxuries that he does enjoy his large,
well-appointed flat, the better texture of his clothes, the better
quality of his food and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants,
his private motor-car or helicopter - set him in a different world from a
member of the Outer Party, and the members of the Outer Party have a
similar advantage in comparison with the submerged masses whom we call
'the proles'.
The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city,
where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes the difference
between wealth and poverty.
And at the same time the
consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the
handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable
condition of survival... ...
...war is waged by each ruling
group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make
or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society
intact.
The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading.
It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war
has ceased to exist.
War is Peace...
In short, the purpose of war is to keep the ruling class in power, while the lower classes remain powerless...!
by Tyler Durden April 17, 2024 from ZeroHedge Website
READ MORE
Big Brother Loves You...
Global Reset - Great Reset
Global Militarism - The Military-Industrial Complex
The Global Elite - The Transnational Capitalist Class - Oligarchy
