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Anti-Capitalist Meet-up: Eisenhower [1]

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Date: 2025-04-06

It may seem strange to bring a Republican president to an anti-capitalist meet-up, but Eisenhower had important things to say about the military-industrial complex. In fact, I believe he coined the term. The heart of his Farewell Address in 1961 is a warning to beware of the MIC.

"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

(The following quotations are from the National Archives, the Eisenhower Presidential Library. Each quote is labeled with the event and date it was uttered.)

Eisenhower never ceased to work for peace and against war.

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."

He hated having to balance the needs of the country with the demands of an ever-increasing military-industrial complex.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

He condemned the sort of "preventive war" that later administrations routinely inflicted on developing nations.

"A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled, the transportation systems destroyed, sanitation implements and systems all gone? That isn't preventive war; that is war."

Eisenhower on politics and government:

"Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage."

"I believe that the United States as a government, if it is going to be true to its own founding documents, does have the job of working toward that time when there is no discrimination made on such inconsequential reason as race, color, or religion."

On voting:

"Our American heritage is threatened as much by our own indifference as it is by the most unscrupulous office seeker or by the most powerful foreign threat. The future of this Republic is in the hands of the American voter."

"In the long perspective of history, the right to vote has been one of the strongest pillars of a free society. Our first duty is to protect this right against all encroachment."

On labor:

"I have no use for those — regardless of their political party — who hold some foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when unorganized labor was a huddled, almost helpless mass."

"Today in America unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of unreconstructed reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions. Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice."

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

(Letter from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Edgar Newton Eisenhower, 1954.)

I wrote this in a different world, October 2024, before the fuhrer was elected and the fascists took over the government. Nevertheless the warning about the abuse of power rings even truer today. Soldiers are regarded as expendable assets, to be used or used up. Veterans are regarded as "losers" especially if they are disabled. The dead are disdained, their sacrifices ignored.

President Eisenhower favored unions and the public welfare. In his day he was a centrist. Today the fascists would regard him as a dangerous radical. He would be aghast to see the depths to which this nation has sunk.

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