Brian Becker Seminar #1: The Military Industrial Complex, Biden is the new Bill Clinton, and the next US war (Preview)
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 9 April 2021
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this December 2020 patrons-only seminar, Brian and the crew talked about the big picture of US imperialism from World War II to today, including what the Biden administration means for US foreign policy. Check out the preview now and subscribe at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram to hear the rest!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to The Socialist Program. |
| 0:03.0 | This is the audio of our monthly seminar. |
| 0:05.0 | Subscribe and support this programming at patreon.com slash the Socialist Program to join live once a month and ask Brian Becker your questions and listen to them as soon as they come out. |
| 0:16.0 | Thanks so much for your help in keeping this independent show going. |
| 0:19.0 | We can make this program with you, |
| 0:21.2 | but not without you. Everything changes for the United States coinciding with the beginning of the |
| 0:28.4 | Korean War. And it's not coincidental that that war has not ended. It started in 1950. |
| 0:36.4 | That led to the remobilization of the American military, using the UN as a |
| 0:41.5 | fig leaf this time rather than direct U.S. military aggression. And the U.S. went to war in Korea, |
| 0:48.9 | but it never demobilized after the Korean War. From then on, there was a permanent armaments industry. |
| 0:56.6 | And we explore in our discussion with Lee Camp why that is. And even at the beginning of the |
| 1:02.9 | permanent war machine, after the promulgation of what was called National Security Doctrine |
| 1:07.8 | 68, there was an understanding within the American capitalist class that the armaments industry was at least partly a subsidy for American corporations from the government so that the U.S. would not be plunged into the same kind of economic duress and distress and morass that had existed before World War II, |
| 1:30.9 | which was the Great Depression. There was a feeling that the depression cycles were going to |
| 1:36.6 | happen once again, and the U.S. had to have a countervailing, pump-priming, Keynesian economic |
| 1:43.6 | spending program, but instead of it being for people, it would be to subsidize the arms industry. |
| 1:50.1 | And then the second reason for the creation of a military industrial complex, of course, is that U.S. capitalism restored world capitalism. |
| 1:59.3 | European capitalism had been destroyed during the war, |
| 2:02.2 | both the Allies and the Access Powers. Japan, too, was destroyed. Its cities lay in ruins. |
| 2:08.6 | There was revolution sweeping Asia, the Chinese Revolution, the Korean Revolution, the Vietnamese |
| 2:13.9 | Revolution, the National Liberation Movement in Indonesia, all of Southeast Asia, |
| 2:19.5 | throughout Africa, the Middle East. The U.S. became the anchor of a new global world order, |
... |
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