By Manuel Raposo
February 14, 2025
The author is editor of the Portuguese Marxist web magazine, Mudar de Vida (Change of Life, jornalmudardevida.net). His article, published Feb. 8, discussed the frenetic war drive in the NATO member countries of the European Union as these countries follow U.S. imperialist leadership in mobilizing for war with Russia and China.
‘Lack of bread, plenty for NATO,’ Lisbon, 2024.
Directed at the working class in Portugal and the rest of Europe, the article is also pertinent to the workers and the antiwar forces in the United States. While benefiting a small part of the capitalist class, the war drive will threaten cuts to all living conditions for the great majority of the population.
Translation: John Catalinotto.
The same character who once accused the Portuguese people of squandering European Union subsidies “on women and wine” recently demanded that the country’s military spending (like that of all NATO members) be increased from 2% to 5% of GDP. He even said outright, with the arrogance of a colonizer, that this increase in spending should be obtained by cutting pensions, public health and education. The character, Mark Rutte, was then prime minister of the Netherlands and is now secretary-general of NATO.
Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro received him in Lisbon with the utmost solicitude, calling him “my friend” and accepting without restriction the imposition of this tax collector, whose purpose is none other than to feed the anti-Russian and anti-Chinese crusade launched by the U.S. and welcomed by the European Union.
‘NATO needs a war mentality’
In an attempt to overcome natural resistance — not from the leaders, but from the European population, which is already fed up with war — Rutte has tried to justify the extortion with the idea that Europe is facing a serious danger against which it must prepare: the “Russian threat,” recovering the ideological and propaganda arsenal of the Cold War. To confront this “threat,” says Rutte, it is necessary to adopt a “war mentality,” in other words, to instill in European populations the conviction that Russia is an enemy and convince them to give up social interests in order to feed the war machine of U.S. imperialism and its European allies.
The NATO narrative, which the Portuguese authorities and their court of propagandists embrace and cannily repeat, is the mirror image of what today’s imperialism, in its rotten state, has to offer the peoples — now not just the peoples of the so-called peripheral world, but also of the developed world itself. Goodbye progress, better lives, social advancement, peace, etc. etc. That ship has sailed. From now on, war mentality, increased military spending, declining living conditions. That’s the program.
‘Reindustrialization’ or simply the business of armaments?
Someone once said that capitalism, faced with a problem, doesn’t solve it — it invents a business. The problem is the senility of Western capitalism, specifically the blockage of the capital accumulation process. The solution, the business, is the arms race.
Since the mid-1970s, Western capitalism has been in a long stagnation that continues to this day and from which it can find no way out. Over the past half-century, its growth rates have fallen consistently. Since capitalism is a system based on continuous growth, stagnation means decadence, senility and death. This is the underlying reason for the decline of U.S. imperialism. Its dependent partners, which share the same characteristics of an ageing capitalism, such as Europe, suffer from the same problem and are therefore dragged down.
The arms industry business is presented as the miraculous solution (in fact, the last resort) for the “re-industrialization” of Europe and is even seen as the path to a renewal of its economic splendour, its “autonomy” (in the face of the unbridled expression of U.S. dominance) and its “role in the world” (as an imperialist power, obviously).
Fruit of these desperate circumstances, the [former Italian Prime Minister Mario] Draghi Report for the “salvation” of Europe, the warmongering arrogance of Mark Rutte and the servile ignorance of Luís Montenegro converge with one purpose: to make a business out of the “war mentality,” feeding a very specific sector of capital at the expense of what remains of the European welfare state.
None of them are concerned about the immediate and long-term social consequences that this turnaround will have for Europe’s and Portugal’s economic policy.
Waste as an economic program
As with investment in the luxury goods industry, investment in the arms industry is socially unproductive.
A productive investment is characterized by helping to increase social wealth. The resulting surplus value can be reinvested and reproduced, allowing for the wider accumulation of capital — diversifying the production of goods and their consumption, (at least potentially) increasing employment, (at least potentially) improving living conditions, etc. This type of investment therefore results in an extended reproduction of social capital.
This is not the case with unproductive investments. As is clear with the luxury industry, all production of goods of this type is aimed not at society as a whole but essentially at the ruling classes or even just a portion of them. The social effect, so to speak, of the goods resulting from this production is restricted to satisfying the particular interests of a fraction of a given social class.
Of the value that this industrial sector produces, only a portion results in social benefit (namely, through the wages paid to its workers); everything else goes to restricted private consumption without contributing to the conditions of existence of society as a whole. From the point of view of society as a whole, it constitutes an unproductive cost, or even a waste. This type of investment does not result in the widespread reproduction of social capital.
The arms industry intended for war, which is what we’re referring to, has these characteristics: It’s aimed at a specific type of consumption (even following programmed waste and obsolescence plans), which takes the form of the exercise of violence by the dominant classes, not only in their disputes, but above all in the conquest or defense of privileges vis-à-vis rebellious countries and peoples.
The type of consumption that is characteristic of this sector — evident above all in the final disposal of goods, which are destined to be eliminated, themselves destroying other social capital — constitutes a brake on economic growth, in the sense that this consumption fails to create the elements needed for the extended reproduction of social capital.
Society pays
These socially unproductive industries, as can be seen, do not fail to generate profit for the capitalists who invest in them; they do not fail to provide employment and wages for the workers they exploit; they do not fail to contribute to the consumption of other goods paid for with their workers’ wages. In this strict sense, they produce surplus value and therefore profit for their respective capitalist owners.
In the specific case of the war industry, the state guarantees that the products have a safe, guaranteed market. The state plays a decisive role in this process by acquiring arms production through the taxes it levies. In doing so, it dissipates social wealth in pure loss, usurping value from the direct and indirect wages of the working masses.
Investments in the military industry can thus always count on low-risk and usually gigantic profits. This is the point that appeals to the gluttony of capitalist investors, who find it difficult to realize profits in other sectors of activity and generates applause from political leaders in office.
But, we insist, insofar as the products in question are not intended for consumption by the general population, or even a significant part of it; insofar as the value they produce is squandered — they cannot contribute to a general (even potential) improvement in the living conditions of the community. And, on the contrary, insofar as they tend to take capital resources away from the productive sphere (everyday consumer goods, housing), as well as resources from social services (health, pensions, education), or even resources destined for equipment and infrastructure (transport, roads, sanitation networks or energy) — they contribute to impoverishing social capital. They constitute unproductive costs paid by society.
“Costs that for society belong to the faux frais of production [false costs, extra production costs], can be a source of enrichment for the individual capitalist.” (Karl Marx, Capital)
A course to disaster
The hopes pinned on the profits from the arms industry — particularly regarding the revival of the European economy — are not only illusory, they seek to mask the economic and social degradation that the imperialist world is unable to halt on its home soil. Waste and unproductive activity are gaining increasing weight in the capitalist system in general, particularly visible in the Western world.
This path of wasted social labor and parasitism is accentuated by the aging and inoperability of the capitalist system, contributing to worsening, not improving, the general conditions of existence of today’s societies. In particular, the continuous growth of military spending appears not only as a derivative of a broken production system, but also as an extreme necessity for the defense of the ruling classes — in order to appropriate resources and remain in power.
Draghi, Rutte or Montenegro, each on their own scale and in their own role, are agents of this course towards disaster disguised as a “salvation program” for Europe. The people of Europe have every right and duty to fight against taking this path to catastrophe mapped out in Washington and Brussels, as reflected in the “war mentality” that NATO wants to impose. This path fuels the climate of military confrontation, liquidates social rights and freedoms, and leads to even greater economic degradation through the massive mobilization of resources for the arms sector.
Montenegro may well swear that the colossal contributions to NATO will not jeopardize the social rights of the Portuguese … but Rutte’s brutal words contradict him. The logic behind Europe’s rearmament plans, especially in an environment of stagnation throughout Western capitalism, points directly to an increase in the exploitation of labor and the deterioration of workers’ living conditions, since this is the source from which capital draws resources for its adventures.
