Capitalism And Nuclear Weapons: Just The Right Dose, Please.

Our society is predicated on the existence of an economic system that destroys the natural world, and weapons that guarantee our own destruction.

Photo by Abenteuer Albanien on Unsplash

by Ben Cohen

After World War II, a new global conflict emerged between competing economic ideologies that would dominate history for the next 40 years. America capitalism and Soviet communism fought a proxy war fueled by the development of highly advanced nuclear weapons to deter the other system from taking over.

Ultimately, the West’s combination of liberalized market and nuclear weapons won, leaving a new world order where capitalism reigned supreme.

A highly centralized economy played a major role in the downfall of Communism in Russia, rotting the system from the inside as Russians defied the often ludicrous dictates of their government. As economists Andre Shleiffer and Robert W. Vishny argued, rigid planning, excessive price distortions, and repressed inflation “led to a breakdown of traditional economic ties and coordination mechanisms in the Soviet economy”.

The fear of an external enemy could not save the Soviet empire from collapse, highlighting a society’s need for at least a degree of economic (and political) freedom. With nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union had a monopoly on violence, but not its own economy.

To what degree then, is the Western world held together by free markets and a monopoly on violence? Is one more important than the other, and what happens when we attempt to move away from a system that is essentially based on greed and fear? Furthermore, with our increased understanding of humanity’s environmental impact on the planet, is capitalism and the existence of nuclear weapons compatible with our own existence?

Held together by insanity

Sane people should view nuclear weapons as an insane technology. It is an inconceivably destructive power that primates should never have invented. We have used nuclear weapons on other humans twice, and the results were so unbelievably awful we have never used them since.

“Japan learned from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the tragedy wrought by nuclear weapons must never be repeated and that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist,” wrote Japanese writer and philosopher Daisaku Ikeda.

Almost 80 years later, the world is yet again facing the prospect of nuclear war. With Russia openly threatening to use these destructive weapons against Ukraine, we are confronting the insanity our very recent ancestors thought it wise to introduce.