PEACE, IT'S TERRIBLE!
Chase, Stuart
Peace, It's Terrible! by STUART CHASE This is the first of a series of two articles exploring the economic consequences of peace. The second, which will appear next month, will propose...
...If they were eliminated, demand would have to be found for an equivalent sum to keep employment at 1959 levels...
...The shift from a war to peace economy in 1946 was accomplished swiftly because there was a tremendous pent-up buying power for consumer goods...
...Somebody, we hope, will do something—or perhaps disarmament will prove a will-of-thewisp...
...In addition, because of the rise in population, annual output should increase by $15 to $20 billion over the year before...
...Another began in 1939...
...China is trying the same formula in even more ruthless terms...
...Fortunately the country had elaborate plans for mobilization in 1939, as the threat of war in Europe intensified...
...I agree with Seymour Harris that American production has not been dependent on munitions for prosper ity over the generations—contrary to the Marxian postulate—but it has been dependent at certain limited times and this is one of them...
...eight million unemployed all found their way, by 1942, either into war industry or into the armed forces...
...How will that formidable power center, the Pentagon, react to the prospect of closing Annapolis, West Point, and the new Air Force Academy...
...Whatever the figure, there is no possibility of business-asusual filling the gap...
...How do the wives of these men feel about it...
...But if anybody has any plans for the day peace breaks out, they are a remarkably well-kept secret...
...How many of us have faced the alternatives seriously and really want to disarm...
...Today, total defense outlays, says Harris, amount to $46 billion a year...
...It is pushing the U. S. economy on various fronts, and is way ahead on missiles and space exploration...
...they ask...
...Take capital formation out of Ivan's hide, not from foreign loans...
...We have reached an era of "private opulence and public squalor...
...by STUART CHASE This is the first of a series of two articles exploring the economic consequences of peace...
...If 70 million workers (all the "gainfully employed") now provide $450 billion of goods and services a year—Gross National Product—I estimate that each is accountable for an average of $6,000 or more...
...Yet it is more vital than ever before that we start planning without delay...
...These figures are rough, but they give at least an idea of the magnitude of the problem...
...Now the Russians are working on a Seven-Year Plan, and feeling most optimistic about it...
...I HAPPENED to be in Moscow in 1928 when the first Five-Year Plan was being prepared, and spent a week in a great barn of a building interviewing Gosplan economists, geographers, statisticians, and engineers...
...Most travelers report that I would...
...Meanwhile the Cold War permits them to eat their cake and have it too...
...We must [consume] this additional amount of goods each year if we are to avoid unemployment., , Adding $15 billion to the $46 billion, it follows that about $60 billion a year will be the gap to be filled if disarmament is total...
...Not many citizens are aware of the statistics, but most of us are aware of the problem, even if we believe that war will some day come again...
...is cut $60 billion, some 10 million workers would lose their jobs (about 15 per cent of the gainfully employed...
...At the best, both women and men feel ambivalent about the pursuit of peace and are inclined tacitly to accept the ultimate inevitability of war...
...It might be six million unemployed, it might be 12 million, depending on the disarmament agreement...
...We've always had wars and always will," say some of the respondents in my sidewalk poll...
...The project looked rather shaky, but I could not help admiring the energy and confidence with which it was attacked...
...If disarmament is partial—say the $46 billion is cut 50 per cent to $23 billion—the gap then to be filled will be $23 plus $15, or about $40 billion a year, including the annual increment required by population growth...
...Next month, I plan to sketch how we might go about laying the groundwork for the hopeful transition from Cold War to peace...
...If I returned to that old Gosplan building (there is probably a new one now), would I find the same driving energy...
...Thus if the G.N.P...
...He is the author of many books including Goals for America, The Economy of Abundance, Idle Money, Idle Men, and soon to be published, Program for Amer icans.—THE EDITORS...
...But in the United States today, a large-scale economic shift away from armaments will require almost a revolution in our economic concepts...
...Does a worker in the air plane industry, 90 per cent dependent on government orders...
...A moment's consideration makes it perfectly clear that peace, so wonderful in theory, may be terrible in practice for a great many Americans, for an indefinite period...
...What happens to the job, the mortgage, and the kids...
...While we have been saturating ourselves with fintail cars, motels, movies, juke boxes, outboard motors, cosmetics, Miami Beach, Las Vegas, filter-tips, quiz programs, and comics, we have neglected education, health research, urban redevelopment, river pollution, parks and public beaches, airports, flood control, hospitals, conservation—a host of social services essential to the national well being and to the individual enjoyment of our personal wealth...
...After the dancing in the streets, that sound will turn to a knell, as the stock market dives toward the center of the earth...
...Our vital need is not for more and more consumer goods supplied by private enterprise, but for a wide range of social "goods" that can be created only in the public sector (from which private industry would nevertheless profit substantially...
...Chase is one of the nation's foremost social analysts, has served as expert consultant to management, labor, and the federal government...
...Millions of them have a deeply vested interest in the defense establishment...
...At that time production statistics, such as they were, showed the Russian economy about at the level of 1914, just before World War I. Now look at the Soviet Union...
...Does a company president, who fears that disarmament is going to put his corporation out of business...
...Suppose we wake up some bright morning to the sound of bells...
...Does an Army major, who thinks it will be hard to find a civilian job...
...With all these Five-Year and Seven-Year Plans on the record, it is not surprising that Premier Nikita Khrushchev comes forward with a Four-Year Plan for world disarmament, broached in person at the United Nations in New York when he was here last September...
...Morris Rubin reports, after a swing around the country on a lecture trip, that audiences freeze up when he begins to argue for disarmament...
...It is a nasty problem, one we prefer not thinking about...
...But as The Progressive pointed out, Adlai billion dollars—or about one-seventh...
...I say fortunately, because the plans expedited the grim transference when it came...
...Will a Senator from New England come out for the cancellation of defense contracts in his district...
...The second, which will appear next month, will propose suggested adjustments for the American economy "if peace breaks out...
...The Pentagon, I understand, has complete and elaborate plans right now for blowing up the world, using not only fission and fusion but gases and germs...
...if it is cut $40 billion, nearly seven million workers would be out on the street (10 per cent of the gainfully employed...
...Five-Year Plans have succeeded one another, each boosting production—except during the war...
...A similar economic shift in Russia today would presumably move with great ease, since the austerity of the Soviet citizen's life provides an almost unlimited market for consumer goods...
...The formula behind the success of these plans is simple: to keep citizens on the lowest level of consumption they will tolerate, and use the labor and materials so saved for capital expansion—factories, mines, hydro-electric dams, scientific laboratories, universities, and military installations, especially the last...
...All the smart money laughed off his proposal as more Soviet propaganda...
Vol. 24 • January 1960 • No. 1
