American business in wartime

Democracy’s arsenal

The "dollar-a-year" men and what they achieved

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"As a combative anti-Keynesian, Mr Herman scorns the notion that such triumphs resulted from the dictates of an interventionist Roosevelt administration. He often cites instead the free-market ideas of Adam Smith to support his claim that it was the profit motive that inspired America’s feats of mass production."

Mr. Herman has a very narrow and bias view of things. Do you think Roosevelt would have committed America to war if he hadn't felt that American business was up to the task and was capable?. And if it hadn't first been for subsequent American governments, with the favorable business environment they cultivated, corporate America would never have been or had the muscle to succeed in the first place. In other words, if it hadn't first been for governments and the institutions they developed corporate America would never have had the muscle or knowhow to fight and win for the allies.

It was the overall spirit of America that mustered the capabilities that enabled America to fight and win WW2, a spirit forged by its people, business and government. If it hadn't been for the planning and cooperation between the two branches, government and business, the war would never have been won. So, as the saying goes, it takes two to tango. Herman, however, makes it sound as though it only takes one, big business. Moreover, without government's aiding and abetting there would be no big business.

Would American corporations alone been capable of developing the nuclear bomb that eventually ended the war? I don't think so. It first took the insight and networking of government to made such a development possible.

On another level, imagine how reckless and wooly corporate America who be if it wasn't for the government counterbalancing it.


Yes, all true and very handsome profits they made, throughout the war and to this day.Not in vain did Eisenhower, who knew a thing or two about all this, warn about the military industrial complex and its rapacity. Today, what with convenient wars cropping up for unclear reasons, and the outsourcing of some Defense responsibilities, those involved have gone past rapacity, well past decency and morality and straight into outright fraud.


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