Deeper Links
So far in this discussion of military influences on the development and use of technologies, it has been assumed that the purpose of the military is simply to defend societies against aggression. This is the usual picture drawn by militaries and governments and widely believed by members of the public. But there is another viewpoint: that the military is tied in fundamental ways to social structures, especially the state, capitalism, bureaucracy and patriarchy. In this picture, the military both supports and is supported by these structures. This has implications for understanding military-related technology.
Only occasionally are contemporary military forces used to engage in combat against military forces of another country. It is actually much more common for a country’s military to be used against the people of the country itself, most obviously in military dictatorships. This suggests that militaries have as much to do with social control — in the interests of certain groups in a society — as with defence against foreign threats. At the global level, military forces and alliances such as NATO serve to protect dominant groups from challenge. For example, NATO troops help to sustain global economic inequality.
The state, in a sociological sense, can be defined as a community based on a monopoly over organised violence within a territory, this violence being considered “legitimate” by the state itself.[36] In modern societies, organised violence is only considered legitimate when exercised by the police or the military. The state is more commonly thought of as being composed of the government (including national and local officials), government bureaucracies, the legal system, the military, and government-run operations such as schools. The state maintains itself financially mainly through taxes, administers services and regulations through government bureaucracies, and maintains order through the police and the legal system. In any major challenge to the system — such as refusal to pay taxes — the police and, if necessary, the military are available to maintain state power. War is a primary impetus behind the rise of the state. Indeed, war-making and state-making are mutually reinforcing.[37]
The state must defend against external threats, to be sure, but internal threats are more frequent and more complex. Most contemporary states administer unequal societies, with wealth, status and privilege distributed very unevenly, usually accompanied by systematic methods to maintain this inequality, such as class structure and sexual and ethnic discrimination. The pervasive injustice of societies stimulates challenges to the status quo. In societies with representative governments, the usual methods of social control are schooling, manipulation of perception through the mass media, systems of legitimacy such as parliaments and courts, and the economic system. But when these systems are not sufficient to protect the interests of dominant groups, the police and the military may be deployed, for example to arrest demonstrators or break strikes.
During the cold war, the superpowers could justify their massive arsenals by pointing to the threat posed by the enemy. The cold war is over but military spending, though somewhat cut back, continues at a very high rate. It has been widely remarked by commentators that the US Department of Defense and spy agencies have been desperately searching for new legitimations for their existence — favourite rationales are “rogue states,” terrorism and the drug trade. The lack of an overt justification for a continuing military megamachine provides added weight to explanations referring to the military’s role in maintaining systems of inequality.
The links between the military and the state also have implications for technology. A large proportion of funding for R&D comes from the state. This includes many nominally civilian areas, such as transport systems, communications, sewerage, energy and industry. Planners within the state are likely to prefer technological systems that ensure continuation of state power.
For example, central provision of energy, through oil and natural gas supplies and through electricity produced at large power stations, is ideally suited for allowing state control or regulation. Taxes can easily be imposed on such energy operations, since consumers must obtain their energy from a few large suppliers. Contrast this with a community in which building design eliminates the need for most energy for heating, town planning allows most people to walk or ride bicycles, and small local enterprises provide for energy from the sun, wind and biofuels. With such a community, there is much less need for strong state intervention. The energy system is low risk: there is no hazard from nuclear reactor accidents, large oil spills, or sabotage of electricity generating plants. There is less dependence on external supplies, and hence resource control — and struggles over this control — is not so vital an issue. There is no great need for heavy investment in automobile manufacture or freeway construction, and hence less need for central regulation or funding in these sorts of areas. Because the community is largely self-sufficient in energy, there is less justification for taxing the energy sector.[38]
As will be discussed in chapter 6, the conventional high-energy-use system, with its high risks, high vulnerability to disruption and large economic investments, also makes it a target for military attack. Thus, military forces are needed to defend such a system. By contrast, the low-energy self-reliant system has much less need for military defence.[39] This example shows the mutually consistent and reinforcing roles of the state and the military. The energy system that provides a convenient vehicle for state intervention and extraction of resources (taxes) for the state is also one that requires and justifies the military. Part of the state’s extraction of resources is to provide energy supplies for the military itself. Centralised provision of energy is convenient for this purpose. By contrast, a system built around energy efficiency, solar heaters and town planning to reduce transport doesn’t provide much scope for supporting an energy-hungry military.
From the point of view of the state, the traditional dichotomies between “peace” and “war” and between “civil” and “military” are increasingly irrelevant. The military capacity of a state depends on systems of education and training, R&D and industry, all ostensibly “civil” arenas. Especially since World War II, the states of industrial societies have pursued policies concerning knowledge and production that lay the basis for technological warfare.[40]
Monopoly capitalism — built around large corporations with active intervention by the state in support of these corporations — favours technologies that also tend to be useful for the military. The automobile industry is an example. A transport system based on large production plants is relatively easy to adapt for military purposes. This is partly because the plants can be converted to produce military goods, but more because the plants are controlled by a few people through large corporate bureaucracies. This organisational structure is easily influenced to serve military ends, either through military contracts or through direct administration in wartime.[41] By contrast, a production system based on smaller enterprises producing more bicycles and fewer heavy vehicles, with a great deal of worker control, is less subject to central control either by capitalists or military administrators.
The economic system commonly called communism — but better described as state socialism, bureaucratic socialism or state capitalism — serves military imperatives even more directly and easily than monopoly capitalism.[42] In the case of both capitalism and state socialism, the large scale of production, the role of the state in regulation and the system of bureaucratic management of enterprises all favour technological systems that are compatible with military purposes.
Similar considerations apply to the role of bureaucracy, which can be defined as a way of organising work built around the principle that workers are replaceable cogs.[43] Bureaucracies are hierarchical, based on a division of labour and operate using standardised procedures. Most government bodies are organised as bureaucracies, but so are large corporations, political parties, churches, trade unions and many other organisations. The military is perhaps the ultimate in bureaucracies, with its rigid hierarchy (the ranks) and system of command. Bureaucracy is the basic organising principle of the state, monopoly capitalism and the military. The technological systems favoured by bureaucratic elites are ones that ensure them a continuing role and position of power. They tend to favour large systems requiring centralised control, such as centralised welfare systems and large hospitals. The previous examples of transport and energy illustrate the interests of bureaucratic elites.
Yet another important social structure linked to the military is patriarchy, the organised social domination of
