Before we look at the post-War period in detail, I want to devote some time to looking at the changing structure of US profits during the period 1929-2000.

I have concentrated on the role of war in generating profits for US companies, although it is clear that much bigger profits were generated in America in the 1920s and 1930s, not due to war, but under conditions of relative peace.

Only a continuing confrontation along East-West lines -and in the future increasingly along the North-South divide -can create the conditions of international tension that make the US strategy possible and, so far, successful in forcing the other countries to follow

During the second half of the 1990s and Clinton’s second Administration, profits continued to grow, but at slower and slower rates, falling back nearly to the annual increases of the first half of the 1980s.

America’s self-induced role as policeman of the world and the associated orientation of research and development (R&D) spending in the service of that objective played a role in causing it to lag behind other States whose post-World War II development was oriented around the non-military, civil economy, such that R&D spending in them was used to develop their economies in a more competitive way.

Generally speaking, however, from the end of World War II until today, profits have not depended so much on America entering foreign conflicts, even though under its “containment” strategy, war has been a constant feature since the 1950s.

In “Capital”, Volume I, Part I, Chapter I, Karl Marx describes the commodity which is the core component of capitalism as follows…

And will the 21st century be the “Asian century” -advocates of this view, such as Kishore Mahbubani¹⁰⁹, refer us back to earlier times when the great empires of the East dominated the world.

“We look on China not as a strategic competitor but as a strategic partner,” said the Indian Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar during his January 10-13 visit to Beijing.

While in China, Aiyer, who was accompanied by representatives of major Indian petroleum firms, signed five memoranda on energy cooperation with the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission. And on January 12, the Indian delegation met with top officials from China’s main energy companies, including the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China Petrochemical Corporation, and China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

The basic premise of capitalism has always been scarcity. Economists see deprivation, or “opportunity cost,” or the necessity of giving up something one wants in order to have something else instead, as the primordial – and necessary – condition of humankind. Even when we do not suffer from absolute want, we are still menaced with the fate of Buridan’s ass, which starved to death because it could not decide between two equally desirable sources of food. Such is the underlying premise of all neoclassical economics, including Virginia Postrel’s fantasy of consumer plenitude. Life is a matter of making difficult “choices,” as we measure costs and benefits “at the margin.” Aesthetic style, Postrel warns us, “is still one of many different possible goods. Choosing more aesthetic value means forgoing some alternative. The age of look and feel, like every other era, demands trade-offs.” Even in the Age of Aesthetics, we are still compelled to economize, to prioritize, and to sacrifice.