MILITARY conflict and conquest — and the manufacture and sale of arms — has always been central to capitalism. In 1577 Francis Drake set out to plunder Spanish settlements in South America in search of gold and silver. In the process he also challenged Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese interests in the East Indies.  

Soon after the defeat of the Spanish Armada the (British) East India Company received its Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth in 1600. In 1803 the company had a private army of over a quarter of a million — twice the size of the British army.  

Following the defeat of Napoleonic France in 1815, Britain expanded its imperial holdings around the globe and its ruling class enjoyed a century of almost unchallenged dominance. The “Pax Britannica” was in fact a continual series of colonial wars, accompanying a rhetoric of “free trade” that gave British capital its dominant position in world commerce.  

Britain’s military dominance was a major stimulus to the late 18th and early 19th-century industrial revolution. By the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851 this had made Britain the “workshop of the world” based on the exploitation of workers at home and overseas. At its height in the early 1920s the British empire — the largest in the world — covered well over a quarter of the Earth’s surface.

Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, written in 1916, argued that the growth of monopoly capitalism and the fusion of bank and industrial capital into “finance capital” had resulted in new internal contradictions including the closure of the world market, the end of free competition and the need to export capital (rather than goods) to exploit labour and other resources elsewhere. Great power rivalry had necessarily culminated in “an annexationist, predatory, plunderous war” over territory and resources.

A century (and two world wars) later the process continues, but with some important developments since Lenin wrote Imperialism. One is Britain’s loss of hegemony, its foreign policy essentially a puppet of the United States. The US itself has invaded or bombed 25 different countries since 1945 and including covert operations it has military deployments in twice this number.

The biggest concentrations of troops are in Europe, Japan, South Korea and the Middle East (Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey and Iraq). The US today maintains around 750 military bases in 70 countries — 13 of them (with 24,000 military personnel) in Britain. Britain in turn has military bases in all its “British” overseas territories as well as Cyprus (most recently used to bomb Yemen), Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Germany, Brunei and Kenya — a total of 13 countries.

At the same time in both Britain as well as the US the line between the police and the military is increasingly blurred, with Britain ever more complicit in repressive policing around the globe.

That process has been accompanied by an enormous increase in arms manufacture and sales a “win-win” situation for capitalism, yielding vast profits for arms manufacturers at the same time maintaining the dominance of capital on the world scene and cementing recipient states’ military and economic dependency.  

As a member of Nato, Britain is committed to spending 2 per cent of GDP on “defence” each year and was one of just nine of Nato member countries to have met this target in 2022, spending 2.1 per cent of GDP on defence. Under Rishi Sunak (and uncontested by Labour under Keir Starmer) that proportion is due to rise to 2.5 per cent of GDP and there are calls to raise this proportion to at least 3 per cent.

Arms sales to other countries are in addition. Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) shows that world military spending grew for the eighth consecutive year in 2022 to an all-time high of an extraordinary $2.75 trillion — as poverty and environmental crisis continues to afflict the world’s poor. Some 76 per cent of global arms exports are from Nato countries.  

Based on deliveries of major conventional weapons — from aircraft to ships, submarines and tanks — Britain is in seventh place in the list of major exporters, behind the US, Russia, France, China, Germany, and Italy. According to the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) if small arms and light weapons, components and military services are included, Britain is the world’s second- or third-biggest exporter.  

The British arms industry is shrouded in secrecy but available data shows that single individual export licences (SIEL) for military goods issued in 2022 totalled £8.5 billion; the highest ever recorded, and more than double the figure for 2021. Over 50 per cent of SIELs were to the Middle East.  

SIEL data does not include arms exported using “open” licences, which allow for unlimited deliveries and to which a financial value is not attached. CAAT estimates that, on average, at least half of British arms exports are made using open licences so the export value of arms is likely to be more than twice this figure.  

Sales direct to the British military of equipment which is later exported (lent or given) directly to recipient countries such as Ukraine are in addition.

In Britain as elsewhere, the arms business enjoys special status as a protected industry. Though its production facilities are privately owned, the British government is its primary customer and it receives huge subsidies from public funds, both directly and through other sources including universities. Arms exports must therefore be seen in the context of this huge overall level of government support, protection, and subsidy that the arms industry as a whole enjoys throughout the world; support that is far out of proportion to its economic significance.  

All this is in addition to Tory and Labour “serial duplicity” in ignoring or condoning illegal wars. Official British policy papers talk about the government’s need to “respond to a more contested and volatile world,” British Secretary of State for Defence Grant Shapps threatens all-out war with Russia, China and Iran and the media hypes up rhetoric about the need for Britain to “defend” itself — including calls for a “citizen army” and the reintroduction of national service.

Meanwhile the arms manufacturers themselves are on a charm offensive. BAE Systems is one of the largest British arms manufacturers and probably Britain’s most state-subsidised company. In November 2003 it reported that it had booked £10bn of orders since the end of June, raking in more than £30bn over the course of the year. It “donates” large sums to charity (£11.5m in 2022) in an attempt to cleanse its image; examples include £20,000 to a foodbank in Barrow, one of Britain’s most deprived areas where one of its subsidiaries, BAE Systems Submarines, is sited.  

Work by campaigner Andrew Feinstein reveals the reality of the global arms trade; a world of high-stakes deals, bribery, and fraud that races ahead of the understanding and therefore regulation of states who might wish to control it. The arms trade accounts for some 40 per cent of all corruption in global commerce. It is an industry which both depends on and ensures the continual destruction and replacement of its produce.  

As a recent article in this paper declared, “war is the heartbeat of Western capitalism” and British foreign policy is dominated and determined by a trade “looking to create a demand for its product.”  

It needs to be confronted directly if a future — for our planet and its peoples — is to be secured.

Marx Memorial Library’s rich programme of events continues on Thursday February 22 2024 at 7pm with an online and on-site presentation by Andrew Feinstein, writer, campaigner, ex-ANC MP and author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade. The following Tuesday February 27 sees the start of MML’s eight-week online course, Capitalism, Crisis & Imperialism. Details and registration at www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk.