Here we go again. The US has restarted its war on Iran (as of mid July). For capitalism, war is big business and it means big profits for the arms industry. For states like US and Israel, it means war for oil and imperialist and racist control. For workers, it means the cost of living shoots up as inflation soars while governments cut back on social spending to pay for increased military spending.
Indeed, one of the biggest booms for capitalism today is the growth of the arms industry. With the rise of the far right authoritarian regimes globally, and the economic and climate crises, there has been a flare-up in horrific wars in Africa, Europe, and the Middle-East, including genocide in Gaza, as governments grasp for limited resources like land and oil.
We are not immune here. The New Zealand government, while not joining any war (although Prime Minister Luxon, a Christian fundamentalist, wanted to join the first US-Israeli war on Iran), has also joined the global arms race.
That government has massively boosted military spending by $9 billion of new spending over four years from 2025. It’s about the only area of spending which it has genuinely increased, apart from splashing out on prisons.
To fund that increase, the government has massively cut, or plans to cut, spending elsewhere – by somewhere around $7 billion in conservative estimates or $20 billion more liberally. This includes budget cuts, pay equity cuts of 2.7 billion per year, firing 10,000 workers, cutting various services (including to the disabled, temporary support for beneficiaries, and the unemployed benefit for most 18-19 year olds), and cancelling various projects.
The old chestnut that war abroad means austerity at home is yet again proved.
Opposing austerity cuts and war requires opposing capitalism in the end. We need not just a strong grassroots anti-war movement like the free Palestine movement, but also to organise workers against war. This needs to occur both inside the companies that directly profit from war, and outside them, such as the transport workers who transport key goods globally. Companies like Aotearoa’s own Rocket Lab, as well as Palantir and Elon Musk’s SpaceX have pocketed billions profiteering from technology which can be, and has, been used for military purposes.
If we cannot organise effectively, we might be facing an era of even harsher wars as the capitalist crisis deepens and we move into a brave new destructive world.