The expansion of mass
production and the mass market paced one another, constantly raising the
ante.
Mass production, mass marketing and pyramiding profits resulted, first
and foremost in the enrichment of businessmen. Their riches
automatically pushed them into a position of pre-eminent importance from
which they were able to make public policy and utilize public authority
for the protection and advancement of their own class interests. It also
called into being a vast array of new professionals; teachers,
engineers, scientists, technicians, social workers and propagandists,
converting the "middle class" from a shadowy remnant of feudal society
into the largest class numerically and the most influential class
politically in the entire modern community.
At the same time, economic enrichment and expansion increased the
importance of the war-making apparatus. The expansion of civilization
has involved a competitive struggle carried on constantly along several
fronts, economic, political, cultural, ideological. The means of
struggle in every civilization has included the military as a political
force and as a final arbiter in deciding who should win and who should
lose civil and inter-group wars. Victory and defeat determined the fate
of land and natural resources, populations, capital installations,
taxing facilities, domestic policing. This deterministic role of the war
machine has never been more dramatically in the foreground than during
the crucial years from 1910 to the present day, when war apparatus costs
have topped the list of government expenditures.
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