Re: Nine more countries join Schengen space - Fortress Europe extends east and south

was it a satisfactory solution to keep the masses in poverty by
restricting the output of goods. This happened to a great extent during the
final phase of capitalism, roughly between 1920 and 1940. The economy of
many countries was allowed to stagnate, land went out of cultivation,
capital equipment was not added to, great blocks of the population were
prevented from working and kept half alive by State charity. But this, too,
entailed military weakness, and since the privations it inflicted were
obviously unnecessary, it made opposition inevitable. The problem was how
to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth
of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And
in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human
lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to
pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the
sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too
comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons
of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient
way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be
consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour
that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as
obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with
further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built. In principle
the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might
exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs
of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is
a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked