PENTAGON CAPITALISM: The Management of the New Imperialism

by Seymour Melman ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1970

Our Depleted Society (1965) stridently surveyed the effects of misplaced priorities on the quality of American life. Pentagon Capitalism zeroes in on the cause, which is not the machinations of a mere military-industrial complex (that ""was effectively terminated soon after it had been announced"") but a monolith of even more dangerous proportions: the new ""state-management,"" a formal central-management office installed in the Pentagon by Robert McNamara to administer the entire military-industrial empire. This major institutional change, replacing market relations between government-military and business interests with a Pentagon management that is itself business. has combined peak economic, political, and military decision-making in the same hands, usually a feature of totalitarian systems. The state-management, in control of the nation's largest network of industrial enterprises, displays the ""characteristic managerial propensity for extending its power,"" and it is this ""institutionalized power-lust"" that generates Vietnams, spiraling ""defense"" budgets, dubious ABM systems, secret CBW projects, ""overkill"" MIRV programs, and a disastrous ""new imperialism"": ""to the older pattern of exploitative imperialism abroad, there is now added an institutional network that is parasitic at home."" Not only are America's social ills neglected, but the concentration of manpower and capital in military industries seriously depletes the civilian economy. Melman, Professor of Industrial Engineering at Columbia, subjects the modes of Pentagon managerial control to close scrutiny and the rationales for Defense policies to blistering criticism, but does not provide details for the ""decisive action"" necessary to forestall ""1984 by 1974."" Despite Melman's extensive homework and industrial knowhow, the book is uneven in its documentation, and like most passionate presentations it suffers from polemical overkill. Nonetheless he mounts one of the most effective assaults on the Pentagon to date.

Pub Date: May 1, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION