Thorstein Veblen and the USMC

According to Veblen, a fundamental stage in the evolution of the leisure class begins when the dominant motivation of men becomes the gaining of repute through demonstrations of prowess and exploit in predatory endeavors. Simultaneously, in order to maintain their reputation for dominating and exploiting others, they must not be seen to perform any work of an “industrial” nature—creating something new for the purpose of the owner, instead of taking or exploiting something previously controlled by another. Such industrial pursuits are seen as the work of women and those men who lack the manly qualities of aggression and predatory efficiency. Particularly onerous are any activities in which one is seen to be subservient or to be working for another’s benefit. While most of our society has advanced beyond this stage, one organization which still exhibits a striking resemblance to Veblen’s barbarian stage is the United States’ military, specifically the Marine Corps, in which I was an officer candidate.

• I don't think you really needed Veblen to explain why in armies the highest status is found at the sharp end of the stick. Nor, after 125 years in empire-building, is it hard to explain why the British Army walked into World War I with the idea that an officer is not a man who kills and is better personally armed with a swagger stick than a sidearm. Veblen, it seems to me, was a waste of words for you.

Though I lacked his vocabulary to describe what I witnessed, I was struck and often troubled by how what I saw at Officer Candidate School resembled Veblen’s barbarian stage. Regardless of all the talk of semper fi and a shared mission, it was obvious that the dominant motive of many of my fellow candidates and our instructors was personal achievement through the demonstration of predatory prowess and aggression. The most obvious manifestation of this was in how the various Mission Occupational Specialties were ranked in repute. At the top were scout-snipers and recon operators—men whose job it was to engage in purely individualized predatory behavior such as the stalking of enemy units and, if need be, combat against more numerous forces. Though less coveted because it did not offer as much potential for the individualized demonstrations of predatory efficiency as those other MOS’s, being in the infantry always conveyed bona fides because it still requires prowess in predatory behavior and ferocity. However, any MOS which required one to work on behalf of these predatory MOS’s was never coveted and did not carry repute. Though they now engage in regular combat, supply and logistics officers were scoffed at. And never did I hear any candidate aspire to or even mention any of the MOS’s involving engineering, technical operations or public affairs.

This pervasive yearning to gain honor through predatory and aggressive activities shaped the curriculum and culture of OCS. Following the creed that “Every Marine is a rifleman,” OCS was a six week test of one’s potential to be an infantry officer. As such, physical fitness was of paramount importance and was held in the highest esteem and so was tested constantly. The best were held out as heroes to be emulated. Academics, nominally equally in importance to physical fitness, were treated as a joke. Classes were for sergeant instructors to catch candidates falling asleep in the sweltering classrooms—thus making them just another physical test. Finally, leadership was assessed solely in the context of physical activities. Moreover, it had to be exploitative in nature. The importance of “command presence”—acting like you are in charge through volume and manly displays of confidence—was held out as the only way to lead and the candidates immediately began to only follow such leadership. The ability to lead through the creation of consensus, or based on respect for one’s opinions was at best tolerated but often criticized. Indeed, during one leadership assessment I was criticized by a sergeant for asking candidates under my command whether they had any input on how we should approach the problem in front of us.

Part of my motivation for withdrawing from the program was my realization that this obsession with the emulation of predatory prowess in order to achieve repute is making it impossible for the military to solve the problems it is faced with. Command presence may move privates, but it will not sway tribal sheiks. Scout-snipers, even my sergeant instructor SStg. Signorelli, a self-described “bad motherfucker,” will not make political leaders come together. What is needed is more people who can and want to do “industrial” work. An Army presentation I attended showed a map of bombings in Sadr city superimposed on a map of where there was no running water in the slum. There was a complete match and the colonel posited this as evidence that what he needed was more engineers, not soldiers. However, he regretfully informed us that the MOS’s that are the fastest track to promotion, and thus the most sought after, are armor and artillery. Not only do neither of these contribute to the material comfort of the residents of Baghdad whose support the colonel was trying to win, given their propensity to cause civilian casualties armor and artillery units are often not even allowed to use their predatory skills.

Given how ingrained the emulation of predatory prowess is in the military, solving this problem will require a monumental effort.

• In fact , it is not at all clear why we should be trying to do it. Digging postholes with a bayonet is inefficient, and someone is likely to get hurt. In general we need a different form of organization for projecting our power abroad to supplement the one whose purpose is to kill people and destroy things. If we didn't persist in spending more than everyone else in the world combined on the organization that does the latter job, we could also create a fine second organization whose purpose is the projection of rebuilding power, which would be better-adapted to the attainment of our national goals in many parts of the world than is the military. Moreover, the present task is one that could only be attempted by a very complex and subtle combination of the strong arm and the rebuilding organization, and it is not one that we would have chosen to undertake if we had not been pervasively lied to and hustled in order to get into it. We are breaking our forces from being effective at the job they can do, thus imperiling the overall safety of our empire, as well as humiliating ourselves by being unable to perform the overall task for which our military is ill-equipped, because we have been led poorly, and there is no way to fix the problems created without divesting ourself of this leadership, which we have had to wait out for constitutional reasons, and electing other leadership that will not permit the continuance of this failed adventure.

The first possibility is an overhaul of military culture. Having meaningful medals for “industrial” or political achievements might do some good, as would changing the promotion structure to increase the importance of combat support and technical activities at the expense of combat experience. Finally, changing basic training, which sets the tone and expectations for one’s career, to teach people how to lead without intimidation might go a long way towards preparing the kind of leaders who can do what General Petraeus needs them to do in their dealings with that could attain local leaders and civilians. However, given how ingrained the predatory culture is within the military and the class in America which staffs it, this may be a lost cause. As the disgruntled colonel told me when I asked what people who thought like him about the nature of the conflict but were turned off by aspects of the military should do, “people like me usually don’t make it in the Army. We need people like you to join the State Department. That’s the only way anything will ever get done.”

• That's the correct conclusion. We never had enough such people, and we never let them do enough, because the national security state had the same overall priorities that the military had, and it was--as President Eisenhower warned us on his way out of office--capable of developing into a military-industrial complex with more than sufficient political power to make itself permanent. One might infer that the solution isn't to change the priorities or structures of the national security state but instead to disestablish it. Or, if one remained convinced that American force projection is still the most important part of the empire under 21st century conditions (which I think an untenable conclusion, personally), at least that it should be made dependent on something other than its own will to exist. The harm done by this last Adminstration will be impossible completely to repair, but we can make some real progress if we are unremitting in our demand for the fundamental reconsideration of the "War on Terror" concept.

• I think the idea of medals for political achievement means something like civilian awards for politics, and they really don't make much sense. Americans in general can't wear medals out of uniform, and being a Medal of Freedom recipient, these days, just means you were an unusually compliant CIA director, or you were loyal despite the lowest popularity ratings in a generation. Political leadership really has to look to history for its honorific vindication, which is another aspect that separates military from civilian society.

• I think the best route to the improvement of this essay is to discard Veblen altogether, as essentially irrelevant or nothing more than a single citation by way of recognition of inspiration, followed by a more committed inquiry into the question, how could the Empire secure itself a force better adapted than the military alone presently is for the conduct of activist foreign policy with boots on the ground in places far from home?