BEFORE WE ARGUE ABOUT MARX, CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE WAR?
America Keeps Debating Capitalism and Communism While Trillions Disappear Into the War Machine
By John-Michael Talboo
Turn on talk radio and eventually somebody will start arguing about capitalism and communism.
Capitalism works.
No, capitalism has failed.
Socialism is coming.
Communism killed millions.
That wasn't real communism.
This is crony capitalism.
That isn't real capitalism.
Everybody retreats to a corner, grabs their favorite dead economist and starts swinging.
I have a simpler question.
Hey, guys—is it working?
Seriously.
How's everybody doing?
According to the Federal Reserve's 2025 household survey, 63 percent of American adults said they could cover a hypothetical $400 emergency expense entirely with cash or its equivalent.
That means more than a third could not.
Four hundred dollars.
In one of the richest countries in human history.
And before somebody says, “Well, technically most Americans can cover $400,” fine.
Congratulations.
We have apparently lowered the economic victory line to four hundred fucking dollars.
Shouldn't people have thousands saved?
Tens of thousands?
Shouldn't decades of increased productivity, technological advancement, automation and national wealth have produced a population that is becoming more economically secure?
Instead, we have people one car repair, medical bill or missed paycheck away from panic.
So I started reading Marx.
There. I said it.
Not because I suddenly want a hammer and sickle tattooed across my forehead. Not because I have forgotten Stalin, Mao, political prisons, mass killing or the horrific things committed by governments calling themselves communist.
One innocent person murdered by a government is already too many for me.
I started reading Marx because somebody should probably read Marx before deciding everything Marx ever said was wrong.
And here's my conclusion so far:
Marx may have been a better diagnostician than physician.
Maybe the prescription was wrong.
Maybe attempts to apply the prescription produced some of the worst governments in modern history.
But that does not automatically mean the diagnosis was imaginary.
Capital accumulates.
Workers can become alienated from what they produce.
Economic power can become political power.
A person can spend a lifetime creating value and still feel as if the product of his own labor belongs to somebody else.
I make music.
I understand that last one more than I would like to.
But while capitalism and communism are screaming at each other across the room, I keep noticing something sitting between them.
War.
War.
War.
War.
War.
You fuckers keep forgetting war.
MAYBE IT WORKED FOR YOU
This is the part of the capitalism debate I think older Americans desperately need to understand.
Maybe capitalism worked for you.
I mean that.
Maybe you worked hard.
Maybe you bought a house.
Maybe you raised a family.
Maybe you saved money.
Maybe you built a retirement.
Maybe the system, with all its flaws, delivered enough of what it promised that you honestly believe the American dream is still alive.
Good.
I'm glad.
But here's the problem:
It being good for you does not prove it is good for them.
Young people aren't evaluating capitalism from your childhood.
They aren't buying houses at the prices you saw.
They aren't paying your rent.
They aren't looking at your grocery bill.
They aren't entering your job market.
They aren't starting adulthood with your ratio of wages to housing costs.
You can tell a 25-year-old that capitalism works because you bought a house at 25.
He's going to ask you to show him the house he can afford.
And that's not Marxism.
That's a fucking Zillow search.
Maybe we need to stop treating young people's anger as ideological contamination and start listening to what they're actually telling us.
They can't buy homes.
Many don't feel financially secure enough to have children.
They don't believe Social Security will necessarily provide the same security older generations expected.
They watch companies report enormous numbers while being told their own labor isn't worth enough to keep pace with the cost of living.
Then somebody who bought a house decades ago turns on the radio and says:
“Why are these kids interested in socialism?”
Maybe ask them.
Seriously.
Ask.
And then do the difficult part.
Shut the fuck up and listen.
Because your success under a system does not invalidate their failure under the same system at a different point in time.
Maybe you received the spoils.
Maybe what they inherited were the bills.
Your spoils have become their inherited failure.
That doesn't mean you personally did something wrong.
It doesn't mean every older American is wealthy.
It doesn't mean every young American is poor.
It means economic systems exist through time.
Conditions change.
Markets consolidate.
Industries disappear.
Technology changes labor.
Housing prices change.
Debt changes.
Government policy changes.
And the version of capitalism you experienced may not be the version arriving on your son's doorstep.
If your son tells you the American dream looks dead from where he's standing, you have two choices.
You can tell him he's lazy.
Or you can walk over and look through his fucking window.
That's why I appreciated hearing a conservative radio host recently asking why younger Americans are becoming more receptive to socialism instead of simply calling them stupid.
Why?
That's the question.
Not, “How do we make them shut up?”
Not, “Which communist country should we tell them to move to?”
Why?
Why is an ideology that older generations were taught to fear suddenly finding an audience among younger Americans?
Maybe they're all idiots.
That's one theory.
Or maybe they're responding to the economic conditions directly in front of their faces.
You don't have to agree with their solution to take their diagnosis seriously.
Funny.
That's almost exactly where I landed with Marx.
THE EIGHT-TRILLION-DOLLAR NUMBER ISN'T EVEN THE WHOLE RECEIPT
Brown University's Costs of War project estimates that America's post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and elsewhere have cost approximately $8 trillion.
Eight trillion dollars.
And even that number does not include all future interest costs on the money borrowed to fight those wars.
Brown also estimates that caring for post-9/11 veterans will cost another $2.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion by 2050, much of which has not yet been paid.
Stop for a second.
We're already talking about numbers so large that the human brain stops processing them.
A million seconds is about 11 and a half days.
A billion seconds is more than 31 years.
A trillion seconds is more than 31,000 years.
Now say “eight trillion dollars” again.
But here's the part that keeps bothering me.
That still isn't the whole war receipt.
The famous $8 trillion figure is an accounting of defined post-9/11 war and counterterrorism costs.
It is not a magical master spreadsheet containing every dollar America has spent on military aid, every proxy conflict, every weapons transfer, every military deployment, every operation and every new geopolitical confrontation through 2026.
Take Ukraine.
According to the federal government's own Ukraine oversight system, Congress appropriated $174.2 billion through five Ukraine supplemental appropriation acts enacted from fiscal year 2022 through fiscal year 2024.
Additional funds were allocated through annual agency appropriations and other supplemental legislation.
Now, let's be accurate.
That does not mean somebody loaded $174.2 billion in cash onto a plane and handed it to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The money covers different things.
Weapons.
Security assistance.
Replacing American weapons stocks.
American military activity in Europe.
Economic and humanitarian assistance.
Other costs associated with the U.S. response to the war.
Fine.
It's still money.
It's still resources.
It's still production capacity.
It's still political attention.
It's still part of the national ledger.
Now look at the Middle East.
Brown University's Costs of War project estimates that in the two years following October 7, 2023, the United States spent $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel.
Brown separately estimates another $9.65 billion to $12.07 billion for American military operations in Yemen and the wider region during that period.
Combined, Brown places those post-October 7 war costs at approximately $31.35 billion to $33.77 billion and counting.
And here's where people writing articles like this usually make a mistake.
They grab $8 trillion.
Then they grab Ukraine.
Then Israel.
Then Yemen.
Then the Pentagon budget.
Then nuclear weapons.
Then veterans.
Then intelligence.
They stack every scary number they can find and scream:
LOOK AT THE TOTAL!
I'm not going to do that.
Because some of these categories overlap.
Some figures measure appropriations.
Others measure obligations.
Others measure actual outlays.
Some include money spent inside the United States replacing weapons sent overseas.
Some cover different periods.
Some military costs are already embedded in broader Pentagon spending.
If I simply add every number together, somebody who understands federal budgeting can tear the argument apart in five minutes.
And they should.
If I'm going to criticize the war machine, I don't need to lie about it.
The real numbers are already fucking enormous.
WE SPENT MORE THAN $14 TRILLION AT THE PENTAGON AFTER AFGHANISTAN BEGAN
Brown University's Costs of War project reported that Pentagon spending totaled more than $14 trillion between the start of the Afghanistan war in 2001 and 2021, with researchers estimating that roughly one-third to one-half went to military contractors.
Again, don't add that $14 trillion directly to the $8 trillion.
There is overlap.
That's the point.
The American war budget is not one neat number.
It's a maze.
Pentagon base budgets.
War appropriations.
Emergency supplementals.
Military aid.
Weapons replacement.
Veterans' care.
Homeland security.
Interest on borrowed war money.
Nuclear weapons spending spread through the Department of Energy.
Intelligence programs.
Operations overseas.
Security assistance.
Contractors.
And now new military confrontations and new spending priorities are layered on top of old ones before we've finished paying the human and financial costs of the last wars.
Then there is China.
Brown University's Costs of War project estimated that the United States spent approximately $3.4 trillion between 2012 and 2024 on militarized rivalry with China.
Not a declared war with China.
Military competition.
Preparing.
Posturing.
Building.
Positioning.
Planning for a war everybody claims to hope never happens.
Maybe some of that spending prevented war.
That's a legitimate argument.
But if we're going to count the cost of the American military system, we have to acknowledge that preparing for wars costs trillions too.
In 2025, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that the United States spent approximately $954 billion on its military.
The entire world spent about $2.887 trillion.
The United States alone accounted for roughly one-third of global military expenditure.
And we're still told to have a serious national conversation about why ordinary Americans aren't economically secure without putting war at the center of the conversation.
How?
“THAT'S NOT REAL CAPITALISM”
Here's something funny I've noticed since reading Marx.
When communism produces a disaster, defenders sometimes say:
“That wasn't real communism.”
Capitalists laugh.
Then capitalism produces monopolies, regulatory capture, corporations influencing government, privatized profits and socialized losses, and defenders say:
“Well, that's crony capitalism. That's not real capitalism.”
Do you hear yourselves?
I'm not saying capitalism and Stalinism are morally equivalent.
They're not.
I'm saying both sides have developed a convenient rhetorical escape hatch.
When the system works, credit the system. When the system fails, declare that the system was never properly tried.
Maybe we should stop worshipping systems.
Maybe we should start auditing outcomes.
I am not a communist.
I am not interested in handing an authoritarian government control over every factory, farm, song, thought and fucking toothbrush.
But I'm also no longer interested in being told that questioning capitalism means I hate freedom.
I like markets.
I like creating something and selling it.
I'm literally making an album and planning to sell physical copies myself.
That's capitalism.
I also think a country where enormous numbers of people are financially fragile while trillions flow through a permanent military economy has a serious structural problem.
That's critique.
Apparently we're no longer allowed to hold both thoughts in our heads.
I can.
DID CAPITALISM EVER GET AN HONEST PERFORMANCE REVIEW WITH WAR DISTORTING THE FUCKING LEDGER?
Here's my question.
What if we've spent decades arguing over whether capitalism works while ignoring the extent to which American priorities have been shaped by perpetual war and militarized foreign policy?
How do you evaluate the economic system without discussing what the government chose to do with trillions of dollars?
I'm not saying take the $8 trillion and divide it by the population.
That's mathematically cute and economically simplistic.
The wars happened across decades.
Much of the spending was borrowed.
Dumping trillions directly into household bank accounts could create inflationary effects.
People would spend differently.
Government spending has multiplier effects.
Military spending supports jobs.
Some weapons are produced in American factories.
I understand all of that.
My question is about opportunity cost.
What else could even a fraction of these resources have done?
What if a trillion dollars had gone into modernizing America's electrical grid?
What if hundreds of billions had gone into medical debt relief?
Housing construction?
Public transportation?
Lead pipe replacement?
Mental health infrastructure?
Addiction treatment?
Veterans before they become homeless?
Small-business capital?
Emergency savings programs?
Domestic manufacturing that produces something other than another weapon to replace the weapon we sent somewhere else?
I'm not claiming every domestic program works.
Government can waste money without firing a missile.
Believe me.
I'm asking why war spending so often receives a different standard of scrutiny.
Tell Americans healthcare is expensive and suddenly everybody becomes a forensic accountant.
“How will we pay for it?”
Tell Americans college costs too much.
“How will we pay for it?”
Tell Americans housing is becoming unaffordable.
“How will we pay for it?”
A bridge is collapsing.
How will we pay for it?
People can't afford childcare.
How will we pay for it?
Then somebody says there's a new geopolitical threat 6,000 miles away and suddenly Congress discovers the fucking Venmo password.
BEFORE YOU TELL ME THERE'S NO MONEY, SHOW ME WHERE THE MONEY WENT
That is my position.
Before you tell working Americans they're irresponsible because they don't have enough savings, show me the national receipt.
Before you tell me capitalism has succeeded, tell me how we're measuring success.
GDP?
The stock market?
Billionaire wealth?
Corporate earnings?
Or whether a parent can survive a transmission failure without putting it on a credit card?
Before you tell me Marx was wrong about everything, explain why wealth and economic power repeatedly concentrate.
Before you tell me Marx was right about everything, explain the bodies produced by governments that claimed his ideological inheritance.
Before you tell me socialism is the answer, show me the safeguards against authoritarian power.
Before you tell me the free market is the answer, show me the free market that exists after corporations capture regulators, lobby lawmakers and receive government contracts worth billions.
And before either side starts another fucking ideological debate—
Tell me about the war.
Tell me about the $8 trillion.
Tell me about the future veterans' costs.
Tell me about the interest.
Tell me about Ukraine.
Tell me about Israel.
Tell me about Yemen.
Tell me about China.
Tell me about the contractors.
Tell me about the Pentagon's more than $14 trillion in spending during the first two decades after the Afghanistan war began.
Tell me why the United States accounts for about one-third of the world's military expenditure.
Then look at the American who can't comfortably absorb a $400 emergency and explain the system to him.
Then look at the 25-year-old who can't imagine buying a house and explain why he is stupid for questioning the system.
Maybe capitalism is the best foundation we've found.
Maybe Marx identified real diseases and prescribed dangerous medicine.
Maybe socialism contains tools worth using without becoming an authoritarian state.
Maybe the answer is a blended system better than the one we have now.
I don't know.
That's why I'm reading.
I'm reading Marx.
I'm reading Aleister Crowley.
I'm reading the books people tell me not to read.
I'm listening to people I disagree with.
Because I'm tired of receiving my opinions pre-chewed by people whose careers depend on keeping me angry at the other half of the country.
And now we have artificial intelligence entering the conversation.
Maybe AI shouldn't rule us.
I don't want to replace human oligarchs with an algorithmic king.
But give the machine the fucking spreadsheet.
Give it the budgets.
Give it the outcomes.
Give it the tax codes.
Give it the wages.
Give it the housing data.
Give it healthcare costs.
Give it military expenditures.
Give it 100 years of policy.
Tell it not to protect Marx.
Tell it not to protect capitalism.
Tell it not to protect Republicans.
Tell it not to protect Democrats.
Tell it to identify what worked, what failed, where the evidence is weak and what we're double-counting.
Then let human beings argue about values with the facts sitting naked on the table.
Because maybe our biggest problem isn't capitalism.
Maybe it isn't communism.
Maybe it isn't socialism.
Maybe our biggest problem is that we keep having ideological arguments while an entire permanent system of war sits in the corner with the national credit card.
And every few years it asks for a higher limit.
Maybe the people who benefited from yesterday's economy need to stop telling the people inheriting tomorrow's economy that everything is fine.
Maybe the younger generation isn't rejecting the American dream.
Maybe they're telling us they can't fucking find it.
And if that's true, the answer isn't to call them lazy.
The answer is to look at the books.
All of them.
War.
War.
War.
War.
There.
Now can we include it in the fucking debate?
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