One night in April I woke up with a start, thinking back to a phrase by Geminello Alvi: «Capitalism (…) pursues the luxury of the superfluous, but requires a state of war or the printing of banknotes» (here).

In the eleven years between 2009 and 2020, the American central bank “printed” six trillion dollars: a deluge of money never seen before, if we consider that in the previous ninety-five years (1913–2008) the money supply had gradually grown from five billion to just under a thousand (here).

After years of futile attempts to reduce liquidity in circulation, post-pandemic inflation broke through, and in 2022 central banks turned off the taps. At that point, the connection between the printing of banknotes and the state of war became automatic.

In a very interesting article on Krisis (here), Andrea Zhok writes: «The link between capitalism and war is not accidental, but structural». The professor reminds us that the reason for existence of capitalism is the increase in capital at each production cycle: when growth does not live up to expectations, investors withdraw, markets contract and the system enters into crisis.

Zhok also notes that «in the Western canon the world wars are characterized by some well-defined culprits»and that the greatest destruction in history was followed by the greatest economic boom.

In the last thirty years capitalism has tried everything: globalization, delocalization, robots, fake money and accounting rationality. For a year and a half, the war tom-tom that has been resonating in our media seems to remind us that we have now scraped the bottom of the barrel.

However, there is a “small” detail that should make us reflect: for eighty years now, a Deus ex machina in the form of an atomic bomb. Capitalism can still invoke war as a remedy, but today the risk is that the fire will annihilate the planet rather than regenerate the forest.

To find a way out that is not collective suicide, the symbiosis between capitalism and war should become a topic of daily debate in the media. And instead, Andrea Zhok’s article remains a more unique than rare case.