Lethality at Lower Prices: How the American System of Manufacture and Mass Production Shaped Modern Warfare

Abstract

Why is it that the 20th century blessed by historically unparalleled improvements in the standard of living is also known as the century of horrors, vilified by politically induced famines killing millions, a holocaust aimed at exterminating an entire people, ethnic cleansing and interstate conflicts raging across the entire globe? The thesis offered by this paper is that the very combination of embodied and disembodied technological change raising the standard of living to unheard of heights also drive down the relative price of exerting military force, of unleashing lethality. In examining embodied technological change the emphasis of the paper is on inventions that improved the quality of capital yielding faster transportation, more rapid communications and more lethal firepower. In analyzing disembodied technological change the discussion focuses on the American system of manufactures, mass production exemplified by the assembly line coupled with mass distribution due to declining costs of transport and communications, and growth in knowledge within the fields of electronics and chemistry. In particular, the decline in the relative price of iron and steel products occurring in the latter half of the 19th century drove down the relative prices of lethality, military force more generally. A side effect of its decline was the growing ease with which challenges to state power could be sustained, thereby undermining the stability of many of the nation-states that came into existence after World War II.