Remembering the M.A.I.N. causes of the First World War, what role did capitalism play in bringing about the conflict?
Capitalist interests in natural resources through the exploitation of colonies was one cause of this war. Dreadnaughts were built by both UK and Imperial Germany from the early 1900s to protect and expand their colonial reach — the interests of which, at times, conflicted. This was the first mechanized war, one run on gasoline and fuel oil. From a macro-economic point of view, the future was fossil fuels and every government knew this. There was nothing more compact and efficient as 10 ounces of this fuel that could move 2,000 lbs of metal one mile. Germany, in the end, gained nothing. During the war, and for decades afterward the UK, US and others occupied areas that are now Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Peninsula, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Isreal, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey, and formed oil companies that exist today as some of the largest corporations in the world.
According to Barbara Tuchman in “The Guns of August” the greatest motivation was Germanys desire to maintain its claim to Alsace-Lorriane which came under German rule when Germany defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. The Schlieffen plan, made at the Kaisers request, was laid out by Alfred Graf von Schlieffen, Chief of the Imperial German General Staff. the plan was to defeat Frances’ army in 39 days and the French government in 42. The plan had been in existance since 1904 and it would have worked if Russia hadn’t mobilized as quickly as it did. The plans purpose was to insure that Alsace-Lorriane remained part of Germany. Everybody else was dragged into the conflict because the plan called for invading the neutrals Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands in order to get to France. That brought England which brought Russia and the sinking of the Lusitania pretty much cemented the U.S. involvement. It was more nationalism than capitolism. Capitolisms role would have been
