For the first time since the early 1990’s, a group in Maine is formalizing the discussion of “economic conversion”*—moving away from an economy focused on the construction, sale and use of weapons and military hardware.

Concerns about militarism and its costs have been brought out of the cupboard again and again in the history of Western civilization but without creating a lasting distaste for violence.

The last time we saw a national effort toward economic conversion was in the late 1970’s when Representative Jim Wright introduced a bill in Congress. As his work gained public attention, Newt Gingrich created a scandal ruining Wright’s reputation, and the conversion effort died.

The “Economic Conversion Project” was active in Maine in the late 80’s and early 90’s and had the support of Governor McKernan and Buzz Fitzgerald, then CEO of Bath Iron Works.

Without federal subsidies for civilian contracts the yard was struggling to maintain full employment, which made it hard to resist an offer by General Dynamics which agreed to “buy” the yard if BIW would build only military vessels. For warships there are generous federal subsidies funded by U.S. taxpayers.

In order for the mainstream to take the idea of conversion seriously it’s important to emphasize that it’s more than an effort toward morality, conscience and non-violence. As an economist at Columbia University for many years, Seymour Melman’s research showed that conversion of the military industrial complex would in fact create more jobs per million dollars spent by the federal government. This point needs to be clearly drawn in order to shift public understanding.

What the military economy is good at is providing huge wealth for the few—military contractors; lobbyists who work the Congress; members of Congress who go along, benefiting from campaign contributions and personal wealth. The “defense” budget grows only at the expense of human and domestic needs.

Political doves are not alone in understanding that cutting the military budget and converting to a strong civilian economy with a focus on infrastructure, alternative energy, education, health, fair trade and rebuilding our workforce is essential to the survival of the U.S. economy.

This time let’s not work toward a mere pendulum swing but rather a major shift in values and the ways in which our culture rewards those values. With that goal in mind, militarism can be seen as the leading symptom of human and global ill health. If we can reward cooperation, non-violence, economic and environmental sustainability as we now reward greed and dominance we will be on our way to solving many of humanity’s most devastating problems.

What is it that needs “converting”? Beyond a switch from guns to windmills, we’ll need to reconsider how we approach the sharing of natural resources, what we choose to build, how we provide for the common good, how we think about the goals and intentions of our workplaces and trade. Language will need some changes too. If conversion is framed only as moving from war to peace we’ll need to find meaningful definitions for what peace means. We’ll need new definitions for concepts like “courage,” “strength,” “victory,” “power,” and “wisdom.”

• The Addams/Melman House in Bath is sponsoring a Conversion Study Group. We use Seymour Melman’s last book, “After Capitalism,” (abebooks.com. Please call 443-9502 for information about joining the Study Group or starting another.