Overview

Which system produces more social damage (sometimes called "structural violence")?  The system of unrestrained capitalism as many socialists argue, or the military empire system of wasting key resources on domination and war?  Socialists argue that capitalism leads to imperialism and war.  But war has been around much longer than capitalism, so I prefer to look at each rather than lump the two together.  All my research time and again over the last century shows that military spending changes lead directly to economic changes of similar magnitude the same year.  Combine this with the finding that many have shown that economic change leads to other changes such as political, social, crime, occupational, and more.

Europe

The countries of the European Union are all capitalistic countries, yet they all have better social statistics than the United States. They have medical care and education provided free of charge for those who need them.  They have twice the vacation time and work hundreds of hours less each year than Americans.  They have much lower rates of obesity, homicides, infant mortality, teen births, and mental illness than Americans. Europe is exhibit A that empire is more damaging to the social structure than capitalism. 

If we believe, as Harry Targ does in his essay The Meaning of Ferguson  that "the root cause of exploitation, racism, and sexism is structural violence (capitalism)" then why is that exploitation so much less in Europe?  The answer is militarism. The use of force to repress demonstrations is fundamentally a militaristic response, not a capitalistic response.  The use of demonization of the victim shot by the policeman is fundamentally a tactic used in warfare, not capitalism.  If banking is at the heart of capitalism, is it not true that Gordon Adams in his book The Iron Triangle has documented the unusually heavy corporate interlocks between defense contractors and major banks?  So if political and economic systems are dominated by the wealthy and powerful, in the American case, that includes the military industrial complex as something that in turn dominates the wealthy and powerful and strongly shapes the culture.

Militarism in the Middle Ages

The regression of civilization after the fall of the Roman Empire is evident in the European Middle Ages.  As the empire collapsed, it was everyone for their own self, leading to pockets of stability maintained by warlords with castles and moats.  This leads to the widespread economic inequality of lords and serfs.  This leads to the ascendency of religion over science, because religion is communal and easy to understand, while science is specialized and complicated.  Feudalism is an extreme case of militarism.

Modern Data

The extensive data bases of the twentieth century and now allow connections to be established much better than in those periods when Keynesian, Classical/Monetarist, and Marxist ideologies were established.  War and empire were considered foreign policy and political constructs not related to the domestic economy.  Today we can show the failings of those three branches of economic thought mentioned before, and can show that economics is directly tied to military spending levels and changes.  So many of the old constructs come into question, and must be replaced with more accurate explanations based on the meticulous accuracy of the new military spending economic models.

For more on the nature of empires:

https://www.academia.edu/4044446/EMPIRE_ECONOMICS