The purpose of fighting the war is to motivate the mining and weapons development industries. If a constituency receives $50 million dollars to produce a type of ammunition or equipment and research the next generation, its large business owners, skilled workers and labor have "won," at least in the short term.
>The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare. The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
(1) http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/540674-the-problem-was-how-t...