In article <bnnn03$14p4$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, Richard Clark says...

The Left and the Military: Leaping the Chasm
by Stan Goff

But how many on the left will acknowledge that the
institution with the most effective affirmative action
program in the country, at least with regard to race, is
the United States Army? Interracial marriage is more common
in the military than the civil sector by orders of
magnitude. How many on the left recognize that on a
military base there resides a community that is in some
respects more socialist than capitalist?

Every resident of a US military base has come to expect
high-quality schools, a plenitude of commons*including
parks, recreations centers, gymnasiums, stadiums, swimming
pools, cinemas, craft shops, hiking trails, community
centers, and nature preserves*a three-tiered universal
health care system, counseling centers, and safe,
well-designed residential neighborhoods where housing,
maintenance, and utilities are provided free. The disparity
between the highest and lowest pay in the military is less
than 13 to 1, compared to an average of 458 to 1 in the
civil sector.

The majority who remain in the military remain there for
these reasons. It never occurs to them that what they like
about the military is socialist. They frequently hate the
deployments, the occasional violence, the bureaucratic
backbiting, and the ubiquitous incompetence. They put up
with all these negatives because they and their families
enjoy some modicum of security and well-being. Soldiers
know some of the concrete possibilities of socialism better
than the rest of us. They've lived them.
http://www.freedomroad.org/milmatters_1_left&military.html

"Anyone who knows how the US military live in their permanent
foreign bases, has seen successful socialism in action. Free
healthcare and dental care. Tick. Heavily subsidized
groceries at your friendly local PX. Tick. High quality
childcare. Tick. Whomping big grants towards your further
education. Tick."

"Serving members of the US military are remarkably well
insulated from the chill winds of market forces. A few years
back, I spent a couple of days on the US Air Force base at
Rammstein. The personnel there had their own little town,
where everything was heavily subsidized. When they had to
buy something from the local German shopkeepers, where they
had to pay full whack, they referred to it, in rather
telling terms, as "going on the economy." No Invisible Hand
here."