Smedley D. Butler – War is a Racket – Review

 

Considered to be one of the more essential antiwar tracts in modern history, first published in 1935, I was astounded by how accurate General Butler's words are in describing the United States present-day imperialism and war-based economy. In essence, it is never the people who benefit from war but a small group of big businesses and Big Banks that reap all the profits and rewards from the suffering, death, and destruction these wars impose. Again, nothing has changed in corporate America. The corporations, politicians, and small groups of oligarchs make billions while the populations truly suffer from war.

Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler's most famous quote from his text, War is a Racket, must be: I spent 33 years in the Marines, most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for Capitalism.

Butler goes onto list the industrial companies that earn the majority of profits from the war game. They include weapons manufacturers, big steel, big copper,; chemical manufacturers, and even the leather industry that makes combat boots, gun holsters, saddles, backpacks, etc. He describes these companies' low profits in peacetime and how in some cases, they quadrupled their earnings in wartime.

These wars are never to spread democracy and freedom, as we have been told and are continuing to be told today. The United States has always been a war-based economy; therefore, war must be perpetually waged for the few to get richer while the rest of us die and suffer. This is not to mention the millions of deaths in foreign lands that the empire has committed in the name of pure profit.

Butler writes:

WELL, it's a racket, all right.

A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it with disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parlays at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.

It was startling to come across today the amount of US congresspeople who has actual stock in the defense manufacturing industry? (The documents are there to be read) So is it any wonder that in both political parties, war is never voted down, if brought to a vote at all? These elected officials have a personal vested interest in perpetual war because they're personally profiting from it.

Butler goes as far as to propose to conscript capital, industry, and labor.

He writes:

Let the officers and the directors and the high powered executives of our armament factories and our steel companies and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in wartime as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted – to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.

Certainly without question, I would include our chicken-hawk politicians that are making money from their stocks in the weapons industries.

I have written this many times - the system is economically rigged for the few to gain and the many to suffer. And because the US is a war-based economy, the only way to profit is to wage more decimation and destruction.

This is unacceptable, and a crime against humanity.

General Butler made American forays into China, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti,”...and this is where he picked up his frequently expressed opinion that he was no more than a bully boy for American corporations.” (Intro)

If you have not read this incredible antiwar treatise, my suggestion is to do so because it certainly illustrates our current plight under these corporate/pro-war/ fascist times.