War Is a Racket

by Smedley Butler

Originally printed in 1935, War Is a Racket is General Smedley Butler's frank speech describing his role as a soldier as nothing more than serving as a puppet for big-business interests. The introduction discusses why General Butler went against the corporate war machine and how he exposed a fascist coup d'etat plot against President Franklin Roosevelt. Widely appreciated and referenced by left- and right-wingers alike, this is an extraordinary argument against war—more relevant now than ever.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, War, Military Fiction, Economics, Philosophy

89 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1935

Reviews

[The Conspiracy is Capitalism · Rating 5 out of 5]

50 must-read pages, especially for "American patriots".

The Brilliant:
--Read it online here.
--I’m upgrading my rating because of this book's usefulness for specific audiences, i.e. soldiers/“support our troops” culture given the author’s military accolades (Major General of the Marine Corps, 2x Medal of Honor, etc.).
--It’s quite something to hear someone so high-ranking debunk the myths of “making the world safe for democracy” by explaining how US foreign policy = poor Americans sent to kill even poorer people abroad to secure greater profits for the richest Americans. Thus, we get chapters “Who Makes the Profits” and “Who Pays the Bills?”.
--As anti-war veteran Michael Prysner (also see Maj. Danny Sjursen) says, “our enemies are not in the poorest countries on the planet, but right here in the richest one!”. The scum of the earth are revealed to be the merchants of death, which happens to be the wealthiest US capitalist shareholders/bondholders/chicken-hawks.

War is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

--My favorite quote from Butler came from his speeches:

...Here's the rest of the quote:

Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. […] I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. […] During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotion. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.

[-Common Sense, Vol. 4, No. 11 (November, 1935), p. 8; bold emphases added]

The Missing:
--Let us fill in the gaps to this 1935 pamphlet:

1) Capitalism and War:
--Butler reveals astronomical wartime profits, and how top capitalists (industrialists and financiers) all share in the spoils. Thus, his #1 step to “smash this racket” is to take the profit out of war (his other steps were #2: vote for war taken from those who risk their lives, i.e. soldiers, and #3: military limited to self-defense).
--Butler suggests a wartime conscription income for everyone to match that of soldiers: “Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.”
--We need to dig deeper into the byzantine nature of capitalism's contradictions and crises:
i) Money creation:
--Businesses start with debt, where bankers bring anticipated productivity growth from the future into the present in the form of credit-money. The assumption is this credit-money will be used productively to realize that future productivity to pay the banker's interest and the shareholders' dividends, but this can quickly spiral into speculation.
ii) Accumulation by dispossession:
--The Enclosures of the Commons, colonialism and continued privatization ("artificial scarcity" thus dependency on markets) create capitalism's peculiar markets, i.e. labour market and land market at the heart of capitalism (since humans and nature are "fictitious commodities", not produced with an obvious cost of production just to be bought/sold on markets).
iii) Capitalism's peculiar markets:
--Markets for real commodities have long pre-dated "capitalism". Capitalism is the expansion of market relationship (instantaneous buying/selling between self-seeking strangers) to sacred social relations that hold society together, thus capitalism's peculiar markets for labour/land/money featuring fictitious commodities (humans/nature/purchasing power): Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
--These peculiarities, along with the violence that maintain them, are conveniently obscured by mainstream economics' utopic and myopic equilibrium focusing on the brief moment of market exchange (of real commodities)
iv) Capitalist crises and war's "creative destruction":
--The relationship between capitalism and war was a crucial topic during WWI. Capitalism’s logic of endless growth (since economic action is driven by profits, economies-of-scale reduces costs while profits are threatened by competition and saturated markets) requires imperialist expansion.
--Unlike the notion of peaceful commerce, pioneering US sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois connected the imperialist Scramble for Africa to the rivalry that led to WWI in “The African Roots of War” (1915). Lenin (the Russian Revolution had strong anti-WWI sentiments) soon published Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism in 1916.
--What is behind capitalism’s boom/bust nature? For the boom's "irrational exuberance", remember how capitalism starts with bankers conjuring credit-money from the future, how tempting it is to cross into speculation? When the bubble bursts, panic flips the optimism into an endless downward spiral of pessimism.
--War is the ultimate reset button for capitalism: it forces capitalism's short-sighted competition to cooperate (at least within a warring nation) without too much concern of proving that socialist planning/cooperation works (because war is meant to destroy rather than fulfill social needs). War is the "creative destruction" wiping away dead capital and replacing it with the insatiable furnace of war markets.
--Thus, it was the greatest global war in human history, WWII, which rescued global capitalism from the endless Great Depression, not the watered-down socialism of the US New Deals, etc.
--Even more crucially for today, WWII's booming factories feeding global destruction were ready for another Great Crash/Great Depression since peacetime consumerism (even the creation of white "middle class" consumerism) could not possibly absorb all the products at a profit compared to the endless appetite of global war! (Ex. the "near-bankrupt aircraft industry": Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation) Thus, the irrationality of capitalist production lobbied for the Cold War arms race/US military industrial complex. It's only a waste of money for social needs; for capitalism, it is essential. So much for the post-war "peace dividend" for the public!

2) Whose Enemies?:
--When Butler says he was a “gangster for capitalism”, US imperialism still on the rise; it was not until WWII, when the other world powers decimated each other as US capitalists profited from selling to both sides, that the empire was fully formed.
--The empire made sure no challenges to capitalism could emerge, in particular the countries fighting to liberate themselves from colonialism:
-Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations
-The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
--The U.S. Military Industrial Complex needs "enemies": the Red Scare was crucial. Communism, in its attempt for the underclass to seize the state and control capital, was indeed the ultimate threat to capitalists... but any form of self-determination during the 20th century's struggle for decolonization could be deemed a "communist" threat (hence the sprawling list of interventions).
--Western capitalism praised European Fascism for its ability to whip labour into shape (and kill dissent, esp. communists) during capitalist crises; Fascism only become a problem when their expansionism revived WWI's inter-imperialist rivalries. After WWII, the freedom-loving West had no problem reviving WWII fascists and funding similar reactionaries to stamp out decolonization:
-The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
-Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
-Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II
-poetic fire on Colonial brutality returning to Europe as Fascism: Discourse on Colonialism
--In fact, Butler personally experienced Fascism in the US! In the Business Plot, a group of US capitalist elites tried to recruit Butler to perform a fascist coup against FDR: The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR
--The Cold War “arms race” was closer to an arms chase, where the USSR (ravaged by the Nazi invasion, rapid industrialization, and civil war) could not keep up with the US’s Madman strategy risking annihilation (The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner) and dollar hegemony (Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance).
--After USSR collapsed, the War on Terror found a new "enemy" in the same reactionary forces that the US had weaponized against USSR, pan-Arabism/Arab nationalism/socialism, etc.: The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump
-US foreign policy for the 1%.
-Michael Parenti on capitalism’s global wars.
-anti-war veteran Michael Prysner speaks.

3) Capitalist Propaganda and Democracy:
--While Butler recognizes the use of propaganda to sell WWI, he seems to think a “free press” is a sufficient counter (provided it had access to the secrecy). However, “freedom” in a capitalist society prioritizes the freedom of capital (one-dollar-one-vote), and the capitalist media has evolved to be the key tool for war propaganda: Chomsky's Prospects for Democracy
--The millions who protested the 2003 invasion of Iraq were able to overcome capitalist media propaganda, only to be ignored as the war continued. “Democracy” is not handed down from above; it must be taken from below.
-Imperialist media's global ideological censorship .
-The sophistication of capitalist propaganda on the educated liberal intelligentsia: Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies
-Case studies in US corporate media coverage of foreign policy: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
-US war culture.

The Bad:
--My previous lower rating was for readers not indoctrinated by US war propaganda or sitting one-the-fence; this book is a bittersweet admission of guilt by a general to war crimes… For all the talk about the hardship of imperialism’s soldiers, imagine what it is like for the world’s poorest to experience imperialism’s high-tech bombs and chemical weapons...

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A scathing condemnation of the corporate-military complex by a quirky retired general who was one of the biggest legends and role models in the U.S. Marine Corps; Smedley Butler, nicknamed "Old Gimlet Eye," had a tattoo of the USMC emblem that covered his chest and was the only Marine officer to win the Medal of Honor twice, America's highest decoration for both effectiveness and outrageous courage in combat (a high percentage of Medals of Honor must be awarded posthumously; you can't do something that will win this medal and have any realistic expectation of living through it even once.)

However, after retiring, he came to the conclusion that much of the fighting he had done had ultimately served the interests not of the American people or the people of the countries where he fought, but those of big businesses such as the United Fruit Company. He refers to it as a racket in the sense that the corporate world that pulls the strings of the U.S. government uses the American military as muscle essentially the same way as organized crime uses its low-ranking members.

Butler was not a pacifist - he advocated a true department of defense, staffed, organized, stationed, and equipped so as to protect America but not to create or maintain an empire.

He showed his integrity once again in retirement, when a group of industrialists, concerned by the Depression and outraged by FDR's New Deal programs, planned to carry out a coup, overthrow the government, and put a puppet "president" in office. They asked Butler to lead their coup and be that puppet president. Instead, he immediately turned them in, pointing out that he had sworn a lifelong oath to support and defend the Constitution. One of my heroes.

I encourage anyone contemplating military service to read this, to see another side than they've probably been shown - we do need armed forces, so the right thing to do may indeed be to enter or stay in the military. But it should be an informed decision.

[Chris Dietzel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This falls under the category of "Must Read." Butler's argument is that the wealthy elite benefit financially from war while everyone else suffers, either through fighting in the wars or else from paying for the war that the rich get richer from. Part of what makes the book so powerful is Butler's history: he fought in WWI and was the most decorated soldier of his lifetime when he wrote this. For me, that gives him credibility that can never be matched by a politician (who probably never fought in a war) going on TV and giving reasons for yet another conflict. Read this each time some person on the news states the case for another war and you'll likely see how hollow their words are and how much weight Butler's words carry.

[Stefania Dzhanamova · Rating 5 out of 5]

General Smedley Butler knows whereof he speaks when it comes to war: having served honorably in the military and hailed as "an outstanding American soldier" by Theodore Roosevelt himself, he understood the soldiers who fought for their country, and he came to be outraged by those who meanwhile were making another kind of killing of their blood, sweat, and tears. He also realized that he had spent most of his active military service being a "high-class muscle" for Big Business, a gangster for capitalism. With his witty humor, he remarks, ". . . I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives," begins he his 1931 speech. Indeed, as he further reveals, at least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during World War I. Who were those lucky guys? Did they come from the ranks of the physically and mentally maimed soldiers returning from the front? Had they ever shouldered a rifle or dug a trench? Had they spent "sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets"? Had they been wounded? Nope. The splendid fortunes were amassed by a chosen few: munitions makers, ship builders, manufacturers, meat packers, bankers, speculators.
One good example cited by Butler is the little steel companies that "patriotically" shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war, and, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Well, their 1914–1918 average was $49,000,000 a year, an increase by about 716%!
Meanwhile, eager not to be left behind, somebody made a profit on mosquito netting. They sold Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. "I suppose," comments Butler wryly, "the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in the muddy trenches – one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!" However, the thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam. Long story short, there were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in war days, although there were no mosquitoes in France. If the war had lasted just a little longer, though, the enterprising manufacturers probably would have also sold Uncle Sam mosquitoes to introduce in France, so he would buy more mosquito netting.
Thus, the chosen few get rich. Who pays for it all, though? And most importantly, what is the price? The biggest part of the bill is shouldered by the soldiers. Normal, healthy boys are taken out of the fields, offices, factories and classrooms, and put into the ranks where they are "remolded", made to “about face”. Through merciless propaganda, they are trained to regard murder as the order of the day. So vicious is this war propaganda that even God, who taught us not to kill anyone, is brought into it: clergymen join in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans in World War I, for instance, because "God is on our side . . . it is His will that the Germans be killed." (Meanwhile, in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies to please the very same God.) Is it God's will, really? Or is it the will of the bankers and the manufacturers to whom war pays high dividends?
Beautiful pictures were painted for young American boys who were sent out to die in "the war to end all wars", "the war for world democracy" (twenty years later, with the rise of totalitarism, the world became even less democratic), but no one told them they would be killed by bullets produced with US patents. Patriotism "was stuffed down their throats"; they were used as numb killing machines for a couple of years, and then, suddenly, those who managed to survive were discharged and left to make "another 'about face'" but this time without officer aid and nation-wide propaganda. Too many of them were eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final “about face” alone. "These boys don’t even look like human beings," describes Butler graphically his visit to a government hospital. "Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone." They had paid with their lives for the profits of others. And so did their families, girlfriends, friends, who had also contributed their dollars (in taxes) to the profits that the munitions makers, bankers, shipbuilders, manufacturers, speculators made, and who now suffered as much as, or even more than, their maimed brothers, friends, sons, fathers, boyfriends did.
It's a racket, all right. What is more important is that General Butler underscores that there is a way to stop this glaring injustice. And – say it louder – the way is not disarmament conferences. Who do the countries send to those conferences? Correct. They send professional soldiers, sailors, politicians, and diplomats. Naturally, the soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. "No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command," writes Butler. "Both mean men without jobs." Therefore, they are not for disarmament. Lurking behind these professional soldiers' backs, the politicians, the all-powerful, sinister agents of those who profit by war, are also ready to do anything to prevent disarmament. Consequently, the chief aim of any power at any of these conferences is not to achieve disarmament and prevent war, but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe. The only way to disarm for real is for all nations to get together and scrap every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane, every ship. But, of course, this is a utopian dream.
The only achievable way to "smash the racket", advises Butler, is for the Government to conscript capital, industry, and labor before the nation’s manhood can be conscripted. Let the officers, the directors, the high-powered executives of armament factories and steel companies, the munitions makers, the shipbuilders, the bankers, the speculators, and the manufacturers of all the other things – necessary and unnecessary – that provide profit in war time get $30 a month, the same wage as the soldiers in the rat-infested trenches get. Oh, how I wish this happened! A brilliant, fool-proof technique for quickly making peace doves out of warmongers.
WAR IS A RACKET is a must read, especially for the contemporary audience, for those young people who are prone to be swayed by rallying cries of fake patriotism. So many years after "the war to end all wars", so many years after Butler's speech, wars are still not over; they are still a source of excellent income for the few and of unfathomable grief and loss for the many. General Smedley Butler was a real hero, one who wasn't afraid to stand up for his country, to say out loud that boys and men give their lives for dollars and cents that stuff the pockets of a small elite, not for a safe world and democracy. It is important to read and understand what he wrote. Peace is much cheaper and safer than war.

[Vannessa Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

War Is A Racket is an in your face exposé about the lies politicians tell American taxpayers to justify their bloodthirsty and psychopathic lust for war.

Impressive quotes:

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. Front cover.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. P. 10

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds again gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out. P. 24

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn’t they? It pays high dividends.

But what does it profit the masses?
What does it profit the men who are killed?
What does it profit the men who are maimed?
What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts?
What does it profit their children?
What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?
Yes, and what does it profit the nation?

Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn’t own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became “internationally minded.” We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our Country. We forgot Washington’s warning about “entangling alliances.” We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely financial bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people—who do not profit. P. 26

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the “war to end wars.” This was the war to make the world safe for democracy.” No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason. No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that bullets made by their own brothers here might shoot them down. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a “glorious adventure.” p. 35

smash the war racket. We must take the profit out of war. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes. P. 42

War Is A Racket is a brilliantly written expose on war and why politicians like them.

If your stomach is sensitive to horror, avoid looking at the pictures depicting the horror of war.

War Is A Racket is a must read!

[H (trying to keep up with GR friends) Balikov · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a lot of reasons given for warfare. Are there any good reasons for nations to be at war? I would think most of those “good” reasons have to do with defending what is already part of a nation. USA Marine Corps General Smedley Butler takes a different approach.

In this brief essay, written later in his life, Butler reflects upon his experience (including being awarded the Medal of Honor twice!) and concludes that there are few beneficiaries of even a successful war, and they are not the kind of you want to admire.

He points out: “In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows... Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.”

Even if the arguments are familiar, Butler gives them weight, based on his service (in war and peace) and his perspective. ” His solutions may no longer resonate:
To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.

1. We must take the profit out of war.

2. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.

3. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

President Eisenhower warned the American nation of the threat posed by “the military-industrial complex.” The American Congress has, generally, chosen to ignore that warning. Thus, the USA military budget far exceeds the sum of the next nations in line. It is not only “war” that needs to be made “unprofitable” but the periods between wars as well. Butler does not cover issues such as contract redundancy and the escalation of military contracts. Nor does he address the number of “military items” that are funded but never produced because they are either unsuitable or fail to function as intended.

This is a short piece that should have sparked a larger discussion when it was written…it still should.

[Jeremy Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is War a Racket?

'For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket'. I have been told 'This was the "war to make (America) safe (from Terrorism)." No mentioned to (us), as we marched away, that (our) going and (our) dying would mean huge war profits'.

As a soldier I have to agree with almost everything that Gen. Smedley Butler, a two time Medal of Honor winner has to say in this book. He wrote this book over 70 years ago, frustrated at how the US goes to war. I have to say that not much has changed, except how the Racket is achieved.

Why is the US still currently in Afghanistan? Why am I, as a soldier on my third deployment to the Middle East? Simply put, Money. Yes, the politicians paint the picture that we are here to ensure that Al Qaeda doesn't come back to power, and so that Afghanistan can become an independent nation. No, this is not the case, we are still here because there is money to be made.

[Feliks · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's an extremely swift read. Strongly felt, and strongly worded, written by a simple, straightforward, outraged American. Justifiably outraged.

In a nutshell: the unholy trio of big business, lobby-driven government, and military--has only one result: vile war profiteering.

The awarding of military contracts--underpins capitalism and has us locked in a vicious cycle which still goes on today (Halliburton, KBR, etc).

Butler makes a great point: after the Civil War but before the age of 'gunboat diplomacy', before the age of American Imperialism, (before we had jingoistic adventures in Japan, China, Tripoli, the Philippines) we had a paltry national debt of just $1m.

After the pattern of foreign wars began, our national debt has never receded. Big, powerful companies--ever since the rise of the Rockefellers, Carnegies, and DuPonts--have raped the American economy for short-term profit and left US citizens holding-the-bag. Not to mention American lives that were lost.

President Woodrow Wilson got elected on an anti-war platform. So why did we wind up fighting in WWI? Because we had lent $6m to Britain & France and they warned us that if we lost, they would not be able to pay it back.

Sigh. A lot of people today talk of their hatred of socialism, and they label socialism with every epithet and criticism they can think of. Yet there is no economic system with as much blood on its hands as capitalism. We've got no high ground to stand on. How much blood has Sweden shed in the modern era?

[Jill H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm just not sure how to rate this book, so I put it in the middle category of three stars. It is an odd little read and while you agree with some of the author's assumptions, others are contradictory. Written by a Major General in the Marines who won two Medals of Honor in WWI, there is no doubt that he knows of what he speaks as far as war is concerned. However, the fact that large companies and individuals reaped fortunes from the war, although somewhat disturbing, is a part of free trade and has been a side effect of war that will always hold true The author doesn't really expound on how that should be avoided. Additionally the book was published in the late 1930s, so the isolationist approach that the author takes may seem a little dated.

It is worth a try if you are interested in how business and war are so tightly intertwined.

[Edward Rathke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a simple and powerful and obvious statement.

What's interesting about Smedley is that he's not against war in a general sense. He's against the kind of war that had become common in the early 20th century (which is the model for all wars now). To put it a different way: he was not against war, but he was against imperialism.

Smedley dissects WWI in quick and simple ways that are sort of a cost benefit analysis.
Who benefits from war? Who pays the burdens of war?

Smedley answers these two questions, but also tells you how much the profiteers profited and how much the soldiers paid for the privilege of losing their lives or getting brutalized, both mentally and physically, in the grind of war.

Indispensable reading, really. I'm shocked I had never heard of it till relatively recently. Or, I'm not shocked, because this is exactly the kind of book that powerful people don't want you to read. But still, it's strange to know this book has existed for 80 years and I had never heard of it.

It really is a simple book, and a clear explanation of who benefits and who loses in war.

The TL;DR version is: you lose, and soldiers lose more.
Banks and arms-dealers make big.

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars for War is a Racket (audiobook) by Smedley D. Butler read by D. S. Harvey.

I think that the author was on to something 90 years ago. Really the biggest difference between then and now is the astronomical amount that is spent on war to day. And just who all gets kickbacks to make sure that the wars continue.

[Cwn_annwn_13 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in the 1930's by a highly decorated Marine Corps General this short book is an essay exposing the utter scam that every war that America has been involved in for at least the past 100 years has been. Although it exposes the horrors and damage that war causes both in Butlers essay and with the inclusion of some gruesome photos War is a Racket is not some limp wristed pacifist liberal tripe. What it is is an essay by a man who connected the dots and realized after many years that he in his military sevice was nothing but "a high class muscle man for big business, for wall street and the bankers". He exposes how these wars are ferminted, who is behind them and who profits from them. He also talks about his own isolationalist political ideas that I can agree with most of his points on. There is also a introduction written by Adam Parfrey that gives a good basic history of Butler and his life. Butler was a great American that should be admired and honored but sadly few people have a clue as to who he is and what he did.

[Joshua Phillips · Rating 2 out of 5]

Major General Butler's main point is spot on; war is (predominately) a racket arranged by politicians to achieve their own ends while attempting to disguise their war efforts as defending "freedom."

However, the General only demonstrates that certain companies turned a profit while supplying the US government during WWI. He never proves his thesis. The fact that someone turns a profit (whether small or large) is not a problem at all. In a free market, the suppliers who better engineer, market, and supply their product will always come out ahead of other suppliers. To insinuate that a provider, earning a positive return on his investment, is guilty of causing a war because he profits from his enterprise is faulty logic at best and most definitely socialistic.

What the General would have done better to do would have been to demonstrate that, behind the scenes, the product suppliers were the very people pressuring Woodrow Wilson into the war. Or, better yet, he could have attempted to show that Wilson (or members of his cabinet) had known they would personally profit from the war.

The second concern with the pamphlet is his answer to contrived war. The General proposes that to stop unjust war from continuing into the future it is necessary that “one month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation -- it must conscript capital and industry and labor” and goes on to state that “everyone in the nation [must] be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches.” This idea is rank Marxist thinking and is possibly even more dangerous than the error he is attempting to fight against.

I agree with General Butler that WWI was not a legitimate war. I also agree that too often wars are created only to line Federal bank accounts at the cost of the human life. But we can’t stop unjust war by becoming socialists. If we don’t handle the issue of the racketeering of war with moral character to begin with, we will be sure to end up where communist Russia did.

[Marian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should be required reading in schools…

[Mark Mortensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

With such an eye catching title and knowledge of the author I had to check out his controversial views. He had a following, while others considered him to be a loaded firecracker.

Smedley Darlington Butler the son of a U.S. Congressman grew up in Pennsylvania with Quaker roots. He voluntarily chose a career in the Marine Corps quickly rising through the ranks making his mark in history. Major General Butler USMC the recipient of two Medals of Honor did not retire quietly. One should separate his military service from his active retirement.

Upon retirement in the 1930’s with politics in his blood Butler crisscrossed America voicing his opinion of big business and war. His issue was not with the defense of America, but with engagements on foreign soil. His main theory was: Money (Wall Street / Big Business) + War = Racket. He mentions that the way to avoid war is to take away the profit motive. The peace movement seeking monetary funding is also labeled a racket.

In his day there were “Banana Wars” and other skirmishes that had no real connection to the defense of our nation. Therefore to some degree Butler is correct and it is healthy to ask questions, big questions however his conclusions seem too absolute. I favor free market capitalism but without checks, balances and consequences graft and corruption can take place.

The 21st Century is a global society and as nice as isolation might be, life today is not that simple on plant earth. At times there is more to worry about than a potential racket as true evil also exists. I’m thankful for America’s freedom of speech and freedom of press where Butler could openly express his views to others. Most of all I appreciate the selfless dedication of those who defend such freedom.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to admit, all of the hype I'd encountered before finally getting to this book led me to believe that this would be an articulate and impassioned voice of "right" over "might" from the pen of one the USMC's mightiest warriors. However, Smedley seems to reduce the "cost" of war primarily to its economic terms and goes into the $$$ figures of how much companies make during war-time and preparation for war-time. Smedley died before WWII and all of the statistics and numbers he gives in this "op/ed" piece are really chump change compared to what transpired after the military industrial complex truly exploded. Still, his sentiment is sincere and at the time it was written, there weren't too many men with his credentials able to speak out this way, calling out Wall Street and their bought-and-paid-for politicians; but the value I think of Smedley Butler lies more in what he did for his fellow military men than what he wrote: Smedley Butler and the Bonus Army.

[Yasiru · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only a thinking soldier is ever truly a hero, and real heroes are what governments ruled by mislaid incentives despise the most.
What's surprising as one reads this is how World War II and even the paradigm shift of the Cold War and subsequent intervention policy seem only to have exacerbated the scale of the problem described in Butler's thesis rather than changing any fundamental feature of it.

Perhaps the broader tragedy is that such a short, cogent argument by one of the most decorated soldiers in history is not considered required reading.

[Arthur Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short but incredibly moving work on the horrors of the military industrial complex and the brazen lies that perpetuate it should be mandatory reading for all high school students in America.

[Mischa Daanen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was really bad. War hero or not, this guy has the reasoning of a ten year old. Oversimplified and nationalist. Why is it that whenever somewhere profits are being made, it’s automatically deemed unethical? Doesn’t matter if it’s fighting a war, curing cancer or preventing a famine. If some industry or person financially benefits from fixing a world crisis by offering their services or products, they’re automatically distrusted and regarded as being inherently bad, as if they made the profits ‘on the backs of others’.

Wartime increases the demand for certain materials like copper (for munitions), steel (for ships and tanks) and leather (for boots). According to Butler everybody at home making a profit from answering to this “demand” by supplying weaponry and resources instead of fighting overseas in the actual trenches is therefore a coward, a leech and a racketeer. Everybody financing and supporting war (through liberty bonds) is evil…

Fighting a war costs money… of course industries profited from freeing Europe from Nazi-Germany. Why’s that bad? Profits are made anywhere, anytime regardless; war or peace. Certain industries profit from certain circumstances, whether it be wartime or peace. Nothing inherently bad or unethical about supplying in a demand c.q. being industrious, equals making a profit. That’s like arguing that doctors or psychologists are vultures because they make money off of sick and depressed people.

When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a “war to make the world safe for democracy” and a “war to end all wars”. Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy.

Americentrism core.exe

[John Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This powerful, easily read book is as relevant today as the day it was originally published. It takes about an hour to read. Treat yourself to the insights of a man who has seen from the inside the fraud perpetrated on the American public for most of the nation's history, then get angry and do something about it. War is a horror we can do without, especially since it's driven by greed and promoted almost exclusively with lies.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smedley Butler was only one of two Marines and nineteen Americans to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor twice. After his retirement from the Corps he wrote an article condemning war as a means for some people to get rich(er) without their families serving in the Armed Forces. He was also a champion of veteran's rights. This work is a thoughtful collection of his speeches and papers on the subjects. A good read for thought.

[Gerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Smedley D. Butler, (Maj.Gen. USMC – Retired – Deceased) was twice awarded the CMOH. His actions taken during the First World War were unquestionably brave, and this makes for a mild understatement to the truth. I’ve seen this sort of thing however over the course of my own life and military experience. In reflection of the horrors of war the person of notoriety takes a different stance and has a change of heart, is this something that came with age or his Quaker background I cannot say for certain. Major General Butler died less than 1 year and 6 months before the attack on the U.S. Naval docks at Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army Schofield Barracks, and U.S. Army-Air Forces Hickam Air Field in Hawaii on the 7th of December 1941. In this manner I believe he would have had his feelings and beliefs changed back to where they were at the time before he wrote this book through the end of his life - then again maybe not. His speeches and writings in 1939 also reflect a further solidification to the isolationist-pacifist he became at the near end of his career and life. However, there are truths to some of his emotional statements but not enough fact to ensure a complete mindset of turn-around for these statements and personally held beliefs to become warranted in action as he had called for at the time.

Following the Second World War and considering that conscription ended in 1945 it was only for a short time – in 1947 the U.S. realized that it had to implement the draft again as the Cold War was well underway. Isolationism was a product of an era that had long left the station with the attack at Pearl Harbor. The brilliant farewell speech by President Eisenhower some 20+ years after the death of General Butler was a similar reaction to age and a change of heart as to what the (then) President observed – what they both seem to have in common is the fact of the current events as they were posed did not have full consideration of what was out of both of their hands - President Eisenhower should have known better based upon his position of President and what he was receiving daily in briefs from his National Security team. Consider, General Butler’s statements both on the eve of and during the beginning of the Second World War with President Eisenhower’s farewell address on 17 January 1961 with statements of the “Military Industrial Complex.” For Butler, the Japanese were already raping China and for Eisenhower the Soviets had already launched Sputnik, all the language used by Butler on "no attack in the USA will come" and for Eisenhower the American space program was in its infancy born in a time based "need" as even he himself could see the horizon of issues with the USSR; the space program was created with Allied agreement in order to protect the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain were forced to develop nuclear armaments together in order of making the world a safer place. President Eisenhower had also known that Vietnam was on the rise, confirmed later by President Kennedy and greatly increased by President Johnson with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution of 1964. What the “Military Industrial Complex” failed to draw attention toward was the increased risk of the "other side"; what Butler failed to realize is that Corporal Hitler was going to have to be stopped eventually - General Butler never witnessed the Declaration of War by Germany upon the USA and his assumptions never take this into consideration any more than the "other side" of the globe where the military build up in Japan would lead to technology able to hit the USA by aircraft via a determined Imperial Navy. General Butler fails miserably in this book. I use the reference to the farewell speech by President Eisenhower here because there are many parallels (but in a less emotional manner) to General Butler's opinion. General Butler doesn't consider the fact of the attack of "Black Tom", the sinking of the Lusitania, nor the Zimmerman Telegram - these points are fully ignored.

When I think of Smedley Butler I think of a Camp on Okinawa Japan that is one of many Marine Bases on the Island. I also think of one 1st Lieutenant Dale Dye who chewed me out for not saluting him – my eyes were facing down looking at paperwork as I was gently walking – to the Lieutenant’s credit he didn’t chew me out that badly in reflection; at the time I was mostly embarrassed as a young Lance Corporal. Times have changed since 1981 as they had from 1918 to 1935 and beyond. The next time I would see Dale Dye was when I was in a movie theatre and heard that distinctive voice in the movie “Platoon” where he played an Army Captain; he also played the crusty old Colonel in “Band of Brothers”.

In conclusion – I did not care for the modern day introduction nor conclusion. The pages within and between that represented this book in 1935 was simply off base - time would prove this. The world in the end can thank none other than Sir Winston S. Churchill for his fortitude of strength and that of the British people who fought this Second World War alone for 2 years before the Russians were forced to enter the war. Had Corporal Hitler not attacked the USSR, the UK would have been forced to fight for nearly another 6 months. Operation Barbarossa began one year and one day after the death of General Butler. Three stars is generous in my view but would rather give this book a 2.5 so I will round up.

[Boadicea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful polemic for a pacifist...

In this short, forceful treatise on the (unilateral) costs of mounting a war, General Smedley Butler unearths the costs of waging a war. Specifically, he's looking at WW1, where he performed with honour. On his retirement, he visits many of the 50,000 veterans who were maimed by the experience such that they were no longer able to live independent lives and becomes aware of the awful consequencesof war.

Through a variety of sources, he is able to confirm that participation in the war cost each man, woman and child in America the princely sum of $400 and that was in the 1914-1918 period. He acknowledges the untold costs of the dead, the injured and the impacts, whether physical, emotional, or moral on both the individuals involved as well as their families.

Then he looks at the profiteers and makes a devastating case for their loss of reputation and consideration for charges of embezzlement. As he indicates, war is 'just another racket'.

Obviously, he does not attempt in this short piece to quantify the losses in the opposing side. I hesitate to call them 'losers', as it would appear everyone loses from this denial of the rights of humanity and inability to live in peace.

However, I have never read such an impressive argument anywhere written in such concise terms, enunciating the lunacy of warmongering.

I read this as the Taliban have once more returned to power in Afghanistan after the American forces & their allies pulled out after 20 years of trying to prop up an unviable government in the "War on Terror". How much has this cost? Well, at least billions are known to be involved- and who has paid? Has it helped infant and maternal mortality, literacy and, ultimately, individual freedom? And if so, by how much? Has it ever enhanced art and culture?

If WW1 cost each individual in the USA $400 in the 1914-18 period, what are the individual costs for the 20 year occupying force in Afghanistan in today's terms? And how much were those economic considerations a factor in their withdrawal?

Put simply, war sucks....and bankrupts society in so many ways.

Highly recommended reading for all.

[Bettie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Info: Major General Smedley ButlerSmedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye", was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.

blurb about the author - During his 34 years of Marine Corps service, Butler was awarded numerous medals for heroism including the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (the highest Marine medal at its time for officers), and subsequently the Medal of Honor twice. Notably, he is one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor, and one of only three to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor for two different actions.

In addition to his military career, Smedley Butler was noted for his outspoken anti-interventionist views, and his book War is a Racket. His book was one of the first works describing the workings of the military-industrial complex and after retiring from service, he became a popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s.

In 1934, he informed the United States Congress that a group of wealthy industrialists had plotted a military coup known as the Business Plot to overthrow the government.

This audio is read by a SAM-esque automated voice, which takes a bit of getting used to. The vocal stresses are quite jolting. Eye-opening stuff this, really.

War is a Racket by Smedley Butler

Major General Smedley Butler & The Fascist Takeover Of The USA - A Warning From History

[Laya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is famous for being one of the few notable contemporaneous accounts of the american military-industrial complex in its early stages. It's reputation as an antiwar classic is well deserved - it disillusions the war fervor and shows the profit incentives running behind war. But Smedley doesn't go beyond the profit incentives and see the bigger machine where capitalism, imperialism and war are inextricably linked - the literature around this has already existed during his times. The best i've gotten of this book is a push to read Lenin's original work on Imperialism - which does a better job at giving a theoretical underpinning to wars between capitalist powers.

[Glen Krisch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible. It reminded me of some of Orwell's essays.

[Michał Wojas · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a veteran I can't suggest this book enough.
Must read for all looking to serve in the military and all that have and are.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book 📚 next war is not with guns or ammunition but chemicals and poisons and huge bombs 💣

So scrapping guns or ammunition would make little difference.

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and bracing. Though this is certainly dated, the logic and evidence holds up to a modern audience, and for every outdated bit of evidence given, I can think of a number of more recent examples that fit. The game hasn't changed one bit. It's a cynical and biting look at the hidden gears that turn the wheel.

It's certainly a piece of reading that gets right under your skin and into your blood. But there's also something of a pleading tone that comes through the pages, as if to say, "Stop, look, and defend yourselves from ever becoming Cannon fodder to line the pockets of another human being."

That bit where the author tells the mothers in the audience to go upstairs to sit next to their sleeping children and think about what would happen to them in a war... that was an affecting passage to say the least.

[Thomas Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

War Is a Racket, Smedley Butler, 1935.


The book is online at

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/w...


Quoted in Joel Andreas' wonderful cartoon book, Addicted to War:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...


U.S. militarism as a gigantic scam “in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” --Smedley Butler

From Alex Scopic, in Current Affairs magazine, 2024.09.30: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/l...
Wall Street financiers in 1934 tried to hire Major General Smedley Butler to lead a putsch against President Roosevelt.

A society that “votes with its dollars” cannot be truly democratic, because it will always be dominated by the people with the most dollars to throw around.

As long as you have economic inequality, you don’t actually have democracy. What you have is a faux democracy with invisible fences around it. The economic elite will tolerate your elections and your “democracy” as long as it always delivers the outcomes they want: most importantly, free markets and the sanctity of property. But if an elected government strays beyond the fences, as Roosevelt began to with the New Deal, the elite will step in to stop it, and what the majority of the people might want or vote for is completely irrelevant. We see this pattern today, too—from unelected “superdelegates” tipping Democratic primaries toward business-friendly candidates, to Super PACs that spend millions to influence the outcomes of congressional elections, to an openly corrupt Supreme Court striking down abortion rights that the majority of the American people support. There are all kinds of antidemocratic levers of power, some more subtle than others.

Ultimately, only one side can get what it wants. A nation’s economy can be controlled democratically by its elected leaders, who attempt to make decisions in everyone’s best interest, or it can be controlled undemocratically by bankers and shareholders, who only look out for themselves. But it can’t be both. For finance capital to flourish, democratic influence over its operations has to be curtailed. Likewise, for democracy to flourish, capital has to be curtailed.

Elon Musk decided to just state the views of his class openly, posting online: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” That, in less than 140 characters, is the relationship between capitalism and democracy. And is there any reason to think that “whoever we want” wouldn’t also include the government of the United States, if Musk and his fellow billionaires deemed it necessary?

The world’s economic elite aren’t invincible. They failed in 1934, all because one person refused to go along with the plan. Even a Major General in the Marines, it turns out, is capable of seeing through decades of lies and ideology and choosing a new path. That means there’s hope. Democracy—and I mean real democracy, not the hollow imitation that pits red capitalists against blue ones in meaningless Coke-or-Pepsi contests—can win. Smedley Butler beat the wealthy fascists of his day, and so can we. --Alex Scopic