War Is a Racket
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War Is a Racket
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Narrated by:
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D S Harvey
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Written by:
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General Smedley D Butler
About this listen
After his retirement from the Marine Corps in the early 1930s, General Smedley D. Butler embarked on a national lecture tour, where he gave his speech about how commercial interests benefit from war. The speech was well received and he wrote an expanded version of it, which was published as War Is A Racket. The work was published by Reader's Digest as a condensed book supplement, which added to its popularity.
The book consists of five chapters. The first chapter cites telling statistics: 21,000 people became millionaires and billionaires during the war; four million men served; the growth of national debt by a factor of 25 from 1898 to 1918. The second chapter details the level of profits made by many major US corporations made in the years preceding World War I and compares them to the significantly greater profits made from and during the war. The third chapter lays bare the ways in which the costs are borne by the public, with particular focus on humiliating deductions from the pay of soldiers.
Chapter four sets forth three simple methods to limit wars: insist that everyone in the war economy earn the same income as that of the soldiers; conduct a vote to decide whether or not to go to war and limit the voters to those who would serve; limit appropriations and activities to strictly defensive measures. The final chapter shows the futility of arms limitations negotiations and makes it plain that only total disarmament will break the back of the beast.
Public Domain (P)2019 MP3 Audiobook ClassicsWhat listeners say about War Is a Racket
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 2024-12-23
Short but to the point, contemporarily important
War Is A Racket is an anti-war piece of non-fiction, in which General Butler, disillusioned by the killing fields of WW1 and asking himself, "What was all this for?" comes to the conclusion that money, greed, and power were what lay behind perhaps not the "spark" of the war, but most certainly the length and the ferocity of the war, with industrial production reaching previously unimaginable heights. It is written pre-WW2, but General Smedley sees that the harbingers of war are flourishing in Europe (written in 1935, so even pre-Spanish Civil War), and I'm sure much to his dismay he lived to see the break-out of WW2. He sadly passed away in 1940, before at least being able to see the Allied victory, but yet again, despite the more "moral" war of WW2 on the side of the allies, the racketeering most certainly did not stop, and in fact grew incredible in strength. The Cold War military spending would have made this man lose his mind completely.
General Smedley absolutely nails the nature of war, the profits to the industrialist and capitalist class, the power to the political class, and the wholesale slaughter or enslavement of the lower classes, in order to bring about such "rewards" to the elites.
A must read/listen. It is under 1 hour long. Perhaps one of the more eye-opening hours of your life, if you never really considered this economic/financial side of warfare.
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