War is a Racket by Smedley Butler

Major General Smedley Butler delivers a blistering indictment of war as a systemic racket in which a small elite profits while the general population bears the human and financial costs. Drawing from his own military experience and post-retirement political awakening, Butler exposes how wartime profits—ranging from 200% to 1,800%—were concentrated in the hands of munitions makers, bankers, shipbuilders, and industrialists during World War I. He details how patriotic corporations like DuPont, Bethlehem Steel, and Anaconda Copper reaped enormous gains while soldiers were underpaid, overworked, and left mentally and physically shattered. The episode underscores the moral and economic absurdity of a system where the poor and working class fight and die, while the wealthy profit from bloodshed. Butler proposes three radical solutions: conscripting capital and labor to equalize wartime income, instituting a limited plebiscite for war decisions restricted to those who would fight, and limiting military forces strictly to home defense. Ultimately, he argues that peace is not only more humane but more profitable than war, and calls for a societal shift to end the war racket once and for all.