Reviews

An interesting little pamphlet that precedes President Eisenhower's call to reject the military-industrial complex by some 20 years. Most of Butler's argument is around the cost of war, which is shouldered by tax-payers and dead, wounded, or psychologically injured soldiers. I think most of this is (or should be) common knowledge to the American people now, but it resonates as much today as it did 80 years ago.

ryanjjung's review

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3.0

A short read. Although I don't disagree, I think Butler is a little shortsighted about a few things. In particular, he thinks we should not go to war unless soldiers themselves vote for it. But he also mentions the indoctrination of soldiers in boot camp. So which is it? Are they unlikely to vote for war? I think not, not with all the hoo-ah forced into their heads. Education has to happen first. Get people smarter and they won't join the military in the first place. Can't go to war without a military. For now, at least. We're now at a place where we have to worry about war machines and automatons and drones. Maybe the military industrial complex doesn't require human blood anymore, and I don't think that's a good thing either.

jake's review

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3.0

Butler's work is a short and persuasive account of how US corporations benefitted from WWI while ordinary Americans--especially soldiers, their families, and holders of Liberty Bonds--suffered. He spends a lot of time comparing pre-war corporate profits to wartime corporate profits in order to demonstrate his claim that companies benefitted from war. He makes this point very convincingly. Butler also has a lot of experience in the US's imperial wars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I had hoped that this book would examine the ways in which capitalist interests interacted with foreign policy in those wars, but it focused solely on WWI. Butler's arguments are also hampered by his inability to articulate the ways in which banking interests profited from the war. Perhaps that is beyond the scope of his short treatise and outside of his realm of expertise, but it leaves his accusations against the banks somewhat vague.

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