So was Smedley Butler "amazing", "fucked-up", or "delusional" when he pointed out the profits US corporations made from the "War to End all Wars"?
"Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people – didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war?
"They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.
"Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump – or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!
"Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad."
War is a Racket.
Only amazingly fucked-up delusional slaves argue otherwise.
Your cheap over-used stale Marxist rhetoric is fucked up, as are you.
Life is a racket, you dickweed.
It should go without saying that suppliers of war materiel make money in a capitalist system when they produce their product and when there is a demand for that product.
It is only fucking imbecile Marxist school girls like you who worry over that fact: "Oh nosies. Big bad evil Haliburton is making
money! Sound the alarums, sirrah!"
The fact that manufacturers of products needed for war make money providing that product hardly equates with your facially retarded proposition that the manufacturers are the ones fomenting war, you imbecile.
Would life be better in this world if there was no war? In some ways, sure. In other ways, obviously not. For without war, nobody stops a fucking Hitler from seizing Poland, etc. Without war, we still might be expected to have slavery right here in the United States. Without war, we wouldn't BE the United State, but just some over the puddle colony of Great Britain.
I realize that shitholes like you live in that Utopian fantasy world which you idiots construct inside your pin-heads. But outside of your fantasy Utopia, war is more complicated than your two-dimensional shallow "thinking." And since wars are not going to cease to exist, and you wouldn't be safe if they could somehow be successfully prevented, the question would arise: given your hatred of capitalism, how the fuck do YOU propose that we supply our fighting forces with uniforms, guns, bullets, missiles, aircraft, bombs, tanks, shells, etc., etc., etc.?
