War Is a Racket (1935)
<i>&gt;A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small &quot;inside&quot; 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.</i><p>Just because people make fortunes from war doesn&#x27;t mean that this is the essential characteristic of war. People make fortunes out of everything regardless of its cause.<p>War is a historic universal, and in fact it was most intense in pre-modern societies. Aboriginal cultures went to war not just for material reasons, but also for cultural reasons, ritualistic, and religious reasons. Long before we had organized commercial activity or opportunity for rackets we had warrior cultures.<p>The conspiratorial idea that war is largely driven by shadowy elites doesn&#x27;t really hold up to anthropology. Far from it elites often even have to reign the flames of war in as populations whip themselves into a frenzy. The fact that war generally benefits few people, or sometimes even nobody at all doesn&#x27;t imply that the majority of people weren&#x27;t genuinely enthusiastic about it, although they&#x27;ll typically deny it later.