I've only skimmed this essay, and plan to read it more carefully later, so please be charitable if I've overlooked an important passage.
Butler's argument appears to be conflating two questions:
1. Does anyone unfairly profit from war?
2. Is the unfair profit the result of a racket?
I think few people would argue that the answer to #1 is "yes", but I don't think he's made a convincing argument that the unfair spoils of war are either necessarily or overwhelmingly the result of a racket.
Here I would like to note that the Butler's definition of "racket" is rather loose. The strongest interpretation of his definition, I think, is that a racket is something that is orchestrated covertly by few, for their own benefit, and at the expense of the many.
There is another word for this: a conspiracy. The American Heritage Dictionary has what I consider to be a fair definition for conspiracy: "an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act."
So to show that war is indeed a racket, Butler would have to demonstrate that one of two things is true:
1. War can only emerge from conspiracy
2. The overwhelming majority of wars have historically emerged from conspiracy
Demonstrating a conspiracy in turn is a two-part enterprise: (1) showing the act was illegal, wrongful or subversive, and (2) showing that a group of people agreed to perform it together. As far as I can tell, we are only shown instances of profiteering, and perhaps individual corruption in the form of draft-dodging and whatnot. This is outrageous, to be sure, but falls short of demonstrating that a "racket" is at play. And while I can think of recent examples of wars that do qualify as a racket (at least, IMO), Butler's more general claim that "War is (effectively always) a racket" seems like hyperbole.
Butler's argument appears to be conflating two questions:
1. Does anyone unfairly profit from war?
2. Is the unfair profit the result of a racket?
I think few people would argue that the answer to #1 is "yes", but I don't think he's made a convincing argument that the unfair spoils of war are either necessarily or overwhelmingly the result of a racket.
Here I would like to note that the Butler's definition of "racket" is rather loose. The strongest interpretation of his definition, I think, is that a racket is something that is orchestrated covertly by few, for their own benefit, and at the expense of the many.
There is another word for this: a conspiracy. The American Heritage Dictionary has what I consider to be a fair definition for conspiracy: "an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act."
So to show that war is indeed a racket, Butler would have to demonstrate that one of two things is true:
1. War can only emerge from conspiracy
2. The overwhelming majority of wars have historically emerged from conspiracy
Demonstrating a conspiracy in turn is a two-part enterprise: (1) showing the act was illegal, wrongful or subversive, and (2) showing that a group of people agreed to perform it together. As far as I can tell, we are only shown instances of profiteering, and perhaps individual corruption in the form of draft-dodging and whatnot. This is outrageous, to be sure, but falls short of demonstrating that a "racket" is at play. And while I can think of recent examples of wars that do qualify as a racket (at least, IMO), Butler's more general claim that "War is (effectively always) a racket" seems like hyperbole.