Gangsters of Capitalism

August 1, 2021

Dubbed "The Fighting Quaker," celebrated U.S. Marine Smedley D. Butler fought for his country in every major overseas conflict from the Spanish-American War of 1898 until the eve of World War II. Yet looking back, he declared bitterly, "I was a racketeer for capitalism," having helped seize Guant�namo Bay, the Philippines, and land for the Panama Canal and helped occupy countries from Nicaragua to Puerto Rico to Haiti. Multi-award-winning journalist Katz uses Butler's life to frame a discussion of U.S. expansionism. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

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October 25, 2021
Journalist Katz (The Big Truck That Went By) delivers a searing and well-documented portrait of early 20th-century U.S. imperialism focused on the career of U.S. Marine Corps major general Smedley D. Butler (1881–1940). Contending that American military actions served the interests of U.S. business and financial institutions, often with dire effects on local people, Katz provides the geopolitical context behind interventions in China, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and elsewhere, and visits each location to document the legacy of U.S. interference. He describes the terror campaign waged against residents of the Philippine island of Samar in retaliation for a 1901 insurgent attack that killed 48 U.S. soldiers, and notes that people still celebrate the uprising and mourn their forebears’ deaths in annual commemorations. In the Caribbean and Central America, Marines helped to install puppet leaders and organized militarized police forces who oppressed the people and smoothed the way for U.S. profiteers. All of these interventions were presented to the American people as heroic assistance for the development of people not ready to govern themselves, Katz notes. Butler’s evolution from the naive son of a prominent Quaker family who lied about his age to enlist in 1898 to a highly decorated major general whose 1935 book, War Is a Racket, condemned the antidemocratic actions he helped carry out provides the history’s intriguing through line. The result is an eye-opening portrait of American hubris.

January 15, 2022
Character study of the Marine hero who became a radical critic of the system he'd fought to uphold. Smedley Butler (1881-1940), whose father was a member of Congress, came from a prosperous, influential family. He was determined to excel, and nowhere else did he do so more than as an officer in the Marines, patrolling places such as the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico--islands that formed the basis of an American empire. In his nearly 35 years in uniform, Butler later said, "I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers....In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism." Foreign correspondent Katz bookends Butler's service with a "Business Plot" that, filtered through the American Legion in the 1930s, was intended to mirror the rise of Mussolini in Italy. Butler was asked to head a column of World War I veterans in a march on Washington as Mussolini had marched on Rome, installing the president as a powerless figurehead fronting a fascist government. Butler replied to his interlocutor, "my interest is, my one hobby is, maintaining a democracy," promising that he would raise an army to fight these homegrown fascists. He then took evidence of the plot to Congress, which did precisely nothing. Katz, naturally, links this plot to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Though Butler won two Medals of Honor and is exalted among Marines, Katz makes clear that it's his heroism and not his politics that are remembered--and then dimly--even as he raised questions about American society and foreign policy that go unanswered today. The author is also not reticent about pointing out that Butler's dedication to American democracy did not hinder him from crushing democratic movements in Cuba and Haiti, where he helped install regimes that were friendly to the autocracy he despised. A relevant, readable effort to link past American colonialism to the present impulse to install homegrown leaders for life.

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November 19, 2021

The heart of reporter Katz's (The Big Truck That Went By) book is a biography of Smedley Butler (1881-1940), one of the most celebrated American war heroes of his time. Before retiring as brigadier general in 1931, Butler won 16 Marine Corps medals for bravery and two Medals of Honor while soldiering on in almost every military operation the United States engaged in--from the Spanish-American War to the Banana Wars of Central America and the Caribbean. Two years after retiring, Butler testified before Congress on an alleged plot by businessmen to topple the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in favor of a pro--big business regime; two years later, Butler published his book War Is a Racket, about the military--industrial complex. Sandwiched into this narrative is a second, in which Katz describes his own visits to the sites of these wars and delivers a general indictment of U.S. military imperialism. VERDICT This book is really two books mashed into one, and not as successfully as they might have been. Katz's account of his own visits intrudes on his account of Smedley's life, and his indictment of military policy is interrupted by the constant return to biography. Only for military history completists.--David Keymer, Cleveland

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