Though published in 1934, The Merchants of Death still resonates with a truth that still applies to today.

The modern arms maker is the result of the Machine Age. Rapid technological development and mass production in the arms industry raised the problem of markets and business methods. The sales methods which the arms merchants evolved in the course of time are fundamentally the same as those employed by Big Business everywhere. But because the arms merchants dealt so largely with governments and because their activities so frequently played into national and international politics, their business methods have been subjected to a much closer scrutiny.

The arm industry is undeniably a menace to peace, but it is an industry to which our present civilization clings and for which it is responsible. It is evidence of the superficiality of many peace advocates that they should denounce the arms industry and accept the present state of civilization which fosters it. If the arms industry is a cancer of the body of modern civilization, it is not an extraneous growth; it is the result of the unhealthy condition of the body itself.

One may be horrified by the activities of an industry which thrives on the greatest of human curses; still it is well to acknowledge that the arms industry did not create the war system. On the contrary, the war system created the arms industry.

Our civilization has permitted and even fostered war-making forces, such as nationalism and chauvinism, economic rivalry and competitive capitalism, imperialism and colonialism, political and territorial disputes, race hatred and pressure population. The traditional way of establishing an equilibrium between these rival forces has been and is violence, armed warfare.

The system of industrial mobilization is a long step toward placing war in the center of our economic life, or to put it another way, to make the arms industry the hub of our industrial machine. An alliance of governments with war industries threatens to make the arms makers supreme in economic life and after that in government. A world dominated economically and politically by the armament industry will eventually result, if wars continue unabated.

Modern war involves the entire economic life of the nation. Without making undue demands on the imagination, it can readily be seen what a gigantic economic task is involved in modern war. In order to prepare for this "emergency," the U.S. government has already made contracts with 15,000 industrialists, instructiing them in detail what will be expected of them in war.

It would almost seem as though governments exist merely to prepare for war.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.