Antony C. Sutton

Antony C. Sutton was born in London on February 14, 1925 to Edward Ceril Sutton and Marjorie Sutton, maiden name Burrett.[1] The family relocated to California in 1957 with Antony and his two siblings, and he became a U.S. citizen in 1962.[3]

Sutton studied at the universities of London, Göttingen, and California and received his D.Sc. from the University of Southampton. Sutton then received an economics professorship at California State University, Los Angeles and a research fellowship at Stanford University's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace from 1968 to 1973.

During his time at the Hoover Institution, he wrote the major study Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development (in three volumes), arguing that the West played a major role in developing the Soviet Union from its very beginnings up until the then-present year of 1970. Sutton argued that the Soviet Union's technological and manufacturing base, which was then engaged in supplying the Viet Cong, was built by United States corporations and largely funded by US taxpayers. Steel and iron plants, the GAZ automobile factory, a Ford subsidiary in eastern Russia, and many other Soviet industrial enterprises were built with the help or technical assistance of the United States or US corporations. He argued further that the Soviet Union's acquisition of MIRV technology was made possible by receiving (from US sources) machining equipment for the manufacture of precision ball bearings, necessary to mass-produce MIRV-enabled missiles. He contributed articles to Human Events, The Review of the News, Triumph, Ordnance, The Proceedings, and many other journals.

In 1973, Sutton published a popularized, condensed version of the sections of the forthcoming third volume relevant to military technology called National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union, after which he was forced out of the Hoover Institution.[4] His conclusion from his research on the issue was that the conflicts of the Cold War were "not fought to restrain communism" but were organised in order "to generate multibillion-dollar armaments contracts", since the United States, through financing the Soviet Union "directly or indirectly armed both sides in at least Korea and Vietnam."[5]

The update to the text, The Best Enemy Money Can Buy, looked at the role of military technology transfers up to the 1980s.[6] Appendix B of that text contained the text of his 1972 testimony before Subcommittee VII of the Platform Committee of the Republican Party in which he summarized the essential aspects of his overall research:

In a few words: there is no such thing as Soviet technology. Almost all — perhaps 90–95 percent — came directly or indirectly from the United States and its allies. In effect the United States and the NATO countries have built the Soviet Union. Its industrial and its military capabilities. This massive construction job has taken 50 years. Since the Revolution in 1917. It has been carried out through trade and the sale of plants, equipment and technical assistance.

Sutton's next three published books (Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, Wall Street and FDR and Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler) detailed Wall Street's involvement in the Bolshevik Revolution to destroy Russia as an economic competitor and turn it into "a captive market and a technical colony to be exploited by a few high-powered American financiers and the corporations under their control"[7] as well as its decisive contributions to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose policies he assessed as being essentially the same "corporate socialism," planned by the big corporations.[8] Sutton concluded that it was all part of the economic power elites' "long-range program of nurturing collectivism"[5] and fostering "corporate socialism" in order to ensure "monopoly acquisition of wealth" because it "would fade away if it were exposed to the activity of a free market."[9]

In his view, the only solution to prevent such abuse in the future was that "a majority of individuals declares or acts as if it wants nothing from government, declares it will look after its own welfare and interests" or, specifically, if "a majority finds the moral courage and the internal fortitude to reject the something-for-nothing con game and replace it by voluntary associations, voluntary communes, or local rule and decentralized societies."[5]

In the early 1980s, Sutton used a combination of public-domain information on Skull and Bones (such as Yale yearbooks) and previously unreleased documents sent to him by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt whose father was a Skull and Bones member to write America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones, which, according to Sutton, was his most important work.[10]

The description on the back flap of the dust jacket of Sutton's 1976 book by '76 Press, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, reveals that Sutton was then working on a forthcoming two-part study of the Federal Reserve System and the War on Gold to be published by '76 Press in 1977. When The War on Gold was released the following year in 1977, the dust jacket description announced the follow-up book, The Paper Factory, would be published in 1978, but this book was never released.

Archive footage of Sutton was used in the 2014 documentary, JFK to 9/11: Everything Is a Rich Man's Trick.[11]

The Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University house four boxes of Sutton's personal papers from 1920 to 1972. The collection includes writings, clippings, letters, and notes related to the outbreak of wars, civil wars, revolutions and other violent conflicts around the globe from 1820 to 1970. There is a particular emphasis on the life and career of American entrepreneur Armand Hammer, especially as relates to his business investments and operations in the Soviet Union.[12]

Sutton died in Reno, Nevada on June 17, 2002.[2][1]

Sutton's works have received a number of criticisms from other academics, particularly in regards to his Wall Street trilogy (Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, Wall Street and FDR, and Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler)".[13][14] Some historians argue that these books more closely resemble conspiracy theory than genuine historical studies. For instance, in a contemporary review of Sutton's Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, researcher Virgil D. Medlin of Oklahoma City University reported finding numerous factual errors in the book and claimed that Sutton repeated "unsubstantiated allegations [and came to] unwarranted conclusions." Medlin also stated Sutton made use of dubious sources, such as rumor and uncorroborated inquiries, as "documentary proof of [his] allegations."[13] Similarly, Howard Dickman of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research referred to Sutton's Wall Street and FDR as a "weak specimen of conspiracy history" that was "poorly written and edited, digressive, repetitious, disorganized, and unconvincing."[14]

Sutton's Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1945 to 1965 has also received criticism, specifically in regards to its thesis. Dr. Samuel Lieberstein of Temple University had initially praised the first two volumes of the study but later came to criticize it in his review of the third volume, stating that Sutton failed to note instances of Soviet technological innovation and ignored positive aspects of the USSR's planned economy that seemed to conflict with his thesis.[15] British historian Richard C. Thurlow also criticized Sutton's thesis stating that "all nations were dependent on international trade for economic development and their industrial infrastructure, including the United States" adding that Sutton "totally [disregarded] alternative explanations of Soviet industrialization".[16]

• University of Southampton, D.Sc. in Southampton, United Kingdom.[17]
• University of Göttingen in Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany.[17]
• University of California, Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California, United States of America.[17]

• Economics professor at California State University Los Angeles.
• Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University, 1968 to 1973.

• Military funding of science
• Military–industrial–media complex
• Military Keynesianism
• Permanent war economy
• Politico-media complex
• Power elite
• The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills

• Stang, Alan. "Antony Sutton: A Giant Departs Not A Real Human Being." Ether Zone, 2002. Archived from the original.
• Millegan, Kris. "In Memoriam: Antony C. Sutton, 1925-2002." AntonySutton.com, June 17, 2002. Archived from the original.

• Antony C. Sutton tribute
• Antony C. Sutton at IMDb
• Antony C. Sutton at Find a Grave
• Antony C. Sutton papers at Online Archive of California
• Antony C. Sutton at as The Online Books Page.