THEORISTS OF WAR

Theorists of War



Theorists of War

Introduction

As a issue of fact, Karl Marx's alter ego was in his youth, succinctly but resolutely, a man of action in the infantry sphere. Given self-assurance by having spent a year (1841-1842) in the Prussian artillery at Berlin, where he dedicated his leisure as a juvenile personal to following Schelling's addresses on beliefs and associating with his juvenile Hegelian critics, the Bombardier (corporal) Engels recruited to fight in the German transformation of 1848-1849. First, in May 1849 in his dwelling village of Elberfeld, from which he was rapidly expelled for fear that a 'red' such as he might wipe off on the local managing group of Public Safety. Then, in June and July in the ranks of the insurrectionary army of Baden and the Palatinate, with the remnants of which he eventually escaped to Swiss territory in face of the Prussian offensive.

Engels went into action without any illusions as to what the fate of the insurgents would be and without any esteem for the authority of what he advised to be a caricature of a revolution. Nonetheless, he showed bravery in activity, troubled overhead all that there should be no ascribe of cowardice against the Communists, for whom he and Marx were currently standard-bearers: 'The party of the proletariat was rather powerfully comprised in the army of Baden and the Palatinate, particularly in the volunteer corps, as for demonstration in our own, in the refugee legion, etc, and it can securely dispute all the other parties to find even the smallest obvious error with any one of its members. The most resolute Communists made the most brave soldiers'.2

By taking part in the battle, Engels furthermore intended to enrich his information of military affairs, having currently came by the rank of a expert on the question within the editorial group of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. It was in this newspaper that, as a revolutionary military detractor, he had written on the main episodes of the 'Springtime of the Peoples' of 1848-1849. Wilhelm Liebknecht later reported that the items Engels had devoted to Hungary were 'attributed to a high grading agent in the Hungarian army',3 just as ten years later his pamphlets published unsigned in Berlin, Po and Rhine (1859) and Savoy, pleasant and the Rhine (1860), were to be attributed to some Prussian general who was anxious to maintain his anonymity.4

Frederick Engels' interest in infantry questions was not a mere hobby. If he immersed himself so profoundly in the study of every aspect of the subject, it was because he was driven by the identical motive that impelled Marx to devour everything that had to do with political economy. It was the determination to assist the class they had selected to identify with, the proletariat--Marx by organising the weapons of the Critique,5 Engels by dedicating himself to the critique of weapons.

As soon as he was established in Manchester in late 1850, Engels resolved down to a methodical events of reading which supplied him ...