Osservazioni di Engels sulla qualità dell'esercito della rivoluzione francese

“But Engels could not indefinitely ignore the linkage between war and revolution. He began to analyze the 1793 model by disassembling it. To organize his and Marx’s thoughts on the subject , and as a “sort of exercise” in his new specialty of military science (29), he began an essay on the prospects that would confront a revolutionary French regime under attack by all the counterrevolutionary powers of Europe. In the ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’, Engels had concentrated on the intensifying and accelerating effect that war would have on the political and social side of a revolution. It was assumed that a revolution would increase a nation’s ability to defend itself. If a nation in desperate military straits could save itself only by resort to increasingly radical measures, those measures had to yield military dividends – else why could a “Fatherland in danger” be saved more surely by a revolutionary regime than by any other sort of government? Now that the dust of 1848 had settled a bit, Engels examined more closely this matter of what revolution might be expected to do for war, and his findings were not encouraging. During the revolutions of 1848 and 1849, Engels had functioned to some extent as a cheerleader of revolution. In 1851, however, he had to be entirely cold-blooded and detached, lest he mislead himself, Marx, and the proletariat as to the prospects of a future revolution. “Now that we are not writing an NRZ, we have no need for illusions”, he said, praising the generalship of Radetzky (30). Even the accomplishments of the miraculous year 1793 diminished under Engels’ critical scrutiny: Valmy was a trivial artillery duel, Carnot a mediocrity, and the heroic volunteers, when not directly under the eye of Dumouriez, fought no better than the south German ‘Volkswehr’ of 1849. The ‘levée en masse’ was no panacea. It had increased the size of the French forces, but had no created an army out of nothing; only the allies’ indecision permitted the French to train their levies in the ‘école de bataillon’. France had been saved not by an irresistible revolutionary forces, but by the discord and incompetence of her foes” [Martin Berger, Engels, Armies, and Revolution. The Revolutionary Tactics of Classical Marxism’, Connecticut, 1977] [(29) To Marx, Apr. 11, 1851, 27, 235; (30) “Holy Alliance vs France”, MS, I, 212. Riazanov, in ‘Neue Zeit’, suggested that Engels wrote it in response to G.A. Techow ‘s article on a similar theme, and the editors of the MS follow Riazanov. The MEW editors argue convincingly that Engels took up the subject on his own (7, 621)]