Frock-Coated Communist by Hunt Tristram

Author:Hunt, Tristram
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing
Published: 2009-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

The failures of 1525 and 1848–9 were not just a question of economic base and political superstructure being out of kilter, they were also the product of extensive military blunders. Thus the study of warfare became a second area of academic interest for Engels. Within months of moving to Manchester, he was writing to Joseph Weydemeyer in Frankfurt asking for some books on military history (which he later secured by buying up the library of a retired Prussian military officer) so that he could ‘take it [military science] at least far enough to be able to join in theoretical discussion without making too much of a fool of myself’.114 Warfare became Engels's ‘special subject’ and with typical rigour he immersed himself in studying the function of leadership, the nature of strategy and the role of topography, technology and army morale. And despite his theoretical aversion towards ‘great men’, Engels couldn't help himself when it came to the great generals. He admired Garibaldi and Napier with schoolboy ardour, but it was the Manichean clash between Napoleon and Wellington which truly bewitched him. Against every one of his materialist inclinations, Engels revered the hero of Waterloo - ‘he would be a genius if common sense were not incapable of rising to the heights of genius’ - and publicly lamented the passing of Britain's most reactionary general-politician in 1852.115

The years spent studying military history reaped dividends in the mid-1850s when the Crimean Peninsula became a miserable quagmire for Russian, British and French troops and Engels began a successful second career as one of England's leading armchair generals. He even hoped his military punditry might offer a route out of Manchester. When war broke out in 1854, Engels immediately fired off a job application to the editor of the Daily News. ‘Perhaps I am not mistaken in supposing that at the present moment an offer to contribute to the military department of your paper may meet with some favour…’ He went on to provide a short military résumé beginning with his service in the Prussian artillery before outlining his ‘active service during the insurrectionary war in South Germany’. While he hoped the Russians would get a sound beating, he promised to mix his politics up ‘as little as possible with military criticism’. But despite such assurances, the job never materialized. ‘It's all off with the The Daily News,’ he wrote angrily to Marx as he saw another lifeline out of Ermen & Engels slipping away. Everything seemed settled – the fee, the proofs, the terms – and then, ‘today, the answer finally arrives saying that the articles are too professional’ and he should approach a specialized, military journal. In a rare burst of pure fury, Engels blamed émigré gossip in London for belittling his military experience and queering his pitch; ‘nothing was easier than to represent Engels, the MILITARY MAN, as no more than a former one-year volunteer, a communist and a clerk by trade, thus putting a stop to everything’.116 All the horrible, huckstering indignity of his position flooded back to taunt him.

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