Marx and the Militia Question

• In Event: Marx's Forgotten Concepts

Abstract

In this paper I look at Marx and Engels’ remarks on militia as a form of
military organization in contrast with the standing army. I look at them, firstly, in the context of their wider theoretical principles and political activities. Secondly, I look at them in the context of what political theorists call The Militia Question, the early modern and modern debates in political economy and philosophy over the form armed forces should take in the nascent capitalist state. I argue that the Enlightenment discussions about the soldier are an important current for understanding one of their readers, Marx, and I argue that the context of the critique of political economy remains relevant as we grapple today with questions of state violence domestically and internationally. Because it sits at the intersection of ‘order’, a capitalist division of labor, and the tension of virtuous free citizenship in the growing modern state, the militia question helps to illuminate a crucial corner of the study of modernity to which Marxism has much to offer: working-class soldiers. In the political context of Marx and Engels writings specifically: the mass soldiery is analyzed as one part of the future of revolutionary socialist working class, that in retrospect is overlooked.

Author

• Jasmine Chorley-Schulz, University of Toronto