Summary of Friedrich Engels’ Pamphlet  
“The Prussian Military Question  
and the German Workers’ Party”  

Hermann.  
No. 324, March 18, 1865  

The Prussian Military Question  
and the German Workers’ Party.  
By Friedrich Engels.  
(Hamburg, Otto Meißner.)  

This very important pamphlet falls into three sections.  

In the first, the author subjects the Prussian army reorganisation to a scientific military critique. He finds the main fault in that the reorganisation plan, “under the pretence of going back to the original universal compulsory military service, which cannot exist without a Landwehr as a large army reserve, in fact makes a shift towards the Franco-Austrian cadre system”.  

The second section sharply criticises the treatment of the military question by the bourgeois opposition. The author comes to the conclusion: “Whatever the errors and complications involved, the bourgeois opposition is now forced into the position of having to fight through the military question, or it will lose the remnant of political power it still possesses... Could the Prussian bourgeoisie have the courage to hold out to the utmost? It must have wonderfully improved since 1848, and the yearning for compromise that the Progress Party has been sighing out daily since the opening of this session does not speak in favour of it.”  

In the third section, the author examines the position “of the workers’ party on this army reorganisation” and the “constitutional conflict that has arisen from it”. His answer is summarised in the following sentences:  

“The more and more consistent implementation of universal compulsory military service is the only point that interests the working class of Germany in the Prussian army reorganisation.”  

115  

Karl Marx  

The policy which the working class has to follow in the constitutional conflict is “above all to keep the workers’ party organised as well as present conditions allow; to push the Progress Party forward to real progress, as far as possible; but to answer the hypocritical enticements of the reaction with: With the spear shall one receive gifts, point against point”.  

116