Engels sets out the way that the Franco-Prussian War, in which two similarly equipped armies confronted each other, also, brought to an end the column formation, as the Prussians, initially, lost large numbers.
“Henceforward, the company column, too, was condemned as a battle formation, no less than the battalion column and the line; all idea of further exposing troops in any kind of close formation to enemy gun-fire was abandoned, and all subsequent fighting on the German side was conducted only in those compact bodies of skirmishers into which the columns had so far regularly dissolved of themselves under a deadly hail of bullets, although this had been opposed by the higher commands as contrary to order; and in the same way the only form of movement when under fire from enemy rifles became the double. Once again the soldier had proved shrewder than the officer; it was he who instinctively found the only way of fighting which has so far proved of service under the fire of breech-loading rifles, and in spite of his officers' resistance he carried it through successfully.” (p 217)
Engels was actually, guilty of the same error he criticised in Duhring, because he wrote,
“... weapons are now so perfected that further progress which would have any revolutionising influence is no longer possible. Once armies have guns capable of hitting a battalion at any range at which the eye can distinguish it, and rifles which are equally effective against individual men, and with which loading takes less time than aiming, all further improvements are more or less unimportant for field warfare.” (p 217)
Of course, the development took the form of trench warfare, and trench warfare, also, led to mechanical warfare, and tank battles, as well as the use of, first, balloons and, then, aircraft, which itself, then, shifts the location of warfare from the battlefield to the towns and cities. Even with the rifle, it was no longer just what the eye could see, but what could be seen via a telescopic sight and so on.
The Franco-Prussian War had led nations to “introduce the Prussian Landwehr system in a stricter form, and with it a military burden which must bring them to ruin within a few years. The army has become the main purpose of the state, and an end in itself; the peoples are there only to provide soldiers and feed them. Militarism dominates and is swallowing Europe.” (p 218)
Engels was, of course, glimpsing the future that unfolded in WWI and II, as he also alludes to in notes in Capital III. But, that militarism that gripped the European states, resulting in WWI and II, just as with the Franco-Prussian War and the US Civil War, was, itself, just a manifestation of the fact that, by the latter half of the 19th century, capitalism had outgrown the nation states, which it had, itself created, as its minimum adequate form. Just as the monopoly of private capital had become a fetter on the further development of capital that was burst asunder by the development of large-scale, socialised capital, so too the nation state had become a fetter on the further development of capital, and had to be burst asunder by imperialism and the creation of larger single markets, encompassed by the creation of new multinational states.
When the component states are no longer fighting each other, the need for such a large military is reduced, which is why, following the creation of the EU, European states were able to reduce their spending on militarism, other than what they had to contribute to support the global imperialist objectives of US imperialism, as developed via NATO. That, however, shows the evolution, as these new multinational states, eventually, are led to posit their own global imperialist interests against those of other similar imperialist states. The increased military spending, now, proposed by the EU, is presented as simply it responding to US pressure inside NATO, but it is, really, the inevitable consequence of the interests of EU imperialism diverging from those of US imperialism. The larger, multinational state, also, engages, thereby, in a sort of economies of scale in its military. It is, however, still a huge waste of resources, and diversion of surplus value away from capital accumulation, which undermines potential growth.
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