클라우제비츠의 <전쟁론>이 마르크스주의에 미친 영향

The Influence of Karl von Clausewitz’s On War upon the Marxism

This article is intended to search and analyze the influence of Clausewitz’s military thinking and his ideas upon the Marxists during the late 19th century and the early 20th century. For the prominent leadership of the Marxists who had tried to make the revolutionary movements from the bourgeoisie society by the proletariat class, had concerned with a great interest of the war and the military affairs. Especially, they firmly believed and praised the Clausewitz’s maxim, “war is merely the continuation of policy by other mean.” Especially Frederick Engels, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and Leon Trotsky. etc. Among them, Engels was the first runner of the military thinker who had read Clausewitz’s ‘On War’ and received his military ideas and had a great interest in the military affairs rather than that of Karl Marx, and had experienced himself with some military activities and technology. But although he was involved with some military affairs together with the revolutionary struggle of the labor class in Germany and an ardent believer of the inevitable revolution, he remained as an ‘amateur general’ who believed that it should be necessary to organize and make the labor class armed. His military view could not escape from the German points. On the other hand, Lenin was opposite to the Russian engagement into the World War I, because he believed that the Great War was the greedy struggles among the Western Imperial Powers after seriously considering the revolutionary movement. He urged the international labor class not to enter the battlefields or fighting with each other. But after he realized that he could not control the nationalist movement and jingoism in the each country, Lenin tried to transform the Clausewitz’s maxim, “war is merely the continuation of policy by other mean” into the Russian reality. That mean that Lenin and the Bolsheviks should encourage the international civil war by the militant uprising of the international labor class. Finally, Lenin engineered to succeed the Bolsheviks revolution in November, 1917. He regularly read Clausewitz On War, and cited Clausewitz’s maxim in his notes and speeches and even advised his comrades to read it carefully. The second top leader among the Bolsheviks members, Trotsky also read Clausewitz’s writing and cited them in his speeches and writings. And as the Red Army’s organizer and commander in chief, he further made those which Lenin had transformed Clausewitz’s maxim into the Russian situation neat. But unfortunately for Trotsky, after the failure of struggle for power, Trotsky’s viewpoint, even though those of his were similar with those of Lenin, was excluded as a heresy in the Marxist world.