Friedrich Engels and the Strategy of “Siege Warfare”
Journal: International Critical Thought
Year: 2020

In a March 1887 letter to Hermann Schluter, a prominent member of the German-speaking socialist movement in the United States, Friedrich Engels argued that the appropriate strategy for the German social democracy of the time was “a form of siege warfare.” In doing so he anticipated Karl Kautsky’s “strategy of attrition” and Antonio Gramsci’s “war of position” in the application of the specific metaphor of siege warfare to revolutionary strategy. Given the prominent role played by Engels in the d