On the History of Mercenaryism

25

MEW, Vol. 29, Karl Marx Letter to Friedrich Engels,

pp. 192-193; 25 September 1857

The history of the army highlights more vividly than anything else the correctness of our view of the connection between the productive forces and social relations. In general, the army is important for economic development. For example, the salary was first developed entirely in the army among the ancients. Likewise with the Romans, the peculium castrense was the first legal form in which the movable property of non-family fathers was recognised. Likewise the guild system with the corporation of the fabri.

Likewise here the first application of machinery on a large scale. Even the special value of metals and their use as money seems to have been originally based - as soon as Grimm's stone age was over - on their martial significance. Even the division of labour within an industry first carried out in the armies. The whole history of bourgeois societies is further summed up very strikingly in this. If you ever have time, you must work out the matter from this point of view.

The only points in your account which, in my opinion, are omitted are: 1. the first complete appearance of the mercenary system on a large scale and all at once among the Carthaginians; (for our private use I will look up a writing by a Berliner on the Carthaginian armies, which only came to my knowledge later); [Book: "History of the Carthaginians" - 1827].