In the decade since International Labor and Working-Class History (ILWCH) published its special issue on “Labor and the Military,” treating military service as a problem of labor has grown from a provocation into a major debate. By surveying five recent books on soldiering as a form of labor, this essay poses a set of questions about warfare and work. Is military service best understood as a form of labor, and what might that perspective reveal, or occlude? How do militaries draw the line between those who work and those who fight? Where does that line become blurry? How do soldiers themselves understand the peculiar forms of “work” that war demands? War and work are not separate domains of experience, as these books show. But in some respects, they still demand different tools of analysis.

自从国际劳工和工人阶级历史（ILWCH）出版《劳工与军事》特刊以来的十年里，将兵役视为劳工问题已经从挑衅变成了一场重大辩论。通过调查最近五本关于当兵作为一种劳动形式的书籍，本文提出了一系列有关战争和工作的问题。服兵役是否最好被理解为一种劳动形式？这种观点可能揭示或掩盖什么？军队如何区分工作人员和战斗人员？这条线在哪里变得模糊？士兵们自己如何理解战争所要求的特殊“工作”形式？正如这些书所表明的那样，战争和工作并不是不同的经验领域。但在某些方面，他们仍然需要不同的分析工具。