Marx and Engels on Revolution in America

Front matter

New Numbers—

of the

Little Red Library

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

Marx and Engels were not only the theoreticians but, in the first place, they were the leaders of the proletarian revolution. It is in the study of the conditions of the proletarian struggle and its victory that they perfected the science of Marxism, the science of the proletarian revolution.

In the First International these men saw an instrument of proletarian struggle and leadership. Thru their theoretical works they supplied a guide to this leadership. Both Marx and Engels equipped themselves in the most painstaking fashion with a thorough knowledge of the conditions in the various countries so that they might give authoritative advice and instruction to the leaders of the working class movement all over Europe. Even in their old age, they set themselves to master new languages to enable them to draw from the literature and journals of the respective countries a knowledge of their various conditions. And so we find displayed in their advice and instruction to their followers an intimate knowledge of the subjective and objective conditions of the labor movement, a knowledge that would surprise any native student.

The body of this little booklet is made up of excerpts from letters written by Marx and Engels on conditions in the United States. To a large extent these conditions still prevail, at least in so far as they deal with the subjective factors of the proletarian revolution. The ideology prevailing among the American workers in those days showed a much greater resistance to counter-acting forces than Marx and Engels had hoped. Marx and Engels misjudged the tempo of the process of dissipation of the illusions obsessing the American working class but they were entirely correct in their estimation of the forces and methods that will finally destroy them.

All these letters and quotations speak for themselves. But a few words must be said as to their origin.

The heroic struggle of the Paris proletariat for the Commune in 1871 had driven home to the ruling classes of those days the reality of the danger of a proletarian revolution. No wonder, then, that, to their ever-present hatred of the revolutionary aspirations of their wage-slaves, they now added a haunting dread. The International Workingmen's Association (The First International) came in for a full share of this hatred and fear. The place of the "Zinoviev letters" of today was taken in those days by letters from that "'arch fiend," Karl Marx. It is but little known today that in the first telegraphic reports of the Chicago conflagration (October, 1871), it was not Mrs. Kelly's cow that caused it, but—the International Workingmen's Association. The General Council of that body was fully justified when it sarcastically complained that the tornado devastating the West Indies about the same time was not booked to its account.

The defeat of the Commune brought the inner differences of the International to a head. Although the Centralists under the leadership of Marx and Engels defeated the Autonomists behind Michael Bakunin at the Congress of the International at The Hague in September , 1872, yet it became clear that only radical measures could save it from complete dissolution. In fact, neither Marx nor Engels had any hopes that it would be saved. But they wanted to secure it an honorable death. With the General Council in London it was certain that the Blanquists would dominate it. To establish the headquarters in any other European capital was impossible under the existing conditions of general reaction. So Marx insisted on the removal of the General Council to New York.

The center of the General Council in New York became its local leader, F. A. Sorge.

F. A. Sorge had taken an active part in the revolution of 1848 in Germany. For some time thereafter he lived in exile in Switzerland. In 1851 he went to London where he became acquainted with the Communist Club and with Karl Marx. When later he emigrated to America he settled in New York where, in 1857, he founded the Communist Club which later became the American Section of the First International. Sorge died in Hoboken, in 1906. His whole life he had devoted to the revolutionary movement of the proletariat and the American movement, especially, is indebted to him for its first Marxian education.

The removal of the General Council of the International to New York did not terminate the leadership of Marx and Engels. Both kept in close touch with affairs and numerous letters full of advice, instructions, and suggestions, written by both Marx and Engels to Sorge, testify to this. The need for a centralized leadership for the International was always clear to Marx and Engels. The basic issue of the struggle between Marx and Bakunin was whether the General Council of the International should be merely a statistical bureau and general postoffice for the exchange of views of the various sections or whether it should be the instrument of international leadership; Bakunin stood for the former concept; Marx fought for the latter.

The First International ceased to exist with the resignation of Sorge from its General Council in 1873. It had completed its task—that of explaining to the working class the conditions and methods of its emancipation. The death of the First International did not, however, mean a death blow to the idea of a centralized leadership for the international movement of the proletariat. The Communist International, under the leadership of Lenin, has become the realization of Engels' hopes: "that the new International be not merely one of propaganda but one of action, built upon the undisguised and unadulterated principles of Marxism, Communism." The Communist International is the rightful heir of the First International Workingmen's Association.

Some of the letters quoted in this booklet were addressed to Mrs. Florence Kelley Wischnewetsky. This is Mrs. Florence Kelley, at present general secretary of the National Consumers' League. Born in 1859, Mrs. Kelley graduated from Cornell College in 1872 and upon her graduation went abroad and studied at Zurich and Heidelberg. While abroad she visited England and there came in con with Friedrich Engels. She became interested in socialism and, under his supervision, translated Engel's classic work, "The Conditions of the Working Classes in England," which was published for the first time in English in New York in 1886. After her return to America she continued to correspond with Engels regarding American affairs. Before his death Sorge was able to obtain Engels' letters to her and turn them over together with his own to the New York Public Library, where they still remain and where most of the originals of the many quotations in this booklet may be found. Florence Kelley was one of the organizers of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society and has been for many years on their executive committee. In the last ten years or so her former close contact with the socialist movement lessened to a considerable extent.

The study of this pamphlet will help many of those active in the revolutionary labor movement in the United States better to understand the problems of the movement. Comrade Heinz Neumann, one of the leaders of the Communist Party of Germany, performed a real service for the American proletariat by compiling and analyzing this valuable material from the writings of the founders of the International Communist movement, Marx and Engels.

The reader who is familiar with the recent discussions in the American Communist movement concerning the role of the Labor Party movement in this country and its services in politically awakening the American masses to elementary forms of class consciousness and class action will notice the remarkable applicability of many of the statements and analyses of Marx and Engels to just this problem. A careful study of this material will cast considerable light on the Labor Party question that is now one of the fundamental problems facing the American proletariat and its Party.

Chapter 1

Marx and Engels on Revolution in America

By Heinz Neumann.

IN the imperialist epoch the United States assumed the role of the economically and politically predominating country of the bourgeoisie which England had played in the period of the capitalism of free competition. America is the most powerful mainstay of imperialism. The European revolution cannot be successful without the help of the masses of the American working class.

Leninism always combatted the theory of the Second International, according to which the course of the revolution in the various capitalist countries was dependent upon the "stage of development of the forces of production." Lenin demonstrated theoretically and practically that the proletariat is not first victorious in those countries where the productive forces are most highly developed, but in those countries where the world system of imperialism is weakest and the revolutionary forces of the proletariat and of its allied peasant masses are strongest.

But Lenin's theory of the proletarian revolution means more than this. In his polemic against Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution, which maintained that the victory of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia was only possible "with the state aid of the working class in the more highly developed countries," Lenin pointed out repeatedly that the proletariat of the highly developed capitalist countries already become the strongest allies of the victorious proletariat in the backward countries even before the establishment of their own dictatorship. Not only the "state aid" but the very revolutionary struggle for the seizure of power in the capitalist countries renders the consolidation of the proletarian dictatorship possible and the development of socialism in the existing Soviet Republics.

When applied to the perspective of the European, especially of the Central European and primarily the German revolution, the Leninist theory requires the correct estimate of the role of the American proletariat and consequently the establishment of a revolutionary mass Party in America as a decisive factor in gaining and defending the dictatorship of the proletariat in Germany. The development of imperialism after the first world war made America the metropolis of the capitalist world. Germany and a constantly increasing number of other European states which formerly were amongst the older and dominant capitalist countries, sink to the level of economically and politically backward countries, to industrial colonies of American finance capital. Although these countries had already accomplished the bourgeois revolution a long time ago, they play a role with respect to American finance capital similar to that which Russia played with regard to West European capital.

The Dawes regime lends this development not only historical, but immediate political significance for Germany. The German proletariat can only then conquer in its fight against American Dawes' rule, if it be supported by an extensive revolutionary mass movement in America. As long as the rule of American finance capital does not meet with resistance in the metropolis itself, as long as the Communist Party of America remains a small sectarian party, as long as the great organizations of the American working class remain unchallenged in the hands of the representatives of the most reactionary labor aristocracy—in short, as long as no revolutionary mass Party exists in America—the strength of the German bourgeoisie, supported by American finance capital, and the difficulties of the German revolution, are increased ten-fold.

To deny this fact signifies the rejection of the Leninist viewpoint of the direct support of the revolution in comparatively backward countries, by the class struggle of the proletariat in the imperialist metropolis. It signifies renouncing the revolutionary estimate of the role of the American proletariat in the present stage of the European revolution, and the recognition of the Trotskyist theory of "state aid," which, as an inseparable component of the theory of the "permanent revolution," in this case ends in nothing else but Kautsky's "doctrine of productive forces."

Marx and Engels clearly realized the future role of America in the class strugle of the proletariat. In his third preface to the "Communist Manifesto" in 1883, Engels stated: "The limited extent of the spread of the proletarian movement at the time the Manifesto was first published (January, 1848), is best demonstrated by the last chapter: 'The Attitude of the Communists of the Various Opposition Parties.' First of all, Russia and the United States are missing in this chapter…" Engels calls both countries "the great reserve of European reaction." He recalls the period "in which emigration to the United States absorbed the surplus of the European proletariat." The United States, like Russia, supplied "Europe with raw materials, and at the same time served as a market for the sale of the latter's industrial products." Engles then continues: "Both functioned thus, in one way or another, as pillars of the European social order.

"How all this has changed today! European emigration has rendered possible the colossal development of North American agriculture, Which, through its competition, is shaking the foundations of large as well as small land ownership in Europe. At the same time it enabled the United States to begin with the exploitation of its rich industrial resources with such energy and upon such a scale THAT WITHIN A SHORT PERIOD THE INDUSTRIAL MONOPOLY OF WESTERN EUROPE MUST BE BROKEN. (Emphasis here, as well as in all following quotations, mine—H. N.)

"And both these circumstances REACT UPON AMERICA IN A REVOLUTIONARY DIRECTION. The small and medium property of the farmer working for himself, the foundation of America's whole political system, fails more and more victim to the competition of the giant farms, while at the same time, is formed for the first time a NUMEROUS PROLETARIAT in the industrial districts together with a FABULOUS CONCENTRATION OF CAPITAL."

This utterance immediately precedes the famous prophecy that "the Russian revolution will be the signal for a workers' revolution in the West." Both of these statements fall in that period of Engels' work, in which he had already recognized the decisive changes characterizing the transformation from the capitalism of free competition to imperialism. With the Paris Commune, the period of the First International had to all intents concluded, although it continued to exist formally. Marx and Engels continue to view the problems of the labor movement from the standpoint of the basic principles of the International Working Men's Association. However, at the same time, they seek a new form of labor movement which, corresponding with the changed historical form of development of capitalism itself, rises above the level of the past. In "The Civil War in France" and in the "Letters to Kugelmann," the Marxian theory of the State is developed to its utmost issue; at the same time the leading role of the Communist Party in the struggle of the proletariat is definitely expressed. Lenin always refers to these works in his own writings; he looked to them for guidance upon the most important problems of the proletarian revolution. There is no doubt that the passages in the correspondence of Marx and Engels dealing with the American labor movement ought to come under this head. These letters cover the historical content of an entire generation—from 1868 to 1895.

Leninism is not, as several opportunists maintain, only a sub-division of Marxism. It is neither the Marxism of the "early period" nor the Marxism of the "mature period." Leninism is the whole of Marxism in the epoch of imperialism and of the proletarian revolution. But no Chinese wall separates the epoch of imperialism from the epoch of the capitalism of free competition. Between the epoch of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the epoch of the proletarian world revolution there lie no insuperable barriers. Between them there lies a period of transition. In the ranks of revolutionary Marxism this period of transition in its broadest sense is embodied in the left, revolutionary wing of the Second International. In a narrow sense it is expressed in the work of Marx's and Engels' concluding years, which historically already tower over the period prior to the Paris Commune and almost directly intertwine with the foundations of Leninism.

For this reason it is not admissable to consider the statements of Marx and Engels upon the problems of the American labor movement as "quotations from a bygone period." They belong rather, to the tactical doctrines of Marx and Engels, which on all essentials of method agree with the tactics of Lenin and which in the main still apply today to the problems of our tactics.

II. Method

II. METHOD.

IN his letter to Sorge dated September 16, 1887, Engels wrote as follows upon the American labor movement:

"In spite of all, the masses can only be set in motion in a way suitable to the respective countries and adapted to the prevailing conditions—and this is usually a roundabout way. But everything else is of minor importance if only they are really aroused."

The method with which Engels approached the problems of the American labor movement required, therefore, firstly, the consideration of these specific national characteristics of the country, without the schematic application of the "ways" which had been tested in other countries, as the only correct ones; and secondly, shifting the tactical focus of interest to the "real arousing" of the American laboring masses, in which connection all doctrinary questions are of "minor importance."

In his letter to Mrs. Wischnewetsky, dated September 15, 1887, Engels remarks:

"Fortunately the movement in America has now got such a start that neither George, nor Powderly, nor the German intriguers can spoil or stop It. Only it will take UNEXPECTED FORMS. The real movement always looks different to what it ought to have done in the eyes of those who were tools in preparing it."

That signifies, thirdly, that European experience does not suffice to decide a priori upon rigid forms of the American labor movement. These forms can only be developed in the course of American practice itself. There is no recipe for them. They will be "unexpected."

In Engels' letter to Sorge dated April 8, 1891, he writes:

"It proves how useless is a—theoretically for the most part correct—platform if it is unable to get into contact with THE ACTUAL NEEDS of the people."

Engels here wants to demonstrate to the sectarians of the Hyndman group in England as well as to the German emigrants of the "Socialist Labor Party" in America, the necessity of gaining primarily the support of the workers organized in the trade unions. Of importance methodologically in this connection is, fourthly, the fact that Engels sets the actual requirements of the labor movement higher than the theoretical platform. In his letter dated June 10, 1891, he states expressly that the transition from a sect to a mass party is even more important than an "orthodox" Marxist platform:

"The comical phenomenon is very significant that here, as in America, those persons who parade as orthodox Marxians, those who have reduced our IDEAS OF MOVEMENT to a rigid dogma which must be memorized, that those people figure here as well as over there as a pure sect."

The method, by means of which Engels determined the tactics of the American Communists, contains the following four salient points: The point of origin is the specific national peculiarities of the American conditions. The principal task is, to begin with, the "real arousing" of the workers. The forms of tactic can only be found through the practice of the movement itself. Linking up with the actual needs of the working class is of more importance than the theoretical platform.

He sums up this method in a classic form in his letter to Mrs. Wischnewetsky dated January 27, 1887:

"The movement in America, just at this moment, is I believe best seen from across the ocean. On the spot personal bickerings and local disputes must obscure much of the grandeur of it. And THE ONLY THING that could really delay its march would be the consolidation of these differences into established sects. To some extent that will be unavoidable, but the less of it the better… Our theory is a theory of evolution, not of dogma to be learned by heart and to be repeated mechanically. The less it is hammered into the Americans from the outside and the more they test it through their own experience… the more will it become part of their own flesh and blood."

III. The Historical Peculiarities of the American Labor Movement

III.

The Historical Peculiarities of the American Labor Movement.

BOTH England and America have always offered a number of particularly knotty problems for the exponents of Marxism. In practice, both countries were characterized by the absence of a revolutionary workers' party; in the theoretical field, they led Marx and Engels to utter the well-known epigram—that the proletarian revolution could take place in a peaceful manner in England and America. Kautsky employed this phrase against Lenin in the polemic about the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin replied in his pamphlet against Kautsky:

"In the 'seventies, was there anything which made England and America … exceptions? It should be a matter of course for anyone in the least degree acquainted with the requirements of science in the field of historical problems that this question must be raised. Not to put this question signifies falsifying science and being satisfied with sophistry. If this question is raised, however, there can be no doubt of the answer; the revolotionary dictatorship of the proletariat signifies the rule of force against the bourgeois. The necessity of this rule of force is, as Marx and Engels repeatedly and at length… pointed out, primarily conditioned by the existence of militarism and of bureaucracy. At a time when Marx made this statement, in the 'seventies of the nineteenth century, these institutions did not exist in England and America! (However, they are now to be found in England as well as in America)."

The causes of the late development of these typical phenomena of the capitalist state in England were the existence of the industrial monopoly and the century-old tradition of parliamentarism. In America, the historical period of feudalism had never existed; America has been demo from the very beginning of its existence as an independent state. While in England capitalist monopoly delayed the development of a bureaucratic-militaristic state machine, in America the diametrically opposite cause, the immaturity of capitalist development, acted in the same direction. Engels was already able in the 'eighties to state that on the one hand England's industrial monopoly had been shaken to its foundations while on the other hand, the United States was changing from an agrarian country into an industrial power. Thus, almost simultaneously, the harmonizing of the most developed and the least developed capitalist countries took place, with the general legal line of development of the bourgeois state as analyzed by Marx. The premises for the "exception" to the Marxian theory of the state, thus vanished.

In a similar fashion, but much more slowly, the approach of the American labor movement to the European type is in process. The British worker already began this assimilation to the proletarian class struggle of the continent in the 'nineties. At that time Engels established the fact of the development of a "new unionism." This new tendency in the British labor movement required forty years to mature—its most recent fruits are the radicalization of the British trade unions through the Purcell group. The class struggle of the American proletariat has had to travel a much more difficult path. The after-effects of the downfall of an industrial monopoly were easier to overcome than the influence of bourgeois ideol in America, the derivation of which from the feudal period is not evident to the American workers in consequence of the lack of an American feudalism. The penetrating eye of Engels sees in this specific characteristic of America's history the reason for American workers' well-known "contempt for theory," which was one of the greatest obstacles to the formation of a revolutionary mass party. He writes to Sorge on September 16, 1886:

"In a country as elemental as America, which has developed in a purely bourgeois fashion without any feudal past, but has taken over from England a mass ideology surviving from the feudal period, such as English common law, religion and sectarianism, and in which the necessity of practical work and of the concentration of capital has produced a general contempt for all theories, which is only now beginning to disappear in educated and scientific circles,—in such a country the people must come to realize their own social interests by making mistake after mistake. Nor will the workers be spared that; the confusion of trade unions, socialists, Knights of Labor, etc. will continue for some time to come, and they will only learn by injuring themselves. But the chief thing is that they have been set in motion…

In another letter, dated February 8, 1890, Engels draws the conclusion that this "elemental conservative" ideology of the American workers can be overcome "only through experience," and only through getting in contact with the trade unions:

"The people of Schleswig-Holstein and their descendants in England and America, cannot be converted by preaching; this stiff-necked and conceited crew must learn through their own experience. They are doing that from year to year, but they are elementally conservative—just because America is so purely bourgeois, has absolutely no feudal past, and is therefore, proud of its purely bourgeois organization—and therefore, will only be freed through experience from old traditional intellectual rubbish. Hence with trade unions and such like, must be the beginning, if there is to be a mass movement, and every step forward must be forced upon them by a defeat. But, however, after the first step beyond the bourgeois viewpoint has been made, things will move faster, just like everything in America… and then the foreign element in the nation will make its influence felt by its greater mobility."

From the rise of a mass movement, therefore, Engels hopes not only for the revolutionization of the "native" workers, but at the same time the overcoming of a sectarian spirit and of doctrinairism amongst the foreign-born proletarians. The shifting of the center of gravity to the native workers in the trade unions is in no way intended to limit the historical role of the "foreign element," but to extend it by the exploitation of the latter's "greater mobility" and by linking together the two elements of the American working class.

Engels considered the antagonism between the native-born and the immigrants one of the principal obstacles to the development of a mass party. The danger of this antagonism consists in the fact that it coincides with the class antagonism between the labor aristocracy and the mass of unskilled wage workers. The connection of the national with the social distinctions within the working class is for him the most important reason for the slow development of the American labor movement.

"It appears to me that your great obstacle in America is the privileged position of the native-born worker. Until 1848, a native-born, permanent working class was the exception rather than the rule. The scattered beginnings of the latter in the East and in the cities could still hope to become farmers or members of the bourgeoisie. Such a class has now developed and has organized itself to a large degree in trade unions. But it still assumes an aristocratic position, and leaves (as it may) the ordinary, poorly-paid trades to the immigrants, of whom only a small percentage enter the aristocratic trade unions. These immigrants are, however, divided into nationalities, which do not understand one another, and for the most part do not understand the language of the country. And your bourgeoisie understands even better than the Austrian government, how to play off one nationality against another… so that, I believe, there exist in New York differences in the standard of living of the workers such as are out of the question anywhere else…"

In the same letter to Schlueter, dated March 30, 1892, Engels explains the rhythm of the American labor movement through the coincidence of this national and social line of demarcation within the proletariat:

"In such a country repeated starts, followed by just as certain relapses, are unavoidable. The only difference is that the starts grow more and more vehement, and the relapses less and less paralyzing, and that on the whole things do go forward. But I consider one thing certain: the purely bourgeois foundation without any fraud behind it, the correspondingly gigantic energy of development which manifests itself even in the insane exaggeration of the present protective tariff system, will some day bring about a change, which will astonish the whole world. When the Americans once begin, they will do so with an energy and virulence, In comparison with which we in Europe will be children."

Therefore, Engels considers as of the greatest importance, not the formation of a purely immigrant party, but "of a real mass movement amongst the English speaking population:"

"For the first time there exists a real mass movement amongst the English-speaking (Engels refers to the preparation for strikes to obtain the eight-hour day and to the enormous growth of the Order of the Knights of Labor in spring, 1886—just before the bomb-throwing affair in Chicago. H. N.) It is unavoidable that this at the beginning moves hesitatingly, clumsily, unclearly and unknowingly. That will all be cleared up; the movement will and must develop through its own mistakes. Theoretical ignorance is the characteristic of all young peoples, but so is practical speed of development.

"Just as all preaching is of no avail in England, until the actual necessity is at hand, so too in Amer And this necessity is present in America and is being realized. The entrance of the masses of native workers into the movement in America is for me one of the great events of 1886…" (Letter to Sorge dated April 29, 1886).

In his correspondence with the American Socialists, which lasted for decades, Engels repeatedly emphasized that the German Marxist Socialist Labor Party is of much less importance than the development of a mass party of the native-born workers, even if the latter is not consciously Marxist. On the other hand he replied to the objections which were already then raised by the German immigrants, to the effect that he was thus "denying the role of the Party," and was "showing preference for the 100 per cent Americans," with the sentences of the above-quoted letter; that amongst the conscious Marxian immigrants, there still remains