Marx and Engels on Revolution in America/Chapter 2
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."