Marx and Engels on Revolution in America/Chapter 6
VI.
The Role of the Farmers.
IN his letter of July 25, 1877, Marx predicted the role of the farmers, who are being revolutionized in consequence of the agrarian crisis and their expropriation through big business, as that of the allies of the working class. He designated the revolutionization of the farmers as well as the beginning of the Negroes' awakening "to favorable circumstances" for the "constitution of an earnest workers' party." On the other hand Engels proves in his letter to Sorge dated January 6, 1892, that the American farmers as a class have not the strength for the formation of an independent political party. Every endeavor to form an independent farmers' party in America must of necessity make this party the plaything of petty bourgeois political speculators and consequently an appendage of the two capitalist parties:
"The small farmers and petty bourgeoisie will scarcely ever be able to form a strong party. They are composed of too rapidly changing elements—the farmer is often a wandering farmer, who cultivates two, three or four farms in different states and territories one after the other; immigration and bankruptcy promote the change of personnel in both; economic dependence upon creditors also hinders independence—but to make up for that they are excellent material for politicians, who speculate with their dissatisfaction in order to sell them later to one of the big parties."
The oppression of farmers by immigration has meanwhile disappeared, but to compensate for that, bankruptcies have multiplied. Under any circumstances, the fact remains that the working farmers in America can never defend their class interests against finance capital through an independent party. They can only fight the bourgeoisie and its big parties under the leadership of a mass party of the American workers, which in turn is led by a Marxist party.