Marx and Engels on Revolution in America/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 contact 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.
Agitprop Department,
WORKERS (COMMUNIST) PARTY
OF AMERICA.