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.
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."
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