ogy 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:
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