Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1892
www.marxists.org

Excerpt from Friedrich Engels's 6th of January 1892 letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge:

There is no place yet in America for a third party, I believe. The divergence of interests even in the same class group is so great in that tremendous area that wholly different groups and interests are represented in each of the two big parties, depending on the locality, and almost each particular section of the possessing class has its representatives in each of the two parties to a very large degree, though today big industry forms the core of the Republicans on the whole, just as the big landowners of the South form that of the Democrats. The apparent haphazardness of this jumbling together is what provides the splendid soil for the corruption and the plundering of the government that flourish there so beautifully. Only when the land — the public lands — is completely in the hands of the speculators, and settlement on the land thus becomes more and more difficult or falls prey to gouging — only then, I think, will the time come, with peaceful development, for a third party. Land is the basis of speculation, and the American speculative mania and speculative opportunity are the chief levers that hold the native-born worker in bondage to the bourgeoisie. Only when there is a generation of native-born workers that cannot expect anything from speculation any more will we have a solid foothold in America. But, of course, who can count on peaceful development in America! There are economic jumps over there, like the political ones in France — to be sure, they produce the same momentary retrogressions.

The small farmer and the petty bourgeois will hardly ever succeed in forming a strong party; they consist of elements that change too rapidly — the farmer is often a migratory farmer, farming two, three, and four farms in succession in different states and territories, immigration and bankruptcy promote the change in personnel, and economic dependence upon the creditor also hampers independence — but to make up for it they are a splendid element for politicians, who speculate on their discontent in order to sell them out to one of the big parties afterward.

The tenacity of the Yankees, who are even rehashing the Greenback humbug, is a result of their theoretical backwardness and their Anglo-Saxon contempt for all theory. They are punished for this by a superstitious belief in every philosophical and economic absurdity, by religious sectarianism, and by idiotic economic experiments, out of which, however, certain bourgeois cliques profit.

  • Vncredleader
    ·
    2 years ago

    I am so proud of Pittsburgh for fucking destroying the Workingmen's Party for instantly joining the Greenbacks. I assume that is what he is talking about, the "socialists" who had been in the US for a few generations sold out the org in its first election by specifically not including German and Czech language versions of their plans to go to the Greenback convention. They used the language barrier to betray their majority, German and Bohemian immigrants in Pittsburgh and Hoboken who could hardly speak and could not read English.

    So the Pittsburgh German immigrants who had just done the railstrike burned the party down led by Otto Weydemeyer son of Joseph who was a Prussian civil war Union officer, communist '48er, and personal friend and english translator of Marx and Engels. Otto actually translated several of both Marx and Engels' works into english for the first time.

    A letter by a German Allegheny City laborer and Communist C. Saam

    Those workmen who still hold aloof, to you I say, combine; join our ranks and help us to wage war for the emancipation of humanity, read the socialist journals which represent your interests and those of the whole human race. Reflect upon your own condition, break loose from the existing parties, whether Republican, Democratic or Greenback, all of which are exclusive- ly bent on their own interest. Beware of so-called workmen’s friends, who join our ranks with an eye to office. Until we can produce men out of our own ranks, fit to hold office, let us hold aloof from politics. But let us labor in the meantime for the organization and emancipation of the working classes, doing all we can to induce the workmen to combine [into trade unions], whereby, in my judgment, we shall do more to promote our interests than by interfering in politics before our strength is fully developed, as, for instance, in the case with our English- speaking fellow members in Allegheny Co[unty]. We Germans know full well, first that we were not strong enough to take a hand in the coming autumn elections, second having no members whom we could elect to these offices, third knowing that our election would be of no use. Those members of our organization who brought about this combination have grossly violated the fundamental principles of our constitution, or else they would not have displayed such unbounded ignorance. Let us not be precipitate-let us bide our time-it will come soon

    His words are fucking indistinguishable from the prescription for today, save for literally just Allegheny City being part of Pittsburgh now. that's IT

    • Thomas_Dankara [any,comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      did you read Phillip Foner's histories of US labor? I've been meaning to read them and this seems like the kind of stuff you would learn from reading those histories.

      • Vncredleader
        ·
        2 years ago

        I would hope so cause this is one of Foner's books. :che-smile:

        https://archive.org/details/HistoryWorkingmensPartyUS/page/n17/mode/2up?q=pittsburgh