Heinz Neumann

“ What the breakdown of RUSSIAN CZARISM would be for the great military monarchs of Europe—THE SNAPPING OF THEIR MAINSTAY—that is for the bourgeoisie of the whole world THE BREAKING OUT OF CLASS WAR in America. For America after all was the ideal of all the bourgeoisie: a country rich, vast, expanding with purely bourgeois institutions unleavened by feudal remnants or monarchial traditions and without a permanent and hereditary proletariat. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But no Chinese wall separates the epoch of imperialism from the epoch of the capitalism of free competition. Between the epoch of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the epoch of the proletarian world revolution there lie no insuperable barriers. ”

“ They are doing that from year to year, but they are elementally conservative—just because America is so purely bourgeois, has absolutely no feudal past, and is therefore, proud of its purely bourgeois organization—and therefore, will only be freed through experience from old traditional intellectual rubbish. Hence with trade unions and such like, must be the beginning, if there is to be a mass movement, and every step forward must be forced upon them by a defeat. ”

“ This foreign element, however, comprised and comprises of necessity in America the majority of the pure Marxist party. It is just the Communists' confining themselves to the ranks of their own supporters and those who are already in whole-hearted sympathy with them, it is just the renunciation of the formation of a mass party which leads to the spontaneity theory, to "Khvostism," to the hindrance of the Communist task of taking the leadership of the entire class in the revolution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Another obstacle, the diversion of the workers from the class struggles by the hope of obtaining land, has for the most part been removed by the disappearance of the possibilities of free settlement. There exists "a generation of native-born workers who have nothing more to expect from speculation:"
"Land is the basis of speculation, and the American possibility of and craze for speculation is the chief influence of the bourgeoisie. Only when we have a generation of native-born workers who have nothing more to expect from speculation, will we have firm ground under our feet in America." ”

“ Only when the Marxist—or putting it in modern phraseology—the Bolshevik party fulfills this task within an extensive proletarian mass party—a labor party—can the historically conditioned backwardness of the American movement be overcome by the practical experience of the masses themselves, and can the differences and antagonisms within the working class be settled. ”

“ With you everything happens with great ups and downs. But each up wins definite terrain and thus one does go forward. Thus for instance, the tremendous wave of the Knights of Labor and the strike movement from 1886 to 1888, despite all defeats, did bring us forward. There is an altogether different spirit in the masses than before. ”

“ As long as the rule of American finance capital does not meet with resistance in the metropolis itself, as long as the Communist Party of America remains a small sectarian party, as long as the great organizations of the American working class remain unchallenged in the hands of the representatives of the most reactionary labor aristocracy—in short, as long as no revolutionary mass Party exists in America—the strength of the German bourgeoisie, supported by American finance capital, and the difficulties of the German revolution, are increased ten-fold. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Leninism always combatted the theory of the Second International, according to which the course of the revolution in the various capitalist countries was dependent upon the "stage of development of the forces of production." Lenin demonstrated theoretically and practically that the proletariat is not first victorious in those countries where the productive forces are most highly developed, but in those countries where the world system of imperialism is weakest and the revolutionary forces of the proletariat and of its allied peasant masses are strongest. ”

“ Engels considered the antagonism between the native-born and the immigrants one of the principal obstacles to the development of a mass party. The danger of this antagonism consists in the fact that it coincides with the class antagonism between the labor aristocracy and the mass of unskilled wage workers. The connection of the national with the social distinctions within the working class is for him the most important reason for the slow development of the American labor movement.
"It appears to me that your great obstacle in America is the privileged position of the native-born worker. ”

“ And the history of the International was an incessant struggle of the General Council against the sects and the endeavors of amateurs, who try to maintain themselves against the real movement of the working class within the International. ”

“ But I consider one thing certain: the purely bourgeois foundation without any fraud behind it, the correspondingly gigantic energy of development which manifests itself even in the insane exaggeration of the present protective tariff system, will some day bring about a change, which will astonish the whole world. When the Americans once begin, they will do so with an energy and virulence, In comparison with which we in Europe will be children. ”

“ WE have already pointed out that Marx and Engels never wanted to give up the maintenance of a real Marxist party of the most class-conscious and progressive elements of the native and foreign-born in the working class within the great mass party. For thirty years, in their correspondence with the American Socialists, they rejected any endeavor to set up a mechanical distinction between the Marxist party and the labor party, as two opposites which exclude each other. ”

“ America has been democratic from the very beginning of its existence as an independent state. While in England capitalist monopoly delayed the development of a bureaucratic-militaristic state machine, in America the diametrically opposite cause, the immaturity of capitalist development, acted in the same direction. Engels was already able in the 'eighties to state that on the one hand England's industrial monopoly had been shaken to its foundations while on the other hand, the United States was changing from an agrarian country into an industrial power. ”

“ On the other hand, however, every movement in which the working class as a class faces the ruling classes and attempts to force its will upon them by pressure from without, is a political movement and in this manner there everywhere arises from the scattered economic movement of the workers a political movement, that is, a movement of the class, in order to fight for its interests in a general form, in a form which possesses general, socially compulsory force. ”

“ That will all be cleared up; the movement will and must develop through its own mistakes. Theoretical ignorance is the characteristic of all young peoples, but so is practical speed of development.
"Just as all preaching is of no avail in England, until the actual necessity is at hand, so too in America. And this necessity is present in America and is being realized. The entrance of the masses of native workers into the movement in America is for me one of the great events of 1886..." ”

“ But Lenin's theory of the proletarian revolution means more than this. In his polemic against Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution, which maintained that the victory of the proletarian dictatorship in Russia was only possible "with the state aid of the working class in the more highly developed countries," Lenin pointed out repeatedly that the proletariat of the highly developed capitalist countries already become the strongest allies of the victorious proletariat in the backward countries even before the establishment of their own dictatorship. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Just as all the others, they must learn through their own experience, and through the consequences of their own mistakes. But that will not last very long since they, in contradiction to the old trade unions, deceive with scornful laughter any reference to the identity of the interests of capital and labor. ”

“ The masses must have the opportunity and the time to develop themselves; and they only have this opportunity as soon as they have their own movement—no matter in what form, if only it be their own movement—in which they will be driven forward by their own mistakes and will grow wise through Injury to themselves. ”

“ In his correspondence with the American Socialists, which lasted for decades, Engels repeatedly emphasized that the German Marxist Socialist Labor Party is of much less importance than the development of a mass party of the native-born workers, even if the latter is not consciously Marxist. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Germany and a constantly increasing number of other European states which formerly were amongst the older and dominant capitalist countries, sink to the level of economically and politically backward countries, to industrial colonies of American finance capital. Although these countries had already accomplished the bourgeois revolution a long time ago, they play a role with respect to American finance capital similar to that which Russia played with regard to West European capital. ”

“ The historical perspective sketched by Engels, however, remains unchanged; the monopoly of American finance capital is not to be compared with the former monopoly of British industrial capital. It cannot maintain itself for a long period of time; it is no monopoly in the true sense of the word. ”

“ Our theory is a theory of evolution, not of dogma to be learned by heart and to be repeated mechanically. The less it is hammered into the Americans from the outside and the more they test it through their own experience... ”

“ The International was founded in order to set the real organization of the working class for the struggle in the place of the socialist or semi-socialist sects: The original statutes as well as the inaugural address show that at a glance. On the other hand, the International would not have been able to maintain itself, if the course of history had not already destroyed sectarianism. The development of socialist sectarianism has always been inversely proportional to that of the real labor movement. ”

“ Not only the "state aid" but the very revolutionary struggle for the seizure of power in the capitalist countries renders the consolidation of the proletarian dictatorship possible and the development of socialism in the existing Soviet Republics. ”

“ European emigration has rendered possible the colossal development of North American agriculture, Which, through its competition, is shaking the foundations of large as well as small land ownership in Europe. ”