Page:Marx and Engels on Revolution in America - Heinz Neumann.djvu/11



N the imperialist epoch the United States assumed the role of the economically and politically predominating country of the bourgeoisie which England had played in the period of the capitalism of free competition. America is the most powerful mainstay of imperialism. The European revolution cannot be successful without the help of the masses of the American working class.

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.

But Lenin's theory of the proletarian revolution means more than this. In his polemic against