Page:Marx and Engels on Revolution in America - Heinz Neumann.djvu/13

 play a role with respect to American finance capital similar to that which Russia played with regard to West European capital.

The Dawes regime lends this development not only historical, but immediate political significance for Germany. The German proletariat can only then conquer in its fight against American Dawes' rule, if it be supported by an extensive revolutionary mass movement in America. 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.

To deny this fact signifies the rejection of the Leninist viewpoint of the direct support of the revolution in comparatively backward countries, by the class struggle of the proletariat in the imperialist metropolis. It signifies renouncing the revolutionary estimate of the role of the American proletariat in the present stage of the European revolution, and the recognition of the Trotskyist theory of "state aid," which, as an inseparable component of the theory of the "permanent revolution," in this case ends in nothing else but Kautsky's "doctrine of productive forces."