Page:Marx and Engels on Revolution in America - Heinz Neumann.djvu/17

 Engels, which on all essentials of method agree with the tactics of Lenin and which in the main still apply today to the problems of our tactics.

N his letter to Sorge dated September 16, 1887, Engels wrote as follows upon the American labor movement:

The method with which Engels approached the problems of the American labor movement required, therefore, firstly, the consideration of these specific national characteristics of the country, without the schematic application of the "ways" which had been tested in other countries, as the only correct ones; and secondly, shifting the tactical focus of interest to the "real arousing" of the American laboring masses, in which connection all doctrinary questions are of "minor importance."

In his letter to Mrs. Wischnewetsky, dated September 15, 1887, Engels remarks: