Page:Marx and Engels on Revolution in America - Heinz Neumann.djvu/30

 of the International Working Men's Association with the addition of the name of the locality. Decision IX emphasizes the necessity of the political effectiveness of the working class, and declares that the latter's economic movement and political activity are inseparably united.

This dialectic relationship of the economic and the political aspects of the labor movement, were already at that time one of the chief problems in the tactical discussion in America. In a postscript to the same letter to Bolte, Marx again defines the inseparable unity of the economic and the political struggle in one of those famous passages, which are again and again quoted by European Marxists, but which today very few know are written for the socialists of America, just like Marx's criticism of the sects.

"N. B. to political movement: the political movement of the working class naturally has as its goal the conquest of political power, and to that end is necessary of course, a previous organization of the working class, developed to a certain degree, which arises of itself from the latter's economic struggles.

"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. When these movements are subordinate to a certain