Page:Marx and Engels on Revolution in America - Heinz Neumann.djvu/35

 as much as possible THE WHOLE AMERICAN PROLETARIAT, than that it should start and proceed from the beginning on theoretically perfectly correct lines. There is no better road to theoretical clearness of comprehension than to learn by one's own mistakes, 'durch Schaden klug werden.' And for a whole large class, there is no other road, especially for a nation so eminently practical and so contemptuous of theory as the Americans. THE GREAT THING IS TO GET THE WORKING CLASS TO MOVE AS A CLASS; that once obtained, they will soon find the right direction, and all who resist… will be left in the cold with small sects of their own. Therefore I think also the K. of L. a most important factor in the movement WHICH OUGHT NOT TO BE POOH-POOHED FROM WITHOUT BUT TO BE REVOLUTIONIZED FROM WITHIN, and I consider that many of the Germans then have made a grievous mistake when they tried, in the face of a mighty and glorious movement not of their own creation, to make of their imported and not always understood theory a kind of alleinseligmachendts dogma and to keep aloof from any movement, which did not accept that dogma. Our theory is not a dogma but the exposition of a process of evolution, and that process involves successive phases. To expect that the Americans will start with the full consciousness of the theory worked out in older industrial countries is to expect the impossible. What the Germans ought to do is to act up to their own theory—if they understand it, as we did in 1845