Page:Marx and Engels on Revolution in America - Heinz Neumann.djvu/42

  dependence upon creditors also hinders independence—but to make up for that they are excellent material for politicians, who speculate with their dissatisfaction in order to sell them later to one of the big parties."

The oppression of farmers by immigration has meanwhile disappeared, but to compensate for that, bankruptcies have multiplied. Under any circumstances, the fact remains that the working farmers in America can never defend their class interests against finance capital through an independent party. They can only fight the bourgeoisie and its big parties under the leadership of a mass party of the American workers, which in turn is led by a Marxist party.

N the third preface to the Communist Manifesto, written in 1883, Engels pointed out the change in America's position in the capitalist world. Marx and Engels often spoke in the last few years of their lives of the predominating participation of the United States in the fight for breaking British monopoly. In one passage of his correspondence, which has received altogether too little attention, Engels speaks directly of the possibility of an American monopoly, of the coming domination of American capitalism over the whole world. In his letter to Sorge dated January 7, 1888, he speaks of the danger of the European war which Bismarck threatened to bring