Ten months have elapsed since, at the translator’s* wish, I wrote 
the Appendix? to this book; and during these ten months, a 
revolution has been accomplished in American society such as, in 
any other country, would have taken at least ten years. In 
February 1886,° American public opinion was almost unanimous 
on this one point; that there was no working class, in the 
European sense of the word, in America;* that consequently no 
class struggle between workmen and capitalists, such as tore 
European society to pieces, was possible in the American Republic; 
and that, therefore, Socialism was a thing of foreign importation 
which could never take root on American soil. And yet, at that 
moment, the coming class struggle was casting its gigantic shadow 
before it in the strikes of the Pennsylvania coal miners,” and of 
many other trades, and especially in the preparations, all over the 
country, for the great Eight Hours’ movement which was to come 

* An English translation of the book I had written in 1844 was justified 
precisely by the fact that industrial conditions in present-day America coincide 
almost entirely with those in the England of the forties, that is those described by 
myself. How much this is the case is evinced by the articles on “The Labor 
Movement in America” by Edward and Eleanor Marx-Aveling in the London 
monthly Time of March, April, May and June. I take all the greater pleasure in 
referring to these excellent articles in that it gives me an opportunity to 
simultaneously rebuff the miserable slander about Aveling which the Executive of 
the Socialist Labor Party of America has so foolishly transmitted around the 
world.?”> [ Note by Engels for the 1887 offprint.] 

off, and did come off, in the May following.” That I then duly 
appreciated these symptoms, that I anticipated a working class 
movement on a national scale, my “Appendix” shows; but no one 
could then foresee that in such a short time the movement would 
burst out with such irresistible force, would spread with the 
rapidity of a prairie-fire, would shake* American society to its very 
foundations. 

The fact is there, stubborn and indisputable. To what an extent 
it had struck with terror the American ruling classes, was revealed 
to me, in an amusing way, by American journalists who did me 
the honor of calling on me last summer; the “new departure” had 
put them into a state of helpless fright and perplexity.” But at 
that time the movement was only just on the start; there was but a 
series of confused and apparently disconnected upheavals of that 
class which, by the suppression of negro slavery and the rapid 
development of manufactures, had become the lowest stratum of 
American society. Before the year closed, these bewildering social 
convulsions began to take a definite direction. The spontaneous, 
instinctive movements of these vast masses of working people, over 
a vast extent of country, the simultaneous outburst of their 
common discontent with a miserable social condition, the same 
everywhere and due to the same causes, made them conscious of 
the fact, that they formed a new and distinct class of American 
society; a class of—practically speaking—more or less hereditary 
wage-workers, proletarians. And with true American instinct this 
consciousness led them at once to take the next step towards their 
deliverance: the formation of a political workingmen’s party, with 
a platform of its own, and with the conquest of the Capitol and 
the White House for its goal. In May the struggle for the Eight 
Hours’ working-day, the troubles in Chicago, Milwaukee, etc., the 
attempts of the ruling class to crush the nascent uprising of Labor 
by brute force and brutal class-justice; in’. November the new 
Labor Party organized in all great centres, and the New York, 
Chicago and Milwaukee elections.” May and November have 
hitherto reminded the American bourgeoisie only of the payment 
of coupons of U.S. bonds; henceforth May and November will 
remind them, too, of the dates on which the American working 
class presented their coupons for payment. 

In European countries, it took the working class years and years 
before they fully realized the fact that they formed a distinct and, 

under the existing social conditions, a permanent class of modern 
society; and it took years again until this class-consciousness led 
them to form themselves into a distinct political party, indepen- 
dent of, and opposed to,’ all the old political parties formed by 
the various sections of the ruling classes. On the more favored soil 
of America, where no mediaeval ruins bar the way, where history 
begins with the elements of modern bourgeois society as evolved 
in the seventeenth century, the working class passed through these 
two stages of its development within ten months. 

Sull, all this is but a beginning. That the laboring masses should 
feel their community of grievances and of interests, their solidarity 
as a class in opposition to all other classes; that in order to give 
expression and effect to this feeling, they should set in motion the 
political machinery provided for that purpose in every free 
country—that is the first step only. The next step is to find the 
common remedy for these common grievances, and to embody it 
in the platform of the new Labor Party. And this—the most 
important and the most difficult step in the movement—has yet to 
be taken in America. 

A new party must have a distinct positive platform; a platform 
which may vary in details as circumstances vary and as the party 
itself develops, but still one upon which the party, for the time 
being, is agreed. So long as such a platform has not been worked 
out, or exists but in a- rudimentary form, so long the new party, 
too, will have but a rudimentary existence; it may exist locally but 
not yet nationally; it will be a party potentially but not actually. 

That platform, whatever may be its first initial shape, must 
develop in a direction which may be determined beforehand. The 
causes that brought into existence the abyss between the working 
class and the Capitalist class are the same in America as in Europe; 
the means of filling up that abyss, are equally the same 
everywhere. Consequently, the platform of the American pro- 
letariat will in the long run” coincide as to the ultimate end to be 
attained, with the one which, after sixty years of dissensions and 
discussions, has become the adopted platform of the great mass of 
the European militant proletariat. It will proclaim, as the ultimate 
end, the conquest of political supremacy by the working class, in 
order to effect the direct appropriation of all means of produc- 
tion—land, railways, mines, machinery, etc.—by society at large, 
to be worked in common by all for the account and benefit of all. 

But if the new American party, like all political parties 
everywhere, by the very fact of its formation aspires to the 
conquest of political power, it is as yet far from agreed upon what 
to do with that power when once attained.* In New York and the 
other great cities of the East, the organization of the working class 
has proceeded upon the lines of Trades’ Societies, forming in each 
city a powerful Central Labor Union. In New York the Central 
Labor Union, last November, chose for its standard bearer Henry 
George, and consequently its temporary electoral platform has 
been largely imbued with his principles. In the great cities of the 
North West the electoral battle was fought upon a rather 
indefinite labor platform, and the influence of Henry George’s 
theories was scarcely, if at all, visible. And while in these great 
centres of population and of industry the new class movement 
came to a political head, we find all over the country two wide 
spread labor organizations: the “Knights of Labor’ *” and the 
“Socialist Labor Party,” of which only the latter has a platform in 
harmony with the modern European standpoint as summarized 
above. 

Of the three more or less definite forms under which the 
American labor movement thus presents itself, the first, the Henry 
George movement in New York, is for the moment of a chiefly 
local significance. No doubt New York is by far the most 
important city of the States; but New York is not Paris and the 
United States are not France. And it seems to me that the Henry 
George platform, in its present shape, is too narrow to form the 
basis for anything but a local movement, or at best for a 
short-lived phase of the general movement. To Henry George, the 
expropriation of the mass of the people from the land is the great 
and universal cause of the splitting up of the people into Rich and 
Poor. Now this is not quite correct historically. In Asiatic and 
classical antiquity, the predominant form of class-oppression was 
slavery, that is to say, not so much the expropriation of the masses 
from the land as the appropriation of their persons. When, in the 
decline of the Roman Republic, the free Italian peasants were 
expropriated from their farms, they formed a class of “poor 
whites” similar to that of the Southern Slave States before 1861; 
and between slaves and poor whites,” two classes equally unfit for 
self-emancipation, the old world went to pieces. In the middle 

ages, it was not the expropriation of the people from, but on the 
contrary, their appropriation to the land which became the source 
of feudal oppression. The peasant retained his land, but was 
attached to it as a serf or villein, and made liable to tribute to the 
lord in labor and in produce. It was only at the dawn of modern 
times, towards the end of the fifteenth century, that the 
expropriation of the peasantry on a large scale laid the foundation 
for the modern class of wage-workers* who possess nothing but 
their labor-power and can live only by the selling of that labour 
power to others. But if the expropriation from the land brought 
this class into existence, it was the development of capitalist 
production, of modern industry and agriculture on a large scale 
which perpetuated it, increased it, and shaped it into a distinct 
class with distinct interests and a distinct historical mission. All this 
has been fully expounded by Marx (‘“‘Capital,” Part VIII: “The 
so-called primitive Accumulation.’’) According to Marx, the cause 
of the present antagonism of the classes and of the social 
degradation” of the working class is their expropriation from all 
means of production, in which the land is of course included. 
If Henry George declares land-monopolization to be the sole 
cause of poverty and misery, he naturally finds the remedy in the 
resumption of the land by society at large. Now, the Socialists of 
the school of Marx, too, demand the resumption, by society, of the 
land, and not only of the land but of all other means of 
production likewise. But even if we leave these out of the question, 
there is another difference. What is to be done with the land? 
Modern Socialists, as represented by Marx, demand that it should 
be held and worked in common and for common account, and the 
same with all other means of social production, mines, railways, 
factories, etc.; Henry George would confine himself to letting it 
out to individuals as at present, merely regulating its distribution 
and applying the rents for public, instead of, as at present, for 
private purposes. What the Socialists demand, implies a total 
revolution of the whole system of social production; what Henry 
George demands, leaves the present mode of social production 
untouched, and has, in fact,“ been anticipated by the extreme 

section of Ricardian bourgeois economists who, too, demanded the 
confiscation of the rent of land by the State. 

It would of course be unfair to suppose that Henry George has 
said his last word once for all. But I am bound to take his theory 
as I find it. 

The second great section of the American movement is formed 
by the Knights of Labor. And that seems to be the section most 
typical of the present state of the movement, as it is undoubtedly 
by far the strongest. An immense association spread over an 
immense extent of country in innumerable “assemblies,” repres- 
enting all shades of individual and local opinion within the 
working class; the whole of them sheltered under a platform of 
corresponding indistinctness and held together much less by their 
impracticable constitution than by the instinctive feeling that the 
very fact of their clubbing together for their common aspiration 
makes them a great power in the country; a truly American 
paradox clothing the most modern tendencies in the most 
mediaeval mummeries, and hiding the most democratic and even 
rebellious spirit behind an apparent, but really powerless despot- 
ism—such is the picture the Knights of Labor offer to a European 
observer. But if we are not arrested by mere outside whim- 
sicalities, we cannot help seeing in this vast agglomeration an 
immense amount of potential energy evolving slowly but surely 
into actual force. The Knights of Labor are the first national 
organization created by the American Working Class as a whole; 
whatever be their origin and history, whatever their shortcomings 
and little absurdities, whatever their platform and their constitu- 
tion, here they are, the work of practically the whole class of 
American wage-workers, the only national bond that holds them 
together, that makes their strength felt to themselves not less than 
to their enemies, and that fills them with the proud hope of future 
victories. For it would not be exact to say that the Knights of 
Labor are liable to development. They are constantly in full 
process of development and revolution; a heaving, fermenting 
mass of plastic material seeking the shape and form appropriate to 
its inherent nature. That form will be attained as surely. as 
historical evolution has, like natural evolution, its own immanent 
laws. Whether the Knights of Labor will then retain their present 
name or not, makes no difference, but to an outsider it appears 
evident that here is the raw material out of which the future of 
the American working class movement, and along with it, the 
future of American society at large, has to be shaped. 

The third section consists of the Socialist Labor Party. This 

section is a party but in name, for nowhere in America has it, up 
to now, been able actually to take its stand as a political party. It is, 
moreover, to a certain extent foreign to America, having until 
lately been made up almost exclusively by German immigrants, 
using their own language and for the most part little conversant 
with the common language of the country. But if it came from a 
foreign stock, it came, at the same time, armed with the 
experience earned during long years of class-struggle in Europe, 
and with an insight into the general conditions of working class 
emancipation,’ far superior to that hitherto gained by American 
workingmen. This is a fortunate circumstance for the American 
proletarians who thus are enabled to appropriate, and to take 
advantage of, the intellectual and moral fruits of the forty years’ 
struggle of their European classmates, and thus to hasten on the 
time of their own victory. For, as I said before, there cannot be 
any doubt that the ultimate platform of the American working 
class must and will be essentially the same as that now adopted by 
the whole militant working class of Europe, the same as that of the 
German-American Socialist Labor Party. In so far this party is 
called upon to play a very important part in the movement. But in 
order to do so they will have to doff every remnant of their 
foreign garb. They will have to become out and out American. 
They cannot expect the Americans to come to them; they, the 
minority and the immigrants, must go to the Americans, who are 
the vast majority and the natives. And to do that, they must above 
all things learn English. 

The process of fusing together these various elements of the 
vast moving mass—elements not really discordant, but indeed 
mutually isolated by their various starting-points—will take some 
time and will not come off without a deal of friction, such as is 
visible at different points even now. The Knights of Labor, for 
instance, are here and there, in the Eastern cities, locally at war 
with the organized Trades Unions. But then this same friction 
exists within the Knights of Labor themselves, where there is 
anything but peace and harmony. These are not symptoms of 
decay, for capitalists to crow over. They are merely signs that the 
innumerable hosts of workers, for the first time” set in motion in a 
common direction, have as yet found out neither the adequate 
expression for their common interests, nor the form of organiza- 

tion best adapted to the struggle, nor the discipline required to 
insure victory.* They are as yet the first levies en masse of the great 
revolutionary war, raised and equipped locally and independently, 
all converging to form one common army, but as yet without 
regular organization and common plan of campaign. The converg- 
ing columns cross each other here and there; confusion, angry 
disputes, even threats of conflict arise. But the community of 
ultimate purpose in the end overcomes all minor troubles; ere 
long the straggling and squabbling battalions will be formed in a 
long line of battle array, presenting to the enemy a well-ordered 
front, ominously silent under their glittering arms, supported by 
bold skirmishers in front and by unshakeable reserves in the rear. 

To bring about this result, the unification of the various 
independent bodies into one national Labor Army, with no matter 
how inadequate a provisional” platform, provided it be a truly 
working class platform—that is the next great step to be 
accomplished in America. To effect this, and to make that 
platform worthy of the cause, the Socialist Labor Party can 
contribute a great deal, if they will only act in the same way as the 
European Socialists have acted at the time when they were but a 
small minority of the working class. That line of action was first 
laid down in the “Communist Manifesto” of 1847 in the following 
words: | | 

“The Communists”—that was the name we took at the time and 
which even now we are far from repudiating—‘‘the Communists 
do not form a separate party opposed to other working class 
parties. 

“They have no interests separate and apart from the interests of 
the whole working class. 

“They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by 
which to shape and model the proletarian movement. 

“The Communists are distinguished from the other working 
class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the 
proletarians of the different countries they point out, and bring to 
the front, the common interests of the whole proletariat, interests 
independent of all nationality; 2.In the various stages of 
development which the struggle of the working class against the 
capitalist class has to pass through, they always and everywhere 
represent the interests of the movement as a whole. 

“The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, 
the most advanced and resolute section of the working class 
parties of all countries, that section which ever pushes forward all 
others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have, over the great 
mass of the proletarians, the advantage of clearly understanding 
the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results 
of the proletarian movement. 

“Thus they fight for the attainment of the immediate ends, for 
the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; 
but in the movement of the present, they represent and take care 
of the future of the movement.” * 

That is the line of action which the great founder of Modern 
Socialism, Karl Marx, and with him, I and the Socialists of all 
nations who worked along with us, have followed for more than 
forty years, with the result that it has led to victory everywhere, 
and that at this moment the mass of European Socialists, in 
Germany and in France, in Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, in 
Denmark and Sweden as well as in Spain and Portugal, are 
fighting as one common” army under one and the same flag. 

London, January 26, 1887 
Frederick Engels