Marx, Engels and the workers’ movement in the USA: a contribution to the understanding of the materialist conception of history

Abstract

In the present paper we try to recover the reflection of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on the American workers’ movement of their time, especially as regards to the role of socialists. It is our understanding that this reflection of Marx and Engels contributes, although little explored, to the understanding of the conception of both – the materialist conception of history –, not because it contributed to its final elaboration, but through the practice that the authors made this when they analyzed what was happening on the other side of the Atlantic. The reflection of these two authors may still be, in addition to merely theoretical issues, quite current – hence the focus on issues of political party strategy – since the parties that claim the working class today are, after all, much more than in the second half of the nineteenth century, but on the other hand, much less expressive than in the second half of the twentieth century. It is, in fact, one of several particular contributions of the conception of the two German authors.