“Economic Facts Are Stronger Than Politics”: Friedrich Engels, American Industrialization, and Class Consciousness

In the last third of the nineteenth century, both Engels and Marx assigned the United States a leading role in capitalist development and in the international workers’ movement. This chapter surveys Engels’ evolving viewpoints on American capitalism and his belief that its industrialization would spur a socialist movement. Despite Engels’ extensive knowledge of US capitalism, his prescriptions for working-class solidarity consistently misread American political culture. Its patterns of social mobility, its preindustrial republicanism, and its ethnic and racial differences constituted significant anomalies that undermined workers’ allegiance to socialism. Engels was not blind to these features of American life, but he underestimated their persistence and their negative impact on labor politics. His indomitable belief in capitalism’s impending global crisis subordinated America’s specific conditions to broader aspirations. In doing so, Engels held to a European definition of class conflict that poorly fit American circumstances.