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hearted sympathy with them, it is just the renunciation of the formation of a mass party which leads to the spontaneity theory, to "Khvostism," to the hindrance of the Communist task of taking the leadership of the entire class in the revolution.

 

VI.

The Role of the Farmers.

IN his letter of July 25, 1877, Marx predicted the role of the farmers, who are being revolutionized in consequence of the agrarian crisis and their expropriation through big business, as that of the allies of the working class. He designated the revolutionization of the farmers as well as the beginning of the Negroes' awakening "to favorable circumstances" for the "constitution of an earnest workers' party." On the other hand Engels proves in his letter to Sorge dated January 6, 1892, that the American farmers as a class have not the strength for the formation of an independent political party. Every endeavor to form an independent farmers' party in America must of necessity make this party the plaything of petty bourgeois political speculators and consequently an appendage of the two capitalist parties:

"The small farmers and petty bourgeoisie will scarcely ever be able to form a strong party. They are composed of too rapidly changing elements—the farmer is often a wandering farmer, who cultivates two, three or four farms in different states and territories one after the other; immigration and bankruptcy promote the change of personnel in both; eco-

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