The Revolutionary Act: Military Insurrection or Political Action?

What it is

This is an English pamphlet published by the New York Labor News Company in 1922. It contains Friedrich Engels's 1895 introduction to Karl Marx's work The Class Struggles in France, translated by Henry Kuhn. It also includes an essay by Daniel De Leon, titled Militarism or Industrial Unionism?, which first appeared as a supplement to As to Politics. The cover shows a bundle of sticks tied together with a hatchet-like blade, and gives a price of 15 cents.

Why it matters

The pamphlet shows how Engels's late writings were used in American socialist debates after his death. Placing his introduction beside De Leon's essay shows that readers were arguing about whether workers should seek power through political action or through direct revolt.

Look closer

• What does the bundle of sticks on the cover suggest about the message of the pamphlet?
• Why would publishers put Engels's name on the cover of a pamphlet that also contains another author's essay?
• Whose voices are missing from a debate between these two writers?