Friday, April 30, 2010

A political immigrant

Given the central role that immigration has played in this election, it is worth pondering the opinion held by Friedrich Engels of his status as an immigrant in the England of the 1880s.

After the death of Karl Marx some of Engel’s supporters urged him to return to live on the Continent; Engels stayed put, explaining that “I shall not go to any country from which one can be expelled. But that is something one can only be safe from in England & America.”

Could he be so confident of that today?