Only when the land — the public lands — is completely in the hands of the speculators, and settlement on the land thus becomes more and more difficult or falls prey to gouging — only then, I think, will the time come, with peaceful development, for a third party. Land is the basis of speculation, and the American speculative mania and speculative opportunity are the chief levers that hold the native- born worker in bondage to the bourgeoisie. Only when there is a generation of native-born workers that cannot expect anything from speculation any more will we have a solid foothold in America. ============================== Interesting. Engels wrote this just about the same time as Turner advanced the thesis that the availability of cheap land on the frontier had acted as a safety valve preventing the build up of the same deep social unrest as in Europe, and just after the 1890 census had declared the frontier closed.
Updating Engels, you could say that in the recent period stocks and urban real estate have been "the basis of speculation, and the American speculative mania and speculative opportunity are the chief levers that hold the native- born (sic) worker in bondage to the bourgeoisie." Less certainly than Engels - he didn't expect capitalism to survive the next century - you might venture that "only when there is a generation of...workers that cannot expect anything from speculation any more will we have a solid foothold in America" might a real third party develop on the left.
Right now, though, it appears that a third party of any consequence would be more apt to develop in the centre - to the right of the Democrats and left of the Republicans. The number of disenchanted "independent" voters positioning themselves in that political space has been rising and Obama and McCain each won their parties' endorsements because they were seen as the the most capable of winning that constituency. They haven't congealed into a coherent force yet, but if the Dems become as widely discredited in government as the Republicans under Bush, there will be lots of Micheal Bloombergs out there itching to organize and lead them.