Chapter V: The International

The economic studies necessitated by his book "Capital" led Marx into the study of the social history of England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and gave him an insight into the working-class movements of those times such as but few scholars, English or foreign, have acquired. He became familiar with the modes of thought and expression of the working-class revolutionary movements, and especially of the Chartist movement, with the surviving leaders and adherents of which he was personally acquainted. Always eager to obtain knowledge of the actual working-class movement and to take part in it, he watched the activities of the English working class, which in the fifties was mainly occupied with purely trade unionist questions, being, politically, still in the Liberal camp. A change seemed imminent, however, about the beginning of the sixties. The London Labour leaders began to think about a Parliamentary reform movement, about starting a campaign for universal suffrage, which was an old Chartist demand. Likewise they manifested an interest in the fate of Poland and in other international questions concerning liberty.

At the International Exhibition held in London in 1862, the Labour leaders made the acquaintance of a deputation of French working men, with whom they afterwards carried on a correspondence. In 1863 and 1864, in the course of this correspondence, the idea of founding an international union of workers was mooted; and in the fourth week of September, 1864, this idea was carried into effect. Labour delegates from Paris and London held a conference in London from the 25th to the 28th of September, and the event was celebrated by a public gathering in St. Martin's Hall on the evening of the 28th. Marx received an invitation to this meeting in order that the German workers might be represented there. This conference and meeting resulted in the formation of the International Working Men's Association. Committees and sub-committees were elected to draw up a declaration of principles and outline the constitution. One of Mazzini's followers and a Frenchman submitted schemes which were handed over to Marx to be elaborated by him. He consigned them to the waste-paper basket and wrote the "Inaugural Address," giving a history of the English workers since the year 1825, and deducing the necessary conclusions. The declaration of principles is entirely the work of Marx, and it is by no means a subtly and diplomatically conceived composition designed to please English and French working men; it consists essentially of Marxian ideas expressed in terms, however, which would appeal to English working men of that time. "It was difficult," writes Marx to Engels--("Correspondence," Vol. III., p. 191)--"so to arrange matters that our view should appear in a form which would prove acceptable to the working-class movement with its present outlook.... It needs time before the reanimated movement will allow of the old boldness of speech. One must go _fortiter in re, suaviter in modo_ (firmly maintaining essential principles with a pleasant manner)."

The Inaugural Address sums up the history of the English working class from 1825 to 1864, and shows that from its struggles, as indeed from modern social history in general, the following lessons may be learnt by the proletariat: independent economic and political action by the working class; the turning to account of reforms forced out of the ruling classes by the proletariat; international co-operation of workers in the Socialist revolution and against secret, militarist diplomacy.

Marx devoted a great deal of his time during the years 1865 to 1871 to the International. Its progress awoke in him the greatest hopes. In 1867 he writes to Engels: "Things are moving. And in the next revolution, which is perhaps nearer than it seems, we (i.e., you and I) have this powerful machinery _in our hands_."--("Correspondence of Marx and Engels," Vol. III., p. 406.)

The International passed through three phases: from 1865 to 1867 the followers of Proudhon held sway; from 1868 to 1870 Marxism was in the ascendant; from 1871 to its collapse it was dominated and ultimately broken up by the Bakunists. The followers of Proudhon, like those of Bakunin, were against political action and in favour of the federative economic form of social organisation, only the Bakunists were also Communists, whereas the followers of Proudhon had an antipathy to Communism. Both groups were in agreement with Marx only on the one point--that he made economics the basis of the working-class movement. Both groups, however, accused him of being dictatorial, of attempting to concentrate the whole power of the International in his own hands. Besides insurmountable theoretical differences, racial and national prejudices crept into the International as disintegrating factors. The Romance and Russian Anarchists looked upon Marx as a pan-German, and conversely, some Marxians considered Bakunin a pan-Slav. Even as late as 1914, in the first months of the war, Professor James Guillaume, the last of the Bakunists, wrote a pamphlet entitled "Karl Marx, Pangermaniste" (Paris).

Michael Bakunin (b. 1814, near Twer, in Russia; d. 1876, in Berne) lived and studied in Germany during the forties. In 1848 and 1849 he took part in the revolution, was arrested, then handed over to Russia and banished to Siberia, whence he escaped in 1856, afterwards living in various countries of Western Europe. He was an indifferent theorist, and contributed little to the enrichment of philosophical Anarchism, but he distinguished himself by his immense revolutionary activity and his capacity for sacrifice. The influence which he exercised sprang from his character. He had been acquainted with the Young Hegelians as well as with Marx, Engels, and Wilhelm Wolff since the beginning of the forties. Until the end of 1868 he acknowledged Marx as his intellectual leader, as is evident from the following letter which he addressed to Marx:

"123, Montbrillant, Geneva,
"December 22, 1868.

"Serno has shown me the portion of your letter which concerns
me. You ask him whether I am still your friend. Yes, more than
ever, my dear Marx, for now I understand better than ever how
truly right you are when you advance along the high road of
economic revolution and invite us to follow, and when you set
those below us who stray into the side-tracks either of national
or exclusively political enterprises. I am now doing the same
thing that you have been doing for more than twenty years. Since
my solemn public leave-taking from the bourgeois of the Berne
Congress, I no longer know any other society, any other milieu,
than the world of the workers. Henceforth my country is the
'International,' of which you are one of the most illustrious
founders. Yon see, my dear friend, that I am your disciple--and
I am proud of it. That will be enough to make clear my attitude
and my feelings toward you."--("Neue Zeit," 19th year, Vol. I.,
p. 6.)

Nevertheless, this discipleship did not hinder Bakunin from secretly forming a separate organisation which contributed to the break-up of the International. Moreover, the International was only a kind of school for Socialist officers who had yet to create their armies, but it proved even more successful than Marx himself could have expected. The fundamental principles of Marxism ousted every other social revolutionary system which had made itself prominent within the working-class movement.