Karl Marx_ A Biography ( PDFDrive )

S E V E N

The International

The International belonged to the period of the Second Empire during which the oppression reigning throughout Europe prescribed unity and abstention from all internal polemics to the workers' movement, then just reawakening.

Engels to Sorge (1874), MESC, p. 288

I . O R I G I N S O F T H E I N T E R N A T I O N A L

One of the main reasons why Volume One of Capital was so long in appearing and why the subsequent volumes never appeared at all is that Marx's time was taken up by the work forced on him as the leading figure in the International.

After the dissolution of the Communist League in 1852, Marx had carefully avoided any party political commitment; for one thing, the 1850s were a period of reaction and left-wing activism was inopportune. But by the early 1860s political and economic conditions were encouraging a revival of working-class activity in Europe. In England the successful struggle of the building workers for a nine-hour day encouraged the

relax the anti-trade union laws in the hope of using the workers as a counterweight to the increasing liberal opposition. As for Central Europe, Lassalle (who died just a few weeks before the founding of the International) had 'reawakened the working-class movement in Germany after a sleep of fifteen years'.'

This revival coincided with a growing spirit of internationalism, particularly strong in England. T h e cause of Italian independence had long been popular among the British working class; Garibaldi was feted when he came to London and Mazzini was personally known to many of the working-class leaders. Lincoln's proclamation abolishing slavery rallied trade unionists to the side of the North in the Civil War and Marx was very impressed by the 'monster meeting' organised by the trade unions

I'olish insurrection of 1863. A representative delegation of French workers subsidised by Napoleon - had already visited London in the Exhibition year of 1862 and it was natural that the French should send a delegation ID the mass meeting on Poland called in London in July 1863. These links were further strengthened by French and English workers contributing to 1 k h others' strike funds. Following the Polish meeting, George Odger, Secretary of the London Trades Council, was deputed to draw up an address, 'To the Workmen of France from the Working M en of England', which proposed the foundation of an international association to promote peace and foster the common interests of the working classes of all countries. T h e French drafted a reply and a meeting was called at St Martin's Hall near Covent Garden on 28 September 1864 to hear the exchange of addresses. It was at this meeting that the International was

founded.2

Although Marx was in no way instrumental in summoning this meet-

the. time the lava will flow from East to West and not the other way, so thm we will be spared the "honour" of a French initiative.'5 To give vent in Ins views, Marx conceived the idea of a pamphlet - the military half

he. liver forced him to stop. These manuscripts, which remained unpub-

economic influences, and their mainspring is Marx's Russophobia. Accord-

Marx was thus actively interested in the immediate occasion for the St Martin's Hall meeting. His own account of his being invited (written some weeks later to Engels) is as follows:

A Public Meeting was summoned for 28 September 1864 in St Martin's Hall by Odger (shoemaker, President of the Council of all London Trades' Unions) and Cremer (a mason and secretary of the Masons' Union). . . . A certain Le Lubez was sent to me to ask whether I would take part on behalf of the German workers and in particular whether I could supply a German worker to speak at the Meeting. I supplied Eccarius, who was a great success, and I was also there - as a silent figure on the platform. I knew that this time the real 'powers' from both the London and Paris sides were present, and so decided to waive my otherwise standing rule to decline any such invitations.'

In fact, Marx's invitation seems to have been a very hurried affair, for he only received the formal note from Cremer asking him to attend a few hours before the meeting. T h e French, largely followers of Proudhon, believed that workers should run their own organisations, and Eccarius was an obvious choice, having been one of the signatories of the German Workers' Educational Association's Manifesto in October 1863.

T h e meeting was 'packed to suffocation' with some 2000 present. Beesly, Professor of History at London University and a leading Positivist, made a brief speech from the chair, the German workers' choir sang, and Odger read out the Address he had written the previous December. Henri Tolain, the most influential socialist in France, and a member of the delegations that visited London in 1862 and 1863, read the French reply which was almost exclusively confined to advocating, in Proudhonist terms, a reform of the relation between capital and labour that would ensure the worker a fair return for his work. Le Lubez then outlined the French plan for a Central Committee in London which was to correspond with sub-committees in the European capitals with a view to drawing up a common policy. George Wheeler and William Dell, two British trade unionists, proposed the formation of an international association and the immediate formation of a committee to draw up its rules. After a debate in which Eccarius spoke for the Germans, the meeting closed with the election of a committee comprising thirty-four members: twenty-seven Englishmen (eleven of them from the building trade), three Frenchmen, two Italians and two Germans, Eccarius and Marx.

This General Committee (soon to be called General Council) met on 5 October and elected Odger as President and Cremer, on the proposal of Marx, as Secretary. Corresponding secretaries were elected for France and Poland. Marx suggested that the secretary for Germany be chosen

S E L E C T C R I T I C AL B I B L I O G R A P HY 3 3 5

by the German Workers' Educational Association and he was himself elected by them shortly afterwards. Turning to its main business, after 'a

men's organisation.'11 Odger and others, continued Eccarius, were very dissatisfied with the proposed drafts and had remarked that 'the right man in the right place would be Dr Marx'.1 2 Cremer himself wrote urging Marx to attend. However, Marx also missed the next meeting of the subcommittee claiming that he was not informed of the rendezvous in time. At this meeting Le Lubez was deputed to synthesise the drafts made by Wolff and Weston.

Marx finally put in an appearance at the General Committee which met on 18 October to consider this synthesis. Marx wrote that he was 'really shocked when I heard the worthy Le Lubez read out an appallingly

crusted over with the vaguest tags of French socialism'.13 Marx managed to get the drafting once more referred back to the sub-committee, which met two days later in his own house. His aim was if possible 'not to let one single line of the thing stand' and, in order to buy time, he suggested

to postpone the meeting of the General Committee until they had had time for a further sub-committee meeting. T h e papers were left for Marx to work on. His brief was merely to give expression to the 'sentiments' of Le Lubez's draft which the General Committee had already approved. Ii) justify what he himself admitted to be the 'extremely peculiar way' in which he went about this, he wrote an Address to the Working Classes which he described as 'a sort of review of the fortunes of the working classes' since 1845.1 4 He also reduced the number of rules to ten. At the subcommittee meeting Marx's draft was approved except that, as he wrote to

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K A R L M A R X : A B I O G R A P H Y

Engels, 'I was obliged to accept into the preamble of the Statutes two phrases on "duty" and "right", and also on "truth, morality and justice"; but they are so placed that they cannot do harm.'15 T h e General Committee then approved the Preamble, Address and Rules, though not without amendment: that Marx was not able to get his way completely is shown

produced within a week and included material that later appeared in Capital. Marx wrote to Engels: 'It was very difficult to arrange the thing in such a way that our view appeared in a form that made it acceptable to the present standpoint of the workers' movement. It will take time before the reawakening of the movement allows the plain speaking of the past. We must act fortiter in re, suaviter in modo (strong in content, soft in form)."6 Thus, in contrast to the Communist Manifesto, there were no sweeping generalisations or appeals to revolutionary action. T h e Address began with the statement that 'It is a great fact that the misery of the working masses has not diminished from 1848 to 1864',1 7 and proceeded to document this statement with quotations from official British publications describing the poverty that contrasted so glaringly with the optimistic pronouncements of the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the country's increasing wealth. Marx's reason for dwelling on England at length was the apparently rather naive view that 'with appropriate changes in local colour and scale, the English facts reproduce themselves in all the industrial and progressive countries of the Continent'.18 Although, he admitted, 'a minority of the working class have obtained increases in their real wages', yet 'since 1848 the great mass of the working classes have been sinking down to a lower depth at the same rate at least as those above them have been rising in the social scale'.19 His conclusion was:

In all countries of Europe it has become a truth demonstrable to every unprejudiced mind, and only denied by those whose interest it is to hedge other people in a fool's paradise, that no improvement of machinery, no application of science to production, no contrivance of communication, no new colonies, no emigration, no opening of markets, no free trade, nor all these things put together, will do away with the miseries of the industrial masses; but that, on the present false basis,

This is one of the clearest formulations of Marx's doctrine of relative pauperisation. It is paradoxical that in England the International chiefly helped to benefit the better-off workers and thus served to increase the very disparity Marx mentioned.21

ii'lieved by two important events: the passing of the Ten Hours Bill ('the lust time that in broad daylight the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class'),22 and the cooperative movement. But - and Marx had in mind here the French disciples of Proudhon - this movement could only succeed against the power of capital if developed 'to national dimensions'. Thus 'to conquer

in the abolition of slavery, the support of Poland, and the opposition to Russia - 'that barbarous power whose head is at St Petersburg and whose hands are in every cabinet of Europe'.24 He closed with the traditional appeal: 'Proletarians of all countries, Unite!'

In the Preamble to the Rules Marx started from the principle that 'the emancipation of the working classes must be achieved by the working 1 lasses themselves' and that this struggle would eventually involve 'the abolition of all class rule'. Since economic subjection was at the bottom of all social and political ills, it followed that 'the economical emancipation of the working classes is therefore the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means'.25 These statements were interlarded with the various phrases - about 'truth, justice

.md morality', and so forth - that Marx could not avoid, and the document closed with ten rules, dealing with such questions as annual Congresses and the election of the General Council.

I he Address shows the extent to which Marx was prepared to take the working-class movement as it was without imposing any blueprint. He (arefully avoided anything that might jar on the susceptibilities of the I' nglish or French. In particular the majority of English trade unionists prevented Marx from alluding in any way to revolutionary aims. Indeed Iteesly said of the audience in St Martin's Hall: 'only a few, perhaps not one amongst them, belonged to any socialistic school. Most of them, I think, would have hesitated to accept the name of Socialist.'26 Equally, in spire of his guarded criticism of the co-operative movement, Marx had to avoid any mention of state centralisation, a policy anathema to the French.

3 6 2 K A RL M A R X : A B I O G R A P H Y

national continued to favour its growth in the middle years of the decade. T h e political instability leading up to the Franco-Prussian War and the increase in strikes generated by the economic crisis of 1866-67 inevitably enhanced the International's prestige, and in its first years it was able to grow steadily inside the fairly loose doctrinal framework set up by Marx.

In England, the International made good progress for the first few years. It secured the affiliation of, among other organisations, the important Union of Bricklayers and Cordwainers. Its activities were regularly reported in the most influential working-class newspaper, the Beehive. One of the first acts of the General Council was to send a bombastic Address (drawn up by Marx) to Lincoln, the 'single-minded son of the working class'. In April 1865 Edmund Beales and other middle-class radicals joined six workers to create the Reform League to agitate for manhood suffrage. Marx, renewing contact with his old friend Ernest Jones, was active in getting the League formed. All six workers were members of the General Council and Marx wrote enthusiastically to Engels: 'The great success of the International Association is this: T h e Reform League is our doing.'27 In reality, however, the League merely weakened the International, whose work many of its members considered of less immediate importance than the League's own programme.

Marx put into the International a tremendous amount of work - much of it evidently against his will. In March 1865, for instance, he explained to Engels how he had spent the previous week: on 28 February there had been a sitting of the General Council until midnight which had been followed by a further session in a public house where he had to sign more than 200 membership cards. T h e following day he had attended a public meeting to commemorate the Polish uprising. On the fourth and sixth of March there had been sub-committee meetings into the small hours, and on the seventh again a meeting of the General Council until midnight.28 A few months later Marx had to pretend to be absent on a journey in order to snatch some time to work on Capital and by the end of the year he complained that 'the International and everything to do with it haunts me like a nightmare'.29

During 1866 the progress of the previous year was maintained and the International displayed for the first time what the English viewed as its chief asset: its ability to prevent the introduction of blackleg labour from the Continent. Marx emphasised to Liebknecht that 'this demonstration of the International's direct effectiveness has not failed to impress itself on the practical spirit of the English'.30 T h e strike of the London Amalgamated Tailors was a success owing to the International's efforts in this field and they immediately applied for affiliation. Several small societies joined and in August there was a major breakthrough: the Sheffield

Conference of Trades Delegates recommended that its members join the International. By the time the first Congress was held in Geneva in September 1866, it could be reported that seventeen unions had joined the International and thirteen were negotiating. In November the National Reform League, the sole surviving Chartist organisation, applied to join. If only the London Trades Council could be persuaded to affiliate, Marx felt, 'the control of the working class here will in a certain sense be transferred to us and we will really be able to push the movement forward'.31 Engels, however, did not allow himself to be influenced by Marx's enthusiasm and for several years was distinctly reticent about the achievements of the International. He failed to form a six-member section 111 Manchester and refused even to become a correspondent.

the continental groups, as soon as they begin to be stupid.'32 Marx also attributed his dominance to German ideological superiority and the fact that the rest of the General Council felt 'German science' to be 'very useful and even indispensable'.33

Marx's interventions when the General Council discussed Poland in lanuary 1865 provoked an unusually enthusiastic response: the normally matter-of-fact minutes record that 'the address of Dr Marx was pregnant with important historical facts which would be very valuable in a published form'.34 In the summer of 1865 the General Council discussed the views of John Weston (which he had already set out in the Beehive) that wage increases would only result in higher prices and that producers' cooperatives were therefore the only method of raising the workers' standard ol living. Marx considered this view extremely superficial and, despite his opinion that 'you can't compress a course of Political Economy into one hour',35 adopted the model of his previous addresses to working-class audiences and lectured the General Council through two long sessions. I le attempted to show that rises in wages did not, in general, affect the prices of commodities and, since the tendency of capitalist production was to lower the average standard of wages, trade union pressure was necessary to resist these encroachments; of course, trade unions should

the ultimate abolition of the wages system'.'6 In his arguments Marx incorporated a great deal of material from his drafts of Capital and in particular his theory of surplus value, there stated publicly for the first time. Although some members of the Council wanted the lecture published, Marx hesitated, considering it not flattering to have Weston as an opponent and not wishing to detract from the impression that the publication of his magnum opus would eventually make ."

Marx for altering so drastically their first version of the Inaugural Address and who particularly objected to the 'class' character of Marx's ideas. Marx described the events in a letter to his cousin Nannette Philips:

During my absence . .. Mazzini took pains to ferment a revolt against my leadership. Leadership is never something agreeable nor something that I covet. I have always in my mind's eye your father who said: 'the asses always hate their keeper'. Mazzini, who does not conceal his hatred of free thought and socialism, is jealously watching the progress of our association.... He intrigued with certain English workers and aroused their jealousy against 'German' influence. . . . In doing this he was certainly acting sincerely, for he abhors my principles which are, for him, tainted by the most criminal 'materialism'.38

Marx counter-attacked by convoking all the foreign secretaries to his house for a concerted drive against Mazzini's followers who thereafter abandoned all co-operation with the International." In September 1866 Marx himself was proposed as President of the General Council but declined on the grounds that the position should be occupied by a manual worker, and Odger was elected. From the start Marx regarded England as the linchpin of the International. A few months after the founding of the International, he wrote to Kugelmann: 'I prefer a hundred times my action here via the International. T h e influence on the English proletariat is direct and of supreme importance.'40

On the General Council Marx's official responsibility was for Germany of which he was corresponding-secretary. But in spite of the importance he attached to spreading the influence of the International in Germany, Marx had little to show for his efforts during the first year. Lassalle had died a few weeks before the foundation of the International and his party, the A D A V (General Union of German Workers), the only existing labour organisation in Germany, was left with a leadership problem as well as disputes about the party's centralised organisation and its attitude to Bismarck's policies. T h e party did not become sufficiently united to adopt