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in the time of Chartism. The government was finally convinced that concessions were
unavoidable.
We shall now recall that after the July Revolution of 1830 a strong movement
for parliamentary reforms had taken place in England. It had all culminated in a
compromise, the workers were cheated in the most unpardonable fashion, and the
right to vote was won only by the industrial bourgeoisie. So it happened now. When
the government saw that its retreat was inevitable, and that the city workers were in
a threatening mood, it proposed a compromise -- the broadening of the suffrage right
to include the city proletariat.
We should specify that universal suffrage meant universal male suffrage. The
granting of this right to the women was not even thought of. The compromise was
immediately accepted by the bourgeois members of the committee of electoral
reforms. Suffrage was granted to workers who had a definite abode, even if it
consisted of one room, for which they paid a specific minimum rental. Thus the right
to vote was won by almost all the urban workers, with the exception of the very
indigent ones of whom there were at the time a considerable number in the English
cities. The rural proletariat still remained without the right to vote. This clever trick
was invented b y Disraeli, the leader of the English conservatives, and was subscribed
to by the bourgeois reformers who persuaded the workers to accept the concessions
with the view to a further struggle for an extension of the suffrage. But the rural
workers had to wait another twenty years, while the workers without permanent
homes were given suffrage only after the liberalising influence of the Revolution of
1905 in Russia.
Events not less important took place in Germany in the years 1865-1866. A
furious conflict broke out between Prussia and Austria. The mooted question was
hegemony within Germany. Bismarck's objective was the final exclusion of Austria
from the German Confederation, and the elevation of Prussia to a dominant place
among the remaining German states. This controversy developed into an armed
conflict between Austria and Prussia. In two or three weeks Prussia, which had no
scruples about entering into an alliance with Italy against another German state,
smashed Austria to pieces and annexed several petty German states which had been
helping Austria -- the Kingdom of Hanover, the free city of Frankfort, the Hesse
principality, etc. Austria was definitely thrown out of the German Confederation. The
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North-German Confederation headed by Prussia was organized. To win the
sympathies of the workers, Bismarck introduced universal suffrage.
In France, Napoleon was forced to make some concessions. A few laws
dealing with combinations of workers were eliminated from the criminal code. The
persecution of economic organisations, particularly co-operatives and societies for
mutual aid, was weakened. The moderate wing among the workers, with its emphasis
on legal means, was gaining strength. On the other hand Blanquist organisations
were growing. These fought the Internationalists tooth and nail, accusing them of
abandoning revolutionary action and of coquetting with Bonaparte's government.
In Switzerland, the workers were engaged in their local affairs and only the
emigrants from other countries took an interest in the International. The German
section, headed by Becker, which published the Vorbote, played the role of a centre
for that portion of the workers in Germany who, unlike the Lassalleans, adhered to
the International.
The Congress convened in Geneva in September, 1866, shortly after Prussia
had defeated Austria, and the English workers had won what had then appeared to
them as a great political victory over the bourgeoisie. The Congress was opened with
a scandal. Besides the Proudhonists, there came from France the Blanquists, who
also insisted on participating in the work of the Congress. These were mostly
students of very revolutionary tendencies. They acted most pertinaciously, although
they had no mandate. They were finally quite indecorously thrown out; it was even
rumoured that there was an attempt to drown them in the Lake Geneva, but this is a
fairy tale. But the denouement did not come off without the application of fistic and
pedal energy, this being the usual thing when Frenchmen are embroiled in a factional
fight.
When, however, the work was started, a battle royal occurred between the
Proudhonists and the delegation of the General Council which consisted of Eccarius
and some English workers. Marx himself could not come, he was busy putting the
finishing touches to the first volume of Capital. Furthermore, for a sick man who was
also under the vigilant surveillance of French and German spies such a journey
would have been difficult. But Marx wrote a very detailed report for the delegation
concerning all the points to be taken up at the Congress.
The French delegation presented a very painstaking report which was an
exposition of the economic ideas of Proudhon. They declared themselves to be
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vigorously opposed to woman labour, claiming that nature itself designated woman
for a place near the family hearth, and that woman's place is in the home and not the
factory. Declaring themselves definitely opposed to strikes and to trade unions, they
propounded the ideas of co-operation and particularly the organisation of exchange
on the principles of mutualism. The first conditions were agreements entered into by
separate co-operatives, and the establishment of free credit. They even insisted that
the Congress ratify an organisation for international credit, but all they succeeded in
doing was to have a resolution adopted which advised all the sections of the
International to take up the study of the question of credit and the consolidation of
all the workers' loan associations. They even objected to legislative interference with
the length of the workday.
They met with the opposition of the English and the German delegates. Point
by point they brought forward in the form of resolutions the corresponding parts of
Marx's report.
This report insisted that the chief function of the International was the
unification and co-ordination of the divers efforts of the working class fighting for its
interests. It was necessary to weave such ties so that the labourers of the different
countries should not merely feel themselves comrades in battle but that they should
also work as members of one army of liberation. It was necessary to organise
international aid in cases of strikes and to interfere with the free movement of
strikebreakers from one country into another.
As one of the most important problems, Marx stressed scientific research into
the conditions of the working class which should be instituted on the initiative of the
working class itself. All the collected materials should be directed to the General
Council to be worked over. Marx even indicated briefly the chief points of this
working-class inquiry.
The question of trade unions provoked most vehement debates. The
Frenchmen objected to strikes and to any organised resistance to the employers. The
workers must seek their salvation through co-operatives only. The London delegates
pressed as a counter-proposal that section of Marx's report which dealt with trade
unions. This was adopted by the Congress; but the same misunderstanding occurred
here as had with regard to the other regulations of the First International. The exact
text was not known for a long time. The Germans knew it through a very
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