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did Mehring, of overestimating the significance of the progressives, of placing too
great a hope in the bourgeoisie. We have already had occasion to read Marx's
characterisation of the Prussian bourgeoisie written by him
as a result of the
experiences of 1848. We have seen how severely he criticised the bourgeois.
democracy in his polemic against Vogt. The difference arose not because Marx, torn
away from his native land, still retained faith in the progressivism of the Prussian
bourgeoisie, while Lassalle, better acquainted with Prussian realities, was thoroughly
disillusioned in them. It was a disagreement concerning the tactics in relation to the
bourgeoisie. Just as in a war between capitalist states, so in the struggle between the
progressive bourgeoisie and Bismarck, was it necessary to work out tactics which
would remove t-he danger of the socialists becoming catspaws of one of the
conflicting parties. In his onslaught against
the Prussian progressives, Lassalle was
forgetting that there was still a Prussian feudalism, a Prussian Junkerdom, which
was not less inimical to the workers than the bourgeoisie. He beat and lashed the
progressives with good reason, but he did keep himself within the necessary bounds
and only compromised his cause by toadying before the government, Lassalle did not
even hesitate to resort to wholly unpermissible compromises. When, for
instance,
some workers were arrested, he suggested that they address a petition to Bismarck,
who,
no doubt, would release them just to spite the liberals. The workers refused to
follow Lassalle's advice. A study of his speeches, particularly those delivered during
the first half of the year 1864, reveals a multitude of such errors. We shall not dwell
on the negotiations which Lassalle, without the knowledge of the organisation, was
conducting with Bismarck, thus exposing his own reputation and the cause which he
served to serious injury.
These were the differences which prevented Marx and Engels from giving the
authority of their names in support of Lassalle's agitation. But -- and this we
emphasise -- while refusing Lassalle their support, they nevertheless refused to
oppose him openly. Their influence upon their coworkers in Germany, Liebknecht,
for instance, was in the same spirit. Meanwhile Lassalle, who greatly prized their
neutrality, was precipitously rolling down an inclined plane. Liebknecht, as well as
other comrades from Berlin, and the Rhine province, was demanding of Marx to
come out openly against Lassalle's erroneous tactics. It is quite likely that it would
have come to an open rupture had not Lassalle been killed on August 30, 1864. Four
weeks after his death, September 28, 1864, the First International was founded. This
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CHAPTER VII
THE CRISIS OF 1867-8.
THE GROWTH OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND,
FRANCE AND GERMANY.
THE LONDON INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION IN 1862.
THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.
THE COTTON FAMINE.
THE POLISH REVOLT.
THE FOUNDING OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL.
THE ROLE OF MARX.
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS.
We pointed out in the previous chapter that almost ten years had gone
by before the revolutionary labour movement began to recover from
its defeat of 1848-49. We showed that the beginning of this recovery
was bound up with the crisis of 1857-58 which was assuming
international proportions and which even affected Russia in a very
pronounced form. We indicated how the ruling classes of Europe,
outwardly peaceful
up to that time, were forced to undertake anew the
solution of all those problems which were put forward by the
Revolution of 1848 and never solved. The most important problem
pressing for a solution was that of nationalism -- the unification of
Italy, the formation of a united Germany. We mentioned briefly the
fact that this revolutionary movement was, strictly speaking, limited
98
only to Western Europe and influenced strongly only a part of
England, but that it failed to reach the major part of Europe, Russia,
and the far-away United States of America.
In Russia, at that time, the
burning question of the day was the abolition of serfdom. It was the
so-called period of "great reforms/index.htm" when the movement
began which, towards the early sixties, shaped itself into those
underground revolutionary societies the foremost of which was the
so-called Land and Freedom society. On the other side of the Atlantic'
in the United States, the question of the abolition of slavery was being
pressed for solution. This question, even in a greater measure than the
similar one in Russia, showed how really international
the world had
become, the world which used to be thought of in terms of a limited
part of Europe.
A problem so far removed as that of the abolition of slavery in the United
States became of the utmost importance to Europe itself. Indeed, so important did it
become that Marx, in his foreword to the first volume of Capital, stated that the war
for the abolition of slavery sounded the tocsin for the new labour movement in
Western Europe.
We shall begin with the most important labour movement, the English. Of the
old revolutionary Chartist movement there was nothing left by 1863. Chartism was
dead. Indeed some historians maintain that it died in 1848,
right after the famous
experiment of the abortive demonstration. But actually Chartism had one more
period of bloom in the fifties, during the Crimean War. Owing to the leadership of
Ernest Jones (1819-1868), a splendid orator and a brilliant journalist, who had built
up with the assistance of Marx and Marx's friends the best socialist organ of those
times, Chartism was able to utilise the discontent of the masses of workers during the
Crimean War. There were months when the Peoples Paper, the central organ of the
Chartists, was one of the most influential papers. Marx's masterly articles directed at
Gladstone and particularly at Palmerston were attracting universal attention. But
this was only a temporary revival. Soon after the conclusion of the war, the Chartists
lost their organ. The causes lay not only in the factional dissensions which flared up
between Jones and his opponents; there were more basic causes.
The first cause was the amazing efflorescence of English industry which had
begun as far back as 1849. The minor irritations which were occurring during this
period, irritations in separate branches of industry, did not in
the least interfere with