Study of his life nd work maximilien Rubel and Margaret Manale

THE FOUNDING OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL

In September a young French immigrant Le Lubez invited Marx to participate as the representative from Germany at an international working men’s meeting to be held that month in St Martin’s Hall. Marx sent Eccarius in his place but, after receiving a second invitation from the joiner William Cremer, finally decided to attend as a spectator. At this meeting it was decided to found an international association of working men, the goal of which was stated as ‘the social equality of working men' (Sept. 28). Marx and Eccarius were designated as members of a provisional committee charged with editing the statutes and preamble for the association. In a letter to Joseph Weydemeyer in America, Marx explained why he had decided to participate

Its English members consist mostly of the heads of the local trade unions, that is, the actual labour kings of London j j j From the French side the members are themselves insignificant, but they are the direct organs of the leading ‘ouvriers’ in Paris ... Although for years I have systematically declined all participation in any ‘organisations', etc., whatsoever, I accepted this time because it involved a matter where it is possible to do some important work (Nov. 29).

While the election of Lassalle’s successor in the ADAV was still pending, Marx, who had eliminated himself as a candidate through his new loyalty to the International, commented on the two possible nominees, Moses Hess and Bernhard Becker, saying | ‘... it is all the same which of the two you choose, for at the decisive moment the men who are needed will turn up’ (letter




to Carl Klings, Oct. 4); neither would in any case be capable of guiding an important movement.

At the first meeting of the Committee on October 5 Marx was among a group of nine selected to a sub-committee with the specific task of drawing up the platform of principles. However, a new attack of furunculosis prevented him from attending either the sub-committee meeting (Oct. 8) or the next meeting of the General Committee on October 12, at which it was voted to adopt the name ‘International Working Men's Association’. Eccarius subsequently informed Marx that his absence had been conspicuous and was variously interpreted. ‘It is absolutely essential,’ Eccarius added, ‘that you set the seal of your exact and profound mind on this, the first-born offspring of the European working men’s organisation’ (Oct. 12). In Marx’s absence John Weston had been charged with editing the declaration of principles, Major Wolff with the Rules, and both papers had been referred back to sub-committee for reworking. The sub-committee’s secretary, Cremer, wrote to Marx on October 13 that they hoped to be able to see Marx at the next session. On October 18 Marx was present at a meeting of the Committee which now adopted the title ‘Central Council’ (changed to ‘General Council’ in November 1866), where the ‘substance’ of a programme and rules read by Le Lubez was accepted and then referred back to sub-committee again for a final revision. Shortly thereafter, Marx met several members of the Central Council at his home to discuss the documents in question. It was agreed that he should elaborate the texts in a way suitable for final presentation to the Council.

In a later letter to Engels (Nov. 4) Marx explained what happened with the texts he had been given. The preamble, by Le Lubez, was ‘badly written, completely immature and full of atrocious phraseology’ and so, to gain a free hand and justify his changes, Marx wrote an address—‘a sort of review of the adventures of the working classes since 1845'; then, under the pretext of having already incorporated the essential facts into the address, he threw out the Declaration of Principles, written by Weston, and reduced the rules from forty to ten. All in all,

‘It was very difficult to keep the thing in a form which made our views acceptable at the present stage of the labour movement. Time is needed before the movement, now revived, will permit the old vigour of language’ (Nov. 4). To the extent that politics




were touched upon in the address, Marx pointed out, he spoke of countries and not nationalities and denounced Russia and not the ‘minores gentium’.

On November 1 both the address and the statutes were read before the Central Council and, with a few insignificant changes in wording, were adopted unanimously. The Council thanked Marx, Le Lubez and Weston for ‘their exertions and the production of so admirable an address’. Both it and the statutes appeared in pamphlet form in London on November 24.

The Inaugural Address speaks of the ‘social pest called a commercial and industrial crisis’, of the ever-growing poverty of the masses in contrast to the wealth and property concentrated in the hands of a few. Progress in technology and trade would never alleviate the evils of the industrial system and the misery of the working masses, but rather ‘on the present false base, every fresh development of the productive powers of labour must tend to deepen social contrasts and point up social antagonisms’ (Marx, Engels, SW 1:346). We are reminded of the victories of the working class in England, the ‘compensating features’ for the defeat of the 1848 revolutions: The Ten-Hour Bill had been a victory of working class principles as opposed to the interests of the factory owners; the co-operative movement has shown, ‘by deed, instead of by argument’, that large-scale production is possible without class divisions and monopolies. ‘Like slave labour, like serf labour, hired labour is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labour' (ibid., p. 347). The address proposes that co-operative labour be introduced on a national scale in order to counter effectively the growth of monopolies; it stresses that the potential success of the working class lies in its numbers, ‘But numbers weigh only in the balance, if united by combination and led by knowledge’ (ibid., 348).

The provisional rules of the Association begin with the basic tenet proclaiming ‘That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves; that the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class rule’ (Documents 1:288).

Informed at length about the founding of the IWA, Engels commented that it was certainly important for them to have


contact with men who represented the working class; yet he was sceptical about the group’s future, expecting it to break up ‘very soon into its theoretically bourgeois and theoretically proletarian elements just as soon as the issues have been more clearly defined’ (Nov. 7).

During these active days of the founding Marx met Michael Bakunin for the first time in sixteen years and was pleased to find that this Russian was one of the rare men who had ‘advanced and not regressed’ in the long interval (Marx to Engels, Nov. 4). In Germany, meanwhile, Becker had been named president of the ADAV in accordance with Lassalle’s will. Liebknecht informed Marx as well that the ADAV was planning to start a new newspaper, the Social-Demokrat, with Liebknecht and Hofstetten as editors, and that his and Engels’s participation would be welcome (letter to Marx, Nov. 4). Marx accepted this offer for them both and referred in his reply to the principles set down in the paper's prospectus: solidarity of popular interests, a united people’s republic of Germany, abolition of the rule of capital.

At a Central Council meeting on November 22 Marx moved that they invited various working men’s groups to stand for membership in the TWA. The Council appointed Marx to write an address congratulating Abraham Lincoln on his recent re- election. Marx found this task more difficult than something ‘with contents’ since the problem here was to make it ‘stand off from ordinary democratic phraseology’ (to Engels, Dec. 2). This address, which was presented to the CC on November 29 and adopted by a unanimous vote, interpreted Lincoln’s re-election as a triumph which meant death to the slavery interests and would introduce a new era of ascendancy for labour:

The working men of Europe feel sure that as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Anti-Slavery War will do for the working classes (Documents 1:53).

Marx sent copies of the IWA documents—the addresses and statutes—to friends and family in America and Europe: to Ernest Jones, Dr Kugelmann, Miquel, Tolain, Bakunin, and instructed the latter to pass copies on to Garibaldi in Italy. In December the Social-Demokrat published its first specimen issues


containing a German translation of the IWA Inaugural Address. Marx was interested in seeing the ADAV and other German associations for the working class adhere to the IWA and wrote, therefore, to Carl Siebel about the importance of these ties between Germany and the Central Council in London:

You understand that we only need the adherence of the Ailgetneiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein for the beginning here in face of our adversaries. Later on, the whole establishment of that organ will have to be demolished because its foundations are wrong (Dec. 22).

Marx also warned Liebknecht about the definite ‘Lassalle cult’ which the Social-Demokrat seemed to follow in its first numbers.

While Marx had been writing the Lincoln address for the Association, the journalist Peter Fox had assumed charge of a similar address in support of the Polish insurgents. Fox, who like many other English democrats, had a ‘fanatical “love” for France’ according to Marx, closed his address by ‘consoling the Poles with the passionate friendship of the English working classes for the French democrats’ (Marx to Engels, Dec. 10). In a sub-committee session Marx sharply criticised Fox's Franco- mania and pointed out that France’s treason against Poland had a long history. The address in question was adopted on condition that the conclusion was changed in accordance with Marx’s remarks. When the address was then presented to the CC on December 13, a lengthy debate ensued and the matter was deferred until the next session. Referring to Fox, Marx remarked in a letter to Engels: ‘Easy as it is, however, to accomplish the rational when dealing with the English working men, one must in equal measure be on one's guard as soon as the intellectuals, bourgeois or the bogus-intellectuals participate in the movement’ (Dec. 10).

1865 During this year Marx was an active participant in the CC meetings, except for three weeks in July and August when he retired, on the pretext of travel, into his study to work on the manuscript of Capital. On January 30 the Hamburg publisher Meissner agreed to publish the ‘Economics’ and Marx received his contract on March 23, according to which he was obliged to deliver the 800-page text before the end of May.

At the January 3 CC meeting Marx presented the German translations of the Inaugural Address and the statutes, stating


that 50,000 copies had been distributed in Germany. The issue of Fox’s Poland address was taken up again; Marx ‘in a very able historical resume argued that the traditional foreign policy of France had not been favourable to the restoration and independence of Poland'. The Council voted that the address should be amended ‘to accord with the truths of history’ (Minutes, Jan.

3. 
   . On January 23 an invitation was read to the Council from a group of bourgeois radicals, inviting them to join a mass meeting to be held in support of universal suffrage and electoral reform. Knowing the connections between the IWA and the British trade unions, the group had appealed to the Council for aid in organising this meeting. Marx moved that a delegation be sent strictly in the role of observers and that it be authorised to support the reformers under two conditions: ‘if, in the first place, manhood suffrage is directly and openly proclaimed in their programme and, in the second, if people elected by us are placed on the regular committee so that they can watch the fellows and can compromise them when they commit a fresh act of treachery, which, as I made clear to all, is bound to occur’ (to Engels, Feb. 1). The Council heard on January 31 the answer of the American Ambassador Charles Francis Adams to the IWA’s Address to Lincoln. Adams’s message, ‘the first answer which is more than strictly formal on the part on the old fellow’, (Marx to Engels, Feb. 1) declared that:
   

the United States regard their cause in the present conflict with slavery maintaining insurgents as the cause of human nature and they derive new encouragement to persevere from the testimony of the working men of Europe that the national attitude is favoured with their enlightened approval and earnest sympathies (Minutes, Jan. 31).

On the request of Liebknecht and J. B. von Schweitzer, Marx wrote a memorial tribue to Proudhon in the form of a letter to Schweitzer that appeared in the Social-Demokrat on February 1. 3 and 5. This letter contained—in Marx’s estimation—‘some very bitter blows, apparently meant for Proudhon’ but in fact directed against the ADAV's own founder Lassalle. Like the latter, Proudhon had a ‘petit-bourgeois point-of-view’ and never advanced beyond sophistry in trying to use the dialectic method: Be never really grasped scientific dialectics’ (SW 1:360). His Best writing, once praised by Marx as a monumental work,