The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 14, 1932, Page 8

DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1932 Marx, the Founder of the First International By MAX BEDACHT The Hague Congress of the First International in September, 1872, décided to remove the seat of the General Council from London to New York. The motion was made by Karl Marx. This motion was an ac- tual recognition of the inevitable end of the First International. It died actually in 1874; it was offi- cially buried only in 1876. The First International was founded in 1864. In spite of reaction throughout Europe which prevailed after the stormy days of 1848, the labor movement began to develop in most European countries. Develop- ing capitalism had begun to pro- duce its own undertaker, the mod- ern proletariat. This proletariat, in spite of its suffering and suppres- sion, or, rather, because of that, be- gan to form economic and political associations to defend its interests. The theoretical line of the labor organizations and movements of the various countries differed with the different stages of development of capitalism. In advanced Britain, for instance, trade unionism pre- vailed, The backward German states produced the journeymen communists of Wilhelm Weitling. In the territory of typical home in- dustry of the Jura in Switzerland petty bourgeois individualism and anarchism rooted itself, while in France with its revolutionary and, insurrectionary traditions there de- veloped the theory of Putchism (Blanqui-ism) on the one hand and the petty bourgeois reactionary re- formism of Proudhon on the other. Yet, in 1864, aiter a number of ef- forts, Association was organized. This or- ganization became known in his- tory as the First International. Although they did not directly in- itiate it, Marx and Engels took an active part in it from the very be- ginning. Marx became the German secretary of the General Council. In this position Marx began to struggle against the main weakness of the International. He endeavored to put in place of the many nation- al groups with the many different conceptions one unified Interna- tional with one fundamental pro- gram and aim. In the Workers In- ternational Marx and Engels saw the potential conqueror of capital- ism. But the growth of the strength of the Workers International to the point of a successful revolutionary challenge to capitalism presup- posed the elimination of theoretical and national divisions. The aim of Marx was to develop the working class as a class, conscious of its so- cial existence and mission as a class, and active in its class inter- ests. Only such a development would make the workers’ Interna- tional truly international. It would make it inevitably revolutionary. The leadership of Marx and En- gels in the International Working- men’s Association was, therefore, one continuous effort to have the revolutionary theories of Marxism replace the variety of national con- ceptions, Proudhonism, Blanquism, Bakuninism, Weitlingism, etc. The Paris Commune brought the inner division of. the International Workingmen’s Association to a head. The various fractions fought with each other for credit for the successes of the Commune, and they accused each other of the respon- sibility for its mistakes and defeats. This resulted in a life and death struggle of the-fractions for domi- nation in the International. The Hague congress of the International | in 1872 was to be the main battle- field for the fractions. Marx realized this. On June 21, 1872, he wrote an urgent letter to F. A. Sorge, who was the leader of the American section of the Inter- national, Marx wrote: “The next congress will be held on the first Monday in September, 1872, in the Hague (Holland). Under no condi- tions can you confine yourself to send a memorandum. This congress decides about life or death of the International.” ’ The majority of delegates to.the Hague Congress supported Marx. Bakunin and his group were ex- pelled. Bakunin was characterized “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution:~ The proletarians have nothing an international Workmen's } by Marx in a letter to Bolte in New York, dated November 23, 1871, as follows: “At the end of 1868 the Russian, Bakunin, joined the Inter- national for the purpose of forming within it: a second International with himself as the chief, under the name of Social Democratic Alliance | (Alliance de la Democratic Social- bring the Negroes, and thé exten- sive expropriation of (exactly the fertile) land by the railroad and mining companies will bring the al- ready dissatisfied farmers of the west as auxiliary troops to the workers. Thus a nice stew is brewed together over there. This may make, post festum, the removal of the Hague congress the end had com@ for both sides. The only country in which there were still some pos- Sibilities in the name of the Inter- national, was America. And a for- tunate instinct moved the top lead- ership there. Now even there the prestige is exhausted, and any fur- ther efforts to galvanize new life retical knowledge—pretends to rep- resent scientific propaganda within his special organization, and to make this the special task of the second International within the In- ternational. His program was a right and left hodge-podge — equality of classes (1), abolition of the right of inher- itance as a starting point of the so- cial movement (St. Simonist non- sense), atheism as a dogma dictat- ed to the membership, etc., and, as the main dogma, (Proudhonist) ab- stention from political action.” Here we have Marx’s own formu- lation of the reasons why Marx directed his big guns against Ba- kunin, The First International In America, ® With the removal of the General Council of the International from London to New York, F, A. Sorge became the main secretary and leading spirit. But the correspond- ence between Marx and Engels on the one side and Sorge om-the other shows that neither-Marx nor En- gels even for a moment abandoned their ideological leadership of the International. This correspondence is rich in advice and guidance to their American followers. These ad- vices must be heeded even to this day by the Communist Party. The | development of the American prole- tariat as a class was the ever re- curring aim put before the mem- bers and organizations of the First International in America. Every event in the labor movement was followed carefully by the two in London. =~ : Although the International had formally been dissolved in 1876 Marx was still watching the pos- sible influences of the idea of the International as a potent factor of the labor movement of America. When in 1877 a broad mass strug- gle broke out among the American railroad workers; Marx wrote to Engels: “What do you say to the workers of the United States? This first explosion against the associ- ated capitalist oligarchy, which originated in the Civil War, will of course, be suppressed. But it can very well become the starting point for a labor party. Two favorable conditions may help. The policies of iste). He—a man without any theo-;the new, president (Hayes> will; center of the International to America very peculiarly oppor- tune.” The End of the First International, | Sickened by the petty attacks of | the factions and by the evident | hopelessness of a further growth of | the International under prevailing conditions, Sorge resigned his post as secretary. A letter written by Engels on this occasion to Sorge, | on September 12, 1874, contained | the following epitaph for the First | International: “With your resignation there is | an end to the.Old International. And that is well. It belonged in | the period of the second empire (Napoleon III—M,. B.) when the} pressure upon the just reviving la- | bor movement throughout Europe | demanded unity and avoidance of all internal polemics. ‘It was the time when the common cosmopoli- tan interests of the sproletariat could push themselves into the fore- ground; Germany, Spain, Italy, Denmark, just had entered the movement or were then entering it. The theoretical character of the movement throughout Europe, that is with the masses, was in 1864 really very unclear, German Com- munism did not yet exist as a party of labor; Proudhonism was too weak as yet to ride its hobby, Bakunin’s newest invention did not yet exist even. not in the head of Bakunin; even the chiefs of the English trade union movement believed justified by the ideas expressed in the sta- tutes to enter the movement. The first success had’ to break up this naive unity of all fractions. This success came with the Commune, which unquestionably was the in- tellectual child of the International for which it was rightfully held re- sponsible. When, because of the Commune, the International be- came a moral power in Europe, the trouble started. Each group wanted to exploit the successes for itself. into it would be foolish and a waste of efforts. The International has dominated ten years of European history in one direction—in the di- hection where the future lies—and it can proudly look back upon its work. “But in its old form it is obsolete -..I believe that the next Inter- national, after Marx’s writings have sunk in for a few years, will be di- rectly communist and will raise our principles.” After the resignation of Sorge the International continued its formal existence till 1876. At a congress in Philadelphia in that year, partici< pated in only by American affilia< tions, the International dissolved it< self. It wrote finis under ifs ow history with a statement which be< gan: “Fellow workmen: The Interna< tional is dead.” This statement end- ed with the assurance, that “more favorable conditions will again bring together the workingmen of all countries to a common struggle, and the cry will again resound loud- ed than ever: “Proletarians of unite!” all countries, This assurance has since been ful- filled in the formation and the pro- gram, work and achievements of the Communist International, Communist Int'l Contiues Traditions of the First Int’l The Third Communist Interna-, tional, in continuing the work of the First International, and in ac- cepting the fruits of the work of the Second International, resolutely lopped ‘off the latter's opportunism, social-chauvinism, and bourgeois distortion of socialism and set out to realize the dictatorship of the proletariat. In this manner the Communist International continues the glorious and Reroic traditions of the international labor move- ment; of the English Chartists and the French insurrectionists of 1831; of the French and Getman working class revolutionaries of 1848; of the immortal warriors and martyrs of the Paris Commune; of the valiant soldiers of the German, Hungarian and Finnish revolutions; of the workers under the former Tsarist despotism—the victorious bearers of the proletarian dictatorship; of the Chinese proletarians—the heroes of Canton and Shanghai. Basing itself on the experience of The unavoidable disintegration came.| tne revolutionary labor movement The increasing influence. of those jon all continents and of all peoples who were really ready to continue |the Communist International, in its work on the base of the old cornpre- | theoretical and practical work, hensive program, drove the Belgian | stands wholly and unreservedly Proudhonists into the arms of the | upon the ground. of revolutionary Bakuninist Adventurers. With the Marxism and its further develop- ment, Leninism, which is nothing else but Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolu- tion, Advocating and propagating the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels and employing it as a revo- lutionary method of conceiving reality, with the view to the revo- lutionary transformation of this reality, the Communist Interna- tional wages an active struggle against all forms of bourgeois phil- osophy and against all forms of theoretical and practical opportun- ism, Standing on the. ground of consistent proletarian class struggle and subordinating the temporary, partial, group and national interests of the proletariat to its lasting, gen- eral, international interesig, the Communist International merciless- ly exposes all forms of the doctrine of “class peace” that ihe reformists- | have accepted from the bourgeoisie. Expressing the historical need for an international organization of rev. olutionary proletarians—the grave- diggers of the capitalist order—the Communist International is the only international force that has for its program the dictatorship of the pro- letariat and Commiunism, and that openly comes: ott Ws the organizer of the international proletarian rev- olution—From the Programme of the Communist International. Ve to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of all countries, unite!” ae v.)