1. The sources of information
First, I feel it is very important to be able to find good sources of information on the subject one studies. As a general rule, the best sources are the participants of the events, participants who are able to reflect on the situation. These are men of thought and action. One prominent example of such is Julius Ceasar with his history of wars in Gaul.
The worst sources of information are those that bore the reader (one definition of “information” is the degree to which it is surprising, the extent to which a piece of data makes us wander). One example of such, in our case, is G. M. Steckloff, with his “History of the First International”, 1928. There is a sort of people who are interested in advancing their academic career while pretending to be studying “revolutionary” topics. I think that many graduate students and professors of universities and recipients of “socialist” funds recognize themselves in this category. Their “revolutionary” dissertations become known in a narrow circle of “Ivory Tower revolutionaries”, and in time are successfully forgotten. “Let the dead bury their dead”.
So, good works on the First International (F.I.) are:
1) Letter of K. Marx. to F. Engels, November 4, 1864
2) “The Inaugural Address” and “Provisional Rules” of the F.I., by K. Marx
3) Wilhelm Eichhoff, “The International Workingmen’s Association
Its Establishment, Organisation, Political and Social Activity, and Growth”, 1869
4) F. Mehring, “Karl Marx”, 1918
5) M. Bakunin, “Marxism, Freedom and the State”, writings from 1867-72.
6) Karl Marx, “Civil war in France”, 1871
7) Henry Lissagaray, “History of the Paris Commune of 1871“, 1876
8) Freedland and Slutsky, “History of Revolutionary Movements in Western Europe, 1789-1914”, Moscow – Leningrad, 1926 (in Russian)
9) Louis Proyect, “History of the Marxist Internationals“, 2010
2. The necessary conditions for the rise of the International
The First International was created in the following conditions: 1) the Industrial revolution, 2) the rising political consciousness of the proletariat, 3) first-rate men devoting themselves to the cause of proletariat.
1. The principal indicators of the Industrial Revolution in XIX century included coal, pig iron and steel production. For France, we have the following dynamic of these principal indicators:
| 1840 | 1850 | 1860 | 1869 | |
| coal | 3,003,000 | 4,904,000 | 10,317,000 | 16,101,000 |
| pig iron | 348,000 | 522,000 | 1,091,000 | 1,218,000 |
| steel and iron | 245,000 | 320,000 | 781,000 | 1,025,000 |
The principal driving power of the Industrial Revolution in XIX century was the steam. For France, we have the following dynamic:
| 1840 | 1852 | 1862 | 1872 | |
| number of factories with steam power | 3200 | 6500 | 15000 | 23000 |
| total horsepower | 34300 | 75000 | 205600 | 338000 |
The dynamic of trade, for France, is represented by the following figures:
| 1840 | 1850 | 1860 | 1869 | |
| export | 1,052 | 1,119 | 2,657 | 4,009 |
| import | 1,010 | 1,435 | 3,147 | 3,993 |
Freedland and Slutsky write: “The epoch of Napoleon III was the high time of capitalism in France … From 1851 to 1869 the national wealth doubled, having risen from 82 billion francs to 162”.
Engels comments on the situation like this: “The Second Empire opened the exploitation of France by a gang of political and financial adventurers, but at the same time also an industrial development such as had never been possible under the narrow-minded and timorous system of Louis Philippe, with its exclusive domination by only a small section of the big bourgeoisie”.
2. As for the rising political consciousness of proletariat, we note that after the defeat of the revolutions of 1848, the English proletariat was able to pass a Ten Hours’ Bill, limiting the amount of hours one could work legally. In France, we note the development of proudhonism, i.e. a philosophy of cooperation between workers. In Germany, we note the embryo of the Social-Democratic Party, led by Lassalle.
3. Finally, as for the leaders of revolutionary movement of proletariat, we have such first-rate men as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, August Blanqui and Michael Bakunin. These were men of theory and action; many of them spent time in prisons and in exile.
Taking into account these 3 factors, it should not be surprising that on September 28, 1864, in public meeting at St. Martin’s Hall, in London, an International Working Men’s Association was founded. The founding was preceded by mutual visits of French and English workers to each other with the goal of securing their interests against strike breakers (for further details, see Wikipedia, “First International”).
3. The program of the International
When examining an organization, it is necessary first to look at its program. In this program, the organization should announce what it intends to do (the goal), and how it intends to do it (“the road map”). The program is the summary of its theoretical baggage; it reveals the methodology of action. The First International did not have such a program. The closest that the First International came to “a program” is the “Inaugural Address” written by Karl Marx on October 21-27, 1864. What does it say?
“It is a great fact that the misery of the working masses has not diminished from 1848 to 1864, and yet this period is unrivaled for the development of its industry and the growth of its commerce”. This is familiar enough today, when the living standards of the working classes in general decline around the globe.
Marx also writes: “After the failure of the Revolution of 1848, all party organizations and party journals of the working classes were, on the Continent, crushed by the iron hand of force”. This passage we insert because one Russian “Marxist” organization, the MRP, the Marxist Revolutionary Party, known for its dogmatic quoting of Marx, writes in “Global Association of Workers”, commemorating 140 years of the First International:
“The International was born as an echo of the proletarian stream of bourgeois revolutions of 1848-49”, and, “The International appeared in the period between the ‘waves’ of bourgeois revolutions – 1848 and 1871. The first of these waves moved the proletariat and has given the push for creation of the Association.”
In no way a failure of a revolution can serve as a cause for a creation of an International. Rather, an International is created on the waves of a revolution approaching, or actually being (as was the case with the Third International). Thus, the First International was a sign of a rise in workers’ and socialist movement.
Coming back to “The Inaugural Address”, Marx says: “co-operative labor, if kept within the narrow circle of the casual efforts of private workmen, will never be able to arrest the growth in geometrical progression of monopoly, to free the masses, nor even to perceptibly lighten the burden of their miseries”. And hence the need, the duty of the working classes to conquer political power.
In “Rules” of the First International we find following goals:
1) “the economical emancipation of the working classes”, for which the main condition is that the means of production must belong to those who use them. Let’s notice that in the epoch of “knowledge economy” this problem has a tendency to develop in favor of the “workers”, i.e. those who work with modern knowledge and equipment, such as computers and software.
2) “Abolition of all class rule”, i.e. overcoming division of society into social classes, i.e. those who organize and govern, and those who work with their hands or minds.
3) Creation of “of a fraternal bond of union between the working class of different countries”, i.e. internationalism of the working class.
4) “This Association is established to afford a central medium of communication and co-operation between Working Men’s Societies existing in different countries, and aiming at the same end, viz., the protection, advancement, and complete emancipation of the working classes”. So, the First International was to be a hub allowing communication and cooperation between organizations of workers in different countries. The ultimate goal of these communications and cooperation was to give freedom to the working class.
Now, for the means to accomplish the aforesaid goal. The first of these is international organization, which was founded in St. Martin’s Hall in 1864. The second is the knowledge of international politics. Marx writes: “The fight for such a foreign policy forms part of the general struggle for the emancipation of the working classes”.
4. Conferences and Congresses
After establishment in 1864 in London, the First International held its first conference in London in September 1865. Then, there was the first congress, in Geneva, in 1866. F. Mehring explains the difference between “a conference” and “a congress”: “Marx considered that on the whole the political situation was not yet mature enough to justify the holding of the public congress which had been arranged to take place in Brussels in 1865, and he feared, not without good reason, that it would degenerate into a Babel of tongues. With great difficulty and against particularly energetic opposition from the French he succeeded in securing agreement for the holding of a closed conference in London instead of the public congress in Brussels, a conference to be attended only by the representatives of the leading committees and to be no more than a preliminary to the future congress”.
The second Congress took place in Lausanne in September 1867. The third Congress took place in Brussels in September 1868. Wikipedia writes: “The Brussels Congress of the International in 1868, approved Marx’s tactics in regard to the League (of Peace), opposing official affiliation to the League but calling upon the working class to combine efforts with all progressive anti-military forces”. Note: this is in sharp opposition to Trotsky’s tactic of “entryism” in order to strengthen the membership, in numbers.
The fourth Congress took place in Basle in September 1869. In 1870 there was a conference in London (instead of a Congress). This change was caused by the French-Prussian war. Next, there was a conference in London in September 1871. The last Congress of the International was held in Hague in 1872, after which the seat of the General Council was transferred from London to New York, and the First International effectively stopped its existence. (The anarchist section of the First International exists today as International Workers’ Association. Its official site is http://www.iwa-ait.org/.) Hence, we see 3 conferences and 5 Congresses. That is the outward form of the life of the First International.
Let’s note that the annual meetings of the International were held all over Western Europe. Today, we live in the era of imperialism, where a small number of imperialist countries exploits the rest of the world. Because of poverty, traveling for workers in the exploited countries is difficult enough inside their own countries, and almost impossible to go abroad. Hence, true representatives of workers and communism from imperialist countries should go to the exploited parts of the world, rather than visa versa. Otherwise, if they subsidize trips to conferences and social forums in Western Europe and the United States, as they do today, Western socialists risk contacting political prostitutes rather than revolutionaries. For example, see the case of Ukrainian “Workers’ Resistance”.
As an additional remark, we should note that in the period of the First International, Marx developed the “Irish problem”. What is the significance of that? In the XIX century, England dominated the world. The weak spot of England was, and still is, the “Irish problem”, i.e. the oppression and exploitation of Irish by English, including the English working class. A revolution in Ireland threatens the very existence of capitalism in England (for example, listen to the song “Belfast” by Elton John, 1990’s).
Today, the U.S. dominates the world. The weak spot of the U.S. has been, and still is, the Blacks and the “Hispanics”, including the emigrants from Latin America. According to Malcolm X, the Negro ghetto is the revolutionary dynamite of the U.S. To explode this bomb means to explode the very existence of capitalism in the U.S. (Think of Black Lives Movement…) If the U.S. will fall, it will be followed by Germany, and the rest of the imperialist world. As Leo Cohen sings: “First, we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin”.
5. Marx vs. Bakunin
The inner life of the International consisted in struggles between various factions of the working class, each subscribing to this or that theoretician or mode of action. The most prominent of these was a struggle between the Marxists and the Bakunists, or anarchists. In fact, this struggle effectively killed the International, causing Marx and Engels to propose the transfer to New York.
Whereas the history of human society, according to Marx, is the history of the class struggle, the history of organizations is the history of struggles of different factions. Just like a class struggle can lead to a total disintegration of a society, so can a struggle between different factions lead to a disintegration of an organization.
What was the kernel of disagreement between Marx and Bakunin? It seems to me the kernel of disagreement was different attitudes to “the State” and politics in general. Let’s listen to Bakunin, first.
It seems to me that for Bakunin the supreme goal is “freedom” (see “Revolutionary catechism”, written in tsarists prison in 1851). What is freedom? “Freedom is the absolute right of every adult man and woman to seek no other sanction for their acts than their own conscience and their own reason, being responsible first to themselves and then to the society which they have voluntarily accepted”. Compare this with I. Kant’s definition of “Enlightenment”, 1784: “Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another”. Freedom in Bakunin’s understanding is synonymous with Enlightenment in Kant’s interpretation.
Freedom allows for “the triumph of humanity”, which is “the conquest and accomplishment of the full freedom and full development, material, intellectual and moral, of every individual, by the absolutely free and spontaneous organization of economic and social solidarity as completely as possible between all human beings living on the earth.”
According to Bakunin, the State is absolutely opposed to the idea of freedom: “But as upholder in all circumstances of liberty, that first condition of humanity, I think that liberty must establish itself in the world by the spontaneous organisation of labor and of collective ownership by productive associations freely organised and federalized in districts and by the equally spontaneous federation of districts, but not by the supreme and tutelary action of the State.
This is the point which principally divides the Revolutionary Socialists, or Collectivists, from the Authoritarian Communists, who are upholders of the absolute initiative of the State. Their goal is the same; each party desires equally the creation of a new social order founded only on the organization of collective labor, inevitably imposed on each and everyone by the very force of things, equal economic conditions for all, and the collective appropriation of the instruments of labor. Only, the Communists imagine that they will be able to get there by the development and organization of the political power of the working-classes, and principally of the proletariat of the towns, by the help of the bourgeois Radicalism, whilst the Revolutionary Socialists, enemies of all equivocal combinations and alliances, think on the contrary that they cannot reach this goal except by the development and organisation, not of the political but of the social and consequently anti-political power of the working masses of town and country alike, including all favorably disposed persons of the upper classes, who, breaking completely with their past, would be willing to join them and fully accept their program” (“Marxism, Freedom, and the State”).
Hence, Marxists (“Communists”) and anarchists (“Revolutionary Socialists”) have different methods: “The Communists believe they must organize the workers’ forces to take possession of the political power of the State. The Revolutionary Socialists organize with a view to the destruction, or if you prefer a politer word, the liquidation of the State. The Communists are the upholders of the principle and practice of authority, the Revolutionary Socialists have confidence only in liberty. Both equally supporters of that science which must kill superstition and replace faith, the former would wish to impose it; the latter will exert themselves to propagate it so that groups of human beings, convinced, will organize themselves and will federate spontaneously, freely, from below upwards, by their own movement and conformably to their real interests, but never after a plan traced in advance and imposed on the ‘ignorant masses’ by some superior intellects.”
Thus, we see while Marx and Bakunin held the same vision of the goal, they differed in their vision of the road to be taken. Bakunin believed in spontaneous action of the masses. He believed that the State must be immediately abolished on the very next day after a revolution.
“All work to be performed in the employment and pay of the State— such is the fundamental principle of Authoritarian Communism of State Socialism. The State having become sole proprietor—at end of a certain period of transition which will be necessary to let society pass without too great political and economic shocks from the present organisation of bourgeois privilege to the future organisation of the official equality of all—the State will be also the only Capitalist, banker; money-lender, organiser, director of all national labor and distributor of its products. Such is the ideal, the fundamental principle of modern Communism”.
Of Marxists Bakunin says: “They are Governmentalists, we are out and out Anarchists.”
“Socialism implying the destruction of the State, those who support the State must renounce Socialism; must sacrifice the economic emancipation of the masses to the political power of some privileged party”. Let’s observe the truth that is present in Bakunin. The bureaucracy in the Soviet state has formed “a privileged party”. The 5-year plans, the industrialization and collectivization, were “traced in advance and imposed on the ‘ignorant masses’ by some superior intellects”. These, and other facts help to explain why anarchism still finds supporters, for example in the former USSR (see photo below).
In defense of Marxism we should say that Bakunin did not correctly interpret the very existence of a state. A state is a consequence of appearance of social classes. It becomes necessary because otherwise the classes will destroy each other in their mutual struggle (for an interesting factual description of appearance of a state, see Herodotus’ “History”). While it is a consequence of appearance of antagonisms in a society, a state becomes also a cause for maintenance of a class structure of society. This is dialectics, where each concept turns into its opposite.
Bakunin proposed to abolish the “secondary cause” (the State). As for the primary cause (social classes), all he did was propose abolition of the rights of inheritance. Mehring comments: “Like all other bourgeois legislation, the inheritance laws were not the cause, but the effect, the legal consequence of the economic organization of a society based on private property in the means of production. The right to inherit slaves had not been the cause of slavery. On the contrary, slavery had been the cause of the right to inherit slaves. If the means of production were turned into common property, then the right of inheritance would disappear as far as it was of social importance, because a man could leave to his heirs only that which he had possessed during his life. The great aim of the working class was, therefore, to abolish those institutions which gave a few people the economic power to appropriate the fruits of the labour of the many. To proclaim the abolition of the laws of inheritance as the starting point of a social revolution would, therefore, be just as absurd as to proclaim the abolition of the laws of contract between buyers and sellers so long as the present system of commodity exchange prevailed.”
Conflict between Marx and Bakunin teaches us that we no longer should make an attempt to unite the Marxists and Anarchists into a single organization.
In his struggle against anti-authoritarian Bakunin, Marx revealed a tendency in development of Internationals. It is the tendency towards greater centralization. Mehring writes that at the Hague congress (1872), “In a long speech Marx demanded not only that the previous powers of the General Council should be maintained, but even increased. The General Council should be given the right to suspend, under certain conditions, not only individual sections, but whole federations pending the decisions of the next congress. It had neither police nor soldiers at its disposal, but it could not permit its moral power to decay. Rather than degrade it to a letter-box it would be better to abolish the General Council altogether. Marx’s viewpoint was carried with 36 votes against 6, 15 votes being withheld”.
In addition to the tendency towards centralization, we observe the tendency towards a single, uniform doctrine. The First International consisted of proudhonists and blanquists from France, trade-unionists and Marxists from England, anarchists from various countries. The Second International was dominated by the doctrine of Marx, as this was interpreted by Social-Democratic parties. The Third International was not simply “Marxist”, but opposed to “defensism” of Social-Democracy, and hence called itself “Communist International” (Comintern). The Fourth International was not simply “Communist”, but opposed itself to the Stalinist current in communism, and hence was “Trotskyist”. We can suppose that the tendency will continue. It will be opposed both to the theory of “capitalism” in the former USSR, originating in the West, and to Stalinism and Maoism, originating in the East.
beyond Marxism / дальше марксизма 