Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement: Years of the First International

366 Pages·5.195 MB·English

by  Henry Collins, Chimen Abramsky

KARL MARX AND THE
BRITISH LABOUR
MOVEMENT
Years of the First International
BY
HENRY COLLINS
AND
CHIMEN ABRAMSKY
LONDON
MACMILLAN & CO LTD
NEW YORK • ST MARTIN’S PRESS
1965
Copyright © Henry Collins and Chimen Abramsky 1965
MACMILLAN AND COMPANY LIMITED
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Library of Congress catalogue card no. 65—11940
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
PREFACE
September 1964 marks the centenary of the First Inter­
national. Despite its comparatively short life, that organisation
changed the history of the world. It was established in 1864
towards the height of England’s mid-Victorian prosperity. The
General Council, as its directing body came to be called, in­
cluded from the beginning a relatively unknown German
refugee. It was he who, serving in the modest capacity of
Corresponding Secretary for Germany, gave world significance
to its activities.
The foundation of the International in London on Septem­
ber 28, 1864 was a turning-point in the history of the European
labour movement. Its two predecessors, the Fraternal Demo­
crats of 1846 and the International Association of 1855, re“
mained comparatively feeble and made hardly a ripple either
in England or on the Continent. The International was the
first working-class organisation to make a decisive impact on
European politics. If it helped actively in shaping and mould­
ing the early labour organisations in Europe, this was largely
the achievement of one man — Karl Marx.
Marx had come to live in England in 1849. He was soon
on friendly terms with leading Chartists, particularly with
Ernest Jones and George Julian Harney. But, since Chartism
at just that moment was entering its period of disintegration
and decline, Marx remained largely unknown in the British
labour movement down to 1864. His lasting significance for
England derives largely from his activity on the General Council
of the International from then until 1872. Though he played
no part in founding the International, Marx was co-opted on
to the General Council from the beginning and soon established
an almost unchallenged intellectual ascendancy. Keeping
deliberately in the background, he drafted almost all its state­
ments, addresses, manifestos and general reports.
Both the First International and its General Council in
London were hampered throughout their existences by lack of
money. The International was hardly the powerful, well
administered, smoothly functioning organisation of current
Preface
VI
legend. But it provided the medium through which the ideas
of Marx were transmitted to the young socialist movements of
France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Russia and the U.S.A.
as well as, though in smaller measure, to other parts of Europe.
In more than a dozen countries the new organisation fired the
imagination of the working class. It produced echoes as far
afield as India and Australia. Inevitably it also became the
bogy of more than one frightened government.
When, during the lifetime of Marx, Socialism became a
world force, it was expressed in his terms and armed with his
ideas, rather than those of Mazzini, Proudhon or Bakunin.
This was almost entirely due to the International and the
effective leadership which Marx brought to bear on the labour
movements of many countries at a formative stage in their
development. But for the International it seems doubtful
whether Marx’s impact on the future of world Socialism would
have been so deep or lasting. It was the International which
caused the re-publication of the Communist Manifesto in German
and other languages. More than any other of Marx’s writings,
this pamphlet was the means through which his ideas were
disseminated.
It seems paradoxical that it was in England, where the
General Council of the International was established and where
through its work Marx came into contact with so many of the
leading trade unionists, that his direct influence was so small.
The present book is in part an attempt to explain the paradox.
Yet, even at a superficial glance, it is clear that the International
made its mark on the British labour movement. For one thing,
it was the first political organisation in which trade unions
participated as affiliated bodies. For another, industrial and
political causes with which the labour movement in Britain
was later to identify itself were first raised to prominence on a
world scale by the International. The Campaign for the legal
eight-hour day was initiated by the International at its Geneva
Congress in 1866. A generation later it became the main plat­
form around which the forces of the ‘New Unionism’ mustered
in their struggle to win control of the T.U.C. The second
annual Trades Union Congress, meeting at Birmingham in
1869, paid tribute to the achievements of the International and
called on its affiliated unions to join it. A few days later the
Basle Congress of the International brought a three-year-old
controversy to an end, when it included land nationalisation in
Preface Vil
its programme with the full support of the English trade union
delegation headed by Robert Applegarth.
The International also taught the trade unions in Britain to
react as organised bodies to international developments. It
strengthened the already powerful internationalist currents in
the movement against those who wanted the unions to remain
insular and to concentrate exclusively on industrial matters.
Over the Irish question, Marx and the General Council
instructed the labour movement in the first of a long series of
‘anti-colonial* campaigns. The International was the first
organised labour body to make a definite stand on the question
of war in general and it expressed its attitude to a particular
war — that between France and Prussia in 1870 — in a
memorable address.
If the International made its impact on the working-class
movement in Britain, the participation of the British trade
unions was decisive for the future of world Socialism. On the
Polish question, the eight-hour day, land nationalisation and
the participation of workers in politics, it was only through the
support of the British unions that ‘collectivist* Socialism won
its battles with the anarchist trend, at first represented by the
French followers of Proudhon. By the late eighteen-sixties the
Russian, Mikhail Bakunin, raised the second and much more
formidable anarchist challenge to the leadership of Marx. In
the year which followed the defeat of the Paris Commune in
May 1871 Marx, faced with a growing threat from Bakunin,
found himself now without the active support of the British
trade unionists. He then took the extraordinary step of
transferring the General Council to New York where it died
almost unnoticed four years later. For Marx, as for many
others, the International had ceased to fulfil a useful political
and educational purpose once the first experiment in working-
class government had been destroyed. In the circumstances,
the International could well be allowed a dignified if incon­
spicuous funeral in New York.
The present book tries for the first time to assess the
International in relation to the industrial and political move­
ment of the British working class. A new analysis has been
attempted of the Inaugural Address, the first document drafted
by Marx for the General Council and of its significance in the
development of those ideas which were to find more systematic
expression a few years later in Das Kapital. New light is
Preface
Vlll
thrown on Marx’s approach to the British labour movement in
an examination of both the Inaugural Address and of Marx’s
subsequent and more spectacular Civil War in France. Finally,
we have added what we believe to be the most comprehensive
bibliography on the First International in existence.
The book has gained greatly, at various stages, from dis­
cussion with a great many people who have helped us with
criticism and also with advice on the location of documents
and with the loan of material. They include in particular
Frederick B. Adams Jnr., New York ; Bert Andreas, Geneva ;
Professor Sir Isaiah Berlin ; Dr. Werner Blumenberg, Amster­
dam ; H. L. Beales ; Professor Asa Briggs ; Hugh Clegg ; the
late Professor G. D. H. Cole ; Dr. Stephen Coltham ; Dr. Eric
Hobsbawm ; Dr. Royden Harrison ; Miss M. Hunink, Amster­
dam ; James Klugmann ; Arthur Lehning, Amsterdam ; Dr.
Paul O’Higgins ; Philip McCann ; D. N. Pritt, Q.C. ; Andrew
Rothstein; Professor A. J. C. Riiter, Amsterdam; Marc
Tougouchi, Brussels. Our sincere gratitude is due to all of
the above who are, however, in no way responsible for the
opinions expressed in the book. Our thanks are also due to
George Aitken and the office staff of the A.E.U., and to the
General Secretaries and office staffs of the A.S.W. and
A.U.B.T.W. for their kindness in providing us with access to
union records, and to the librarians and staffs of the Inter­
national Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, the Reading
Room and Newspaper Library of the British Museum, the
Public Record Office, the London School of Economics, the
Goldsmiths* Library and the Bishopsgate Institute, London.
Finally, we are most grateful to the Oxford University Delegacy
for Extra-Mural Studies for the grant to one of the authors,
Henry Collins, of a year’s sabbatical leave and to the Trustees
of the Arnold and the Cyril Foster essay funds for generous
help towards travelling expenses.
We are most grateful for the special advice given by E. H.
Carr.
H. C.
C. A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface V
Abbreviations xi
Part One
FOUNDATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL
CHAP.
I. Early Attempts at a Labour International 3
II. Origins of the First International H
III. Karl Marx and the Foundation of the
International 30
IV. Marx's Conception of the International 39
Part Two
THE INTERNATIONAL IN ENGLAND,
1864-9
V. The International in England. Progress:
1864-7 59
Appendices 79
VI. The International in England. Stagnation :
1867-9 82
Part Three
CONFLICT OF IDEAS IN THE
INTERNATIONAL, 1864-9
VII. London and Geneva IOI
VIII. From Geneva to Brussels 125
IX. From Brussels to Basle 145
ix
Contents
X
Part Four
THE WAR AND THE PARIS COMMUNE
CHAP. PAGE
X. From Basle to the French Republic 161
XI. From the Fall of France to the Paris
Commune 185
XII. From the Paris Commune to the London
Conference, 1871 199
Part Five
THE LAST PHASE
XIII. The London Conference of 1871. Bakunin in
the International 227
XIV. From the London Conference to The Hague 235
XV. After The Hague 267
Conclusions 283
Appendices 305
Bibliography 315
Index 345
ABBREVIATIONS
A.B.V. Arbeiterbildungsverein (German Workers* Educa­
tional League)
A.S.C.J. Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners
A. S.E. Amalgamated Society of Engineers
B. F.C. British Federal Council
Bis. Bishopsgate Institute, London
G.C. General Council
I.I.S.G. International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
I.L.U. International Labour Union
I.M.L. Institute of Marxism-Leninism, Moscow
Int. Her. International Herald
I.W.M.A. International Working Men*s Association
L.L.L. Land and Labour League
L.S.E. London School of Economics and Political Science
L.T.R.A. Land Tenure Reform Association
L. T.C.London Trades Council
M. E.S.CM. arx-Engels Selected Correspondence, London, 1936
London
M.E.S.C. Marx-Engels Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1956
Moscow
M.E.S.W. Marx-Engels Selected Works, London, 1942
London
M.E.S.W. Marx-Engels Selected Works, Moscow, 1951
Moscow
M.E. Soc. Marx-Engels Sochinenia, Moscow
T.U.C. Trades Union Congress
Note : There are a number of editions of the correspondence
of Marx and Engels. Except where stated, letters can be
found in the Marx-Engels Sochinenia, Moscow, volumes XXI-
XXIX, under the appropriate dates. Where there is an English
edition, volume and page references are also given.