The year 1867-68 will mark an epoch in the history of the Association. After a period of peaceable development it has assumed dimensions powerful enough to provoke the bitter denunciations of the ruling classes and the hostile demonstrations of governments.[3] It has entered upon the phases of strife.
The French Government took, of course, the lead in the reactionary proceedings against the working classes. Already last year we had to signalise some of its underhand manoeuvres. It meddled with our correspondence, seized our Statutes, and the Congress documents.b ,3 After many fruitless steps to get them back, they were at last given up only under the official pressure of Lord Stanley, the English Minister of Foreign Affairs.
But the Empire has this year thrown off the mask and tried to directly annihilate the International Association by coups de police and judiciary prosecution. Begot by the struggle of classes, of which the days of June, 1848, are the grandest expression, it could not but assume alternately the attitudes of the official saviour of the Bourgeoisie and of the paternal protector of the Proletariat. The growing power of the International having manifested itself in the strikes of Roubaix, Amiens, Paris, Geneva, &c.,[14] reduced our would-be patron to the necessity of turning our Society to his own account or of destroying it. In the beginning he was ready enough to strike a bargain on very moderate terms.c The manifesto of the Parisians read at the Congress of Genevad15 having been seized at the French frontier, our Paris Executive demanded of the Minister of the Interior the reasons of this seizure.[3] M. Rouher then invited one of the members of thé Committeeb to an interview, in the course of which he declared himself ready to authorise the entry of the manifesto on the condition of some modifications being inserted.0 On the refusal of the delegate of the Paris Executive, he added,
"Still, if you would introduce some words of gratitude to the Emperor, who has done so much for the working classes, one might see what could be done." d
M. Rouher's, the sub-Emperor's, insinuation was met by a blank rebuff. From that moment the Imperial Government looked out for a pretext to suppress the Association. Its anger was heightened by the anti-chauvinist agitation on the part of our French members after the German war. Soon after, when the Fenian panic had reached its climax, the General Council addressed to the English Government a petition[6] demanding the commutation of the sentence of the three victims of Manchester, and qualifying their hanging as an act of political revenge/ At the same time it held public meetings in London for the defence of the rights of Ireland. The Empire, always anxious to deserve the good graces of the British Government, thought the moment propitious for laying hands upon the Internationale It caused nocturnal perquisitions to be made, eagerly rummaged the private correspondence, and announced with much noise*[1] that it had discovered the centre of the Fenian conspiracy, of which the International was denounced as one of the principal organs.[16] All its laborious researches, however, ended in nothing.[1] The public prosecutor himself threw down his brief in disgust.j The attempt at converting the
a "A M. le ministre de l'intérieur. Vendredi. 9 mars 1867". In Le Courrier français, No. 112, May 1, 1868.— Ed.
b Antoine Marie Bourdon, the section's archivist.— Ed. c Instead of "to an interview ... being inserted" the German has: "to an interview. In the course of the meeting that followed he first demanded that certain passages in the Manifesto should be moderated and altered".— Ed.
International Association into a secret society of conspirators having miserably broken down, the next best thing was to prosecute our Paris branch as a non-authorised society of more than 20 members.[17] The French judges, trained by the Imperialist discipline, hastened, of course, to order the dissolution of the Association and the imprisonment of its Paris Executive.[3] The tribunal had the naïveté to declare in the preamble of its judgment that the existence of the French Empire was incompatible withb a working men's association that dared to proclaim truth, justice, and morality as its leading principles.0 The consequences of these prosecutions made themselves felt in the departments, where paltry vexations on the part of the Prefects succeeded to the condemnations of Paris. This Governmental chicanery, however, so far from annihilating the Association, has given it a fresh impulse0 by forcing the Empire to drop its patronising airs to the working classes.
In Belgium the International Association has made immense strides. The coal lords of the basin of Charleroi, having driven their miners to riots by incessant exactions, let loose upon those unarmed men the armed force which massacred many of them.e
It was in [the] midst of the panic thus created that our Belgian branch took up the cause of the miners, disclosed their miserable economical condition/ rushed to the rescue of the families of the dead and wounded, and procured legal counsel for the prisoners, who were finally all of them acquitted by the jury.[18] After the affair of Charleroi the success of the International in Belgium was assured. The Belgian Minister of Justice, Jules Bara, denounced the International Association in the Chamber of Deputies and made of its existence the principal pretext for the renewal of the law against foreigners.[19] He even dared to threaten he should
a Instead of "and the imprisonment of its Paris Executive" the German text has "and fined the Committee members and sentenced them to imprisonment".— Ed.
prevent the Brussels Congress from being held.a The Belgian Government ought at last to understand that petty States have no longer any raison d'être in Europe except they be the asylums of liberty.
In Italy, the progress of the Association has been impeded by the reaction following close upon the ambuscade of Mentana[20]; one of the first consequences was the restriction put upon the right of association and public meeting. But the numerous letters which have come to our hands fully prove that the Italian working class is more and more asserting its individuality quite independently of the old parties.
In Prussia, the International cannot exist legally, on account of a law which forbids all relations with foreign societies.[21] Moreover, in regard to the General Union of the German Working Men, the Prussian Government has imitated Bonapartism on a shabby scale. Always ready to fall foul of each other, the military Governments are cheek by jowl when entering upon a crusade against their common enemy, the working classes. In spite, however, of all these petty tribulations, small groups spread over the whole surface of Germany had long since rallied round our Geneva centre.[22] The General Union of the German Working Men, whose branches are mostly confined to Northern Germany, have in their recent Congress held at Hamburg decided to act in concert with the International Working Men's Association,[23] although debarred from joining it officially.b In the programme of the Nuremberg Congress, representing upwards of 100 working men's societies, which mostly belong to Middle and Southern Germany, the direct adhesion to the International has been put on the order of the day.0 At the request of their leading committee we have sent a delegate to Nuremberg.[24]
In Austria the working-class movement assumes a more and more revolutionary aspect.d In the beginning of September a congress was to meet at Vienna, aiming at the fraternisation of the working men of the different races of the Empire. They had also sent an address to the English and French working men, in which they declared for the principles of the International.[6] Your General Council had already appointed a delegate " to Viennaa
when the Liberal Government of Austria, on the very point of succumbing to the blows of the feudal reaction, had the shrewdness to stir the anger of the working men by prohibiting their congress.
In the struggle maintained by the building trades of Geneva the very existence of the International in Switzerland was put on its trial. The employers made it a preliminary condition of coming to any terms with their workmen that the latter should forsake the International. The Working men indignantly refused to comply with this dictate. Thanks to the aid receivedb from France, England, Germany, &c, through the medium of the International, they have finally obtained a diminution of one hour c of labour and 10 per centd increase of wages. Already deeply rooted in Switzerland, the International has witnessed since that event a rapid increase in the number of its members. In the month of August last the German working men residing in Switzerland (about 50 societies) passed at their Congress in Neuenburg a unanimous vote of adhesion to the International.[25]
In England the unsettled state of politics,e the dissolution of the old parties, and the preparations for the coming electoral campaign have absorbed many of our most active members, and, to some degree, retarded our propaganda. Nevertheless, we have entered into correspondence with numerous provincial trades' unions, many of which have sent in their adhesion. Among the more recent London affiliations those of the Curriers' Society and the City Men's Shoemakers are the most considerable as regards numbers.
Your General Council is in constant communication with the National Labour Union of the United States. On its last Congress of August, 1867, the American Union had resolved to send a delegate to the Brussels Congress/ but, pressed for time, was unable to take the special measures necessary for carrying out the vote.[26]
The latent power of the working classes of the United States has recently manifested itself in the legal establishment of a working day of eight hours in all the workshops of the Federal Government, and in the passing [of] laws to the same effect by many State Legislatures.[27] However, at this very moment the working men of New York, for example, are engaged in a fierce struggle for enforcing the eight hours' law, against the resistance of rebellious capital. This fact proves that even under the most favourable political conditions all serious success of the proletariat depends upon an organisation that unites and concentrates its forces; and even its national organisation is still exposed to split on the disorganisation of the working classes in other countries, which one and all compete in the market of the world, acting and reacting the one upon the other. Nothing but an international bond of the working classes can ever ensure their definitive triumph. This want has given birth to the International Working Men's Association. That Association has not been hatched by a sect or a theory. It is the spontaneous growth of the proletarian movement, which itself is the offspring of the natural and irrepressible tendencies of modern society. Profoundly convinced of the greatness of its mission, the International Working Men's Association will allow itself neither to be intimidated nor misled. Its destiny, henceforward, coalesces with the historical progress of the class that bear in their hands the regeneration of mankind.[3]
London, September 1
Adopted by the General Council on Reproduced from The Times and September 1, 1868 checked with the copy of the German manuscript made by First published in French in a special M a r x> s w i f e J e n n y M a r x supplement to Le Peuple Belge, September 8, 1868: "Troisième congrès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs. Compte rendu officiel", Bruxelles, 1868; in English in The Times, No. 26225, September 9, 1868
Endnotes
[12] The Fourth Annual Report of the General Council (the first report was submitted to the London Conference of the International in September 1865) was written by Marx (approved by the General Council on September 1, 1868) for the Third Congress of the International held in Brussels on September 6-13, 1868. The Brussels Congress was attended by nearly 100 delegates representing workers from Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and Spain. Marx, who took an active part in the preparations for the Congress, was absent. However, he helped the General Council representatives there, since he was kept informed almost daily by Friedrich Lessner. The French text of the report drawn up by Marx was read at the Congress by Dupont on September 7. The Congress adopted an important resolution on the necessity for transferring railways, mineral resources, collieries and mines, woods and arable land into public property. This resolution showed that most of the French and Belgian Proudhonists had become supporters of collectivism, and it marked the victory of proletarian socialism over petty-bourgeois reformism within the International. The Congress also adopted the resolutions (drawn up by Marx) on the eight-hour working day, on the use of machinery under capitalism and on the attitude towards the congress of the bourgeois-pacifist League of Peace and Freedom (see present edition, Vol. 20, p. 204), and a resolution, moved by Lessner for the German delegates, recommending the workers of all countries to study Marx's Capital and secure its translation from German into other languages. The fourth annual report was included in the official French edition of the minutes of the Brussels Congress— Troisième congrès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs. Compte rendu officiel. Supplement to Le Peuple Belge, September 8, 1868 and reprinted in La Liberté, No. 64, September 13, 1868. The English text, written by Marx, was published in Eccarius' correspondence "International Working Men's Congress" in The Times, No. 26225, September 9, 1868 and reprinted in The Bee-Hive, No. 361, September 12, 1868. The German text of the report, also written by Marx, was printed in Der Social-Demokrat, No. 106, September 11, the Demokratisches Wochenblatt, No. 38 (supplement), September 12 and Hermann, No. 506, September 12, 1868. The report was also published in a number of newspapers and books in Germany, Britain, Belgium, Switzerland and France. Abridged translations appeared in Russian and Flemish. In this volume the annual report is reproduced from The Times and checked with the handwritten copy in German made by Mrs. Marx and slightly differing from the English text. The main discrepancies are indicated in footnotes,
[14] The strike of weavers and spinners in Roubaix in March 1867 was caused by the dismissal of a great number of workers following the introduction of machinery. A strike of dyers in Amiens in July 1867 was supported by the workers in other trades. In February 1867 the bronze-workers of Paris refused to dissolve their credit society on their employers' demand and went on strike. Thanks to the General Council (it discussed the matter at its meetings of March 5, 12, 19 and 26, and April 2 and 9, 1867), the Paris workers received financial aid from the British trade unions. The strike ended in the victory for the bronze-workers — they managed to save their organisation. In March and April 1868, 3,000 building workers went on strike in Geneva. They demanded the reduction of the working day to 10 hours, higher wages and pay by the hour for pay by the day. They were joined by workers in other trades. The aid from the workers of Switzerland, Britain, France and Germany helped the Geneva builders to win the strike.
[16] In December 1867 the homes of the Executive Committee members of the Paris Section of the International were searched. This was followed by an investigation and then the first trial against the International in France. The case was heard on March 6 and 20, 1868. Among the documents seized by the police during the searches was a letter of November 23, 1867 from Dupont, the Corresponding Secretary for France, to a member of the Paris Section, André Mural, in which the French members of the International were informed of the campaign organised in defence of the imprisoned Fenians (see Note 1). The French authorities tried to use this letter to incriminate the International in the organisation of the Fenian conspiracy. The court declared the Paris Section dissolved and fined the Committee members.
[17] In France, according to Article 291 of the Criminal Code and the Law of April 10, 1834, any society with a membership exceeding 20 had to be sanctioned by the respective authorities.
[18] In the spring of 1868, the workers of the Charleroi coalfield declared a strike, in reply to the mine-owners' reduction of production to four days a week and lowering of wages by ten per cent. In the bloody clashes between the miners and police troops, twenty-two people were arrested and put on trial. The Brussels Central Section launched a broad campaign in support of the strikers both in Belgium and abroad. It organised meetings of protest and gave wide coverage of the events in the columns of La Tribune du Peuple, La Liberté and other newspapers. On April 12, 1868 it issued a manifesto to the workers of Belgium and other countries (see La Tribune du Peuple, No. 4, April 19, 1868). The section maintained regular ties with the General Council of the International. The Council discussed the Charleroi events at its meetings of April 21, May 12 and June 2, 1868 and organised aid to the strikers. The Brussels Section set up a special committee to brief lawyers for the defence of the detainees. The lawyers managed to swing public opinion in favour of the accused, and on August 15 they were acquitted by the jury. This led to a rise in membership of the International in Belgium.
[19] See Note 5.
[20] At Mentana, on November 3, 1867, the French army, jointly with the Pope's hired guards, defeated Garibaldi, who had undertaken a new campaign against Rome to liberate the city from the French and annex it to the Italian state.
[21] Marx refers to the reactionary Prussian law on associations adopted on March 11, 1850.
[22] From November 1805 until the formation of the Eisenach Party in 1869, the Central Committee of German sections in Switzerland headed by Johann Philipp Becker was an organising centre for sections uniting German workers not only in Switzerland but also in Germany, Austria, the L'nited States and countries where German émigré workers lived. Becker's activities, in particular his Vorbote (on the significance of this monthly see Mrs. Marx's letter to Becker of January 29, 1866, present edition, Vol. 42), did much to spread the ideas of the International among the German workers at a time when conditions for establishing an organisation in Germany itself were still lacking.
[23] The reference is to the general congress of the General Association of German Workers held in Hamburg on August 22-26, 1868 (see Note 9). The resolution adopted was published in Der Social-Demokrat, No. 102, September 2, 1868.
[24] Marx refers to the Nuremberg Congress of the Union of German Workers' Associations, led by Bebel, which was held from September 5 to 7, 1868. The General Council's official representative, Georg Eccarius, was present (see Marx's letter to Engels of July 29, 1868, present edition, Vol. 43). By 69 votes against 46 the Congress resolved to join the International Working Men's Association and elected a committee of 16 to carry out this resolution (see Protokoll über den 5. Vereinstag der deutschen Arbeitervereine am 5. und 7. September 1868 zu Nürnberg, Leipzig, 1868, S. 19). On September 22 the General Council approved this committee as the Executive Committee of the International Working Men's Association for Germany. The Nuremberg Congress also resolved to organise trade unions and heard Liebknecht's report on armament, in which he demanded the abolition of standing armies. The Union of German Workers' Associations was founded at a congress of German workers' educational societies in Frankfurt am Main on June 7, 1863, in opposition to the Lassallean General Association of German Workers. Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel took an active part in its activity.
[25] The decision to affiliate to the International adopted by the delegate meeting of 50 German workers' educational societies in Switzerland, held in Neuenburg (Neuchâtel) on August 9-10, 1868, was announced in Der Vorbote, No. 8, August 1868.
[26] The National Labour Union was founded in the USA at a congress in Baltimore in August 1866, with the active participation of William Sylvis, a prominent leader in the American labour movement. In a letter to Ludwig Kugelmann on October 9, 1866, Marx wrote with satisfaction about the Baltimore congress: "...Most of the demands I had put up for Geneva were put up there too, by the correct instinct of the workers" (see present edition, Vol. 42). The Labour Union established contacts with the International Working Men's Association in October 1866, but its delegate to the next congress of the International, Richard Trevellick, elected by the Union's congress in Chicago in August 1867, was unable to come to Lausanne. At the last sessions of the Basle Congress of the International (September 1869) Andrew Cameron was the National Labour Union delegate. At the Union's congress in Cincinnati in August 1870, Cameron reported on his participation in the International's Congress, and the Union adopted a resolution on its adherence to the principles of the International Association and its intention to join it. The resolution was not implemented, however. Its leaders soon became involved in Utopian projects of money reform. In 1870 and 1871, many trade unions withdrew, and in 1872 the Union virtually ceased to exist.
[27] On June 25, 1868 the American Congress passed a law introducing an eight-hour working day for all government enterprises and federal institutions.
[3] Marx wrote this item on the basis of a letter from Johann Baptist Schweitzer dated April 29, 1868. The item was included in the report of the General Council meeting of May 12, 1868 published in The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 344, May 16, 1868, but is not to be found in the Minute Book. Informing Engels of Schweitzer's letter, Marx wrote to him on May 4, 1868 that he intended "to use this question in the interests of the Party", and insisted on an inquiry into the condition of the workers employed in the iron trade of the Rhine Province (see this letter and Marx's letter to Engels of May 7 and the latter's reply of May 6-7, 1868, present edition, Vol. 43).
[6] " The public meeting to celebrate the anniversary of the June 1848 insurrection of the Paris workers was held on June 29, 1868 in the Cleveland Hall, London. Such meetings were annually held by the German Workers' Educational Society in London jointly with other émigré organisations. The French petty-bourgeois democrat Félix Pyat, who attended the meeting, delivered a speech and moved a provocative resolution urging terroristic acts against Napoleon III (the resolution was published in The Bee-Hive, No. 351, July 4, 1868). The Brussels Espiègle, No. 25, July 5, 1868, published a report of the meeting which described it as a meeting of the International with Pyat as one of its leaders. This statement was repeated in other newspapers. The General Council held that this could discredit the International in the eyes of the workers and give the Bonapartist government a pretext for the persecution of its members in France and Belgium. Consequently, at its meeting on July 7 the Council resolved, on Marx's proposal, to disavow Pyat's behaviour in a resolution to this effect (see also Marx's letter to Engels of July 7, 1868, present edition, Vol. 43). When the General Council's resolution against Pyat appeared in the press, a split took place in the French Section in London, of which he was a member. Eugène Dupont, Hermann Jung, Paul Lafargue and other proletarian members of the section expressed their disapproval of Pyat's adventurous and provocative tactics and withdrew from it. Pyat's group lost ties with the International but continued to act in its name and repeatedly supported anti-proletarian elements opposing Marx's line in the General Council. On May 10, 1870, the General Council officially dissociated itself from this group (see this volume, pp. 127-28). The text of this resolution has been preserved in the Minutes of the General Council meeting of July 7, 1868. It was first published in La Liberté, No. 55, July 12, 1868 and reproduced in La Cigale, No. 29, July 19, La Tribune du Peuple, No. 7, July 26, 1868 (with the end of the resolution denying Pyat's connections with the International omitted), and in other newspapers. This resolution was first published in English in The General Council of the First International. 1866-1868, Moscow, 1964.
[1] In the autumn of 1867 the General Council of the International Working Men's Association launched a widespread campaign among the English workers in support of the Irish national liberation movement led by the Fenians. The memorial written by Marx was an integral part of this campaign. The Fenians were Irish revolutionaries who named themselves after the "Féne"— a name of the ancient population of Ireland. Their first organisations appeared in the 1850s in the USA among the Irish immigrants and later in Ireland itself. The secret Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, as the organisation was known in the early 1860s, aimed at establishing an independent Irish republic by means of an armed uprising. The Fenians, who expressed the interests of the Irish peasantry, came chiefly from the urban petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia and believed in conspiracy tactics. The British Government attempted to suppress the Fenian movement by severe police reprisals. On September 18, 1867, the Fenians made an armed attack on a prison van in an attempt to liberate Kelly and Deasy, two of their leaders. The latter managed to escape but a policeman was killed during the clash. Five Irishmen (Maguire, Condon, Larkin, Allen and O'Brien) were charged with murder and brought to trial. Although there was no direct evidence, they were sentenced to death. Maguire was subsequently pardoned, and Condon, as an American citizen, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. The others were executed. The Fenian trial in Manchester aroused a storm of protest in Ireland and England. On the insistence of Marx, the General Council of the International began, on November 19, a discussion on the Irish question during which the leaders of the international proletarian organisation expressed their solidarity with the struggle of the Irish people for independence and condemned the position of the reformist trade union leaders who, in the wake of the English bourgeois radicals, denied the right of the Fenians to resort to revolutionary methods in the struggle. The discussion was scheduled to continue on November 26 (see this volume, pp. 189-93), but when the news of the conviction was received, the General Council convened a special meeting on November 20 and addressed a memorial to the Home Secretary asking for the commutation of the death sentence. The British Government ignored the memorial. Because of opposition from the trade union leaders, the English labour press did not publish the memorial in its original wording. A report on the special meeting of the General Council, published in The Bee-Hive, No. 319, November 23, 1867, only summarised it, and named the General Council members who had signed it. The French translation was published by Le Courrier français, No. 163, November 24. In English the memorial was first published in full in The General Council of the First International. 1866-1868, Moscow, 1964. This document is also preserved in the form of the manuscript copy made by Mrs. Marx which fully coincides with the text entered into the Minute Book. Written as an article, this copy was apparently to be sent to the press. In this volume the memorial is reproduced from this copy.