The First International - Part 1 (1956)

From the October 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

An attempt to form a Communist Party in 1847 failed partly on account of the defeat of working class aspirations during the European uprisings of 1848, shortly after the publication of the Communist Manifesto. Just over 20 years later, when working class militancy was reviving, another attempt was made. Though this one was wider and stronger in numbers, it was weaker in outlook and attracted support from groups which were not only antagonistic to each other but also had no real interest in Socialism—which was the fundamental concern of the Marxian founders of the new organisation. This organisation was the International Working Men’s Association, subsequently known as the First International.

The First International was formed in 1864. Throughout its career of about ten years it suffered from numerous handicaps, the most important of which was the immaturity of the workers political understanding at the time.

It had incompetent secretaries and badly written minutes; it was hampered by government persecution, including the seizing of important documents and the circulation of forged ones.

The ideas upon which the International was built were not new; many advanced workers were dissatisfied with their oppressive conditions and were groping for a way out. The breaking of strikes by the importation of workers from outside the country involved was one of the principal spurs to urge on the building up of an international organisation of workers.

Arising out of protest meetings relating to the suppression of a Polish Nationalist revolt, which were attended by workers from different countries, a meeting was held in September, 1864, in St. Martin’s Hall, near Covent Garden. At this meeting a proposal to form an international association of workers was greeted with enthusiasm by French, German and English delegates. A proposal to form a Central Committee, with its seat in London, was carried, and a Provisional Committee was appointed to work out the details of the Association. Marx, who had been invited to attend the meeting, was nominated to the Provisional Committee and was subsequently a member of the Central Council—later the General Council.

The Provisional Committee consisted of Trade Union leaders, Owenites, Chartists, Nationalists, Proudhonists, and old members of the Communist League. The Provisional Committee appointed a sub-committee to prepare an address and draft rules. A number of addresses and drafts of rules were prepared and rejected. Finally Marx submitted an address and rules that after slight amendment, were accepted.

The address contained a vivid picture of industrial conditions in England at the time and statements that are as pertinent now as when they were written nearly 90 years ago. For instance:

  “In all countries of Europe it has now become a truth demonstrable to every unprejudiced mind, and only denied by those whose interest it is to hedge other people in a fool’s paradise, that no improvement of machinery, no appliance of science to production, no contrivances of communication, no new colonies, no emigration, no opening of markets, no free trade, nor all of these things put together, will do away with the miseries of the industrious masses; but that, on the present false base, every fresh development of the productive powers of labour must tend to deepen social contrasts and point social antagonisms.”

  “Yet the lords of land and the lords Of capital will always use their political privileges for the defence and perpetuation of their economical monopolies. So far from promoting, they will continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labour . . . To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.”

On the whole, however, the address did not come up to the standard of the Communist Manifesto. This was mainly due to the necessity of producing something that would meet with the approval of those who founded the International. As Marx put it, in a letter to Engels:

  "It was very difficult to frame the theory so that our view should appear in a form acceptable from the present standpoint of the workers. It will take time before the reawakened movement allows the old boldness of speech ” 

There was little in the address that the average reformer would object to, and much that could be, and has been, misinterpreted. It contained weaknesses that brought trouble and disunion later.

Although the rules gave the Central Council an inordinate amount of power, the first five paragraphs of the preamble to the rules contain some of the best material of all. They were as follows:

"Considering:

"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;

"That the economical subjection of the man of labour to the monopolisers of the means of labour; that is, the sources of life, lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation and political dependence;

"That the economical emancipation of the working classes is, therefore, the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means;

"That all efforts aiming at that great end have hitherto failed from the want of solidarity between the manifold divisions of labour in each country, and from the absence of a fraternal bond of union between the working classes of different countries.

"That the emancipation of labour is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists, and depending for its solution on the concurrence, practical and theoretical, of the most advanced countries.”

Apart from the reference to “equal rights and duties” the above is a fair statement of the position, but few of those who signed it and joined the Association really understood it. All that most of them got out of it was an expression of the general feelings in the air at the time: condemnation of existing evils and the barriers to national independence; sympathy with the co-operative movement and the glorification of the working man as a person deserving consideration.

At the beginning the International was poorly provided with funds; there was no fixed subscription, each group being left to make what voluntary subscriptions it thought fit.

Adhesions to the International were not made nationally, but by isolated groups; such as a trade union, a political party, or a group of some kind organised for some particular object In the course of time groups in different countries federated and formed their own central councils the Central Council in London taking the name of General Council as the supreme authority. These different Central Councils had a great deal of autonomy, and were at times at loggerheads with each other.

At first adhesions to the International were slow, coming mainly from England. Later it made considerable progress in Switzerland; then it gained the adherence of Belgian and French trade unions and representatives of Spain and the United States were elected to the General Council. Whilst working to gain support the General Council took an active part in strikes and demonstrations, and sent out addresses on various occasions. It also took part in the Reform agitation in England in 1865, demanding Universal Suffrage.

Arrangements had been made to hold the first Congress in Brussels in 1865, but the project had to be abandoned owing to Governmental prohibition. Instead of the Congress an informal conference was held in London to discuss a variety of subjects, amongst which was “The Muscovite danger to Europe and the re-establishment of a free and united Poland.” Some of the subjects for discussion reflected the immaturity of the understanding of the delegates. There was a small delegation from Switzerland, France and Belgium; the rest were English delegates or foreigners resident in London.

The informal conference was really only a preparation for the Congress that was to be held the following year at Geneva, and the same subjects came up for discussion again at Geneva.

As the International progressed on the Continent the German speaking portion of Switzerland became the organising centre for Germany and Austria, where political combination was prohibited, under the Genevese Central Committee. The French-Swiss section in Geneva became the organising centre for the Jura region and extensive portions of France. This latter section soon became a storm centre, the principal scene of the activities of the Anarchists and, eventually, to a great extent the tool of Bakunin. Italy began to show increasing interest but the activities of the anarchists there and the nationalist movement complicated the situation.

Gilmac.

(To be continued.)

The First International - Part 2 (1956)

From the November 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

The first congress of the International was held at Geneva in 1866, and it ran into difficulties at its opening. Individual members, mainly Blanquist, insisted on sitting as delegates and voting, although they only represented themselves. The London Conference had laid down that only official delegates were to be allowed to sit and vote. After some heated argument the Blanquists were ejected. They were so infuriated by this treatment that they afterwards became steadfast opponents of the International.

The delegation at the Congress was as follows: Twenty-five sections of the International were represented by forty-five delegates. There were also eleven co-operative societies represented by fifteen delegates—another instance of the peculiar and loose form in which the International operated. The French had by far the largest delegation, and Proudhonist views soon began to cloud the discussions.

One factor that intruded upon and influenced the discussions was the effect of an economic crisis which had brought a general stagnation in commerce and industry and was coupled with a bad harvest that made bread prices high.

The French delegates proposed a scheme for a worldwide co-operative society; they were opposed to strikes and to the limitation of the working day to eight hours on grounds that are worth quoting as an example of the weakness of Proudhonist objection to existing conditions:

 "In the name of freedom of contract, it was improper for the International Assembly to interfere in the private relationship between employers and employed, except by giving advice when asked."

(quoted by Stekloff, page 69). 

This amounted to a sweeping denial of the class struggle by people who had pledged their adherence to the principles and policy laid down in the inaugural address and the preamble to the rules—which were agreed to by the Congress.

A resolution was passed fixing the contributions of all members at 3d. per year. Fixing the contributions was easy, but collecting them was entirely different. Trifling though the amount was, money came in very tardily, and less than fifty pounds came into the funds during the whole of the following year; this in spite of the fact that the size and influence of the International grew rapidly.

On the whole the first Congress was little more than a sounding board for the various discordant voices. In the main, however, the attitude of the General Council was supported, which meant that the influence of Marx was paramount. The views expressed at the Congress, however, alarmed the French Government, which henceforth seized every document going through the post on which they could lay. their hands, including a report of the Congress.

The activities of the International now began to get into the press of different countries, sometimes with favourable notices, as there was always a hope that the International might be something that could be used with advantage in the struggle between capitalists.

The next Congress was at Lausanne in 1867, and was monopolised by the Proudhonists. A resolution relating to war was passed which, after beginning with a statement involving the abolition of Capitalism as the only method of abolishing war, contradicted it by stating that the International was prepared to “share in any activities in which the League of Peace and Freedom may engage in order to achieve the abolition of standing armies and the maintenance of peace.” Behind the objection to standing armies was an attempt to get round the obstacle they offered to attempts at successful insurrection; attempts that were never supported by the mass of the population, partly through fear, but mainly through lack of interest.

Another proposal at the Congress was that State railways, canals, mines and public services should be exploited, or administered, by workers’ associations whose members should give their services at cost price, though what price the latter was did not emerge.

There were many other proposals and resolutions, including one on simplified spelling and another on a moral code for all peoples in harmony with morality,  justice and virtue!

The Proudhonists again expressed themselves against strikes without calling forth much opposition, and induced Congress to pass a resolution advising trade unions to invest their funds in co-operative production societies.

The discussions showed that the participants had not made much progress in practical knowledge, and that differences in outlook were being swamped by the influence of Proudhonism, although Marx, who was mainly taken up with his work on Capital at the time, still dominated the proceedings of the General Council.

Gradually a position was being reached in which the General Council was at loggerheads with a large part of the membership. It was this that gave Bakunin his opportunity when he entered the International in 1869 and promptly set out to fight the policy of Marx, with the object of getting control of the Association.

The Brussels Congress in 1868 was attended by 99 delegates, an indication of the growing influence of the International. The large delegation was no evidence of clarity in outlook; it simply forced to the front the fundamental differences in outlook of antagonistic sections. In spite of the efforts of the General Council, Proudhonistic influence still dominated, although at that Congress the International first declared openly for Communism; that is, Communism as the word used to be understood, and not the monstrosity that has come out of Russia.

Proposals were put forward recommending a strike against war; producers to gain possession of machines through the co-operative societies and the mutual credit system; and, also, the hoary old platitude that Justice should regulate the relations between national groups.

In September 1869 the Congress was held at Basle, and marked the first appearance of an American delegate. It also marked the beginning of the struggle with Bakunin (who had recently joined the Association) that finally broke up the International.

At this Congress Bakunin supported a resolution giving the General Council power to expel any section which acted in defiance of the principles of the International; and also a resolution in favour of the abolition of individual ownership of the soil. Both resolutions were carried.

A resolution was put forward to abolish the right of inheritance. Bakunin supported this on the ground that the right of inheritance had become the basis of the State and the Family. The Marxists replied that the laws of inheritance were not the cause, but the effect of the existing economical organisation. However, the resolution was carried, but it did not get the absolute majority (owing to a large body of abstentions) to make it a part of the policy of the Association.

Bakunin also opposed a resolution that involved working class participation in political action, on the ground that the capitalist state should be left to rot away and a workers' state be built within it, to be set up on its ruins.

There was a discussion on trade unionism in which the supporters of Bakunin introduced the syndicalist idea that trade unions represented the social and political organisations of the future, in which groups of producers would own the means of production in each industry; the mines for the miners, the railways for the railwaymen, etc.

In spite of all the efforts of the Marxists, the Basle Congress was a sweeping victory for Bakunin, which shook the International to its basis. This Congress ended the constructive side of the International’s work; henceforth it became a battle ground for a bitter conflict between the Anarchists and the Marxists.

In the six years since its foundation the activities of the International had been considerable in many fields, and in the minds of the governments of the day it appeared to be more powerful than it really was. By 1870 it was recognised as a menace to the existing social order, and was treated as such. Members and groups were subjected to police surveillance and persecution; correspondence was opened and documents confiscated.

Gilmac.

(To be continued).

Economics and ideas. Their influence on political institutions (part 6) (1925)

From the September 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from last month).

The workers demand the franchise.

But the revolt of the workers though it could be repressed could not be destroyed. In spite of all opposition their Trade Unions, though declared illegal by the Combination Acts, persisted and waged a never-ceasing war of resistance against low wages, the extension of the working day and intolerable conditions of labour.

Side by side with the industrial struggle went on a ferment of political ideas at length issuing in demands that were the outcome of the antagonism between the social relations of capitalist economy— fostering ideas of “equal rights” and “individual liberty”—and the actual oligarchic form of the state with its assumption of unequal rights and of different grades of social status.

At first the workers’ aspirations for political and legal rights were inarticulate and unorganised, but the spread of workers’ associations, of discussion and reading and the growing ease of communication facilitated the growth of an organised movement. Political groups aiming at constitutional reform sprang up in the cities and these, though dominated by intellectuals and bourgeois radicals had considerable influence amongst sections of the working class. One of the earliest was the London Corresponding Society, founded in 1797 by Hardy, a bootmaker. With it Paine and Godwin were associated. Its leaders nearly all suffered imprisonment or transportation. At a later date Cobbett carried on a vigorous agitation amongst the workers :

“When he reduced ‘The Weekly Political Register’ from a shilling and a halfpenny to twopence, 50,000 copies were scattered over the country, and everywhere men gathered in clubs to hear the paper read by one of them who had schooling” (Green’s “Short History,” p. 846).

But the great political movement of the period was that of the industrial bourgeoisie. Their struggle for the Reform Bill was undoubtedly instrumental in rallying masses of the workers. But the political demands of the working men had roots independent from and antagonistic to the basis of the bourgeois movement. To them electoral reform was primarily a means of alleviating their economic miseries. At the same time it is impossible to separate, in the stimulus behind their demands, the economic discontent that was the chief spur to action, from the force of the political ideas which gave their discontent expression in aspirations towards political democracy and demands which spoke eloquently of the extent to which they had moved from their old confirmed belief in the necessity of “status” and the inevitability of political privilege.

The details of the Reform Movement need not detain us, but it was a severe and a bloody struggle in which the workers bore the brunt of the fight. After forming the backbone of the struggle for the Reform Bill of 1832 which enfranchised the new capitalists but excluded themselves, the exasperated workers threw their strength into their own Chartist movement and carried on the conflict afresh. Again we may note that, though the Chartist working men meant political reform as a means to economic ends, the purely political demands of the Charter—manhood-suffrage, vote by ballot, etc.—indicate how widespread “democratic” and “libertarian” ideas had become.

Though the Chartist movement broke down and its demands were resisted, the concepts that it had done so much to popularise were now permanently rooted and could not be eradicated. But for a period the agitation for political reform died down. After the worst excesses of the factory-system had been alleviated by the Factory Acts, after a period of comparative prosperity due to the rapid extension of British production and its supremacy in the World Market and to the rising strength of their Unions, the workers had become reconciled to the system. Their Trades Unions, now tacitly recognised by the masters, became benefit societies and means of diplomatic negotiations with the employers. Their leaders declared the common interests of Capital and Labour, and counselled conciliation and mutual good-will between the classes.

But in the “sixties” events revealed the legal insecurity of the Unions and their funds, and a strong demand ensued for their definite legalisation. Along with this movement began an active revival of the agitation for the franchise. Reform Leagues sprang up spontaneously all over the country. The “International,” founded in 1864 and led by Marx, actively supported the new movement.

“All through the autumn and winter (1866-7) great meetings were held in the great towns and cities to promote the cause of reform. A most significant feature of these demonstrations was the part taken by the organised trades associations of working men.” (McCarthy— “Our Own Times.”)

At length, as Engels says, “the workers’ claims to the franchise gradually became irresistible,” and the ruling class gave way.

Significantly enough, it was the Tories who passed the second Reform Bill of 1867, which enfranchised a great mass of the town workers, thus demonstrating that even the most traditionally, cautious party of the master class had seen “the writing on the wall,” and were convinced that working-class suffrage was inevitable. In 1872 the secret ballot was instituted, and in 1885 the vote was further extended to the counties and the agricultural workers.

The ruling-class had made in 1867 what Lord Derby called a “leap in the dark,” but, to their relief—though this must have been half-expected — the plunge proved harmless. It was soon overwhelmingly apparent that the working-class — though jealous enough in the defence of their immediate interests—had no thoughts of disrespect to or revolt from the “rights of property,” and that they believed and acted on the assumption that “capital” and “wages” were eternal categories, and the only practical basis of social life.

Before this, in America and in France, the workers had already achieved the franchise, and since then all over the capitalist world an enfranchised working-class has been recognised as the indispensable basis of stability in the State.

The Great Illusion.

With the vote, with his Unions legalised (1871 in England) and other legal rights established, the workers seemed to have achieved what bourgeois historians regard the be-all and end-all of social evolution—full “civic rights and liberties.” They had in actuality reached the very fullest “freedom” as a class that they could achieve or even conceive so long as their ideas and aspirations kept within the bounds of the capitalist system. The facts of law and politics now no longer seemed in contradiction with the “liberty” and “individualism” of economic life. Did not the “people” now “rule the country,” did not they decide the fate of statesmen and governments, did not the politician plead and struggle for their support and tremble at their indecision? At last, the son of toil seemed truly a free man, and he could sing “Britons never, never, never !” with never a twinge of conscience.

That the overworked, ill-fed slave of the factory-blast can live in the same city with the gilded drones who live in luxurious leisure upon the product of his toil— and yet believe in the reality of his freedom— in liberty of contract and the reward of enterprise seems a ghastly joke. Yet the positive reality of the belief is a fact to which anyone who knows the workers can testify.

The wage-slave does not perceive that the unequal distribution of property into which he is born exercises as compelling a tyrannical control over his destiny as any law that the State can make. He is blind to the fact that freedom for property means slavery for those who possess none. He explains the inequality of wealth op the theory that the rich have been “lucky” or particularly clever. The man who has “got on” he admires, and he lives in the shadowy hope of following in his steps. His hero is the “self-made man.”

It is essential to clearly understand that the resignation of the average worker to the capitalist system and, indeed, his active support of it arises directly from the fact that he accepts private property in the means of life without question. Once this basis is granted, the support of the whole system follows of necessity. The worker may and does desire economic security, but this only results from control of the means of life. In the early, days of the system the workers did endeavour to return to the measure of such control that the hand-tool period allowed them. They fought the machines and tried to turn back the wheels of history. But with the generations that had grown up amongst and known nothing other than the machine system, such aspirations could have no place. The means of production were now giant mechanisms jointly operated —no one worker used them. So long as the traditions of individual ownership persisted, therefore, the workers could not own or even with sense think of owning the instruments they operated. The social productive mechanisms of modern society can only be owned by the users in common —and the idea of social ownership had not yet taken wide and deep root.

But the impossibility of security for the workers did not prevent them continuing to seek for it—but as they accepted the system they had also to accept the only method of aiming at security that the system offers — increase of income, through collective bargaining largely, but also through—if only as a vague but persistent aspiration—”getting on,” if possible, accumulating property—processes that naturally foster the outlook of individualism.

R. W. Housley

(To be continued.)

Marx: the Man and his Work - Part 2 (1973)

From the November 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

Marx and the 1st International

Marx associated himself with working-class organizations although they were not Socialist in character. In his day as today, very few workers had a Socialist policy.

The International Workingmen’s Association (the First International) was founded at a meeting in St. Martin’s Hall, London, on 28th September 1864. It was not the work of one individual, and it was not “a small body with a large head”. It was neither “an insignificant shadow” nor “a terrible menace”, as it was described by various sections of the press of the period. The First International was a transitional form of the working-class struggle for better conditions, and it was as necessary as it was transitional.

In the capitalist mode of production, an embodied contradiction both produces and destroys modern states. It intensifies all national antagonisms to the utmost and at the same time it creates all nations in its own image. So long as the capitalist mode of production exists these contradictions are insoluble, and therefore the brotherhood of man about which we have heard from the apologists for capitalism has had no existence. While large-scale industry preaches freedom and peace between nations, it also has turned the world into an armed camp as never before in history. However, with the disappearance of capitalist production its contradiction will vanish also.

Early in the history of the working-class movement a tendency towards internationalism made itself felt. This is a vital condition for the very existence of the workers’ struggle for emancipation. The workers possess no magic wand in this respect any more than in any other — there is no level and easy path. The modern working class has to fight its battles under conditions created by historical development. It cannot overcome these conditions by any short cut but can triumph over them only by understanding, in the sense that to understand is to overcome.

This understanding was made more difficult owing to the circumstances of Marx’s time. The beginnings of the working-class movement coincided with, crossed and recrossed, the beginnings of a number of national states which were founded as a result of the capitalist mode of production. By drawing lessons from the struggles of the different sections of the International with their capitalist governments, Marx hoped to win various groups to his point of view and mould them into an international Socialist party. On the General Council of the International, and at its international conferences, he worked hard to realize his hopes.

Marx’s chief rôle in the First International began after it was organized. He soon became the guiding spirit of it. To him fell the task of presenting the inaugural address. It must be admitted that this address contained many compromises and concessions. Marx himself in a letter to Engels, dated 4th November 1864, in which he deals with the formation of the International, states:

  I was obliged to insert two phrases about “duty” and “right” into the Preamble to the Statutes, ditto “truth, morality and justice”, but these are placed in such a way that they can do no harm.

The address opens by recording the fact that in the years from 1848 to 1864 the poverty of the working class did not diminish, although this period had been one of unparalleled industrial development and commercial growth. It proves its point by comparing the statistics published in the official Blue Book concerning the poverty of the English working class with the official figures used by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Gladstone, in a Budget speech to show “the intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power” which had taken place in the same period but had been “entirely confined to the classes of property”. The address exposed this contradiction of English conditions because England was the leading country of European trade and industry, but it pointed out that similar conditions existed on a somewhat smaller scale in, making allowances for local differences, all the continental countries where large-scale industry was beginning to develop.

All over the world this “intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power” was “entirely confined to the classes of property”, with the one exception perhaps that a small section of the workers as in England were receiving somewhat higher wages, though even this improvement was cancelled out by the general increase in prices.

   Everywhere the great mass of the working class sank into ever deeper misery to the same extent as the upper class rose in the social scale. In all the countries of Europe it is now an irrefutable fact, undeniable for every unprejudiced enquirer and denied only by those who have an interest in awakening deceptive hopes in others, that neither the perfection of machinery nor the application of science to industry and agriculture, neither the resources and artifices of communication, neither the conquests of new markets nor free trade, or all these things combined can succeed in abolishing the misery of the working class, and that on the contrary, every new development of the creative power of labour is calculated on the false bases of existing conditions to intensify the social antagonisms and aggravate the social conflict. During this intoxicating period economic progress, starvation raised itself almost to the level of a social institution in the capital of the British Empire. The period is characterised in the annals of history by accelerated return, the extended compass and the deadly effects of the social pest known as industrial and commercial crises.

The address then went on to look at the defeat of the working-class movement in 1850, and came to the conclusion that this period had its compensating characteristics. Two facts were stressed, first of all the legal enactment of the ten-hour day with its effects on the English working class. The struggle for the legal limitation of the working day had been a direct intervention in the conflict between the blind forces of the law of supply and demand, which summed up capitalist-class political economy, and production regulated by social welfare as represented by the working class.

  And therefore the Ten-Hour Bill was not only a great practical success, but also a victory of a principle; for the first time the political economy of the bourgeoisie was defeated by the political economy of the working class.

After a reference to the co-operative movement of the period, and the revival of the working-class movements in England, France, Germany and Italy and their efforts to reorganize politically, the address continues:

  They possess an element of success — numbers. But numbers are weighty in the scales only when they are united in an organization and led towards a conscious aim.

Past experience had shown that to ignore the fraternity which should exist between the workers of different countries and spur them on to stand together in all the struggles for their emancipation, always resulted in a general failure of all their unrelated efforts. This consideration had moved the meeting in St. Martin’s Hall to found the International Workingmen’s Association. The address concluded with the words: “Workers of the world, unite!”

The provisional rules, for which Marx was responsible, may be summed up as follows. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. The struggle for the emancipation of the working class is not a struggle for the establishment of new class privileges, but the abolition of class rule altogether. The economic subjection of the worker to those who have appropriated the tools of labour, i.e. the source of life, results in servitude in all its forms: social misery, intellectual atrophy and political dependence. The economic emancipation of the working class is therefore the great aim for which all political movement must serve as a means.

The conference of the International held at The Hague in 1872 concluded with a public meeting at which Marx in the course of his speech said:

  One day the working class must hold political power in its hands in order to establish a new organization of labour. It must overthrow the old political system which maintains the old institutions in being, unless it wishes, like the old Christians, who despised and neglected such action, to renounce “the Kingdom of the World”.

We now know that the First International was bound to collapse, due to the conditions which gave rise to it and the conflicts which arose within it. Marx from this period concentrated on his literary work. He suffered several personal losses. In December 1881 his wife died, and this was followed by the death of his eldest daughter. Engels tells us he never recovered from these losses, and they aggravated a condition of poor health from which he suffered for some time. On the fourteenth of March 1883 he died quietly in his chair.

Bob Ambridge

Cooking the Books: Mark Carney as Vulgar Marxist (2018)

The Cooking the Books column from the June 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, seems to be haunted by the spectre of Karl Marx. In December 2016, when discussing the current longest period of stagnating wages since the 1860s, he referred to Marx’s ‘scribbling’ the Communist Manifesto. This April he again referred to Marx scribbling in a speech to the Canada Growth Summit (he is also a Canadian Liberal Party politician). This time, according to a headline in the Independent (14 April), he was concerned that ‘robots taking jobs could lead to a rise of Marxism’. He was reported as saying:

  ‘The automation of millions of jobs could lead to mass unemployment, wage stagnation and the growth of communism within a generation. He warned “Marx and Engels may again become relevant”.’

This, because ‘increases in artificial intelligence, big data and high-tech machines could create huge inequalities between high-skilled workers who benefit from the advances and those who are sidelined by them.’

His argument is that this is what happened after the industrial revolution in England that began in the second half of the 18th century: production increased but wages didn’t because the new jobs that were created were low-paid; it was only in the second half of the 19th century that workers began to benefit. According to him, it was the prolonged period of inequality and stagnant wages that paved the way for the rise of Marxism.

This can be disputed as a historically  accurate account of the spread of Marx’s views. While it is true that the empirical examples in Capital are taken from England in the 1860s, Marx’s views did not begin to penetrate sections of the workers’ movement till the end of the 19th century, during a period when Carney says the benefits of the industrial revolution in terms of higher wages and better conditions began to be felt by workers. Marxism was in fact embraced not so much by low-paid unskilled labourers as by higher-paid skilled engineering and building workers.

Be that as it may, will Carney’s fears come true? He himself doesn’t appear to really believe that robotisation will lead to ‘mass unemployment’ – that’s been predicted about mechanisation since the industrial revolution but has never materialised – but advances, rather, the lesser argument that it will lead to an increasing proportion of lower-paid jobs. He advises office workers, whose jobs are now threatened by artificial intelligence, to retrain for jobs ‘which require a higher emotional intelligence, in sectors such as care and leisure’, both of which are notoriously low-paying.

This does seem to have been happening to some extent as, although the statistics show record employment levels in Britain, they have not been showing any increase in average wages. In positing a direct link between increasing poverty and opposition to capitalism Carney comes across as a ‘vulgar Marxist’. The link between the conditions of the wage and salary working class and the emergence of socialist consciousness is rather more complicated. Even in times of ‘prosperity’ capitalism is based on the exploitation of wage labour for the profit of a minority and is as unacceptable then as in its lean years. Which is why Marx and Engels are relevant as long as capitalism lasts and whatever state it is in and even if Carney’s fears are not realised.

The Leap in the Dark (1985)

From the September 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Palmerston died in December 1865, shortly after his Liberal Party won the general election of that year. The way was now clear for a second Reform Bill to further extend the franchise, which it was widely agreed was necessary even if there was disagreement about how this should be done and how far it should go. The new Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, lost no time in having one drafted and presented to Parliament, in March 1866.

Agitation for the extension of the franchise had begun some years previously, both among the capitalist class and the working class. A Trades Unionists' Manhood Suffrage and Vote by Ballot Association had been established in 1862 (with which Ernest Jones who, after the disappearance of the People's Paper had resumed his profession as a lawyer in Manchester, was associated). Its chairman was George Odger, a shoemaker who was also the part-time secretary of the London Trades Council that had been established as a direct result of the London building workers' strike and lockout of 1859 60. Odger was one of the new generation of working class militants which this strike had brought to the fore. Among the others were Robert Applegarth, who became the secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Builders in 1862. and three other building workers: William Randal Cremer, George Howell and George Potter. Potter, who had been appointed manager of the Bee-Hive, an influential trade union weekly, when it had been started in 1862, was the most militant of this group on trade union matters and soon fell out with the others and so was not to be associated with their political initiatives.

But it was John Bright, with his National Reform Union, who got the renewed suffrage agitation off the ground. Although the National Reform Union campaigned for a ratepayers suffrage (those who paid the local property tax) and not the traditional working class demand for universal suffrage, its campaign enjoyed considerable trade union and working class support. Links between Bright and the new generation of trade union leaders had been made during their joint campaign in favour of a Northern Victory in the American Civil War. [1] Marx, who was an enthusiastic supporter of the North, had himself attended one such meeting in March 1863 addressed by Bright and also by Odger, Cremer and Howell.

With his break with Ernest Jones in 1857 Marx lost his link with the English working class movement (though he remained in contact with the German workers' movement in Britain through the German Workers' Educational Association (Deutscher Arbeiterbildungsverein). This link was restored in 1864 when in September Marx accepted an invitation to be present on the platform at a meeting organised with a group of French workers from Paris by Odger, Cremer. Howell and others to discuss international co-operation. In the past Marx had always refused such invitations since he had a generally low opinion of his fellow political refugees from the Continent in London. But he accepted this time because he realised that those involved, on both the French and British sides, were of a different calibre from the Continental refugees whose posturings he knew only too well.

The September 1864 meeting led to the formation of the International Working Men's Association (IWMA). Odger became its first President and Cremer its Secretary. Marx was one of those appointed to draw up a manifesto and rules for the new association. He ended up doing both, virtually on his own. Besides the trade union leaders, the English members of the IWMA also included old Chartists like Benjamin Lucraft (also a trade unionist) and Owenites like John Weston. In 1867 the O'Brienite organisation — the National Reform League (O'Brien himself had died earlier in 1864) affiliated to the IWMA. So there was a direct link with earlier British working class movements and theories.

In April 1865 the formation of a Reform League, [2] under the presidency of a reformer, Edmond Beales, was announced. The League stood for universal manhood suffrage and was dominated by members of the General Council of the IWMA with Howell, a Council member, as its secretary. Marx was very pleased with this development, seeing the Reform League as a sort of revival of Chartism, especially as its demand for universal suffrage made it a rival of Bright's National Reform Union.

But, as on so many other occasions, Marx's confidence was to be misplaced. When the Liberal government published its Reform Bill in March 1866, the Reform League decided to support it on the grounds that it was a step in the right direction, even though it did not even provide for a ratepayers' suffrage, let alone universal suffrage. What it did propose was a reduction of the property qualification, to a level low enough to enfranchise a considerable number of workers. Marx was very disappointed and wrote to Engels on 2 April 1866 about "the cursed traditional character of all English movements" having appeared, according to which a measure is hailed as a victory merely "because the Tories cry: guard".

The Liberal Bill, however, was defeated, not by the Tories alone but as a result of a defection of a number of Liberal MPs. The government thereupon resigned and Queen Victoria asked Lord Derby to form yet another minority Tory government. Following the defeat of the Liberal Bill, agitation for Reform broke out with renewed vigour. The Reform League called a mass rally in Hyde Park for 23 July; the government responded with an order banning the rally. The League refused to accept this ban and on 23 July marchers from all over London converged on Hyde Park. Refused admittance, most of them went on to Trafalgar Square where a short meeting was held. Some, however, stayed at Hyde Park, pushed the railings down and entered. This “riot” was a clear warning to the new Tory government as to what was likely to happen if they tried to resist Reform. They got the message and the following year Disraeli presented the Conservative government's own Reform Bill, which was considerably expanded during its passage through the House of Commons.

The 1867 Reform Act, and the corresponding measures the following year for Scotland and Ireland, introduced household suffrage (for male heads of household) in the towns, increasing the electorate by over a million from 1,350,000 to 2,470,000. Most of the new voters were members of the working class, even though most workers were still left voteless. But a situation had been created — a working class majority among the electorate in most urban areas — which led Marx to later conclude could permit a peaceful capture of political power in Britain by the working class once it had become socialist-minded.

The working class, however, was at this time far from being socialist-minded. Odger, Cremer. Howell, Applegarth and the others did not even claim to be socialists. They were working class Radicals, that is, working class supporters of the Radical wing of the Liberal Party, the party of the industrial capitalist class. They felt that the best way to pursue the interests of the working class was to work through the Liberal Party, a point of view that was to be shared by most trade union militants for the next thirty to forty years. Odger, Cremer and Howell were Liberal candidates in the 1868 General Election (as, indeed, was Ernest Jones who died later on that year). [3]  When the Reform League was dissolved in April 1869, its leading members were to be found in the Labour Representation League which was founded later that year. But despite its name, the aim of this new organisation was not to secure "labour representation" as such in Parliament, but "labour representation" in Parliament through the Liberal Party.

Although none of the trade unionist Liberal candidates were elected in the 1868 elections, the Liberal Party did win. Gladstone became, for the first time, Prime Minister and gave Bright a post in his Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. The new Liberal government proceeded to carry out the reforms which had been held up for at least a decade pending the extension of the franchise: recruitment to the civil service was made subject to passing an open, competitive examination; the purchase of commissions in the armed forces was abolished; the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were opened to other than those who professed the established Anglican religion. All these changes went in the direction which Marx had said was sooner or later inevitable; the aristocrat-dominated state machine was being remodelled into a capitalist state. In addition, the law on trade unions was liberalised and an Education Act in 1870 introduced compulsory primary education for all children. Similar changes were made in Ireland: the Anglican Church was disestablished and a very timid Tenants Rights Bill passed, an attempt to reform the universities failed however. Ireland was, in fact, beginning to emerge as the issue that was to bedevil British politics until the 1920s. In 1867 there was unrest in parts of Ireland led by the Fenians, extreme Irish nationalists. The government replied by arresting the Fenian leaders in both England and Ireland. In November some Fenians attacked a police van in Manchester and released two of their leaders, killing a policeman in the process. Five Fenians were sentenced to death for this attack, and three of them were executed. Both the Reform League and the IWMA — particularly Marx himself — were involved in the campaign against this and a subsequent campaign for better treatment for the Fenian prisoners.

In 1872 a second [4] of the Charter's six demands was enacted: vote by secret ballot. The first election by ballot, however, resulted in the defeat of the Liberals and a victory for the Conservative Party. Gladstone thereupon resigned both as Prime Minister and as leader of the Liberal Party and Disraeli became Prime Minister for the first time. The new Conservative government did not go back on the reforms enacted by the previous Liberal government, on the contrary, it continued the policy of reform in the interest of the capitalist class. Local government. public health, housing, the law on picketing by trade unionists, the Factory Laws were all reformed and modernised. In foreign affairs, the Eastern Question reared its head again with a new war in 1877-8 between Russia and Turkey. Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. In the 1880 elections the Liberals again emerged as the majority party and Gladstone again became Prime Minister. Gladstone's second Liberal Ministry was still in office when Marx died in March 1883.

In many respects British politics after 1868 — the capitalist class becoming the politically ruling as well as the economically dominant class — were more interesting than in the previous period. Unfortunately, we do not have for the 1860s and 1870s the same detailed commentary on political events in Britain as Marx's journalism had provided for the 1850s. Marx was, as we shall see, fairly active in British politics from 1864 to 1872 but he has left us nothing for this period comparable with the articles he wrote for various papers from 1852 to 1862.

Adam Buick

[1] Potter had a different position: he held that the workers should not take sides as this was a war between the partisans of chattel slavery (the South) and those of wage-slavery (the North) between which there was nothing to choose.

[2] Not to be confused with the O'Brienite National Reform League mentioned in the previous paragraph.

[3] Cremer was later elected a Liberal MP and ended his life as Sir Randal Cremer, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

[4] The first, the abolition of the property qualification to be an MP. was removed in the 1850s.

Votes for some Workers (1968)

From the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

November 1868 is a significant date in British working class history. For in that month was held the first general election in which the majority of electors were workers. Most workers, it is true, were still excluded but enough had the vote to elect a majority of socialist delegates had they wanted to. It is true also that the Second Reform Act of 1867 was a miserable compromise between the Tories and the Liberals, both of whom were opposed to democracy and afraid of giving the vote to too many workers.

In 1832 the workers had been tricked into backing their employers' demand for a share with the landed aristocrats, big merchants and bankers in running the government. The First Reform Act was framed so as deliberately to exclude workers and in fact, in some cases, they were actually disfranchised. This was not an experience they easily forgot. The manufacturers had used the threat of a workers' uprising to scare the governing classes into sharing power with them. One of the first acts of the government elected under the new franchise was to reform the Poor Law system: they made it harsher in order to drive people into the factories (or, as they would say today, to encourage “mobility of labour”). Partly as a result of this for the next decade or so the government was, in Chartism, faced with the real threat of a workers’ uprising.

Chartism, the first independent workers’ political party in the world, was an expression of general discontent with early capitalism. Their six-point charter, which included universal manhood suffrage, added up to a demand for a democratic state. They were convinced that with democracy the workers could reshape society in their own interests. This was well expressed in the words of one of their songs: “We will get the land, when we get the Charter”. It was this emphasis on the need for winning political power that commended Chartism to Marx and Engels and it taught them that the workers’ class struggle must become political. The Chartists in fact failed to achieve any of their aims. Their last monster demonstration in 1848 failed ignominiously. Faced with the choice of passively accepting parliament’s rejection of the Charter or insurrection they backed down. The more determined kept up the struggle for a few more years coming to absorb the ideas of the French utopian communists like Babeuf and Blanqui and even those of Marx and Engels.

By the 1860’s the trade unions, after years of syndicalist-type opposition to “wage-slavery”, came to accept the wages system and put forward the conservative slogan of “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.” Their leaders were rejecting violent overthrow of the the government in favour of working for small improvements within the system.

The manufacturers, who were the gainers from 1832, were now eager to push out the old landed aristocracy and have the state machine all to themselves. The successful Anti-Corn Law campaign led by Cobden and Bright had whetted their appetite. They saw as one way of increasing their control to extend the suffrage to their workers who they knew would vote for them. So despite the failure of Chartism the Reform issue was raised from time to time after 1850. However, the restricted franchise did not allow the radicals their due weight inside the Liberal party. The Whigs, themselves landed aristocrats, still had a great say and Lord Palmerston refused to allow a Reform bill. When he died the way was clear and in March 1866 Gladstone introduced a Bill which by lowering the property qualification would have given the vote to many workers. But the Whigs had their last fling. Some forty of them voted with the Tories against the bill. The government resigned and a minority Tory one took over. Almost immediately they were faced with a country-wide Reform agitation. Bright on behalf of the manufacturers’ National Reform Union called for ratepayers’ suffrage while the trade unions and the First International backed the Reform League which, like the Chartists, stood for universal manhood suffrage. It was the League that organised a great demonstration for 23 July at Hyde Park which the government banned. The organisers refused to accept this and the demonstration went on. The crowds pulled down the railings at Hyde Park and swarmed in. The fear of insurrection and a revival of Chartism, suggested by this, scared the government and Disraeli introduced his own Reform bill, more radical even than Gladstone's, in order, as he said, “to dish the Whigs”.

Marx commented favourably on the tactic of playing off one section of the governing classes against another which the workers had used to get factory laws. The passing of the Second Reform Act presented the same spectacle. The Tories proposed to give the vote to all ratepayers in the towns, while the Liberals wanted a steadily falling property qualification. Since the Liberals had a majority in parliament the actual Act, which with similar ones for Scotland and Ireland increased the electorate from 1,350,000 to 2,470,000, was a compromise.

If Disraeli had hoped to gain the new voters' gratitude and so dish the Whigs he must have been disappointed. The 1868 election returned Gladstone with a big majority. The new government then set about stripping the aristocrats of more of their privileges: they reformed the civil service and the universities; they disestablished the Church in Ireland; they brought in compulsory elementary education. Once again the workers had been used by the manufacturing capitalists as tools in their fight against the landed aristocracy. But this time it was voluntary. The workers allowed themselves to be used in this way. The new voters of 1868 set an unfortunate precedent which has been followed at every election since: they used their votes to hand over political power to the capitalist class.

One of three Tory Ministers to resign was Lord Cranbourne (who later as Lord Salisbury was three times Prime Minister). His complaint was that power was being transferred to

those who have no other property than the labour of their hands. The omnipotence of Parliament is theirs.

Marx and Engels took a similar view. Writing on the Chartists in the 1850's they had pointed out that universal suffrage in Britain would amount to political power for a class-conscious working class. They seem to have regarded the Second Reform Act as a “radical sham” and a travesty on democracy, as indeed it was. But, although fearing a “pro-slavery rebellion", Marx knew its significance as he showed in his famous speech at the Hague in 1872 when he stated that in America, Britain and perhaps Holland the workers could win power for Socialism peacefully, by winning a majority in a general election.

The government extended the franchise to workers in Britain under pressure, partly from the workers themselves and partly from some capitalists who saw this was in their interests. The workers' vote is a real gain, a potential class weapon which should, in Marx’s phrase, be used as “an instrument of emancipation". The government could not, as some claim, now suddenly suspend democracy, for besides being essential to the smooth running of modern capitalism, it is part of the political consciousness of the working class. By their past actions, from Chartism to pushing down the railings in Hyde Park, they have forced governments to take their views into account. Nor is universal suffrage a fraud, as these same people claim, a trick to convince us we have some say in the running of social affairs while the real decisions are made elsewhere. Parliament does control how the state machine is used—whether troops stay East of Suez or fight in Aden, what the police should do to control riots outside the American embassy, what laws the Courts should enforce—and universal suffrage does allow workers to choose who shall sit in Parliament..

Adam Buick

They Never Had It So Good In 1860 (1962)

From the February 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pick up any governmental speech, or article in the newspapers, on the subject of strikes and it is an even chance that a dividing line will be drawn between the “bad old days” when strikes were legitimate and the present time when strikes are said to be unnecessary, useless, dangerous and immoral. Nowadays, they will say, the workers are well off and don’t need to strike; and what is more, “the country” is in such a precarious state that strikes will lose markets for British goods and cause suffering all-round, to the strikers among others.

It is a seductive line but not at all persuasive when you realise that the same arguments were being advanced back in "the bad old days” of a century ago, as may be seen in the Quarterly Review, which in 1860 published an unsigned article on strikes, with particular reference to Papers on strikes read to the British Association in 1838 and 1854.

It started off with some splendid blarney about what a fine worker the Englishman was and how French peasants at Rouen, seeing English railway builders for the first time, gaped in wonder and admiration at the energy, the dexterity and the vast output, (It is possible, of course, that the translator was at fault and that the bench peasants were really saying "did you ever see such clots? ”).

The next thought of the writer in the Quarterly was that it was only right that such magnificent workers should be "liberally remunerated" and receive "a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work.” He was not, however leading up to the theme that workers ought to be paid more but that they were already being paid enough:

  At no previous period has so large a number of skilled workmen received higher wages, and in no country are they able to live more comfortably upon the proceeds of their toil, if we except only those new colonies in which land is unusually abundant. There never was a time when skill and diligence received more general encouragement, or in which there was a greater disposition to do honour to the lot of the labour.

Not only were workers well off, but look at the chances they had of becoming really wealthy: “It is notorious that many of our most successful employers, and some of our largest capitalists have sprung directly from the working class . . ."

There never had been such working class affluence, indeed, the writer clearly thought it had been a bit overdone. ’’Will it be believed that the annual earnings of many families engaged in the cotton manufacture amount to more than the average incomes of the clergy of England?"

And London engineering workers were getting more than "the whole body of dissenting Ministers": iron workers being paid as much as an army captain with ten years’ service: and other workers with a larger income "than falls to the lot of most professional men." The figures given for these Staffordshire "ball-furnace men” were £300 to £400 a year (“when trade is brisk”). At current prices this would be equivalent to between £1,500 and £2,000: “Yet the houses of these favoured labourers are scenes of disgusting untidiness and squalor.”

But in 1860, as now, all was not well. The affluent workers did not always appreciate their good fortune, or understand how easily it could be destroyed. Some of them formed unions and came out on strike, whereas if well advised they would have been abstemious, saved money and joined the ranks of the capitalists.

If these workers came out on strike they were, said the writer, flying in the face of all experience because, as he sought to show with lots of examples, all strikes are either defeated or else they gain only temporary victory or they drive trade into the hands of foreign rivals. (He omitted to explain how the French could capture English markets in view of his quoted evidence that one Englishman did as much work as eight Frenchmen).

He summed up his arguments about the futility of strikes with the declaration: “Indeed there is not an instance of any extensive strike, no matter how well organised and supported, having ended otherwise then in suffering and defeat to the workmen.”

But he was not at all confident that workers would be convinced by what he thought he had proved. He feared that though you might prove "by political economy" that strikes were useless, some workers just would not be convinced. He quoted the case of a trade unionist who “boldly declared in Hyde Park"—"If political economy is against us, then we are against political economy! ”

There were other workers trying to resist machinery—he noted in passing that the workers were often encouraged to do this by rival employers.

It was all there, just like today, and not forgetting the final gentle admonishment to the employers:

   At the same time, employers ought not to stand too strongly upon their rights, nor entrench themselves too exclusively within the circle of their own order. Frankness and cordiality will win working men’s hearts, and a ready explanation will often remove misgivings and dissatisfaction. Were there more trust and greater sympathy between classes, there would be less disposition to turn out on the part of men and a more accommodating spirit on the part of masters.

Edgar Hardcastle

Cooking the Books: The First Lost Decade Since the 1860s (2017)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a speech in Liverpool on 5 December Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, described the current decade as ‘the first lost decade since the 1860s’ (See here). At that time, he stated, ‘Karl Marx was scribbling in the British Library, warning of a spectre haunting Europe: the spectre of communism.’ Not quite, as Marx wrote about that much earlier, in 1848, when he was living in Brussels. But he would have been in the British Museum taking notes for his major work, Capital, that was to be published in 1867.

Before that, in 1864, Marx drafted the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association that had been set in September of that year. In it, he noted a statement Gladstone had made in his budget speech to the House of Commons in April 1863:

‘Dazzled by the “Progress of the Nation” statistics dancing before his eyes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild ecstasy: “From 1842 to 1852, the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent; in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it has increased from the basis taken in 1853, 20 per cent! The fact is so astonishing to be almost incredible! ... This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power,” adds Mr. Gladstone, “is entirely confined to classes of property!”’

Later, critics were to accuse Marx of distorting what Gladstone had said. The controversy is described by Engels in his Preface to the fourth German edition of Capital in 1890.  Basically what happened was that Gladstone had exercised the right of MPs to alter Hansard if they had said something they didn’t mean and had deleted the part about the increase in wealth and power being ‘entirely confined to classes of property’, even though this is what the newspapers the following day had reported him as having said.

Carney’s speech was accompanied by a graph (chart 6 on page 5) which showed that in the ten years up to 1864 real wages fell. So Gladstone’s initial statement had been correct. The increase in wealth during that period was ‘entirely confined to classes of property’. Just as it has been during the current ‘lost decade.’ Carney quoted some figures which showed that, as then, the richer got richer:

‘In recent decades, as global inequality has fallen markedly, it has edged ever higher in most advanced economies. In Anglo-Saxon countries, the income share of the top 1% has risen notably since 1980. Today, in the US, the richest 1% of households receive  20% of all income. Such high income inequalities are dwarfed by staggering wealth inequalities. The proportion of the wealth held by the richest 1% of Americans increased from 25% in 1990 to 40% in 2012. Globally, the share of wealth held by the richest 1% in the world rose from one-third in 2000 to one-half in 2010.The picture in the UK is complex but in general suggests relatively stable but high levels of overall inequality, with sharper disparities emerging in recent times for the top 1%.’

Plus ça change.