Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
International Workingmen’s Association 1871
On Trade Unions and the International
Abstract
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Marx and Engels on the Trade Unions, Edited by Kenneth Lapides;
Written: Engels, from minutes of General Council, October 31 1871;
First Published: in The General Council of the First International 1864-72: Minutes, Progress Publishers, 1962-;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citizen Engels said it [could] not be maintained for an instant that the Trades Unions were branches; the branches had to submit their rules to the General Council for approval, while the Unions framed their own rules without any control being exercised over them; besides, they took action when they pleased without consulting the Association. Another thing, they had not paid so much per member, but had contributed in lump sums.
Showing posts with label dictatorship of the proletariat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dictatorship of the proletariat. Show all posts
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-The International Workingmen's Association, 1868
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
The International Workingmen's Association, 1868
The Fourth Annual Report of the General Council
Adopted by the General Council on September 1, 1868
Written: by Karl Marx on September 1, 1868;
First published: in French in a special supplement to Le Peuple Belge, September 8, 1868: "Troisième congrès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs. Compte rendu official", Bruxelles, 1868; in English in The Times, No. 26225, September 9, 1868 Reproduced from The Times, and checked with the copy of the German manuscript made by Marx's wife, Jenny Marx.
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. [1] 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. [2] 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., 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. [3] The manifesto of the Parisians read at the Congress of Geneva [4] having been seized at the French frontier, our Paris Executive demanded of the Minister of the Interior the reasons of this Seizure. [5] M. Rouher then invited one of the members of the Committee [6] 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. [7] 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." [8]
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 [9] demanding the commutation of the sentence of the three victims of Manchester, and qualifying their hanging as an act of political revenge. [10] 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 International. [11] It caused nocturnal perquisitions to be made, eagerly rummaged the private correspondence, and announced with much noise [12] that it had discovered the centre of the Fenian conspiracy, of which the International was denounced as one of the principal organs. All its laborious researches, however, ended in nothing. [13] The public prosecutor himself threw down his brief in disgust. [14] The attempt at converting the 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. 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. [15] The tribunal had the naiveté to declare in the preamble of its judgment that the existence of the French Empire was incompatible with [16] a working men's association that dared to proclaim truth, justice, and morality as its leading principles. [17] 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 impulse [18] 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. [19] 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, [20] 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. 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. He even dared to threaten he should prevent the Brussels Congress from being held. [21] 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; 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. 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. 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. [22] 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. [23] At the request of their leading committee we have sent a delegate to Nuremberg.
In Austria, the working-class movement assumes a more and more revolutionary aspect. [24] 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. [25] Your General Council had already appointed a delegate ~ to Vienna [26] 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 received [27] from France, England, Germany, &c., through the medium of the International, they have finally obtained a diminution of one hour [28] of labour and 10 per cent [29] 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.
In England, the unsettled state of politics, [30] 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, [31] but, pressed for time, was unable to take the special measures necessary for carrying out the vote.
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. 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. [32]
London, September 1
Notes
All Ed. notes from Marx Engels Collected Works.
1 The German text has "and persecutions by governments".
2 The German text has "and the Geneva Congress documents on the French frontier".
3 The German text has: "In the beginning not much was demanded."
4 The German text further has: "(1866) and published in Brussels in the following year".
5 "A M. le ministre de l'intérieur. Vendredi. 9 mars 1867". In Le Courrier français, No. 112, May 1, 1868.
6 Antoine Marie Bourdon, the section's archivist.
7 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".
8 Le Courrier français, No. 112, May 1, 1868. The quotation gives the general meaning of Rouher's speech.
9 See
10 After the word "petition" the German has the following text: "in which the forthcoming execution of the three Manchester martyrs was described as a judicial murder (the reference is to William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin and Michael O'Brien).
11 The German further has "on both sides of the Channel".
12 The German has "in the English press".
13 In the German text this sentence reads: "Much ado about nothing."
14 In the German text this sentence reads: "The legal investigation found not a shadow of a corpus delicti despite its zeal."
15 Instead of "and the imprisonment of its Paris Executive" the German text has "and fined the Committee members and sentenced them to imprisonment".
16 In the German text the beginning of this sentence reads as follows: "Yet the tribunal had the naïvete to state two things, in the preamble of its judgement: on the one hand that the power of the I.W.A. was growing and, on the other, that the December Empire was incompatible with...."
17 See the tribunal's sentences of March 20 and May 22, 1868 in Procès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs. Bureau de Paris, Paris, 1868, pp. 59-40 and 128.
18 In the German text then follows a separate sentence: "Nothing has enhanced its influence in France more strongly than the fact that it finally forced the December government to break clearly with the working class."
19 In the German text the words "which massacred many of them" are omitted.
20 The German text has "in the press and at public meetings".
21 Marx refers to Jules Bara's speech in the Chamber of Deputies on May 16 1868, published in La Liberté, No. 47, May 17, 1868.
22 In the German text the end of the sentence reads: "although by law it is unable to join the I.W.A. officially".
23 See Demokratisches Wochenblatt, No. 35, August 29, 1868, pp. 275-76.
24 The German text has "distinct character".
25 "Die Arbeiter Wien's an die französischen und englischen Arbeiter", Der Vorbote, No. 8, August 1868, pp. 120-22.
26 Peter Fox.
27 The German text has "by them in Switzerland itself as well as".
28 The words "one hour" are omitted in the German text.
29 "10 per cent" omitted in the German text.
30 The German text has "the political movement" instead of "the unsettled state of politics".
31 Richard Trevellick.
32 In the manuscript there follows: "For the General Council: Robert Shaw, Chairman J. George Eccarius, General Secretary."
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
The International Workingmen's Association, 1868
The Fourth Annual Report of the General Council
Adopted by the General Council on September 1, 1868
Written: by Karl Marx on September 1, 1868;
First published: in French in a special supplement to Le Peuple Belge, September 8, 1868: "Troisième congrès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs. Compte rendu official", Bruxelles, 1868; in English in The Times, No. 26225, September 9, 1868 Reproduced from The Times, and checked with the copy of the German manuscript made by Marx's wife, Jenny Marx.
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. [1] 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. [2] 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., 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. [3] The manifesto of the Parisians read at the Congress of Geneva [4] having been seized at the French frontier, our Paris Executive demanded of the Minister of the Interior the reasons of this Seizure. [5] M. Rouher then invited one of the members of the Committee [6] 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. [7] 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." [8]
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 [9] demanding the commutation of the sentence of the three victims of Manchester, and qualifying their hanging as an act of political revenge. [10] 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 International. [11] It caused nocturnal perquisitions to be made, eagerly rummaged the private correspondence, and announced with much noise [12] that it had discovered the centre of the Fenian conspiracy, of which the International was denounced as one of the principal organs. All its laborious researches, however, ended in nothing. [13] The public prosecutor himself threw down his brief in disgust. [14] The attempt at converting the 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. 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. [15] The tribunal had the naiveté to declare in the preamble of its judgment that the existence of the French Empire was incompatible with [16] a working men's association that dared to proclaim truth, justice, and morality as its leading principles. [17] 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 impulse [18] 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. [19] 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, [20] 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. 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. He even dared to threaten he should prevent the Brussels Congress from being held. [21] 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; 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. 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. 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. [22] 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. [23] At the request of their leading committee we have sent a delegate to Nuremberg.
In Austria, the working-class movement assumes a more and more revolutionary aspect. [24] 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. [25] Your General Council had already appointed a delegate ~ to Vienna [26] 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 received [27] from France, England, Germany, &c., through the medium of the International, they have finally obtained a diminution of one hour [28] of labour and 10 per cent [29] 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.
In England, the unsettled state of politics, [30] 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, [31] but, pressed for time, was unable to take the special measures necessary for carrying out the vote.
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. 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. [32]
London, September 1
Notes
All Ed. notes from Marx Engels Collected Works.
1 The German text has "and persecutions by governments".
2 The German text has "and the Geneva Congress documents on the French frontier".
3 The German text has: "In the beginning not much was demanded."
4 The German text further has: "(1866) and published in Brussels in the following year".
5 "A M. le ministre de l'intérieur. Vendredi. 9 mars 1867". In Le Courrier français, No. 112, May 1, 1868.
6 Antoine Marie Bourdon, the section's archivist.
7 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".
8 Le Courrier français, No. 112, May 1, 1868. The quotation gives the general meaning of Rouher's speech.
9 See
10 After the word "petition" the German has the following text: "in which the forthcoming execution of the three Manchester martyrs was described as a judicial murder (the reference is to William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin and Michael O'Brien).
11 The German further has "on both sides of the Channel".
12 The German has "in the English press".
13 In the German text this sentence reads: "Much ado about nothing."
14 In the German text this sentence reads: "The legal investigation found not a shadow of a corpus delicti despite its zeal."
15 Instead of "and the imprisonment of its Paris Executive" the German text has "and fined the Committee members and sentenced them to imprisonment".
16 In the German text the beginning of this sentence reads as follows: "Yet the tribunal had the naïvete to state two things, in the preamble of its judgement: on the one hand that the power of the I.W.A. was growing and, on the other, that the December Empire was incompatible with...."
17 See the tribunal's sentences of March 20 and May 22, 1868 in Procès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs. Bureau de Paris, Paris, 1868, pp. 59-40 and 128.
18 In the German text then follows a separate sentence: "Nothing has enhanced its influence in France more strongly than the fact that it finally forced the December government to break clearly with the working class."
19 In the German text the words "which massacred many of them" are omitted.
20 The German text has "in the press and at public meetings".
21 Marx refers to Jules Bara's speech in the Chamber of Deputies on May 16 1868, published in La Liberté, No. 47, May 17, 1868.
22 In the German text the end of the sentence reads: "although by law it is unable to join the I.W.A. officially".
23 See Demokratisches Wochenblatt, No. 35, August 29, 1868, pp. 275-76.
24 The German text has "distinct character".
25 "Die Arbeiter Wien's an die französischen und englischen Arbeiter", Der Vorbote, No. 8, August 1868, pp. 120-22.
26 Peter Fox.
27 The German text has "by them in Switzerland itself as well as".
28 The words "one hour" are omitted in the German text.
29 "10 per cent" omitted in the German text.
30 The German text has "the political movement" instead of "the unsettled state of politics".
31 Richard Trevellick.
32 In the manuscript there follows: "For the General Council: Robert Shaw, Chairman J. George Eccarius, General Secretary."
Friday, September 16, 2011
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-The International Workingmen's Association, 1866
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
The International Workingmen's Association, 1866
Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council
The Different Questions
Written: by Marx at the end of August 1866;
First published: in Der Vorbote Nos. 10 and 11, October and November 1866 and The International Courier Nos. 6/7, February 20, and Nos. 8/10, March 13, 1867;
Translated: by Barrie Selman;
Transcribed: by director@marx.org, April 1996.
Table of Contents
Organisation of the International Association
International combination of efforts, by the agency of the association, in the struggle between labour and capital
Limitation of the working day
Juvenile and children's labour (both sexes)
Co-operative labour
Trades' unions. Their past, present and future
Direct and indirect taxation
International credit
Polish question
Armies
Religious question
1.
Organisation of the International Association
Upon the whole, the Provisional Central Council recommend the plan of organisation as traced in the Provisional Statutes. Its soundness and facilities of adaptation to different countries without prejudice to unity of action have been proved by two years' experience. For the next year we recommend London as the seat of the Central Council, the Continental situation looking unfavourable for change.
The members of the Central Council will of course be elected by Congress (5 of the Provisional Statutes) with power to add to their number.
The General Secretary to be chosen by Congress for one year and to be the only paid officer of the Association. We propose £2 for his weekly salary. [The French and German texts add: "The Standing Committee, which is in fact an executive of the Central Council, to be chosen by Congress, the function of any of its member to be defined by the Central Council."]
The uniform annual contribution of each individual member of the Association to be one half penny (perhaps one penny). The cost price of cards of membership (carpets) to be charged extra.
While calling upon the members of the Association to form benefit societies and connect them by an international link, we leave the initiation of this question (etablissement des societes de secours mutuels. Appoi moral et materiel accorde aux orphelins de l'association [foundation of benefit societies; moral and material assistance to the Association's orphans. -- Ed.]) to the Swiss who originally proposed it at the conference of September last.
2.
International combination of efforts, by the agency of the association, in the struggle between labour and capital
(a) From a general point of view, this question embraces the whole activity of the International Association which aims at combining and generalising the till now disconnected efforts for emancipation by the working classes in different countries.
(b) To counteract the intrigues of capitalists always ready, in cases of strikes and lockouts, to misuse the foreign workman as a tool against the native workman, is one of the particular functions which our Society has hitherto performed with success. It is one of the great purposes of the Association to make the workmen of different countries not only feel but act as brethren and comrades in the army of emancipation.
(c) One great "International combination of efforts" which we suggest is a statistical inquiry into the situation of the working classes of all countries to be instituted by the working classes themselves. To act with any success, the materials to be acted upon must be known. By initiating so great a work, the workmen will prove their ability to take their own fate into their own hands. We propose therefore:
That in each locality, where branches of our Association exist, the work be immediately commenced, and evidence collected on the different points specified in the subjoined scheme of inquiry.
That the Congress invite all workmen of Europe and the United States of America to collaborate in gathering the elements of the statistics of the working class; that reports and evidence be forwarded to the Central Council. That the Central Council elaborate them into a general report, adding the evidence as an appendix.
That this report together with its appendix be laid before the next annual Congress, and after having received its sanction, be printed at the expense of the Association.
General Scheme of Inquiry, which may of course be modified by each Locality
Industry, name of.
Age and sex of the employed.
Number of the employed.
Salaries and wages: (a) apprentices; (b) wages by the day or piece work; scale paid by middlemen. Weekly, yearly average.
(a) Hours of work in factories. (b) The hours of work with small employers and in home work, if the business be carried on in those different modes. (c) Nightwork and daywork.
Meal times and treatment.
Sort of workshop and work: overcrowding, defective ventilation, want of sunlight, use of gaslight. Cleanliness, etc.
Nature of occupation.
Effect of employment upon the physical condition.
Moral condition. Education.
State of trade: whether season trade, or more or less uniformly distributed over year, whether greatly fluctuating, whether exposed to foreign competition, whether destined principally for home or foreign competition, etc. [The Minute Book of the General Council has the word "consumption" instead of "competition." -- Ed.]
3.
Limitation of the working day
A preliminary condition, without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive, is the limitation of the working day.
It is needed to restore the health and physical energies of the working class, that is, the great body of every nation, as well as to secure them the possibility of intellectual development, sociable intercourse, social and political action.
We propose 8 hours work as the legal limit of the working day. This limitation being generally claimed by the workmen of the United States of America,'40 the vote of the Congress will raise it to the common platform of the working classes all over the world.
For the information of continental members, whose experience of factory law is comparatively short-dated, we add that all legal restrictions will fail and be broken through by Capital if the period of the day during which the 8 working hours must be taken, be not fixed. The length of that period ought to be determined by the 8 working hours and the additional pauses for meals. For instance, if the different interruptions for meals amount to one hour, the legal period of the day ought to embrace 9 hours, say from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., or from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., etc. Nightwork to be but exceptionally permitted, in trades or branches of trades specified by law. The tendency must be to suppress all nightwork.
This paragraph refers only to adult persons, male or female, the latter, however, to be rigorously excluded from all nightwork whatever, and all sort of work hurtful to the delicacy of the sex, or exposing their bodies to poisonous and otherwise deleterious agencies. By adult persons we understand all persons having reached or passed the age of 18 years.
4.
Juvenile and children's labour (both sexes)
We consider the tendency of modern industry to make children and juvenile persons of both sexes co-operate in the great work of social production, as a progressive, sound and legitimate tendency, although under capital it was distorted into an abomination. In a rational state of society every child whatever, from the age of 9 years, ought to become a productive labourer in the same way that no able-bodied adult person ought to be exempted from the general law of nature, viz.: to work in order to be able to eat, and work not only with the brain but with the hands too.
However, for the present, we have only to deal with the children and young persons of both sexes divided into three classes, to be treated differently [a]; the first class to range from 9 to 12; the second, from 13 to 15 years; and the third, to comprise the ages of 16 and 17 years. We propose that the employment of the first class in any workshop or housework be legally restricted to two; that of the second, to four; and that of the third, to six hours. For the third class, there must be a break of at least one hour for meals or relaxation.
It may be desirable to begin elementary school instruction before the age of 9 years; but we deal here only with the most indispensable antidotes against the tendencies of a social system which degrades the working man into a mere instrument for the accumulation of capital, and transforms parents by their necessities into slave-holders, sellers of their own children. The right of children and juvenile persons must be vindicated. They are unable to act for themselves. It is, therefore, the duty of society to act on their behalf.
If the middle and higher classes neglect their duties toward their offspring, it is their own fault. Sharing the privileges of these classes, the child is condemned to suffer from their prejudices.
The case of the working class stands quite different. The working man is no free agent. In too many cases, he is even too ignorant to understand the true interest of his child, or the normal conditions of human development. However, the more enlightened part of the working class fully understands that the future of its class, and, therefore, of mankind, altogether depends upon the formation of the rising working generation. They know that, before everything else, the children and juvenile workers must be saved from the crushing effects of the present system. This can only be effected by converting social reason into social force, and, under given circumstances, there exists no other method of doing so, than through general laws, enforced by the power of the state. In enforcing such laws, the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power, now used against them, into their own agency. They effect by a general act what they would vainly attempt by a multitude of isolated individual efforts.
Proceeding from this standpoint, we say that no parent and no employer ought to be allowed to use juvenile labour, except when combined with education.
By education we understand three things.
Firstly: Mental education.
Secondly: Bodily education, such as is given in schools of gymnastics, and by military exercise.
Thirdly: Technological training, which imparts the general principles of all processes of production, and, simultaneously initiates the child and young person in the practical use and handling of the elementary instruments of all trades. [The German text calls this "polytechnical training." -- Ed]
A gradual and progressive course of mental, gymnastic, and technological training ought to correspond to the classification of the juvenile labourers. The costs of the technological a schools ought to be partly met by the sale of their products.
The combination of paid productive labour, mental education bodily exercise and polytechnic training, will raise the working class far above the level of the higher and middle classes.
It is self-understood that the employment of all persons from 9 and to 17 years (inclusively) in nightwork and all health-injuring trades must be strictly prohibited by law.
5.
Co-operative labour
It is the business of the International Working Men's Association to combine and generalise the spontaneous movements of the working classes, but not to dictate or impose any doctrinary system whatever. The Congress should, therefore, proclaim no special system of co-operation, but limit itself to the enunciation of a few general principles.
(a) We acknowledge the co-operative movement as one of the transforming forces of the present society based upon class antagonism. Its great merit is to practically show, that the present pauperising, and despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital can be superseded by the republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers.
(b) Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms into which individual wages slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the co-operative system will never transform capitalist society. to convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, viz., the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves.
(c) We recommend to the working men to embark in co-operative production rather than in co-operative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the present economical system, the former attacks its groundwork.
(d) We recommend to all co-operative societies to convert one part of their joint income into a fund for propagating their principles by example as well as by precept, in other words, by promoting the establishment by teaching and preaching.
(e) In order to prevent co-operative societies from degenerating into ordinary middle-class joint stock companies (societes par actions), all workmen employed, whether shareholders or not, ought to share alike. As a mere temporary expedient, we are willing to allow shareholders a low rate of interest.
6.
Trades' unions. Their past, present and future
(a) Their past.
Capital is concentrated social force, while the workman has only to dispose of his working force. The contract between capital and labour can therefore never be struck on equitable terms, equitable even in the sense of a society which places the ownership of the material means of life and labour on one side and the vital productive energies on the opposite side. The only social power of the workmen is their number. The force of numbers, however is broken by disunion. The disunion of the workmen is created and perpetuated by their unavoidable competition among themselves.
Trades' Unions originally sprang up from the spontaneous attempts of workmen at removing or at least checking that competition, in order to conquer such terms of contract as might raise them at least above the condition of mere slaves. The immediate object of Trades' Unions was therefore confined to everyday necessities, to expediences for the obstruction of the incessant encroachments of capital, in one word, to questions of wages and time of labour. This activity of the Trades' Unions is not only legitimate, it is necessary. It cannot be dispensed with so long as the present system of production lasts. On the contrary, it must be generalised by the formation and the combination of Trades' Unions throughout all countries. On the other hand, unconsciously to themselves, the Trades' Unions were forming centres of organisation of the working class, as the mediaeval municipalities and communes did for the middle class. If the Trades' Unions are required for the guerilla fights between capital and labour, they are still more important as organised agencies for superseding the very system of wages labour and capital rule.
(b) Their present.
Too exclusively bent upon the local and immediate struggles with capital, the Trades' Unions have not yet fully understood their power of acting against the system of wages slavery itself. They therefore kept too much aloof from general social and political movements. Of late, however, they seem to awaken to some sense of their great historical mission, as appears, for instance, from their participation, in England, in the recent political movement, from the enlarged views taken of their function in the United States, and from the following resolution passed at the recent great conference of Trades' delegates at Sheffield:
"That this Conference, fully appreciating the efforts made by the International Association to unite in one common bond of brotherhood the working men of all countries, most earnestly recommend to the various societies here represented, the advisability of becoming affiliated to that hody, believing that it is essential to the progress and prosperity of the entire working community."
(c) Their future.
Apart from their original purposes, they must now learn to act deliberately as organising centres of the working class in the broad interest of its complete emancipation. They must aid every social and political movement tending in that direction. Considering themselves and acting as the champions and representatives of the whole working class, they cannot fail to enlist the non-society men into their ranks. They must look carefully after the interests of the worst paid trades, such as the agricultural labourers, rendered powerless [French text has: "incapable of organised resistance"] by exceptional circumstances. They must convince the world at large [French and German texts read: "convince the broad masses of workers"] that their efforts, far from being narrow -- and selfish, aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions.
7.
Direct and indirect taxation
(a) No modification of the form of taxation can produce any important change in the relations of labour and capital.
(b) Nevertheless, having to choose between two systems of taxation, we recommend the total abolition of indirect taxes, and the general substitution of direct taxes. [In Marx's rough manuscript, French and German texts are: "because direct taxes are cheaper to collect and do not interfere with production".]
Because indirect taxes enhance the prices of commodities, the tradesmen adding to those prices not only the amount of the indirect taxes, but the interest and profit upon the capital advanced in their payment
Because indirect taxes conceal from an individual what he is paying to the state, whereas a direct tax is undisguised, unsophisticated, and not to be misunderstood by the meanest capacity. Direct taxation prompts therefore every individual to control the governing powers while indirect taxation destroys all tendency to self-government.
8.
International credit
Initiative to be left to the French.
9.
Polish question
[The French subtitle reads: "Necessity of annihilating Russian influence in Europe by implementing the right of nations to self-determination and restoring Poland on a democratic and social basis." German subtitle reads similarly.]
(a) Why do the workmen of Europe take up this question? In the first instance, because the middle-class writers and agitators conspire to suppress it, although they patronise all sorts of nationalities, on the Continent, even Ireland. Whence this reticence? Because both, aristocrats and bourgeois, look upon the dark Asiatic power in the background as a last resource against the advancing tide of working class ascendancy; That power can only be effectually put down by the restoration of Poland upon a democratic basis.
(b) In the present changed state of central Europe, and especially Germany, it is more than ever necessary to have a democratic Poland. Without it, Germany will become the outwork of the Holy Alliance, with it, the co-operator with republican France. The working-class movement will continuously be interrupted, checked, and retarded, until this great European question be set at rest.
(c) It is especially the duty of the German working class to take the initiative in this matter, because Germany is one of the partitioners of Poland.
10.
Armies
[French and German subtitle reads: "Standing armies; their relation to production."]
(a) The deleterious influence of large standing armies upon production, has been sufficiently exposed at middle-class congresses of all denominations, at peace congresses, economical congresses, statistical congresses, philanthropical congresses, sociological congresses. We think it, therefore, quite superfluous to expatiate upon this point.
(b) We propose the general armament of the people and their general instruction in the use of arms.
(c) We accept as a transitory necessity small standing armies to form schools for the officers of the militia; every male citizen to serve for a very limited time in those armies.
11.
Religious question
[French and German subtitle reads: "Religious ideas; their influence on the social, political and intellectual movement".]
To be left to the initiative of the French.
Notes
a Note from International Publishers: Instead of this sentence the French and German texts have two sentences ending the preceding paragraph and beginning a new one: "However, for the present, we have only to deal with the children and young persons belonging to the working class.
"We deem it necessary, basing on physiology, to divide children and young persons of both sexes" and then as in the English text.
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
The International Workingmen's Association, 1866
Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council
The Different Questions
Written: by Marx at the end of August 1866;
First published: in Der Vorbote Nos. 10 and 11, October and November 1866 and The International Courier Nos. 6/7, February 20, and Nos. 8/10, March 13, 1867;
Translated: by Barrie Selman;
Transcribed: by director@marx.org, April 1996.
Table of Contents
Organisation of the International Association
International combination of efforts, by the agency of the association, in the struggle between labour and capital
Limitation of the working day
Juvenile and children's labour (both sexes)
Co-operative labour
Trades' unions. Their past, present and future
Direct and indirect taxation
International credit
Polish question
Armies
Religious question
1.
Organisation of the International Association
Upon the whole, the Provisional Central Council recommend the plan of organisation as traced in the Provisional Statutes. Its soundness and facilities of adaptation to different countries without prejudice to unity of action have been proved by two years' experience. For the next year we recommend London as the seat of the Central Council, the Continental situation looking unfavourable for change.
The members of the Central Council will of course be elected by Congress (5 of the Provisional Statutes) with power to add to their number.
The General Secretary to be chosen by Congress for one year and to be the only paid officer of the Association. We propose £2 for his weekly salary. [The French and German texts add: "The Standing Committee, which is in fact an executive of the Central Council, to be chosen by Congress, the function of any of its member to be defined by the Central Council."]
The uniform annual contribution of each individual member of the Association to be one half penny (perhaps one penny). The cost price of cards of membership (carpets) to be charged extra.
While calling upon the members of the Association to form benefit societies and connect them by an international link, we leave the initiation of this question (etablissement des societes de secours mutuels. Appoi moral et materiel accorde aux orphelins de l'association [foundation of benefit societies; moral and material assistance to the Association's orphans. -- Ed.]) to the Swiss who originally proposed it at the conference of September last.
2.
International combination of efforts, by the agency of the association, in the struggle between labour and capital
(a) From a general point of view, this question embraces the whole activity of the International Association which aims at combining and generalising the till now disconnected efforts for emancipation by the working classes in different countries.
(b) To counteract the intrigues of capitalists always ready, in cases of strikes and lockouts, to misuse the foreign workman as a tool against the native workman, is one of the particular functions which our Society has hitherto performed with success. It is one of the great purposes of the Association to make the workmen of different countries not only feel but act as brethren and comrades in the army of emancipation.
(c) One great "International combination of efforts" which we suggest is a statistical inquiry into the situation of the working classes of all countries to be instituted by the working classes themselves. To act with any success, the materials to be acted upon must be known. By initiating so great a work, the workmen will prove their ability to take their own fate into their own hands. We propose therefore:
That in each locality, where branches of our Association exist, the work be immediately commenced, and evidence collected on the different points specified in the subjoined scheme of inquiry.
That the Congress invite all workmen of Europe and the United States of America to collaborate in gathering the elements of the statistics of the working class; that reports and evidence be forwarded to the Central Council. That the Central Council elaborate them into a general report, adding the evidence as an appendix.
That this report together with its appendix be laid before the next annual Congress, and after having received its sanction, be printed at the expense of the Association.
General Scheme of Inquiry, which may of course be modified by each Locality
Industry, name of.
Age and sex of the employed.
Number of the employed.
Salaries and wages: (a) apprentices; (b) wages by the day or piece work; scale paid by middlemen. Weekly, yearly average.
(a) Hours of work in factories. (b) The hours of work with small employers and in home work, if the business be carried on in those different modes. (c) Nightwork and daywork.
Meal times and treatment.
Sort of workshop and work: overcrowding, defective ventilation, want of sunlight, use of gaslight. Cleanliness, etc.
Nature of occupation.
Effect of employment upon the physical condition.
Moral condition. Education.
State of trade: whether season trade, or more or less uniformly distributed over year, whether greatly fluctuating, whether exposed to foreign competition, whether destined principally for home or foreign competition, etc. [The Minute Book of the General Council has the word "consumption" instead of "competition." -- Ed.]
3.
Limitation of the working day
A preliminary condition, without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive, is the limitation of the working day.
It is needed to restore the health and physical energies of the working class, that is, the great body of every nation, as well as to secure them the possibility of intellectual development, sociable intercourse, social and political action.
We propose 8 hours work as the legal limit of the working day. This limitation being generally claimed by the workmen of the United States of America,'40 the vote of the Congress will raise it to the common platform of the working classes all over the world.
For the information of continental members, whose experience of factory law is comparatively short-dated, we add that all legal restrictions will fail and be broken through by Capital if the period of the day during which the 8 working hours must be taken, be not fixed. The length of that period ought to be determined by the 8 working hours and the additional pauses for meals. For instance, if the different interruptions for meals amount to one hour, the legal period of the day ought to embrace 9 hours, say from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., or from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., etc. Nightwork to be but exceptionally permitted, in trades or branches of trades specified by law. The tendency must be to suppress all nightwork.
This paragraph refers only to adult persons, male or female, the latter, however, to be rigorously excluded from all nightwork whatever, and all sort of work hurtful to the delicacy of the sex, or exposing their bodies to poisonous and otherwise deleterious agencies. By adult persons we understand all persons having reached or passed the age of 18 years.
4.
Juvenile and children's labour (both sexes)
We consider the tendency of modern industry to make children and juvenile persons of both sexes co-operate in the great work of social production, as a progressive, sound and legitimate tendency, although under capital it was distorted into an abomination. In a rational state of society every child whatever, from the age of 9 years, ought to become a productive labourer in the same way that no able-bodied adult person ought to be exempted from the general law of nature, viz.: to work in order to be able to eat, and work not only with the brain but with the hands too.
However, for the present, we have only to deal with the children and young persons of both sexes divided into three classes, to be treated differently [a]; the first class to range from 9 to 12; the second, from 13 to 15 years; and the third, to comprise the ages of 16 and 17 years. We propose that the employment of the first class in any workshop or housework be legally restricted to two; that of the second, to four; and that of the third, to six hours. For the third class, there must be a break of at least one hour for meals or relaxation.
It may be desirable to begin elementary school instruction before the age of 9 years; but we deal here only with the most indispensable antidotes against the tendencies of a social system which degrades the working man into a mere instrument for the accumulation of capital, and transforms parents by their necessities into slave-holders, sellers of their own children. The right of children and juvenile persons must be vindicated. They are unable to act for themselves. It is, therefore, the duty of society to act on their behalf.
If the middle and higher classes neglect their duties toward their offspring, it is their own fault. Sharing the privileges of these classes, the child is condemned to suffer from their prejudices.
The case of the working class stands quite different. The working man is no free agent. In too many cases, he is even too ignorant to understand the true interest of his child, or the normal conditions of human development. However, the more enlightened part of the working class fully understands that the future of its class, and, therefore, of mankind, altogether depends upon the formation of the rising working generation. They know that, before everything else, the children and juvenile workers must be saved from the crushing effects of the present system. This can only be effected by converting social reason into social force, and, under given circumstances, there exists no other method of doing so, than through general laws, enforced by the power of the state. In enforcing such laws, the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power, now used against them, into their own agency. They effect by a general act what they would vainly attempt by a multitude of isolated individual efforts.
Proceeding from this standpoint, we say that no parent and no employer ought to be allowed to use juvenile labour, except when combined with education.
By education we understand three things.
Firstly: Mental education.
Secondly: Bodily education, such as is given in schools of gymnastics, and by military exercise.
Thirdly: Technological training, which imparts the general principles of all processes of production, and, simultaneously initiates the child and young person in the practical use and handling of the elementary instruments of all trades. [The German text calls this "polytechnical training." -- Ed]
A gradual and progressive course of mental, gymnastic, and technological training ought to correspond to the classification of the juvenile labourers. The costs of the technological a schools ought to be partly met by the sale of their products.
The combination of paid productive labour, mental education bodily exercise and polytechnic training, will raise the working class far above the level of the higher and middle classes.
It is self-understood that the employment of all persons from 9 and to 17 years (inclusively) in nightwork and all health-injuring trades must be strictly prohibited by law.
5.
Co-operative labour
It is the business of the International Working Men's Association to combine and generalise the spontaneous movements of the working classes, but not to dictate or impose any doctrinary system whatever. The Congress should, therefore, proclaim no special system of co-operation, but limit itself to the enunciation of a few general principles.
(a) We acknowledge the co-operative movement as one of the transforming forces of the present society based upon class antagonism. Its great merit is to practically show, that the present pauperising, and despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital can be superseded by the republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers.
(b) Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms into which individual wages slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the co-operative system will never transform capitalist society. to convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, viz., the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves.
(c) We recommend to the working men to embark in co-operative production rather than in co-operative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the present economical system, the former attacks its groundwork.
(d) We recommend to all co-operative societies to convert one part of their joint income into a fund for propagating their principles by example as well as by precept, in other words, by promoting the establishment by teaching and preaching.
(e) In order to prevent co-operative societies from degenerating into ordinary middle-class joint stock companies (societes par actions), all workmen employed, whether shareholders or not, ought to share alike. As a mere temporary expedient, we are willing to allow shareholders a low rate of interest.
6.
Trades' unions. Their past, present and future
(a) Their past.
Capital is concentrated social force, while the workman has only to dispose of his working force. The contract between capital and labour can therefore never be struck on equitable terms, equitable even in the sense of a society which places the ownership of the material means of life and labour on one side and the vital productive energies on the opposite side. The only social power of the workmen is their number. The force of numbers, however is broken by disunion. The disunion of the workmen is created and perpetuated by their unavoidable competition among themselves.
Trades' Unions originally sprang up from the spontaneous attempts of workmen at removing or at least checking that competition, in order to conquer such terms of contract as might raise them at least above the condition of mere slaves. The immediate object of Trades' Unions was therefore confined to everyday necessities, to expediences for the obstruction of the incessant encroachments of capital, in one word, to questions of wages and time of labour. This activity of the Trades' Unions is not only legitimate, it is necessary. It cannot be dispensed with so long as the present system of production lasts. On the contrary, it must be generalised by the formation and the combination of Trades' Unions throughout all countries. On the other hand, unconsciously to themselves, the Trades' Unions were forming centres of organisation of the working class, as the mediaeval municipalities and communes did for the middle class. If the Trades' Unions are required for the guerilla fights between capital and labour, they are still more important as organised agencies for superseding the very system of wages labour and capital rule.
(b) Their present.
Too exclusively bent upon the local and immediate struggles with capital, the Trades' Unions have not yet fully understood their power of acting against the system of wages slavery itself. They therefore kept too much aloof from general social and political movements. Of late, however, they seem to awaken to some sense of their great historical mission, as appears, for instance, from their participation, in England, in the recent political movement, from the enlarged views taken of their function in the United States, and from the following resolution passed at the recent great conference of Trades' delegates at Sheffield:
"That this Conference, fully appreciating the efforts made by the International Association to unite in one common bond of brotherhood the working men of all countries, most earnestly recommend to the various societies here represented, the advisability of becoming affiliated to that hody, believing that it is essential to the progress and prosperity of the entire working community."
(c) Their future.
Apart from their original purposes, they must now learn to act deliberately as organising centres of the working class in the broad interest of its complete emancipation. They must aid every social and political movement tending in that direction. Considering themselves and acting as the champions and representatives of the whole working class, they cannot fail to enlist the non-society men into their ranks. They must look carefully after the interests of the worst paid trades, such as the agricultural labourers, rendered powerless [French text has: "incapable of organised resistance"] by exceptional circumstances. They must convince the world at large [French and German texts read: "convince the broad masses of workers"] that their efforts, far from being narrow -- and selfish, aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions.
7.
Direct and indirect taxation
(a) No modification of the form of taxation can produce any important change in the relations of labour and capital.
(b) Nevertheless, having to choose between two systems of taxation, we recommend the total abolition of indirect taxes, and the general substitution of direct taxes. [In Marx's rough manuscript, French and German texts are: "because direct taxes are cheaper to collect and do not interfere with production".]
Because indirect taxes enhance the prices of commodities, the tradesmen adding to those prices not only the amount of the indirect taxes, but the interest and profit upon the capital advanced in their payment
Because indirect taxes conceal from an individual what he is paying to the state, whereas a direct tax is undisguised, unsophisticated, and not to be misunderstood by the meanest capacity. Direct taxation prompts therefore every individual to control the governing powers while indirect taxation destroys all tendency to self-government.
8.
International credit
Initiative to be left to the French.
9.
Polish question
[The French subtitle reads: "Necessity of annihilating Russian influence in Europe by implementing the right of nations to self-determination and restoring Poland on a democratic and social basis." German subtitle reads similarly.]
(a) Why do the workmen of Europe take up this question? In the first instance, because the middle-class writers and agitators conspire to suppress it, although they patronise all sorts of nationalities, on the Continent, even Ireland. Whence this reticence? Because both, aristocrats and bourgeois, look upon the dark Asiatic power in the background as a last resource against the advancing tide of working class ascendancy; That power can only be effectually put down by the restoration of Poland upon a democratic basis.
(b) In the present changed state of central Europe, and especially Germany, it is more than ever necessary to have a democratic Poland. Without it, Germany will become the outwork of the Holy Alliance, with it, the co-operator with republican France. The working-class movement will continuously be interrupted, checked, and retarded, until this great European question be set at rest.
(c) It is especially the duty of the German working class to take the initiative in this matter, because Germany is one of the partitioners of Poland.
10.
Armies
[French and German subtitle reads: "Standing armies; their relation to production."]
(a) The deleterious influence of large standing armies upon production, has been sufficiently exposed at middle-class congresses of all denominations, at peace congresses, economical congresses, statistical congresses, philanthropical congresses, sociological congresses. We think it, therefore, quite superfluous to expatiate upon this point.
(b) We propose the general armament of the people and their general instruction in the use of arms.
(c) We accept as a transitory necessity small standing armies to form schools for the officers of the militia; every male citizen to serve for a very limited time in those armies.
11.
Religious question
[French and German subtitle reads: "Religious ideas; their influence on the social, political and intellectual movement".]
To be left to the initiative of the French.
Notes
a Note from International Publishers: Instead of this sentence the French and German texts have two sentences ending the preceding paragraph and beginning a new one: "However, for the present, we have only to deal with the children and young persons belonging to the working class.
"We deem it necessary, basing on physiology, to divide children and young persons of both sexes" and then as in the English text.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Marx To Engels In Manchester-1864
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1864
Marx To Engels In Manchester-1864
Source: MECW Volume 42, p. 11;
First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Stuttgart, 1913.
[London,] 4 November 1864
Dear Frederick,
I was very pleased to hear from you again.
All well here. Myself included, since your departure from here until the day before yesterday, when yet another carbuncle appeared below my right breast. If the thing does not clear up quickly and others appear, I intend to use Gumpert’s arsenic remedy this time.
I would translate your runic rüm hart, etc. as Dutch-Frisian for open heart, clear horizon. But I fear that there may be a quite different explanation, so I give up the riddle.
You must send all the enclosed papers back to me as soon as read. I still need them. So that I do not forget any of the things I wanted to tell you, I am going to number them.
1. Lassalle and Countess Hatzfeldt.
The lengthy document is a copy of a circular that Herwegh’s wife (honi soit qui mal y pense), Emma, sent to Berlin immediately after the catastrophe, so that extracts from it could be put in the newspapers. You will see from it how cleverly Emma manages to put herself and her spineless Georg in the limelight at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the report; how the account evades two important points, firstly Rüstow’s meeting with Donniges and daughter, when the latter must have renounced Lassalle before the scene recounted by Emma took place. Secondly: how the duel came about. Lassalle wrote the insulting letter. But then something happened which is not reported and which led directly to the duel.
The suppression of two such important and crucial points makes one sceptical of the accuracy of the account.
The Hatzfeldt letter. On her arrival in Berlin I got Liebknecht to take her a brief letter of condolence from myself. Liebknecht wrote to me that she was complaining ‘I left Lassalle in the lurch’, as if I could have done the man any greater service than by keeping my mouth shut and letting him do as he liked. (In his last speech before the Düsseldorf assizes, he played the part of Marquis Posa with handsome William as Philipp II, whom he was trying to persuade to suspend the present constitution, proclaim universal direct suffrage and ally himself with the proletariat.) You can see what is behind her letter and what she wants of me. I wrote a very amicable but diplomatically discouraging letter in reply. The latterday Redeemer! That personage and the sycophants, who surround her, are mad.
Apropos. A couple of numbers of E. Jones’ Notes to the People (1851, 1852) happened to fall into my hands again; as far as the economic articles are concerned, the main points in them had been written directly under my guidance and partly even in direct collaboration with myself. Well! What do I find in them? That at that time we conducted the same polemic — only better — against the co-operative movement, since it claimed, in its present narrow-minded form, to be the last word, as Lassalle conducted against Schulze-Delitzsch in Germany 10-12 years later.
In his last will and testament Lassalle has ‘installed’ Bernhard Becker, the unfortunate fellow, who was Juch’s editor on the Hermann for a while, as his successor in the office of President of the General Association of German Workers — in his ‘last will and testament’ (like a ruling prince). The Association’s congress meets in Düsseldorf this month, 16 and strong opposition to this ‘decree’ by last will and testament is expected.
Also enclosed, letter from a worker in Solingen, Klings, in fact the clandestine leader of the Rhineland workers (former member of the League). This letter is not to be returned but filed.
2. Workingmen’s International Association
Some time ago, London workers sent an address to workers in Paris about Poland and called upon them to act jointly in the matter.
For their part, the Parisians sent over a deputation headed by a worker named Tolain, who was the real workers’ candidate in the last elections in Paris, a thoroughly nice fellow. (His compagnons were quite nice lads, too.) A public meeting in St Martin’s Hall was called, for 28 September 1864, by Odger (shoemaker, President of the local Council of All London Trades’ Unions and, in particular, also of the Trades’ Unions Suffrage Agitation Society, is which is connected with Bright) and Cremer, a mason and secretary of the Mason’s Union. (These two had arranged the big Trade-Union meeting on North America chaired by Bright in St James’s Hall, ditto the Garibaldi manifestations.) A certain Le Lubez was sent to ask me if I would participate pour les ouvriers allemands [for the German workers], and, in particular, whether I was willing to provide a German worker to speak at the meeting, etc. I provided them with Eccarius, who put on a splendid performance, and I was also present myself in a non-speaking capacity on the platform. I knew that on this occasion ‘people who really count’ were appearing, both from London and from Paris, and I therefore decided to waive my usual standing rule to decline any such invitations.
(Le Lubez is a young Frenchman, i.e. in his thirties; however, he grew up in Jersey and London, speaks capital English and is a very good intermediary between the French and English workers.) (Music teacher and leçons of French.)
At the meeting, which was chock-full (for there is now evidently a revival of the working-classes taking place), Major Wolff (Thurn-Taxis, Garibaldi’s adjutant) represented the London Italian Workingmen’s Society. It was resolved to found a ‘Workingmen’s International Association’, whose General Council is to have its seat in London and is to ‘Intermediate’ between the workers’ Societies in Germany, Italy, France, and England. Ditto that a General Workingmen’s Congress was to be convened in Belgium in 1865. A Provisional Committee was set up at the meeting, with Odger, Cremer and many others, some of them former Chartists, former Owenites, etc., representing England, Major Wolff, Fontana, and other Italians representing Italy, Le Lubez, etc. for France, Eccarius and myself for Germany. The committee was empowered to co-opt as many people as it chose.
So far so good. I attended the first meeting of the committee. A Sub-Committee (including myself) was set up to draft a declaration des principes and provisional rules. Indisposition prevented me from attending the meeting of the Sub-Committee and the subsequent meeting of the full committee.
At these two meetings, which I did not attend, — that of the Sub-Committee and the subsequent one of the full committee — the following occurred:
Major Wolff had submitted the regulations (statutes) of the Italian Workers’ Associations (which possess a central organisation, but, as emerged later, are essentially associated Benefit Societies) to be used by the new Association. I saw the stuff later. It was evidently a concoction of Mazzini’s, and that tells you in advance in what spirit and phraseology the real question, the labour question, was dealt with. As well as how the nationalities question intruded into it.
What is more, an old Owenite, Weston — now a manufacturer himself, a very amiable and worthy man — had drawn up a programme full of extreme confusion and of indescribable breadth.
The subsequent full committee meeting instructed the Sub-Committee to remodel Weston’s programme, ditto Wolff’s regulations. Wolff himself left to attend the congress of the Italian Workingmen’s Associations in Naples and persuade them to join the central association in London.
A further meeting of the Sub-Committee, which again I did not attend, as I was informed of their rendezvous too late. At this meeting, ‘une déclaration des principes’ and a revised version of Wolff’s rules were presented by Le Lubez and accepted by the Sub-Committee for submission to the full committee. The full committee met on 18 October. Eccarius wrote to me that it was a case of periculum in mora [danger in delay], so I went along and was really shocked when I heard the worthy Le Lubez read out a fearfully cliché-ridden, badly written and totally unpolished preamble pretending to be a declaration of principles, with Mazzini showing through the whole thing from beneath a crust of the most insubstantial scraps of French socialism. What is more, the Italian rules had by and large been adopted, whose aim, apart from all their other faults, was really something quite impossible, a sort of central government of the European working classes (with Mazzini in the background, of course). I remonstrated mildly, and, after prolonged debate. Eccarius proposed that the Sub-Committee should subject the thing to further ‘editing’. However, the sentiments expressed in Lubez’ declaration were carried.
Two days later, on 20 October, Cremer representing England, Fontana (Italy) and Le Lubez met at my house. (Weston was unable to be present.) I had not previously had the papers (Wolff’s and Le Lubez) in my hands, so could not prepare anything; but I was absolutely determined that not one single line of the stuff should be allowed to stand if I could help it. To gain time, I proposed that before we ‘edited’ the preamble, we ought to ‘discuss’ the Rules. This was done. It was 1 o'clock in the morning before the first of the 40 Rules was adopted. Cremer said (and that was my whole aim): we have nothing to put before the committee that is to meet on 25 October. We must postpone it until 1 November. But the Sub-Committee can meet on 27 October and attempt to reach a definite conclusion. This was agreed and the ‘papers’ were ‘bequeathed’ to me for my perusal.
I could see it was impossible to make anything out of the stuff. In order to justify the extremely peculiar way in which I intended to edit the sentiments that had already been ‘carried’, I wrote an Address to the Working Classes (which was not in the original plan; a sort of review of the adventures of the working classes since 1845); on the pretext that all the necessary facts were contained in this ‘Address’ and that we ought not to repeat the same things three times over, I altered the whole preamble, threw out the declaration des principes and finally replaced the 40 Rules by 10. Insofar as International politics is mentioned in the ‘Address’, I refer to countries and not to nationalities, and denounce Russia, not the minores gentium [smaller nations]. The Sub-Committee adopted all my proposals. I was, however, obliged to insert two sentences about ‘duty’ and ‘right’, and ditto about ‘Truth, Morality and Justice’ in the preamble to the rules, but these are so placed that they can do no harm.
At the meeting of the General Committee my ‘Address’, etc., was adopted with great enthusiasm (unanimously). The debate on the form of publication, etc., is to take place next Tuesday. Le Lubez has a copy of the ‘Address’ for translation into French and Fontana one for translation into Italian. (For a start there is a weekly called Bee-Hive, edited by Trade Unionist Potter, a sort of Moniteur.) I am to translate the stuff into German myself.
It was very difficult to frame the thing so that our view should appear in a form that would make it acceptable to the present outlook of the workers’ movement. In a couple of weeks, the same people will be having meetings on the franchise with Bright and Cobden. It will take time before the revival of the movement allows the old boldness of language to be used. We must be fortiter in re, suaviter in modo [strong in deed, mild in manner]. You will get the stuff as soon as it is printed.
3. Bakunin sends his regards. He left today for Italy where he is living (Florence). I saw him yesterday for the first time in 16 years. I must say I liked him very much, more so than previously. With regard to the Polish movement, he said the Russian government had needed the movement to keep Russia itself quiet, but had not counted on anything like an 18-month struggle. They had thus provoked the affair in Poland. Poland had been defeated by two things, the influence of Bonaparte and, secondly, the hesitation of the Polish aristocracy in openly and unambiguously proclaiming peasant socialism from the outset. From now on — after the collapse of the Polish affair — he (Bakunin) will only involve himself in the socialist movement.
On the whole, he is one of the few people whom after 16 years I find to have moved forwards and not backwards. I also discussed Urquhart’s denunciations with him. (Apropos: the International Association will probably lead to a rupture between myself and these friends!) He inquired a great deal after yourself and Lupus. When I told him of the latter’s death, he said straightaway that the movement had suffered an irreplaceable loss.
4. Crisis. By no means burnt out on the Continent yet (esp. France). Incidentally, what the crises have lost in intensity, they have now gained in frequency.
Salut.
Your
K. M.
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1864
Marx To Engels In Manchester-1864
Source: MECW Volume 42, p. 11;
First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Stuttgart, 1913.
[London,] 4 November 1864
Dear Frederick,
I was very pleased to hear from you again.
All well here. Myself included, since your departure from here until the day before yesterday, when yet another carbuncle appeared below my right breast. If the thing does not clear up quickly and others appear, I intend to use Gumpert’s arsenic remedy this time.
I would translate your runic rüm hart, etc. as Dutch-Frisian for open heart, clear horizon. But I fear that there may be a quite different explanation, so I give up the riddle.
You must send all the enclosed papers back to me as soon as read. I still need them. So that I do not forget any of the things I wanted to tell you, I am going to number them.
1. Lassalle and Countess Hatzfeldt.
The lengthy document is a copy of a circular that Herwegh’s wife (honi soit qui mal y pense), Emma, sent to Berlin immediately after the catastrophe, so that extracts from it could be put in the newspapers. You will see from it how cleverly Emma manages to put herself and her spineless Georg in the limelight at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the report; how the account evades two important points, firstly Rüstow’s meeting with Donniges and daughter, when the latter must have renounced Lassalle before the scene recounted by Emma took place. Secondly: how the duel came about. Lassalle wrote the insulting letter. But then something happened which is not reported and which led directly to the duel.
The suppression of two such important and crucial points makes one sceptical of the accuracy of the account.
The Hatzfeldt letter. On her arrival in Berlin I got Liebknecht to take her a brief letter of condolence from myself. Liebknecht wrote to me that she was complaining ‘I left Lassalle in the lurch’, as if I could have done the man any greater service than by keeping my mouth shut and letting him do as he liked. (In his last speech before the Düsseldorf assizes, he played the part of Marquis Posa with handsome William as Philipp II, whom he was trying to persuade to suspend the present constitution, proclaim universal direct suffrage and ally himself with the proletariat.) You can see what is behind her letter and what she wants of me. I wrote a very amicable but diplomatically discouraging letter in reply. The latterday Redeemer! That personage and the sycophants, who surround her, are mad.
Apropos. A couple of numbers of E. Jones’ Notes to the People (1851, 1852) happened to fall into my hands again; as far as the economic articles are concerned, the main points in them had been written directly under my guidance and partly even in direct collaboration with myself. Well! What do I find in them? That at that time we conducted the same polemic — only better — against the co-operative movement, since it claimed, in its present narrow-minded form, to be the last word, as Lassalle conducted against Schulze-Delitzsch in Germany 10-12 years later.
In his last will and testament Lassalle has ‘installed’ Bernhard Becker, the unfortunate fellow, who was Juch’s editor on the Hermann for a while, as his successor in the office of President of the General Association of German Workers — in his ‘last will and testament’ (like a ruling prince). The Association’s congress meets in Düsseldorf this month, 16 and strong opposition to this ‘decree’ by last will and testament is expected.
Also enclosed, letter from a worker in Solingen, Klings, in fact the clandestine leader of the Rhineland workers (former member of the League). This letter is not to be returned but filed.
2. Workingmen’s International Association
Some time ago, London workers sent an address to workers in Paris about Poland and called upon them to act jointly in the matter.
For their part, the Parisians sent over a deputation headed by a worker named Tolain, who was the real workers’ candidate in the last elections in Paris, a thoroughly nice fellow. (His compagnons were quite nice lads, too.) A public meeting in St Martin’s Hall was called, for 28 September 1864, by Odger (shoemaker, President of the local Council of All London Trades’ Unions and, in particular, also of the Trades’ Unions Suffrage Agitation Society, is which is connected with Bright) and Cremer, a mason and secretary of the Mason’s Union. (These two had arranged the big Trade-Union meeting on North America chaired by Bright in St James’s Hall, ditto the Garibaldi manifestations.) A certain Le Lubez was sent to ask me if I would participate pour les ouvriers allemands [for the German workers], and, in particular, whether I was willing to provide a German worker to speak at the meeting, etc. I provided them with Eccarius, who put on a splendid performance, and I was also present myself in a non-speaking capacity on the platform. I knew that on this occasion ‘people who really count’ were appearing, both from London and from Paris, and I therefore decided to waive my usual standing rule to decline any such invitations.
(Le Lubez is a young Frenchman, i.e. in his thirties; however, he grew up in Jersey and London, speaks capital English and is a very good intermediary between the French and English workers.) (Music teacher and leçons of French.)
At the meeting, which was chock-full (for there is now evidently a revival of the working-classes taking place), Major Wolff (Thurn-Taxis, Garibaldi’s adjutant) represented the London Italian Workingmen’s Society. It was resolved to found a ‘Workingmen’s International Association’, whose General Council is to have its seat in London and is to ‘Intermediate’ between the workers’ Societies in Germany, Italy, France, and England. Ditto that a General Workingmen’s Congress was to be convened in Belgium in 1865. A Provisional Committee was set up at the meeting, with Odger, Cremer and many others, some of them former Chartists, former Owenites, etc., representing England, Major Wolff, Fontana, and other Italians representing Italy, Le Lubez, etc. for France, Eccarius and myself for Germany. The committee was empowered to co-opt as many people as it chose.
So far so good. I attended the first meeting of the committee. A Sub-Committee (including myself) was set up to draft a declaration des principes and provisional rules. Indisposition prevented me from attending the meeting of the Sub-Committee and the subsequent meeting of the full committee.
At these two meetings, which I did not attend, — that of the Sub-Committee and the subsequent one of the full committee — the following occurred:
Major Wolff had submitted the regulations (statutes) of the Italian Workers’ Associations (which possess a central organisation, but, as emerged later, are essentially associated Benefit Societies) to be used by the new Association. I saw the stuff later. It was evidently a concoction of Mazzini’s, and that tells you in advance in what spirit and phraseology the real question, the labour question, was dealt with. As well as how the nationalities question intruded into it.
What is more, an old Owenite, Weston — now a manufacturer himself, a very amiable and worthy man — had drawn up a programme full of extreme confusion and of indescribable breadth.
The subsequent full committee meeting instructed the Sub-Committee to remodel Weston’s programme, ditto Wolff’s regulations. Wolff himself left to attend the congress of the Italian Workingmen’s Associations in Naples and persuade them to join the central association in London.
A further meeting of the Sub-Committee, which again I did not attend, as I was informed of their rendezvous too late. At this meeting, ‘une déclaration des principes’ and a revised version of Wolff’s rules were presented by Le Lubez and accepted by the Sub-Committee for submission to the full committee. The full committee met on 18 October. Eccarius wrote to me that it was a case of periculum in mora [danger in delay], so I went along and was really shocked when I heard the worthy Le Lubez read out a fearfully cliché-ridden, badly written and totally unpolished preamble pretending to be a declaration of principles, with Mazzini showing through the whole thing from beneath a crust of the most insubstantial scraps of French socialism. What is more, the Italian rules had by and large been adopted, whose aim, apart from all their other faults, was really something quite impossible, a sort of central government of the European working classes (with Mazzini in the background, of course). I remonstrated mildly, and, after prolonged debate. Eccarius proposed that the Sub-Committee should subject the thing to further ‘editing’. However, the sentiments expressed in Lubez’ declaration were carried.
Two days later, on 20 October, Cremer representing England, Fontana (Italy) and Le Lubez met at my house. (Weston was unable to be present.) I had not previously had the papers (Wolff’s and Le Lubez) in my hands, so could not prepare anything; but I was absolutely determined that not one single line of the stuff should be allowed to stand if I could help it. To gain time, I proposed that before we ‘edited’ the preamble, we ought to ‘discuss’ the Rules. This was done. It was 1 o'clock in the morning before the first of the 40 Rules was adopted. Cremer said (and that was my whole aim): we have nothing to put before the committee that is to meet on 25 October. We must postpone it until 1 November. But the Sub-Committee can meet on 27 October and attempt to reach a definite conclusion. This was agreed and the ‘papers’ were ‘bequeathed’ to me for my perusal.
I could see it was impossible to make anything out of the stuff. In order to justify the extremely peculiar way in which I intended to edit the sentiments that had already been ‘carried’, I wrote an Address to the Working Classes (which was not in the original plan; a sort of review of the adventures of the working classes since 1845); on the pretext that all the necessary facts were contained in this ‘Address’ and that we ought not to repeat the same things three times over, I altered the whole preamble, threw out the declaration des principes and finally replaced the 40 Rules by 10. Insofar as International politics is mentioned in the ‘Address’, I refer to countries and not to nationalities, and denounce Russia, not the minores gentium [smaller nations]. The Sub-Committee adopted all my proposals. I was, however, obliged to insert two sentences about ‘duty’ and ‘right’, and ditto about ‘Truth, Morality and Justice’ in the preamble to the rules, but these are so placed that they can do no harm.
At the meeting of the General Committee my ‘Address’, etc., was adopted with great enthusiasm (unanimously). The debate on the form of publication, etc., is to take place next Tuesday. Le Lubez has a copy of the ‘Address’ for translation into French and Fontana one for translation into Italian. (For a start there is a weekly called Bee-Hive, edited by Trade Unionist Potter, a sort of Moniteur.) I am to translate the stuff into German myself.
It was very difficult to frame the thing so that our view should appear in a form that would make it acceptable to the present outlook of the workers’ movement. In a couple of weeks, the same people will be having meetings on the franchise with Bright and Cobden. It will take time before the revival of the movement allows the old boldness of language to be used. We must be fortiter in re, suaviter in modo [strong in deed, mild in manner]. You will get the stuff as soon as it is printed.
3. Bakunin sends his regards. He left today for Italy where he is living (Florence). I saw him yesterday for the first time in 16 years. I must say I liked him very much, more so than previously. With regard to the Polish movement, he said the Russian government had needed the movement to keep Russia itself quiet, but had not counted on anything like an 18-month struggle. They had thus provoked the affair in Poland. Poland had been defeated by two things, the influence of Bonaparte and, secondly, the hesitation of the Polish aristocracy in openly and unambiguously proclaiming peasant socialism from the outset. From now on — after the collapse of the Polish affair — he (Bakunin) will only involve himself in the socialist movement.
On the whole, he is one of the few people whom after 16 years I find to have moved forwards and not backwards. I also discussed Urquhart’s denunciations with him. (Apropos: the International Association will probably lead to a rupture between myself and these friends!) He inquired a great deal after yourself and Lupus. When I told him of the latter’s death, he said straightaway that the movement had suffered an irreplaceable loss.
4. Crisis. By no means burnt out on the Continent yet (esp. France). Incidentally, what the crises have lost in intensity, they have now gained in frequency.
Salut.
Your
K. M.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Marx To Engels In Manchester-1860
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1860
Marx To Engels In Manchester-1860
[London, after 11 January 1860]
Source: MECW, Volume 41, p. 3;
First published: abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels Works, Moscow, 1929.
Dear Marx,
Today I am sending you, under separate cover, a copy of the supplement to No. 349 of last year’s Kölnische Zeitung.
The Wilhelm Joseph Reiff mentioned therein as having a warrant out against him for “immoral conduct” is, so I am told, none other than the Reiff who appeared at the trial of the Communists in Cologne and who is presently over here and living off the party.
Now I have written to Reiff today (care of Liebknecht, not knowing how else to get in touch with him), informing him that I can no longer take any interest in him — that I forbid him to continue to use me as a reference — and that I will not tolerate his visits!
Thus, for my part, I have acted as I thought fit. What attitude the party will wish to adopt towards this dirty business is its own affair. You are now in possession of the facts!
Your
F. Freiligrath
I had never received the said ‘Reiff’ at my house because the fellow was suspect, and more than suspect, on account of his conduct at the communist trial, whereas the ‘fat rhymester’[Freiligrath] had taken him under his protection and saddled Liebknecht with him. Since then, the fellow has been living off Liebknecht, the Laplander [Anders], Lessner, Schröder, etc., and other poor devils, besides having the hat passed round at the Workers’ Society, etc.
The above letter from Freiligrath is all the news of the Teuton that I have had since the great retreat.[i.e. Freiligrath’s refusal to side with Marx against Vogt] And what an absurd letter it is. How grotesque the grandeur behind which there lurks the mentality of a cringing cur. F. seems to think that prose can be put to rights with the help of exclamation marks. ‘The party’ is to ‘adopt an attitude’. Towards what? — Towards Wilhelm Joseph Reiff’s ‘immoral conduct’ — or ‘this dirty business’, as Beta’s friend describes it. What an imposition. By the way, I might mention en passant that the ‘Association of German Men’, founded by an equivocal compositor called Zinn has nominated Prince Albert, Gottfried Kinkel, K. Blind and F. Freiligrath as its ‘honorary freemen’. The Cheruscan has, of course, accepted the charter.
Next Monday I have to pay a £1 instalment at the Marylebone County-Court. At the same time I have received from the Westminster County-Court (on behalf of a baker) the enclosed scrap of paper, which you must return to me. What I foresaw is coming to pass. No sooner has one philistine found his way to the County-Court than he is followed by another. If things go on like this, I really don’t know how I can keep my head above water. What is so disastrous about these constant interruptions is that I simply cannot get on with my work.
The review in the Darmstadt Militär-Zeitung is most welcome. Your recent pamphlet [Po and Rhine] has assured you a position as a military critic in Germany. As soon as you get the opportunity, you must publish something under your own name adding beneath it ‘Author of Po and Rhine’. Our rascally enemies shall see by and by that we're able simply to impress the public without first seeking permission from it or its Betas.
In my view, the most momentous thing happening in the world today is the slave movement — on the one hand, in America, started by the death of Brown*, and in Russia, on the other. You will have read that the aristocracy in Russia literally threw themselves into constitutional agitation and that two or three members of leading families have already found their way to Siberia. At the same time, Alexander has displeased the peasants, for the recent manifesto declares outright that, with emancipation, ‘the Communistic principle’ must be abandoned. Thus, a ‘social’ movement has been started both in the West and in the East. Together with the impending downbreak in Central Europe, this promises great things.
I have just seen in the Tribune that there’s been another slave revolt in Missouri which was put down, needless to say. But the signal has now been given. Should the affair grow serious by and by, what will become of Manchester?
Leonard Horner has resigned his post. His last brief report is replete with bitter irony. Could you possibly find out whether the Manchester mill-owners had a hand in his resignation?
It appears from the ‘Factory Inspectors’ Reports’ (of ‘1855'-'1859 first six months') that, since 1850, industry in England has made miraculous progress. The state of health of the workers (adults) has improved since your Condition of the Working-Class (which I have re-read at the Museum), whereas that of the children (mortality) has deteriorated.
Salut.
Your
K. M.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BROWN, JOHN (1800-59). American revolutionary, opponent of slavery. Leader of partisan troops in the partisan war against the slave owners in Kansas, 1854-55. He tried to form an army of runaway slaves. On October 16, 1859, he took the arsenal at Harper's Ferry by a daring attack and wanted to arm the slaves in the neighbourhood. On October 18, 1859, government troops recaptured the arsenal from him. He was executed on December 2, 1859.
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1860
Marx To Engels In Manchester-1860
[London, after 11 January 1860]
Source: MECW, Volume 41, p. 3;
First published: abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels Works, Moscow, 1929.
Dear Marx,
Today I am sending you, under separate cover, a copy of the supplement to No. 349 of last year’s Kölnische Zeitung.
The Wilhelm Joseph Reiff mentioned therein as having a warrant out against him for “immoral conduct” is, so I am told, none other than the Reiff who appeared at the trial of the Communists in Cologne and who is presently over here and living off the party.
Now I have written to Reiff today (care of Liebknecht, not knowing how else to get in touch with him), informing him that I can no longer take any interest in him — that I forbid him to continue to use me as a reference — and that I will not tolerate his visits!
Thus, for my part, I have acted as I thought fit. What attitude the party will wish to adopt towards this dirty business is its own affair. You are now in possession of the facts!
Your
F. Freiligrath
I had never received the said ‘Reiff’ at my house because the fellow was suspect, and more than suspect, on account of his conduct at the communist trial, whereas the ‘fat rhymester’[Freiligrath] had taken him under his protection and saddled Liebknecht with him. Since then, the fellow has been living off Liebknecht, the Laplander [Anders], Lessner, Schröder, etc., and other poor devils, besides having the hat passed round at the Workers’ Society, etc.
The above letter from Freiligrath is all the news of the Teuton that I have had since the great retreat.[i.e. Freiligrath’s refusal to side with Marx against Vogt] And what an absurd letter it is. How grotesque the grandeur behind which there lurks the mentality of a cringing cur. F. seems to think that prose can be put to rights with the help of exclamation marks. ‘The party’ is to ‘adopt an attitude’. Towards what? — Towards Wilhelm Joseph Reiff’s ‘immoral conduct’ — or ‘this dirty business’, as Beta’s friend describes it. What an imposition. By the way, I might mention en passant that the ‘Association of German Men’, founded by an equivocal compositor called Zinn has nominated Prince Albert, Gottfried Kinkel, K. Blind and F. Freiligrath as its ‘honorary freemen’. The Cheruscan has, of course, accepted the charter.
Next Monday I have to pay a £1 instalment at the Marylebone County-Court. At the same time I have received from the Westminster County-Court (on behalf of a baker) the enclosed scrap of paper, which you must return to me. What I foresaw is coming to pass. No sooner has one philistine found his way to the County-Court than he is followed by another. If things go on like this, I really don’t know how I can keep my head above water. What is so disastrous about these constant interruptions is that I simply cannot get on with my work.
The review in the Darmstadt Militär-Zeitung is most welcome. Your recent pamphlet [Po and Rhine] has assured you a position as a military critic in Germany. As soon as you get the opportunity, you must publish something under your own name adding beneath it ‘Author of Po and Rhine’. Our rascally enemies shall see by and by that we're able simply to impress the public without first seeking permission from it or its Betas.
In my view, the most momentous thing happening in the world today is the slave movement — on the one hand, in America, started by the death of Brown*, and in Russia, on the other. You will have read that the aristocracy in Russia literally threw themselves into constitutional agitation and that two or three members of leading families have already found their way to Siberia. At the same time, Alexander has displeased the peasants, for the recent manifesto declares outright that, with emancipation, ‘the Communistic principle’ must be abandoned. Thus, a ‘social’ movement has been started both in the West and in the East. Together with the impending downbreak in Central Europe, this promises great things.
I have just seen in the Tribune that there’s been another slave revolt in Missouri which was put down, needless to say. But the signal has now been given. Should the affair grow serious by and by, what will become of Manchester?
Leonard Horner has resigned his post. His last brief report is replete with bitter irony. Could you possibly find out whether the Manchester mill-owners had a hand in his resignation?
It appears from the ‘Factory Inspectors’ Reports’ (of ‘1855'-'1859 first six months') that, since 1850, industry in England has made miraculous progress. The state of health of the workers (adults) has improved since your Condition of the Working-Class (which I have re-read at the Museum), whereas that of the children (mortality) has deteriorated.
Salut.
Your
K. M.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BROWN, JOHN (1800-59). American revolutionary, opponent of slavery. Leader of partisan troops in the partisan war against the slave owners in Kansas, 1854-55. He tried to form an army of runaway slaves. On October 16, 1859, he took the arsenal at Harper's Ferry by a daring attack and wanted to arm the slaves in the neighbourhood. On October 18, 1859, government troops recaptured the arsenal from him. He was executed on December 2, 1859.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Engels To Joseph Weydemeyer In St Louis-1865
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1865
Engels To Joseph Weydemeyer In St Louis-1865
Source: MECW Volume 42, p. 121;
First published: abridged in Die Neue Zeit, 1906-1907, and in full in Marx and Engels, Works, Moscow, 1934.
Manchester, 10 March 1865
Dear Weydemeyer,
At last I have got down to answering your letter of 20 January. I had sent it to Marx who — partly because he was indisposed — kept it a very long while, in fact did not return it until a week ago today, so that my letter could no longer catch the steamer; I was too occupied with business on that day.
My best thanks for your detailed answers to my questions. With the negligent reporting on militaria in the papers here, I had lost the thread of all the ‘combined’ operations; I found the Red River expedition quite puzzling and I was not much wiser about Sherman’s move eastward from Vicksburg, as there was no mention here of the Southern corps advancing from New Orleans. These combined operations with a point of meeting up not merely in the enemy’s territory but even behind his very lines show precisely how crude are the ideas of strategy of a nation that has no experience of war whatever. And yet if the noble Wrangel and Prince Frederick Charles had not been 2 to 1 in the Danish war they would have got up to much the same tricks. The battle at Missunde and the 2 inexplicable ‘demonstrations’ (to give a nameless thing some kind of name, nevertheless) against Düppel before the assault were, if anything, even more childish.
As to Grant’s conduct at Richmond, I am trying to explain it in another way. I am completely of the same opinion as you that strategically the only correct thing was to attack Richmond from the west. However, it seems to me — insofar as one can form a judgement from such a distance and from such vague reports — that Grant preferred the eastern side for 2 reasons:
1. because he could provision himself more easily there. Whilst on the western side he commanded only the roads to Fredericksburg and to Tennessee (both crossing areas that had been exhausted), on the eastern side he had the Fredericksburg line, and the York and James Rivers as well. Since the difficulty of supplying large armies with provisions has played an important part throughout the war, I would not like to condemn Grant out of hand until I am clear on that score. You reproach him with having turned his back to the sea. But if one controls the sea and has secure points of embarkation (Monroe and Norfolk), then that is an advantage. Compare Wellington’s campaigns in Spain and the Crimean campaign, where the Allies, who had been victorious on the Alma, positively ran away from the enemy in order to ensure their rear the protective cover of the sea south of Sevastopol. That the possession of the Shenandoah valley was the best way to secure Washington is clear. But? The question arises
2. did Grant (and Lincoln) want to have Washington completely secure? On the contrary, it seems to me that with the loose constitution of the Federation and the great indifference to the war in some parts of the North, Lincoln never seriously wanted to drive the Confederates out of Richmond, that, on the contrary, he just wanted to pin them down in a position where they represented something of a threat to Washington, Pennsylvania and even New York. I believe that without that he would have got neither the recruits nor the money to finish the war. I certainly believe that Grant would have very much liked to have taken Richmond in the last 3-4 months, but he has not sufficient forces to do so. I see them estimated at from 70-90,000 men and Lee at 50-70,000. If this ratio is approximately correct, then, with his attack acknowledged to be strategically wrong, he has done everything possible to frustrate any offensive defence by Lee, and to encircle Richmond on at least 3 sides out of 4. For, after distinguishing himself amongst all the other generals of North and South in the last 2 years just by his brilliant use of counter-attacks, I cannot believe that Lee would now abandon this tactic unless forced to. It was, however, a stupendous gain for the North if it succeeded in pinning down the South’s best army at Richmond, in one corner of the southern territory, because of a childish point d'honneur, until the whole hinterland was cut off and militarily disrupted for the South, firstly by conquest of the Mississippi valley and then again by Sherman’s campaign, until finally, and this seems to be the case now, all the Union’s available troops are marching on Richmond and one decisive blow can put an end to the whole business.
The latest news we have is from New York, dated 25 February, i.e. it includes the taking of Charleston and Wilmington, and Sherman’s advance from Columbia to Winnsborough. This Sherman appears to be the only fellow in the North who knows how to use his men’s legs to win battles. But he must, incidentally, have splendid lads under him. I can’t wait to see what will happen. If Lee assesses his desperate situation aright, he has no choice but to pack up and go south. But where to? The only way open to him is to Lynchburg and Tennessee; but that would be exceedingly hazardous to march into such a narrow mountain valley with just one railway, and Knoxville and Chattanooga fortified ahead of him. Besides, that would probably mean sacrificing Beauregard, Hardee and all other Confederate troops positioned in North Carolina, and exposing his flank to Sherman. Or he could advance from Petersburg, turn Grant’s left flank and march directly south against Sherman? Daring, but better; the only way to draw to himself the remnants of the fleeing armies, delay Grant by destroying the railways and bridges, and fall on Sherman with superior strength. If the latter offers battle to this combined force, he will certainly be beaten; if he falls back toward the coast, he will open up the road toward Augusta for Lee who will there be able to make his first respite. But Sherman and Grant would then surely join forces and Lee would then again be faced by a superior force, this time as good as in open country; for I do not believe the Confederates can again concentrate so many heavy guns in any one place inland as to organise another Richmond there. And even if they were to do so, they would only be jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire. Or else — invasion of the North? Jefferson Davis would no doubt be capable of this, but that would also spell the end within a fortnight.
Now, however, Lee can only send some of his forces southwards as well to join with Beauregard and company and stop Sherman, and this seems to me the most probable course. In this case, Sherman will probably give them a proper ‘drubbing’, as they say in South Germany, and then Lee will really be stuck. But even if Sherman were to be defeated, Lee would only have gained one month’s respite, and the troops advancing from every part of the coast — not to mention Grant’s successes in the meantime against the weakened Richmond army — would soon make his position as bad as it had been before. One way or another, the game is up, and I look forward to the arrival of each steamer with expectancy; there is a positive deluge of exciting news just now. The strategic speculations of the numerous Southern sympathisers here are most comical to listen to, they are all epitomised by the remark made by the Polish general Sznaycle in the Palatinate who said after every rout, ‘We are doing exactly what Kossuth did’.
Incidentally, I am most grateful to you for your explanations about military organisation in America, it was only as a result of them that I obtained a clear picture of many aspects of the war there. I have been familiar with the canons Napoléon for many a long year, the English had already replaced them (light, smooth-bore 12-pounders with a charge weighing 1/4 of the ball) when Louis Bonaparte re-invented them. You may have any number of Prussian howitzers, as they have all been withdrawn now and replaced by rifled 6-pounders and 4-pounders (which fire 13-pound and 9-pound heavy shells). I am not surprised that the elevation of your howitzers is only 5°, it was no higher with the old long howitzers the French had (until 1856), and, if I am not mistaken, the English ones were only a little more. In general, the high-angle fire from howitzers has been used for a long time only by the Germans; its great unreliability in range-finding in particular had brought it into disrepute.
Now to other matters.
A Frankfurt lawyer ‘von Schweitzer’ had indeed established himself in Berlin with a little paper called Der Social-Demokrat and asked us to write for it. As Liebknecht, who is in Berlin, was to join the editorial board, we accepted. But then, firstly, the little paper embarked on an insufferable cult of Lassalle, whilst we meanwhile received positive proof (the old Hatzfeldt woman told Liebknecht about it and urged him to work for the same ends) that Lassalle was much more deeply implicated with Bismarck than we had ever realised. There was an actual alliance between the two which had gone so far that Lassalle was to go to Schleswig-Holstein and there to advocate the annexation of the duchies by Prussia, while Bismarck had rather less definitely consented to the introduction of a sort of universal suffrage and more definitely to the right of combination and concessions regarding social policy, state support for workers’ associations, etc. The foolish Lassalle had no guarantee whatever from Bismarck, au contraire he would have been put in prison sans façon as soon as he became troublesome. The gentlemen on the Social-Demokrat knew this but, for all that, they continued to intensify their cult of Lassalle. In addition to that, the fellows allowed themselves to be intimidated by threats from Wagener (of the Kreuz-Zeitung) into paying court to Bismarck, flirting with him, etc., etc. That was the last straw. We published the enclosed statement and made our exit, with Liebknecht doing likewise. The Social-Demokrat then declared that we did not belong to the Social-Democratic Party, which excommunication naturally did not bother us. The whole Lassallean General Association of German Workers’ has taken such a wrong road that nothing can be done with it; however, it will not last long.
I was asked to write about the military question, which I did, but, in the meantime, relations between us became more strained, and the article turned into a pamphlet, which I have now had published separately; I am now sending you a copy of it by the same steamer. To judge by the newspapers I receive, the thing appears to be creating quite a furore, especially on the Rhine, and it will, at any rate, make it very difficult for the workers to ally themselves with reaction just now.
The International Association in London is going from strength to strength. In Paris especially, in London no less so. It is also going well in Switzerland and Italy. Only the German Lassalleans are refusing to bite, and in present circumstances least of all. However, we are again receiving letters and offers from all sides in Germany, a decisive change has taken place, and the rest will turn out right.
The only reply I can make to your wife’s question is that I have not yet entered into a state of holy matrimony.
Photographs enclosed, of Lupus and myself, I have come out a little too dark; but it is the only one I have left.
Schimmelpfennig has taken Charleston — Hurrah!
Write soon.
Your
F. Engels
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1865
Engels To Joseph Weydemeyer In St Louis-1865
Source: MECW Volume 42, p. 121;
First published: abridged in Die Neue Zeit, 1906-1907, and in full in Marx and Engels, Works, Moscow, 1934.
Manchester, 10 March 1865
Dear Weydemeyer,
At last I have got down to answering your letter of 20 January. I had sent it to Marx who — partly because he was indisposed — kept it a very long while, in fact did not return it until a week ago today, so that my letter could no longer catch the steamer; I was too occupied with business on that day.
My best thanks for your detailed answers to my questions. With the negligent reporting on militaria in the papers here, I had lost the thread of all the ‘combined’ operations; I found the Red River expedition quite puzzling and I was not much wiser about Sherman’s move eastward from Vicksburg, as there was no mention here of the Southern corps advancing from New Orleans. These combined operations with a point of meeting up not merely in the enemy’s territory but even behind his very lines show precisely how crude are the ideas of strategy of a nation that has no experience of war whatever. And yet if the noble Wrangel and Prince Frederick Charles had not been 2 to 1 in the Danish war they would have got up to much the same tricks. The battle at Missunde and the 2 inexplicable ‘demonstrations’ (to give a nameless thing some kind of name, nevertheless) against Düppel before the assault were, if anything, even more childish.
As to Grant’s conduct at Richmond, I am trying to explain it in another way. I am completely of the same opinion as you that strategically the only correct thing was to attack Richmond from the west. However, it seems to me — insofar as one can form a judgement from such a distance and from such vague reports — that Grant preferred the eastern side for 2 reasons:
1. because he could provision himself more easily there. Whilst on the western side he commanded only the roads to Fredericksburg and to Tennessee (both crossing areas that had been exhausted), on the eastern side he had the Fredericksburg line, and the York and James Rivers as well. Since the difficulty of supplying large armies with provisions has played an important part throughout the war, I would not like to condemn Grant out of hand until I am clear on that score. You reproach him with having turned his back to the sea. But if one controls the sea and has secure points of embarkation (Monroe and Norfolk), then that is an advantage. Compare Wellington’s campaigns in Spain and the Crimean campaign, where the Allies, who had been victorious on the Alma, positively ran away from the enemy in order to ensure their rear the protective cover of the sea south of Sevastopol. That the possession of the Shenandoah valley was the best way to secure Washington is clear. But? The question arises
2. did Grant (and Lincoln) want to have Washington completely secure? On the contrary, it seems to me that with the loose constitution of the Federation and the great indifference to the war in some parts of the North, Lincoln never seriously wanted to drive the Confederates out of Richmond, that, on the contrary, he just wanted to pin them down in a position where they represented something of a threat to Washington, Pennsylvania and even New York. I believe that without that he would have got neither the recruits nor the money to finish the war. I certainly believe that Grant would have very much liked to have taken Richmond in the last 3-4 months, but he has not sufficient forces to do so. I see them estimated at from 70-90,000 men and Lee at 50-70,000. If this ratio is approximately correct, then, with his attack acknowledged to be strategically wrong, he has done everything possible to frustrate any offensive defence by Lee, and to encircle Richmond on at least 3 sides out of 4. For, after distinguishing himself amongst all the other generals of North and South in the last 2 years just by his brilliant use of counter-attacks, I cannot believe that Lee would now abandon this tactic unless forced to. It was, however, a stupendous gain for the North if it succeeded in pinning down the South’s best army at Richmond, in one corner of the southern territory, because of a childish point d'honneur, until the whole hinterland was cut off and militarily disrupted for the South, firstly by conquest of the Mississippi valley and then again by Sherman’s campaign, until finally, and this seems to be the case now, all the Union’s available troops are marching on Richmond and one decisive blow can put an end to the whole business.
The latest news we have is from New York, dated 25 February, i.e. it includes the taking of Charleston and Wilmington, and Sherman’s advance from Columbia to Winnsborough. This Sherman appears to be the only fellow in the North who knows how to use his men’s legs to win battles. But he must, incidentally, have splendid lads under him. I can’t wait to see what will happen. If Lee assesses his desperate situation aright, he has no choice but to pack up and go south. But where to? The only way open to him is to Lynchburg and Tennessee; but that would be exceedingly hazardous to march into such a narrow mountain valley with just one railway, and Knoxville and Chattanooga fortified ahead of him. Besides, that would probably mean sacrificing Beauregard, Hardee and all other Confederate troops positioned in North Carolina, and exposing his flank to Sherman. Or he could advance from Petersburg, turn Grant’s left flank and march directly south against Sherman? Daring, but better; the only way to draw to himself the remnants of the fleeing armies, delay Grant by destroying the railways and bridges, and fall on Sherman with superior strength. If the latter offers battle to this combined force, he will certainly be beaten; if he falls back toward the coast, he will open up the road toward Augusta for Lee who will there be able to make his first respite. But Sherman and Grant would then surely join forces and Lee would then again be faced by a superior force, this time as good as in open country; for I do not believe the Confederates can again concentrate so many heavy guns in any one place inland as to organise another Richmond there. And even if they were to do so, they would only be jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire. Or else — invasion of the North? Jefferson Davis would no doubt be capable of this, but that would also spell the end within a fortnight.
Now, however, Lee can only send some of his forces southwards as well to join with Beauregard and company and stop Sherman, and this seems to me the most probable course. In this case, Sherman will probably give them a proper ‘drubbing’, as they say in South Germany, and then Lee will really be stuck. But even if Sherman were to be defeated, Lee would only have gained one month’s respite, and the troops advancing from every part of the coast — not to mention Grant’s successes in the meantime against the weakened Richmond army — would soon make his position as bad as it had been before. One way or another, the game is up, and I look forward to the arrival of each steamer with expectancy; there is a positive deluge of exciting news just now. The strategic speculations of the numerous Southern sympathisers here are most comical to listen to, they are all epitomised by the remark made by the Polish general Sznaycle in the Palatinate who said after every rout, ‘We are doing exactly what Kossuth did’.
Incidentally, I am most grateful to you for your explanations about military organisation in America, it was only as a result of them that I obtained a clear picture of many aspects of the war there. I have been familiar with the canons Napoléon for many a long year, the English had already replaced them (light, smooth-bore 12-pounders with a charge weighing 1/4 of the ball) when Louis Bonaparte re-invented them. You may have any number of Prussian howitzers, as they have all been withdrawn now and replaced by rifled 6-pounders and 4-pounders (which fire 13-pound and 9-pound heavy shells). I am not surprised that the elevation of your howitzers is only 5°, it was no higher with the old long howitzers the French had (until 1856), and, if I am not mistaken, the English ones were only a little more. In general, the high-angle fire from howitzers has been used for a long time only by the Germans; its great unreliability in range-finding in particular had brought it into disrepute.
Now to other matters.
A Frankfurt lawyer ‘von Schweitzer’ had indeed established himself in Berlin with a little paper called Der Social-Demokrat and asked us to write for it. As Liebknecht, who is in Berlin, was to join the editorial board, we accepted. But then, firstly, the little paper embarked on an insufferable cult of Lassalle, whilst we meanwhile received positive proof (the old Hatzfeldt woman told Liebknecht about it and urged him to work for the same ends) that Lassalle was much more deeply implicated with Bismarck than we had ever realised. There was an actual alliance between the two which had gone so far that Lassalle was to go to Schleswig-Holstein and there to advocate the annexation of the duchies by Prussia, while Bismarck had rather less definitely consented to the introduction of a sort of universal suffrage and more definitely to the right of combination and concessions regarding social policy, state support for workers’ associations, etc. The foolish Lassalle had no guarantee whatever from Bismarck, au contraire he would have been put in prison sans façon as soon as he became troublesome. The gentlemen on the Social-Demokrat knew this but, for all that, they continued to intensify their cult of Lassalle. In addition to that, the fellows allowed themselves to be intimidated by threats from Wagener (of the Kreuz-Zeitung) into paying court to Bismarck, flirting with him, etc., etc. That was the last straw. We published the enclosed statement and made our exit, with Liebknecht doing likewise. The Social-Demokrat then declared that we did not belong to the Social-Democratic Party, which excommunication naturally did not bother us. The whole Lassallean General Association of German Workers’ has taken such a wrong road that nothing can be done with it; however, it will not last long.
I was asked to write about the military question, which I did, but, in the meantime, relations between us became more strained, and the article turned into a pamphlet, which I have now had published separately; I am now sending you a copy of it by the same steamer. To judge by the newspapers I receive, the thing appears to be creating quite a furore, especially on the Rhine, and it will, at any rate, make it very difficult for the workers to ally themselves with reaction just now.
The International Association in London is going from strength to strength. In Paris especially, in London no less so. It is also going well in Switzerland and Italy. Only the German Lassalleans are refusing to bite, and in present circumstances least of all. However, we are again receiving letters and offers from all sides in Germany, a decisive change has taken place, and the rest will turn out right.
The only reply I can make to your wife’s question is that I have not yet entered into a state of holy matrimony.
Photographs enclosed, of Lupus and myself, I have come out a little too dark; but it is the only one I have left.
Schimmelpfennig has taken Charleston — Hurrah!
Write soon.
Your
F. Engels
Monday, September 12, 2011
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Marx To Ludwig Kugelmann In Hanover-1865
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1865
Marx To Ludwig Kugelmann In Hanover-1865
Source: MECW Volume 42, p. 101;
First published: in Sozialistische Auslandspolitik, No. 18, 1918;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
London, 23 February 1865
1 Modena Villas, Maitland Park, Haverstock Hill
Dear Friend,
Yesterday I received your letter, which I found most interesting, and will now reply to the various points.
First of all, I shall briefly describe my attitude towards Lassalle. Whilst he was pursuing his agitation, our relations were suspended, 1. on account of his bombastic self-adulation, which he managed to combine with the most shameless plagiarism of writings by myself and others; 2. because I condemned his political tactics; 3. because, even before he began his agitation, I had fully explained and ‘proved’ to him here in London that direct socialist intervention by a ‘Prussian state’ was an absurdity. In his letters to me (from 1848 to 1863), as well as when we met personally, he had always declared himself a supporter of the party I represent. As soon as he had become convinced in London (at the end of 1862) that he could not play his game with me, he resolved to set himself up as ‘workers’ dictator’ against me and the old party. In spite of all that, I acknowledged his merits as an agitator, although towards the end of his brief career even that agitation appeared to me in an increasingly dubious light. His sudden death, our friendship of old, the grief-stricken letters from Countess Hatzfeldt, my indignation at the cowardly impudence of the bourgeois papers towards the man they had feared so much while he was alive, all these things induced me to publish a short statement attacking that wretch Blind but not dealing with the substance of Lassalle’s doings (Hatzfeldt sent the statement to the Nordstern). For the same reasons, and in the hope of being able to drive out those elements whom I thought dangerous, Engels and I promised to contribute to the Social-Demokrat (it has published a translation of the ‘Address’, and, at its request, I wrote an article about Proudhon when the latter died) and allowed our names to be put out as contributors, after Schweitzer had sent us a satisfactory programme of its editorial board. We had a further guarantee in W. Liebknecht being an unofficial member of the editorial board. In the meantime, it soon became clear — the proof of this came into our possession — that Lassalle had in fact betrayed the party. He had entered into a formal contract with Bismarck (with no guarantees of any kind in his hands, of course). At the end of September 1864, he was to go to Hamburg and there (together with the crazy Schramm and the Prussian police spy Marr) ‘force’ Bismarck to incorporate Schleswig-Holstein, i.e. to proclaim such in the name of the ‘workers’, etc., in return for which Bismarck promised universal suffrage and a few spurious socialist measures. It is a pity that Lassalle was unable to play this farce through to its conclusion! It would have made him appear deuced foolish and an utter gull! And it would have put paid to all such attempts for ever!
Lassalle got on the wrong path because he was, like Mr Miquel, a ‘realistic politician’, only on a larger scale and with grander aims! (By-the-bye, I had long ago seen through Miquel sufficiently to explain his conduct to myself by the fact that the National Association offered a splendid excuse for a petty Hanoverian lawyer to make himself heard beyond his own four walls, in Germany at large, and then to exploit the enhanced ‘reality’ of his own self retrospectively in his native Hanover, playing the ‘Hanoverian’ Mirabeau under ‘Prussian’ protection, furthermore.) Just as Miquel and his present friends eagerly seized hold of the ‘New Era’ inaugurated by the Prussian Prince Regent in order to national-associate and to fasten on to the ‘Prussian leadership’, just as in general they cultivated their ‘pride of citizenship’ under Prussian protection so Lassalle wanted to play the Marquis Posa of the proletariat to the Philipp II of the Uckermark, with Bismarck as intermediary between himself and the Prussian monarchy. He was merely imitating the gentlemen of the National Association. But, if the latter were invoking Prussian ‘reaction’ in the interests of the middle class, he was shaking hands with Bismarck in the interests of the proletariat. Those gentlemen had more justification than Lassalle, inasmuch as the bourgeois is accustomed to regard the interest he perceives immediately in front of his nose as ‘reality’, and as this class has, in fact, compromised everywhere, even with feudalism, whereas the working class must in the nature of things be genuinely ‘revolutionary’.
For a histrionically vain character like Lassalle (who was not, however, to be bribed with such paltry things as office, mayoralties, etc.), it was a most seductive thought that he, Ferdinand Lassalle, might perform a deed for the direct benefit of the proletariat! He was, in fact, too ignorant of the real economic conditions required for such a deed to be critically self-consistent! The German workers, on the other hand, had ‘demoralised’ too far in consequence of the despicable ‘realistic politics’ with which the German bourgeoisie had tolerated the reaction of 1849-1859 and watched the people’s minds being stultified, for them not to hail such a mountebank of a saviour who was promising to help them reach the promised land with one bound!
So, to take up the thread where I left off above! Hardly had the Social-Demokrat been established when it became clear that the old Hatzfeldt woman was planning to execute Lassalle’s ‘testament’ posthumously. She had contact with Bismarck through Wagener (of the Kreuz-Zeitung). She placed the ‘Workers’ Association’ (Gen. German), the Social-Demokrat, etc., at Bismarck’s disposal. The annexation of Schleswig-Holstein was to be proclaimed in the Social-Demokrat, Bismarck to be generally acknowledged as patron, etc. The whole of this fine plan was frustrated because we had Liebknecht in Berlin and on the editorial board of the Social-Demokrat. Although Engels and I disliked the editorial board of the paper, its lick-spittling cult of Lassalle, its occasional flirting with Bismarck, etc., it was, of course, more important publicly to stay with the paper for the time being in order to thwart the intrigues of the old Hatzfeldt woman and prevent the workers’ party from being totally compromised. We therefore put on bonne mine à mauvais jeu [put brave face on it] although privatim we were constantly writing to the Social-Demokrat telling them that they should stand up to Bismarck just as much as to the men of Progress. We even tolerated that affected fop, Bernhard Becker, who is taking the importance bequeathed to him in Lassalle’s testament quite seriously, intriguing against the International Workingmen’s Association.
In the meantime, Mr Schweitzer’s articles in the Social-Demokrat were becoming more and more Bismarckian. I had earlier written to him to say that, although the men of Progress can be intimidated over the ‘Combination question’, the Prussian government would never under any circumstances concede the complete abolition of the Combination Laws because that would entail breaching the bureaucratic system, giving freedom of thought and expression to the workers, tearing up the Rules Governing Servants, abolishing flogging and birching by the aristocracy in rural areas, etc., etc., which Bismarck could never allow, it being altogether incompatible with the Prussian bureaucratic state. I added that, if the Chamber were to repudiate the Combination Laws, the government would resort to empty phrases (such as e.g. that the social question requires ‘profounder’ steps to be taken, etc.) in order to preserve them. All this has come to pass. And what did Mr von Schweitzer do? He wrote an article in support of Bismarck and is reserving all his heroism for such infiniment petits as Schulze, Faucher, etc.
I believe that Schweitzer, etc., mean it sincerely, but they are ‘realistic politicians’. They wish to take due account of the existing state of affairs and not leave this privilege of ‘realistic politics’ to Messrs Miquel et Comp. alone. (The latter seem to wish to reserve the right of intermixture with the Prussian government.) They know that the workers’ papers and the workers’ movement in Prussia (and hence in the rest of Germany) only exist par la grâce de la police. They thus want to take the circumstances as they are, not to irritate the government, etc., quite as our ‘republican’ realistic politicians want to ‘put up with’ a Hohenzollern emperor. As I am not a ‘realistic politician’, however, I found it necessary together with Engels to serve notice on the Social-Demokrat in a public statement (which you will probably soon see in one paper or other).
You will see at the same time why there is nothing I can do in Prussia at the moment. The government there has flatly refused to restore my Prussian citizenship. I should only be permitted to agitate there in a manner agreeable to Mr von Bismarck.
I prefer my agitation here through the ‘International Association’ a 100 times. The effect on the English proletariat is direct and of the greatest importance. We are now stirring the general suffrage question here, which is, naturally, of quite different significance here than in Prussia.
As a whole, the progress made by this ‘Association’ has exceeded all expectations here, in Paris, in Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy. Only in Germany, of course, I am opposed by Lassalle’s successors who 1. are stupidly afraid of forfeiting their own importance; 2. are aware of my avowed opposition to what the Germans call ‘realistic politics’. (It is this sort of ‘reality’ that puts Germany so far behind all civilised countries.)
Since any person who takes out a card at 1 shilling can become a member of the Association; since the French have chosen this form of individual membership (ditto the Belgians) because the law prohibits them from joining us as an ‘association'; and since the situation is similar in Germany, I have now resolved to ask my friends here and in Germany to form small societies, regardless of how many members there may be in each locality, each member of which will acquire an English card of membership. Since the English society is public, there is no obstacle to this procedure even in France. I should appreciate it if you, too, would get in touch with London in this way in your neighbourhood.
My thanks to you for your prescription. Oddly enough this vile disease had broken out once more 3 days before it arrived. So, the prescription was most timely.
In a few days I shall send you another 24 Addresses. I have just been interrupted in my writing by a friend, and, as I very much want to send off this letter, I shall take up the other points in your letter next time.
Yours
K. M.
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1865
Marx To Ludwig Kugelmann In Hanover-1865
Source: MECW Volume 42, p. 101;
First published: in Sozialistische Auslandspolitik, No. 18, 1918;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
London, 23 February 1865
1 Modena Villas, Maitland Park, Haverstock Hill
Dear Friend,
Yesterday I received your letter, which I found most interesting, and will now reply to the various points.
First of all, I shall briefly describe my attitude towards Lassalle. Whilst he was pursuing his agitation, our relations were suspended, 1. on account of his bombastic self-adulation, which he managed to combine with the most shameless plagiarism of writings by myself and others; 2. because I condemned his political tactics; 3. because, even before he began his agitation, I had fully explained and ‘proved’ to him here in London that direct socialist intervention by a ‘Prussian state’ was an absurdity. In his letters to me (from 1848 to 1863), as well as when we met personally, he had always declared himself a supporter of the party I represent. As soon as he had become convinced in London (at the end of 1862) that he could not play his game with me, he resolved to set himself up as ‘workers’ dictator’ against me and the old party. In spite of all that, I acknowledged his merits as an agitator, although towards the end of his brief career even that agitation appeared to me in an increasingly dubious light. His sudden death, our friendship of old, the grief-stricken letters from Countess Hatzfeldt, my indignation at the cowardly impudence of the bourgeois papers towards the man they had feared so much while he was alive, all these things induced me to publish a short statement attacking that wretch Blind but not dealing with the substance of Lassalle’s doings (Hatzfeldt sent the statement to the Nordstern). For the same reasons, and in the hope of being able to drive out those elements whom I thought dangerous, Engels and I promised to contribute to the Social-Demokrat (it has published a translation of the ‘Address’, and, at its request, I wrote an article about Proudhon when the latter died) and allowed our names to be put out as contributors, after Schweitzer had sent us a satisfactory programme of its editorial board. We had a further guarantee in W. Liebknecht being an unofficial member of the editorial board. In the meantime, it soon became clear — the proof of this came into our possession — that Lassalle had in fact betrayed the party. He had entered into a formal contract with Bismarck (with no guarantees of any kind in his hands, of course). At the end of September 1864, he was to go to Hamburg and there (together with the crazy Schramm and the Prussian police spy Marr) ‘force’ Bismarck to incorporate Schleswig-Holstein, i.e. to proclaim such in the name of the ‘workers’, etc., in return for which Bismarck promised universal suffrage and a few spurious socialist measures. It is a pity that Lassalle was unable to play this farce through to its conclusion! It would have made him appear deuced foolish and an utter gull! And it would have put paid to all such attempts for ever!
Lassalle got on the wrong path because he was, like Mr Miquel, a ‘realistic politician’, only on a larger scale and with grander aims! (By-the-bye, I had long ago seen through Miquel sufficiently to explain his conduct to myself by the fact that the National Association offered a splendid excuse for a petty Hanoverian lawyer to make himself heard beyond his own four walls, in Germany at large, and then to exploit the enhanced ‘reality’ of his own self retrospectively in his native Hanover, playing the ‘Hanoverian’ Mirabeau under ‘Prussian’ protection, furthermore.) Just as Miquel and his present friends eagerly seized hold of the ‘New Era’ inaugurated by the Prussian Prince Regent in order to national-associate and to fasten on to the ‘Prussian leadership’, just as in general they cultivated their ‘pride of citizenship’ under Prussian protection so Lassalle wanted to play the Marquis Posa of the proletariat to the Philipp II of the Uckermark, with Bismarck as intermediary between himself and the Prussian monarchy. He was merely imitating the gentlemen of the National Association. But, if the latter were invoking Prussian ‘reaction’ in the interests of the middle class, he was shaking hands with Bismarck in the interests of the proletariat. Those gentlemen had more justification than Lassalle, inasmuch as the bourgeois is accustomed to regard the interest he perceives immediately in front of his nose as ‘reality’, and as this class has, in fact, compromised everywhere, even with feudalism, whereas the working class must in the nature of things be genuinely ‘revolutionary’.
For a histrionically vain character like Lassalle (who was not, however, to be bribed with such paltry things as office, mayoralties, etc.), it was a most seductive thought that he, Ferdinand Lassalle, might perform a deed for the direct benefit of the proletariat! He was, in fact, too ignorant of the real economic conditions required for such a deed to be critically self-consistent! The German workers, on the other hand, had ‘demoralised’ too far in consequence of the despicable ‘realistic politics’ with which the German bourgeoisie had tolerated the reaction of 1849-1859 and watched the people’s minds being stultified, for them not to hail such a mountebank of a saviour who was promising to help them reach the promised land with one bound!
So, to take up the thread where I left off above! Hardly had the Social-Demokrat been established when it became clear that the old Hatzfeldt woman was planning to execute Lassalle’s ‘testament’ posthumously. She had contact with Bismarck through Wagener (of the Kreuz-Zeitung). She placed the ‘Workers’ Association’ (Gen. German), the Social-Demokrat, etc., at Bismarck’s disposal. The annexation of Schleswig-Holstein was to be proclaimed in the Social-Demokrat, Bismarck to be generally acknowledged as patron, etc. The whole of this fine plan was frustrated because we had Liebknecht in Berlin and on the editorial board of the Social-Demokrat. Although Engels and I disliked the editorial board of the paper, its lick-spittling cult of Lassalle, its occasional flirting with Bismarck, etc., it was, of course, more important publicly to stay with the paper for the time being in order to thwart the intrigues of the old Hatzfeldt woman and prevent the workers’ party from being totally compromised. We therefore put on bonne mine à mauvais jeu [put brave face on it] although privatim we were constantly writing to the Social-Demokrat telling them that they should stand up to Bismarck just as much as to the men of Progress. We even tolerated that affected fop, Bernhard Becker, who is taking the importance bequeathed to him in Lassalle’s testament quite seriously, intriguing against the International Workingmen’s Association.
In the meantime, Mr Schweitzer’s articles in the Social-Demokrat were becoming more and more Bismarckian. I had earlier written to him to say that, although the men of Progress can be intimidated over the ‘Combination question’, the Prussian government would never under any circumstances concede the complete abolition of the Combination Laws because that would entail breaching the bureaucratic system, giving freedom of thought and expression to the workers, tearing up the Rules Governing Servants, abolishing flogging and birching by the aristocracy in rural areas, etc., etc., which Bismarck could never allow, it being altogether incompatible with the Prussian bureaucratic state. I added that, if the Chamber were to repudiate the Combination Laws, the government would resort to empty phrases (such as e.g. that the social question requires ‘profounder’ steps to be taken, etc.) in order to preserve them. All this has come to pass. And what did Mr von Schweitzer do? He wrote an article in support of Bismarck and is reserving all his heroism for such infiniment petits as Schulze, Faucher, etc.
I believe that Schweitzer, etc., mean it sincerely, but they are ‘realistic politicians’. They wish to take due account of the existing state of affairs and not leave this privilege of ‘realistic politics’ to Messrs Miquel et Comp. alone. (The latter seem to wish to reserve the right of intermixture with the Prussian government.) They know that the workers’ papers and the workers’ movement in Prussia (and hence in the rest of Germany) only exist par la grâce de la police. They thus want to take the circumstances as they are, not to irritate the government, etc., quite as our ‘republican’ realistic politicians want to ‘put up with’ a Hohenzollern emperor. As I am not a ‘realistic politician’, however, I found it necessary together with Engels to serve notice on the Social-Demokrat in a public statement (which you will probably soon see in one paper or other).
You will see at the same time why there is nothing I can do in Prussia at the moment. The government there has flatly refused to restore my Prussian citizenship. I should only be permitted to agitate there in a manner agreeable to Mr von Bismarck.
I prefer my agitation here through the ‘International Association’ a 100 times. The effect on the English proletariat is direct and of the greatest importance. We are now stirring the general suffrage question here, which is, naturally, of quite different significance here than in Prussia.
As a whole, the progress made by this ‘Association’ has exceeded all expectations here, in Paris, in Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy. Only in Germany, of course, I am opposed by Lassalle’s successors who 1. are stupidly afraid of forfeiting their own importance; 2. are aware of my avowed opposition to what the Germans call ‘realistic politics’. (It is this sort of ‘reality’ that puts Germany so far behind all civilised countries.)
Since any person who takes out a card at 1 shilling can become a member of the Association; since the French have chosen this form of individual membership (ditto the Belgians) because the law prohibits them from joining us as an ‘association'; and since the situation is similar in Germany, I have now resolved to ask my friends here and in Germany to form small societies, regardless of how many members there may be in each locality, each member of which will acquire an English card of membership. Since the English society is public, there is no obstacle to this procedure even in France. I should appreciate it if you, too, would get in touch with London in this way in your neighbourhood.
My thanks to you for your prescription. Oddly enough this vile disease had broken out once more 3 days before it arrived. So, the prescription was most timely.
In a few days I shall send you another 24 Addresses. I have just been interrupted in my writing by a friend, and, as I very much want to send off this letter, I shall take up the other points in your letter next time.
Yours
K. M.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Joseph Weydemeyer, 19th Century Socialist and Karl Marx Associate
Click on title to link to Karl Marx's Letter To Joseph Weydemeyer from the Karl Marx-Friedrich Engels Internet Archives. More of their correspondence can be clicked on there. For more information about Wedemeyer a key transplanted to America German supporter of Karl Marx Google for his Wikipedia entry.
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Marx To Lion Philips In Zalt-Bommel (1864)
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1864
Marx To Lion Philips In Zalt-Bommel (1864)
Source: MECW Volume 42, p. 46;
First published: in International Review of Social History, Assen, 1956.
London, 29 November 1864
1 Modena Villas, Maitland Park, Haverstock Hill
Dear Uncle,
I hope that you are in the best of health despite the abominable weather. All is well here. Except that, to the great alarm of the whole family, I had a most malignant carbuncle below the left breast at the beginning of this month, which kept me in great pain for 2-3 weeks. Other than that, everything has been going well.
The trade crisis, which I predicted to you long before its actual arrival has by this time long since lost its edge, although its consequences in the manufacturing districts proper are still very considerable. On the other hand, I believe a political crisis is to be expected in the spring or early summer. Bonaparte has again reached the point where he will have to make war again if he is to raise a loan. The Venetian business is being kept open (I am acquainted with some of the agents there) so that it can provide a point of contact if need be. It is possible that Bonaparte will again find a way out, and then he will keep the peace (for he is no real Napoleon), but that is rather improbable.
The enclosed printed Address is written by myself. The matter hangs together like this: in September the Parisian workers sent a delegation to the London workers to demonstrate support for Poland. On that occasion, an international Workers’ Committee was formed. The matter is not without importance because 1. in London the same people are at the head who organised the gigantic reception for Garibaldi and, by their monster meeting with Bright in St James’s Hall, prevented war with the United States. In a word, these are the real workers’ leaders in London, with one or two exceptions all workers themselves. 2. On the Parisian side, Mr Tolain (ouvrier himself, as well) et Co. are at the head, i.e., the same people who were prevented by a mere intrigue on the part of Garnier-Pagès, Carnot, etc., from entering the Corps législatif at the last elections in Paris as representatives of the workers there, and 3. on the Italian side, it has been joined by the representatives of the 4-500 Italian workers’ clubs which held their general congress in Naples some weeks ago an event which even The Times considered important enough to merit a few dozen lines in the paper.
Courtesy toward the French and the Italians, who always require florid language, has obliged me to include a few superfluous turns of phrase in the preamble to the ‘Rules’, though not in the ‘Address’.
A few day’s ago I received a letter from America from my friend Weydemeyer, Colonel in the regiment stationed at St Louis (Missouri). Amongst other things, he writes — and these are his exact words:
‘We are regrettably being detained here at St Louis, since, in view of the many “conservative” elements here, a military force is a continuing necessity to prevent a break-out and the possible release of the numerous Southern prisoners. ... The whole campaign in Virginia is a blunder, which has cost us innumerable men. But for all that, the South will not be able to hold out much longer: it has sent its last man into battle and has no fresh army to call upon. The present invasion of Missouri, like the incursions into Tennessee, has only the character of a raid, a foray: there can be no thought of a lasting re-occupation of districts that have been lost.’
When you reflect, my dear Uncle, how at the time of Lincoln’s election 3½ years ago it was only a matter of making no further concessions to the slave-owners, whereas now the avowed aim, which has in part already been realised, is the abolition of slavery, one has to admit that never has such a gigantic revolution occurred with such rapidity. It will have a highly beneficial influence on the whole world.
At a public meeting this week the fellow-member of our race Benjamin Disraeli has again made a dreadful laughing-stock of himself by assuming the mantle of guardian angel of the High Church and Church rates, repudiating criticism in religious affairs. He furnishes the best evidence of how a great talent unaccompanied by conviction creates rogues, albeit gold-braided and ‘Right Honorable’ ones.
Those jackasses in Germany have again made a proper laughing-stock of themselves over the Muller affair, with ex-parson Kinkel at their head.
With kindest regards from the whole family to you and from me to Jettchen, Dr, Fritz et Co.
Ever your faithful nephew
K. M.
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1864
Marx To Lion Philips In Zalt-Bommel (1864)
Source: MECW Volume 42, p. 46;
First published: in International Review of Social History, Assen, 1956.
London, 29 November 1864
1 Modena Villas, Maitland Park, Haverstock Hill
Dear Uncle,
I hope that you are in the best of health despite the abominable weather. All is well here. Except that, to the great alarm of the whole family, I had a most malignant carbuncle below the left breast at the beginning of this month, which kept me in great pain for 2-3 weeks. Other than that, everything has been going well.
The trade crisis, which I predicted to you long before its actual arrival has by this time long since lost its edge, although its consequences in the manufacturing districts proper are still very considerable. On the other hand, I believe a political crisis is to be expected in the spring or early summer. Bonaparte has again reached the point where he will have to make war again if he is to raise a loan. The Venetian business is being kept open (I am acquainted with some of the agents there) so that it can provide a point of contact if need be. It is possible that Bonaparte will again find a way out, and then he will keep the peace (for he is no real Napoleon), but that is rather improbable.
The enclosed printed Address is written by myself. The matter hangs together like this: in September the Parisian workers sent a delegation to the London workers to demonstrate support for Poland. On that occasion, an international Workers’ Committee was formed. The matter is not without importance because 1. in London the same people are at the head who organised the gigantic reception for Garibaldi and, by their monster meeting with Bright in St James’s Hall, prevented war with the United States. In a word, these are the real workers’ leaders in London, with one or two exceptions all workers themselves. 2. On the Parisian side, Mr Tolain (ouvrier himself, as well) et Co. are at the head, i.e., the same people who were prevented by a mere intrigue on the part of Garnier-Pagès, Carnot, etc., from entering the Corps législatif at the last elections in Paris as representatives of the workers there, and 3. on the Italian side, it has been joined by the representatives of the 4-500 Italian workers’ clubs which held their general congress in Naples some weeks ago an event which even The Times considered important enough to merit a few dozen lines in the paper.
Courtesy toward the French and the Italians, who always require florid language, has obliged me to include a few superfluous turns of phrase in the preamble to the ‘Rules’, though not in the ‘Address’.
A few day’s ago I received a letter from America from my friend Weydemeyer, Colonel in the regiment stationed at St Louis (Missouri). Amongst other things, he writes — and these are his exact words:
‘We are regrettably being detained here at St Louis, since, in view of the many “conservative” elements here, a military force is a continuing necessity to prevent a break-out and the possible release of the numerous Southern prisoners. ... The whole campaign in Virginia is a blunder, which has cost us innumerable men. But for all that, the South will not be able to hold out much longer: it has sent its last man into battle and has no fresh army to call upon. The present invasion of Missouri, like the incursions into Tennessee, has only the character of a raid, a foray: there can be no thought of a lasting re-occupation of districts that have been lost.’
When you reflect, my dear Uncle, how at the time of Lincoln’s election 3½ years ago it was only a matter of making no further concessions to the slave-owners, whereas now the avowed aim, which has in part already been realised, is the abolition of slavery, one has to admit that never has such a gigantic revolution occurred with such rapidity. It will have a highly beneficial influence on the whole world.
At a public meeting this week the fellow-member of our race Benjamin Disraeli has again made a dreadful laughing-stock of himself by assuming the mantle of guardian angel of the High Church and Church rates, repudiating criticism in religious affairs. He furnishes the best evidence of how a great talent unaccompanied by conviction creates rogues, albeit gold-braided and ‘Right Honorable’ ones.
Those jackasses in Germany have again made a proper laughing-stock of themselves over the Muller affair, with ex-parson Kinkel at their head.
With kindest regards from the whole family to you and from me to Jettchen, Dr, Fritz et Co.
Ever your faithful nephew
K. M.
Friday, September 09, 2011
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Marx To Engels In Manchester (1864)
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1864
Marx To Engels In Manchester (1864)
Source: MECW Volume 42, p. 11;
First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Stuttgart, 1913.
[London,] 4 November 1864
Dear Frederick,
I was very pleased to hear from you again.
All well here. Myself included, since your departure from here until the day before yesterday, when yet another carbuncle appeared below my right breast. If the thing does not clear up quickly and others appear, I intend to use Gumpert’s arsenic remedy this time.
I would translate your runic rüm hart, etc. as Dutch-Frisian for open heart, clear horizon. But I fear that there may be a quite different explanation, so I give up the riddle.
You must send all the enclosed papers back to me as soon as read. I still need them. So that I do not forget any of the things I wanted to tell you, I am going to number them.
1. Lassalle and Countess Hatzfeldt.
The lengthy document is a copy of a circular that Herwegh’s wife (honi soit qui mal y pense), Emma, sent to Berlin immediately after the catastrophe, so that extracts from it could be put in the newspapers. You will see from it how cleverly Emma manages to put herself and her spineless Georg in the limelight at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the report; how the account evades two important points, firstly Rüstow’s meeting with Donniges and daughter, when the latter must have renounced Lassalle before the scene recounted by Emma took place. Secondly: how the duel came about. Lassalle wrote the insulting letter. But then something happened which is not reported and which led directly to the duel.
The suppression of two such important and crucial points makes one sceptical of the accuracy of the account.
The Hatzfeldt letter. On her arrival in Berlin I got Liebknecht to take her a brief letter of condolence from myself. Liebknecht wrote to me that she was complaining ‘I left Lassalle in the lurch’, as if I could have done the man any greater service than by keeping my mouth shut and letting him do as he liked. (In his last speech before the Düsseldorf assizes, he played the part of Marquis Posa with handsome William as Philipp II, whom he was trying to persuade to suspend the present constitution, proclaim universal direct suffrage and ally himself with the proletariat.) You can see what is behind her letter and what she wants of me. I wrote a very amicable but diplomatically discouraging letter in reply. The latterday Redeemer! That personage and the sycophants, who surround her, are mad.
Apropos. A couple of numbers of E. Jones’ Notes to the People (1851, 1852) happened to fall into my hands again; as far as the economic articles are concerned, the main points in them had been written directly under my guidance and partly even in direct collaboration with myself. Well! What do I find in them? That at that time we conducted the same polemic — only better — against the co-operative movement, since it claimed, in its present narrow-minded form, to be the last word, as Lassalle conducted against Schulze-Delitzsch in Germany 10-12 years later.
In his last will and testament Lassalle has ‘installed’ Bernhard Becker, the unfortunate fellow, who was Juch’s editor on the Hermann for a while, as his successor in the office of President of the General Association of German Workers — in his ‘last will and testament’ (like a ruling prince). The Association’s congress meets in Düsseldorf this month, 16 and strong opposition to this ‘decree’ by last will and testament is expected.
Also enclosed, letter from a worker in Solingen, Klings, in fact the clandestine leader of the Rhineland workers (former member of the League). This letter is not to be returned but filed.
2. Workingmen’s International Association
Some time ago, London workers sent an address to workers in Paris about Poland and called upon them to act jointly in the matter.
For their part, the Parisians sent over a deputation headed by a worker named Tolain, who was the real workers’ candidate in the last elections in Paris, a thoroughly nice fellow. (His compagnons were quite nice lads, too.) A public meeting in St Martin’s Hall was called, for 28 September 1864, by Odger (shoemaker, President of the local Council of All London Trades’ Unions and, in particular, also of the Trades’ Unions Suffrage Agitation Society, is which is connected with Bright) and Cremer, a mason and secretary of the Mason’s Union. (These two had arranged the big Trade-Union meeting on North America chaired by Bright in St James’s Hall, ditto the Garibaldi manifestations.) A certain Le Lubez was sent to ask me if I would participate pour les ouvriers allemands [for the German workers], and, in particular, whether I was willing to provide a German worker to speak at the meeting, etc. I provided them with Eccarius, who put on a splendid performance, and I was also present myself in a non-speaking capacity on the platform. I knew that on this occasion ‘people who really count’ were appearing, both from London and from Paris, and I therefore decided to waive my usual standing rule to decline any such invitations.
(Le Lubez is a young Frenchman, i.e. in his thirties; however, he grew up in Jersey and London, speaks capital English and is a very good intermediary between the French and English workers.) (Music teacher and leçons of French.)
At the meeting, which was chock-full (for there is now evidently a revival of the working-classes taking place), Major Wolff (Thurn-Taxis, Garibaldi’s adjutant) represented the London Italian Workingmen’s Society. It was resolved to found a ‘Workingmen’s International Association’, whose General Council is to have its seat in London and is to ‘Intermediate’ between the workers’ Societies in Germany, Italy, France, and England. Ditto that a General Workingmen’s Congress was to be convened in Belgium in 1865. A Provisional Committee was set up at the meeting, with Odger, Cremer and many others, some of them former Chartists, former Owenites, etc., representing England, Major Wolff, Fontana, and other Italians representing Italy, Le Lubez, etc. for France, Eccarius and myself for Germany. The committee was empowered to co-opt as many people as it chose.
So far so good. I attended the first meeting of the committee. A Sub-Committee (including myself) was set up to draft a declaration des principes and provisional rules. Indisposition prevented me from attending the meeting of the Sub-Committee and the subsequent meeting of the full committee.
At these two meetings, which I did not attend, — that of the Sub-Committee and the subsequent one of the full committee — the following occurred:
Major Wolff had submitted the regulations (statutes) of the Italian Workers’ Associations (which possess a central organisation, but, as emerged later, are essentially associated Benefit Societies) to be used by the new Association. I saw the stuff later. It was evidently a concoction of Mazzini’s, and that tells you in advance in what spirit and phraseology the real question, the labour question, was dealt with. As well as how the nationalities question intruded into it.
What is more, an old Owenite, Weston — now a manufacturer himself, a very amiable and worthy man — had drawn up a programme full of extreme confusion and of indescribable breadth.
The subsequent full committee meeting instructed the Sub-Committee to remodel Weston’s programme, ditto Wolff’s regulations. Wolff himself left to attend the congress of the Italian Workingmen’s Associations in Naples and persuade them to join the central association in London.
A further meeting of the Sub-Committee, which again I did not attend, as I was informed of their rendezvous too late. At this meeting, ‘une déclaration des principes’ and a revised version of Wolff’s rules were presented by Le Lubez and accepted by the Sub-Committee for submission to the full committee. The full committee met on 18 October. Eccarius wrote to me that it was a case of periculum in mora [danger in delay], so I went along and was really shocked when I heard the worthy Le Lubez read out a fearfully cliché-ridden, badly written and totally unpolished preamble pretending to be a declaration of principles, with Mazzini showing through the whole thing from beneath a crust of the most insubstantial scraps of French socialism. What is more, the Italian rules had by and large been adopted, whose aim, apart from all their other faults, was really something quite impossible, a sort of central government of the European working classes (with Mazzini in the background, of course). I remonstrated mildly, and, after prolonged debate. Eccarius proposed that the Sub-Committee should subject the thing to further ‘editing’. However, the sentiments expressed in Lubez’ declaration were carried.
Two days later, on 20 October, Cremer representing England, Fontana (Italy) and Le Lubez met at my house. (Weston was unable to be present.) I had not previously had the papers (Wolff’s and Le Lubez) in my hands, so could not prepare anything; but I was absolutely determined that not one single line of the stuff should be allowed to stand if I could help it. To gain time, I proposed that before we ‘edited’ the preamble, we ought to ‘discuss’ the Rules. This was done. It was 1 o'clock in the morning before the first of the 40 Rules was adopted. Cremer said (and that was my whole aim): we have nothing to put before the committee that is to meet on 25 October. We must postpone it until 1 November. But the Sub-Committee can meet on 27 October and attempt to reach a definite conclusion. This was agreed and the ‘papers’ were ‘bequeathed’ to me for my perusal.
I could see it was impossible to make anything out of the stuff. In order to justify the extremely peculiar way in which I intended to edit the sentiments that had already been ‘carried’, I wrote an Address to the Working Classes (which was not in the original plan; a sort of review of the adventures of the working classes since 1845); on the pretext that all the necessary facts were contained in this ‘Address’ and that we ought not to repeat the same things three times over, I altered the whole preamble, threw out the declaration des principes and finally replaced the 40 Rules by 10. Insofar as International politics is mentioned in the ‘Address’, I refer to countries and not to nationalities, and denounce Russia, not the minores gentium [smaller nations]. The Sub-Committee adopted all my proposals. I was, however, obliged to insert two sentences about ‘duty’ and ‘right’, and ditto about ‘Truth, Morality and Justice’ in the preamble to the rules, but these are so placed that they can do no harm.
At the meeting of the General Committee my ‘Address’, etc., was adopted with great enthusiasm (unanimously). The debate on the form of publication, etc., is to take place next Tuesday. Le Lubez has a copy of the ‘Address’ for translation into French and Fontana one for translation into Italian. (For a start there is a weekly called Bee-Hive, edited by Trade Unionist Potter, a sort of Moniteur.) I am to translate the stuff into German myself.
It was very difficult to frame the thing so that our view should appear in a form that would make it acceptable to the present outlook of the workers’ movement. In a couple of weeks, the same people will be having meetings on the franchise with Bright and Cobden. It will take time before the revival of the movement allows the old boldness of language to be used. We must be fortiter in re, suaviter in modo [strong in deed, mild in manner]. You will get the stuff as soon as it is printed.
3. Bakunin sends his regards. He left today for Italy where he is living (Florence). I saw him yesterday for the first time in 16 years. I must say I liked him very much, more so than previously. With regard to the Polish movement, he said the Russian government had needed the movement to keep Russia itself quiet, but had not counted on anything like an 18-month struggle. They had thus provoked the affair in Poland. Poland had been defeated by two things, the influence of Bonaparte and, secondly, the hesitation of the Polish aristocracy in openly and unambiguously proclaiming peasant socialism from the outset. From now on — after the collapse of the Polish affair — he (Bakunin) will only involve himself in the socialist movement.
On the whole, he is one of the few people whom after 16 years I find to have moved forwards and not backwards. I also discussed Urquhart’s denunciations with him. (Apropos: the International Association will probably lead to a rupture between myself and these friends!) He inquired a great deal after yourself and Lupus. When I told him of the latter’s death, he said straightaway that the movement had suffered an irreplaceable loss.
4. Crisis. By no means burnt out on the Continent yet (esp. France). Incidentally, what the crises have lost in intensity, they have now gained in frequency.
Salut.
Your
K. M.
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1864
Marx To Engels In Manchester (1864)
Source: MECW Volume 42, p. 11;
First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Stuttgart, 1913.
[London,] 4 November 1864
Dear Frederick,
I was very pleased to hear from you again.
All well here. Myself included, since your departure from here until the day before yesterday, when yet another carbuncle appeared below my right breast. If the thing does not clear up quickly and others appear, I intend to use Gumpert’s arsenic remedy this time.
I would translate your runic rüm hart, etc. as Dutch-Frisian for open heart, clear horizon. But I fear that there may be a quite different explanation, so I give up the riddle.
You must send all the enclosed papers back to me as soon as read. I still need them. So that I do not forget any of the things I wanted to tell you, I am going to number them.
1. Lassalle and Countess Hatzfeldt.
The lengthy document is a copy of a circular that Herwegh’s wife (honi soit qui mal y pense), Emma, sent to Berlin immediately after the catastrophe, so that extracts from it could be put in the newspapers. You will see from it how cleverly Emma manages to put herself and her spineless Georg in the limelight at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the report; how the account evades two important points, firstly Rüstow’s meeting with Donniges and daughter, when the latter must have renounced Lassalle before the scene recounted by Emma took place. Secondly: how the duel came about. Lassalle wrote the insulting letter. But then something happened which is not reported and which led directly to the duel.
The suppression of two such important and crucial points makes one sceptical of the accuracy of the account.
The Hatzfeldt letter. On her arrival in Berlin I got Liebknecht to take her a brief letter of condolence from myself. Liebknecht wrote to me that she was complaining ‘I left Lassalle in the lurch’, as if I could have done the man any greater service than by keeping my mouth shut and letting him do as he liked. (In his last speech before the Düsseldorf assizes, he played the part of Marquis Posa with handsome William as Philipp II, whom he was trying to persuade to suspend the present constitution, proclaim universal direct suffrage and ally himself with the proletariat.) You can see what is behind her letter and what she wants of me. I wrote a very amicable but diplomatically discouraging letter in reply. The latterday Redeemer! That personage and the sycophants, who surround her, are mad.
Apropos. A couple of numbers of E. Jones’ Notes to the People (1851, 1852) happened to fall into my hands again; as far as the economic articles are concerned, the main points in them had been written directly under my guidance and partly even in direct collaboration with myself. Well! What do I find in them? That at that time we conducted the same polemic — only better — against the co-operative movement, since it claimed, in its present narrow-minded form, to be the last word, as Lassalle conducted against Schulze-Delitzsch in Germany 10-12 years later.
In his last will and testament Lassalle has ‘installed’ Bernhard Becker, the unfortunate fellow, who was Juch’s editor on the Hermann for a while, as his successor in the office of President of the General Association of German Workers — in his ‘last will and testament’ (like a ruling prince). The Association’s congress meets in Düsseldorf this month, 16 and strong opposition to this ‘decree’ by last will and testament is expected.
Also enclosed, letter from a worker in Solingen, Klings, in fact the clandestine leader of the Rhineland workers (former member of the League). This letter is not to be returned but filed.
2. Workingmen’s International Association
Some time ago, London workers sent an address to workers in Paris about Poland and called upon them to act jointly in the matter.
For their part, the Parisians sent over a deputation headed by a worker named Tolain, who was the real workers’ candidate in the last elections in Paris, a thoroughly nice fellow. (His compagnons were quite nice lads, too.) A public meeting in St Martin’s Hall was called, for 28 September 1864, by Odger (shoemaker, President of the local Council of All London Trades’ Unions and, in particular, also of the Trades’ Unions Suffrage Agitation Society, is which is connected with Bright) and Cremer, a mason and secretary of the Mason’s Union. (These two had arranged the big Trade-Union meeting on North America chaired by Bright in St James’s Hall, ditto the Garibaldi manifestations.) A certain Le Lubez was sent to ask me if I would participate pour les ouvriers allemands [for the German workers], and, in particular, whether I was willing to provide a German worker to speak at the meeting, etc. I provided them with Eccarius, who put on a splendid performance, and I was also present myself in a non-speaking capacity on the platform. I knew that on this occasion ‘people who really count’ were appearing, both from London and from Paris, and I therefore decided to waive my usual standing rule to decline any such invitations.
(Le Lubez is a young Frenchman, i.e. in his thirties; however, he grew up in Jersey and London, speaks capital English and is a very good intermediary between the French and English workers.) (Music teacher and leçons of French.)
At the meeting, which was chock-full (for there is now evidently a revival of the working-classes taking place), Major Wolff (Thurn-Taxis, Garibaldi’s adjutant) represented the London Italian Workingmen’s Society. It was resolved to found a ‘Workingmen’s International Association’, whose General Council is to have its seat in London and is to ‘Intermediate’ between the workers’ Societies in Germany, Italy, France, and England. Ditto that a General Workingmen’s Congress was to be convened in Belgium in 1865. A Provisional Committee was set up at the meeting, with Odger, Cremer and many others, some of them former Chartists, former Owenites, etc., representing England, Major Wolff, Fontana, and other Italians representing Italy, Le Lubez, etc. for France, Eccarius and myself for Germany. The committee was empowered to co-opt as many people as it chose.
So far so good. I attended the first meeting of the committee. A Sub-Committee (including myself) was set up to draft a declaration des principes and provisional rules. Indisposition prevented me from attending the meeting of the Sub-Committee and the subsequent meeting of the full committee.
At these two meetings, which I did not attend, — that of the Sub-Committee and the subsequent one of the full committee — the following occurred:
Major Wolff had submitted the regulations (statutes) of the Italian Workers’ Associations (which possess a central organisation, but, as emerged later, are essentially associated Benefit Societies) to be used by the new Association. I saw the stuff later. It was evidently a concoction of Mazzini’s, and that tells you in advance in what spirit and phraseology the real question, the labour question, was dealt with. As well as how the nationalities question intruded into it.
What is more, an old Owenite, Weston — now a manufacturer himself, a very amiable and worthy man — had drawn up a programme full of extreme confusion and of indescribable breadth.
The subsequent full committee meeting instructed the Sub-Committee to remodel Weston’s programme, ditto Wolff’s regulations. Wolff himself left to attend the congress of the Italian Workingmen’s Associations in Naples and persuade them to join the central association in London.
A further meeting of the Sub-Committee, which again I did not attend, as I was informed of their rendezvous too late. At this meeting, ‘une déclaration des principes’ and a revised version of Wolff’s rules were presented by Le Lubez and accepted by the Sub-Committee for submission to the full committee. The full committee met on 18 October. Eccarius wrote to me that it was a case of periculum in mora [danger in delay], so I went along and was really shocked when I heard the worthy Le Lubez read out a fearfully cliché-ridden, badly written and totally unpolished preamble pretending to be a declaration of principles, with Mazzini showing through the whole thing from beneath a crust of the most insubstantial scraps of French socialism. What is more, the Italian rules had by and large been adopted, whose aim, apart from all their other faults, was really something quite impossible, a sort of central government of the European working classes (with Mazzini in the background, of course). I remonstrated mildly, and, after prolonged debate. Eccarius proposed that the Sub-Committee should subject the thing to further ‘editing’. However, the sentiments expressed in Lubez’ declaration were carried.
Two days later, on 20 October, Cremer representing England, Fontana (Italy) and Le Lubez met at my house. (Weston was unable to be present.) I had not previously had the papers (Wolff’s and Le Lubez) in my hands, so could not prepare anything; but I was absolutely determined that not one single line of the stuff should be allowed to stand if I could help it. To gain time, I proposed that before we ‘edited’ the preamble, we ought to ‘discuss’ the Rules. This was done. It was 1 o'clock in the morning before the first of the 40 Rules was adopted. Cremer said (and that was my whole aim): we have nothing to put before the committee that is to meet on 25 October. We must postpone it until 1 November. But the Sub-Committee can meet on 27 October and attempt to reach a definite conclusion. This was agreed and the ‘papers’ were ‘bequeathed’ to me for my perusal.
I could see it was impossible to make anything out of the stuff. In order to justify the extremely peculiar way in which I intended to edit the sentiments that had already been ‘carried’, I wrote an Address to the Working Classes (which was not in the original plan; a sort of review of the adventures of the working classes since 1845); on the pretext that all the necessary facts were contained in this ‘Address’ and that we ought not to repeat the same things three times over, I altered the whole preamble, threw out the declaration des principes and finally replaced the 40 Rules by 10. Insofar as International politics is mentioned in the ‘Address’, I refer to countries and not to nationalities, and denounce Russia, not the minores gentium [smaller nations]. The Sub-Committee adopted all my proposals. I was, however, obliged to insert two sentences about ‘duty’ and ‘right’, and ditto about ‘Truth, Morality and Justice’ in the preamble to the rules, but these are so placed that they can do no harm.
At the meeting of the General Committee my ‘Address’, etc., was adopted with great enthusiasm (unanimously). The debate on the form of publication, etc., is to take place next Tuesday. Le Lubez has a copy of the ‘Address’ for translation into French and Fontana one for translation into Italian. (For a start there is a weekly called Bee-Hive, edited by Trade Unionist Potter, a sort of Moniteur.) I am to translate the stuff into German myself.
It was very difficult to frame the thing so that our view should appear in a form that would make it acceptable to the present outlook of the workers’ movement. In a couple of weeks, the same people will be having meetings on the franchise with Bright and Cobden. It will take time before the revival of the movement allows the old boldness of language to be used. We must be fortiter in re, suaviter in modo [strong in deed, mild in manner]. You will get the stuff as soon as it is printed.
3. Bakunin sends his regards. He left today for Italy where he is living (Florence). I saw him yesterday for the first time in 16 years. I must say I liked him very much, more so than previously. With regard to the Polish movement, he said the Russian government had needed the movement to keep Russia itself quiet, but had not counted on anything like an 18-month struggle. They had thus provoked the affair in Poland. Poland had been defeated by two things, the influence of Bonaparte and, secondly, the hesitation of the Polish aristocracy in openly and unambiguously proclaiming peasant socialism from the outset. From now on — after the collapse of the Polish affair — he (Bakunin) will only involve himself in the socialist movement.
On the whole, he is one of the few people whom after 16 years I find to have moved forwards and not backwards. I also discussed Urquhart’s denunciations with him. (Apropos: the International Association will probably lead to a rupture between myself and these friends!) He inquired a great deal after yourself and Lupus. When I told him of the latter’s death, he said straightaway that the movement had suffered an irreplaceable loss.
4. Crisis. By no means burnt out on the Continent yet (esp. France). Incidentally, what the crises have lost in intensity, they have now gained in frequency.
Salut.
Your
K. M.
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