In Commemoration of 150th Anniversary of Foundation

(Third and concluding part of the article that appeared in the October and November 2014 issues of Liberation)

Part III

The Paris Commune and The Civil War in France (which came to be recognised as the first “communist document” of the IWA because here Marx went back, after nearly a quarter century, to the revolutionary straight talk resembling that of the Communist Manifesto) shook the bourgeois world to the bones. Even as Karl Marx emerged as the world’s most popular leader of the working classes, the hate campaign against him and the International became more aggressive than ever before.

Simultaneously, the ideological struggle within the International got more intense. While Marx, Engels and their followers strove to incorporate the historic lessons of the Commune in the political line of the International, the reformists (British trade unionists in particular) and anarchists (Bakuninists in particular) became frantic for imposing their own views on the organisation. Both trends tried desperately to exploit the International’s soaring prestige among the toiling masses everywhere and both were boldly tackled at the London Conference held in September 1871.

Intensified Struggle on Two Front

In his opening speechat the London Conference, Marx focused the work of the conference on the question of the proletarian party, the pivotal point in the fight against the anarchist and trade unionist ideologists. A heated debate naturally developed over the main resolution on this question: “Political Action of the Working Class”.

The initial draft, prepared by a Blanquist who had the benefit of prior consultations with Marx, held that for the success of their cause workers had to “coalesce their forces as much on the political as on the economic terrain”. The anarchist groups on their parts put forward two alternative proposals. The first opted for an international association of trade unions, aloof from politics, to be set up in place of the IWA; and the other proposed an international trade union federation as the prototype of the future social order, to be based on the principles of decentralisation and autonomy.

Opposing the anarchist proposals, Marx drew on the experience of the Commune to emphasise the need for the working class to carry on the political struggle, with the proletarian revolution as its highest form. The success of this revolution, the gaining of political power, was inconceivable without the proletariat being organised into a political party, he said. The trade unions were incapable of playing the proletarian party’s role of political educator and leader of the working class. He also brought out the specific defects of the English trade unions, which represented mainly an aristocratic minority of the English working class and ignored the interests of the low-paid mass of workers.

On the question of revolutionary tactics and forms of struggle, Marx said, “We must tell the governments: we know that you are an armed force aimed against the proletarians; we shall act against you peaceably wherever this proves to be possible, and shall use weapons whenever this becomes necessary.”

Speaking in support of the initial draft, Engels fought both against the anarchist slogan of abstention from political activity and against the trade unionist interpretation of “working-class politics”.

Most of the delegates voted for the official resolution and the general council was instructed to produce the final text. Marx and Engels thoroughly revised the initial draft, and the final version read, in part, “… Against the collective power of the propertied classes the workingclass cannot actas a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes.” (Emphasis ours)

Authorized by the conference, the GC also issued a new edition of the General Rules incorporating the amendments passed in the Conference, thereby vastly improving the principles of democratic centralism as applicable to this particular organization at the given stage of its development.

The success of the London Conference in upholding a consistent proletarian line only raised the ideological battle to a new plane. If in the capitalistically most advanced and relatively more democratic countries with a powerful trade union movement – such as Britain and USA – the main struggle was against right reformism and trade unionism, in the less developed capitalist countries on the European continent the fight was concentrated against ‘left’ sectarianism and anarchism.

In England, Marx expected that the foundation of an autonomous British Federal Council (whose functions were previously discharged by the General Council) would lay the ideological foundations for an independent working class party. But with John Hales, the main leader of the BFC, turning more and more opportunist (his main political plank was to cooperate with the Liberals and to win seats in the parliament with their support) and trying to mobilise the BFC against the GC, this proved well-nigh impossible. However, Marx fought on. At a GC meeting in January 1872, he secured the removal from the Federal Council of all the members of petty bourgeois organisations.Amendments were introduced in the British Federation’s Rules which to some extent prevented petty bourgeois elements from penetrating into its governing body.

Among the political issues on which debates flared up, the most important was the Irish National liberation movement. Particularly despicable was the reformists’ chauvinistic opposition to the independent Irish sections of the International being set up in Ireland and England. Marx and Engels exposed this as a departure from the principles of proletarian internationalism, stressing once again that one of the key tasks of the English working class was to support, in the interest of its own emancipation, the Irish National liberation movement.

In the US too, bourgeois reformists tried to use the International’s units to promote their own ends. Some of them set up sections with a bourgeois membership in New York and elsewhere, challenged the powers of the GC and tried to replace the IWA’s program with the demand for bourgeois reforms. On Marx’s proposal, the GC expelled New York’s Section Number 12, the main centre of bourgeois influence. The GC also passed a resolution under which at least two-thirds of the membership of each section was to consist of wage labourers.

Among anarchists, Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin proved to be the worst troublemaker. In late 1868 and then in early 1869 he had written to the GC that if the programme of his organisation was accepted, he was ready to break up his “international” organisation and to join the IWA with “vast legions” in different countries. On this proposal, Marx wrote in a letter to Engels on March 5, 1869, “... As a matter of fact we would have preferred that they should keep their ‘innumerable legions’ in France, Spain and Italy for themselves.Bakunin thinks: if we approve his ‘radical programme’, he can make a big noise about this …. If we declare ourselves against it they will decry us as counter-revolutionaries.”

Marx responded to this Catch 22 situation with his characteristic ingenuity. He wrote back to Bakunin that the rules of the IWA did not require detailed examination of the programme of his alliance; if the latter was not opposed to the general goal of complete emancipation of the working classes, that would be considered sufficient for joining the International. On this count, just one phrase – which seemed to be “only a slip of the pen” – in the alliance program needed to be deleted.

Bakunin made the slight alteration in the programme as suggested by Marx, and then his organisation was merged with the IWA. But he and his followers in different countries continued their struggle against the political and organisational principles of the International. In November 1871 the Congress of Bakuninist sections in Switzerland rejected the resolutions of the London Conference, proclaimed total autonomy and demanded the dissolution of the GC as a first step towards abolition of “all authority”.

Marx and Engels mobilised the majority of GC members for a fitting rebuff to the anarchist’s challenge. They also established direct contacts with proletarian vanguards in Spain and Italy. In the process, the New Madrid Federation was soon established. On behalf of the GC, Marx and Engels wrote the pamphlet Fictitious Splits in the Internationalto exposethe nature and historical roots of anarchist sectarianism operating under ultra-leftist phrase-mongering and upheld the proletarian party principles.

The bitterest fight against both anarchism and reformism took place in the Hague Congress (September 1872).

A few months ago information had reached the GC that Bakunin’s Alliance of Socialist Democracy, which had been ostensibly dissolved, had actually been preserved as a secret society within the IWA. Naturally, settling scores with these conspirators became the central agenda of the Congress. While anarchists argued for abolishing the GC and completely decentralising the International, Marx spoke in favour of extending the powers of the GC, adding that this authority must rest on the approval and support of the entire organisation. The Congress also considered the question of the secret Alliance and, after a heated debate, resolved to expel the ringleaders – Bakunin and James Guillaume (the Swiss lieutenant of the former).

The split in the International was now real, and for all to see. In view of the official hostility towards the IWA on the European continent in the aftermath of the Paris Commune, and also to pre-empt the possibility of a takeover of the GC by British reformists and immigrant anarchists (who were well-organised and numerically quite strong in London) Engels proposed that the GC should transfer its seat to New York. The move was fiercely resisted by Blanquists and reformists, but the Congress ultimately passed this resolution and also elected a new GC.

Towards a New Stage in Working Class Movement

The bitter struggle and divisions in the Hague Congress naturally made the delegates very sad; with some of them feeling that unity should have been preserved at any cost. But the apprehensions of Marx and Engels proved correct. Bakuninists and their fellow anarchists based mainly in Switzerland, Spain and Belgium as well as British reformist groups within the British Federal Council of the IWA held their respective congresses/conferences and rejected the resolutions of the Hague Congress and the leadership of the new GC. This amounted to withdrawal of these groups from the mother organisation, which Marx and Engels reckoned as good riddance. For them, keeping the ideological banner, political programme and organisational principles of the International unsullied was far more important than a “momentary success” of continuing with a clumsy, strife-ridden, big organisation:

“… there are circumstances in which we must have the courage to sacrifice momentary success for more important things.… if we had come out in a conciliatory way at the Hague, if we had hushed up the breaking out of the split – what would have been the result? The sectarians, especially the Bakuninists, would have another year in which to perpetrate, in the name of the International, still greater stupidities and infamies; the workers of the most developed countries would have turned away in disgust; the bubble would not have burst but, pierced by pinpricks, would have slowly collapsed, and the next Congress, which would have been bound to bring the crisis after all, would have turned into the most sordid personal row, because principles would already have been abandoned at the Hague. Then the International would indeed have gone to pieces – gone to pieces through “unity”! Instead of this we have now got rid of the rotten elements with honour to ourselves…”

Three months later, Marx wrote to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, secretary of the new GC based in New York:

“… As I view European conditions, it is quite useful to let the former organisation of the International recede into the background for the time being, but, if possible, not to relinquish control of the central point in New York…”

Marx was realistic enough to mention the words “if possible”, and it did not prove possible. So, another year on, Engels communicated to the same comrade Sorge his and Marx’s final view on the International. The IWA, he wrote, had grown up when with the first reawakening of the proletarian movement the small sects, with a view to collectively resisting the persecution perpetrated against all of them, had placed their general interests above the internal dissensions and debates. But after the International’s first success — the Paris Commune — each sect tried to utilise it in its narrow interest. This “naive conjunction of all factions” inevitably started falling apart. So the International has a glorious history no doubt, but “in its old form it has outlived its usefulness. …I believe the next International — after Marx’s writings have exerted their influence for some years — will be directly communist and will candidly proclaim our principles. ...”

Remarkably, there is no sense of dejection in Engels! For the founders of scientific socialism were then looking forward to a new stage in the international working class movement, with formation of revolutionary proletarian parties at national levels as the central task. That transition, which came not in Engels’ lifetime but much later (in 1919 to be exact) was described in very precise terms by one who would emerge as the chief architect of the “directly communist” International Engels (and Marx) had hoped for:

“The First International had played its historical part, and now made way for a period of a far greater development of the labour movement in all countries in the world, a period in which the movement grew in scope, and mass socialist working-class parties in individual national states were formed.”

Legacy of First International Lives on

Every genuinely broad-based class struggle/mass movement develops in an intricate unforeseeable way, with disparate political trends joining in and contending among themselves for moulding it in its own image, thereby constantly putting to test the leadership’s capacity to steer the movement in the supreme overall interests of the masses. Such was the story of the IWA, a forum for uniting all existing working-class organisations with some mass base (TU type as well as party type) in a definite direction: that of total economic emancipation and political empowerment of the working class. If broadest possible unity required an accommodating approach towards heterogeneous political trends (including the so-called non-political ones), the commitment to socialism demanded firm determination in struggle on questions of basic principles. The way Marx and his close associates dialectically combined the two aspects of unity and struggle (recall how, for example, the GC directed the work in Germany, leading to the formation of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party) remains fully relevant to this day, encouraging us to emulate the outstanding leadership qualities of Karl Marx (see Liberation, October 2004, p 25) as best as we can.

A major component of the lessons which the FI bequeathed to us is the lessons ofParis Commune. The abundant courage, the historical initiative and astonishing determination, the great capacity for sacrifice and creative genius displayed by the working people of Paris will forever inspire the masses all over the world. No less valuable are the theoretical conclusions Marx and Engels drew, on behalf of the International, from this path-breaking practice. Now that the very concept of dictatorship of the proletariat stands discredited owing to serious distortions, the original theory and practice of this state form (in which the dictatorship is meant for the enemy, and for the people – real democracy with power to elect, supervise and call back all state functionaries) can help make matters clearer for ourselves as well as our democratic friends.

To appreciate the place of the IWA in history we need to see it as a link in a long chain of developments that constituted the genesis of the international communist movement. As we know, the predecessor of FI – the Communist League – was an organisation international in composition and vision, consistently communist in programme and theoretical positions, openly revolutionary in aims and pronouncements. Its main limitation, in part accounted for by police persecution and underground existence, was a small mass base. That weakness was largely overcome in the IWA, which threw its doors wide open for practically all workers’ organisations irrespective of ideological leanings and political positions. While uniting the broad ranks of workers in Europe and America, the GC also made it a point to fight and defeat every attempt by various groups to impose their own ‘systems’ or shibboleths on the International. In course of this struggle, it laid down the fundamental, absolutely non-negotiable ideological-political-organisational principles of revolutionary proletarian movement. On that foundation flourished a train of workers’ parties in the decade following the demise of the FI: the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany (1875), the Socialist Labour Party of America (1877), the French Workers Party (1879-80), the Emancipation of Labour Groupin Russia (1883) – not to mention others that came up soon after. The price paid for stubbornly upholding the cardinal principles – the dissolution of the FI – was thus amply rewarded.

In this sense, the leaders of the IWA were eminently successful in advancing “the real movement of the working class” beyond bourgeois trade unionism and petty bourgeois sectarian anarchism. The principled political vision of Marx and Engels expressed itself no less in the planned, organised retreat after the Hague Congress than in the energetic advances during the previous years. As Lenin aptly remarked, the IWA “made way for” socialist working-class parties in individual countries after preparing the ideological ground for their emergence. These parties came together in the Second International and then, through a complicated process of ideological struggles, divisions and realignments, the Third (Communist) International was founded. In that (so far) highest organ of the world proletariat was realised, at long last, Engels’ dream of an international body which would be “directly communist”. But even that one had to leave the stage once it “outlived its usefulness”, to repeat a phrase Engels used in reference to the IWA.

Since then, for all the labour put into erecting a ‘purer’ Fourth or Fifth International, the current state of communist movement has not warranted or permitted the birth of another international leading centre for the national-level communist/socialist/working class parties. But international associations of national TU centres are doing their job and the importance of the united resistance against the global offensive of capital is growing. International coalitions and solidarity actions on issues like environment, gender, opposition to war etc. have become more visible since the closing years of the last century. Also there is scope for closer regional (South Asian for example) cooperation and solidarity among left parties and popular movements against imperialist exploitation, intervention and aggression.

As we celebrate the 150thanniversary of the IWA, the people of our country and our planet are crying out for closer unity of fighting forces; let us step forward and contribute our mite.

[Concluded]

NB: Unless stated otherwise, works of Marx, Engels and Lenin refer to Progress Publishers (Moscow) editions.

“The task of the International is to generalise and unify the working class’s spontaneous movements, but not to prescribe for or impose upon them any doctrinal system whatsoever.”

– Inaugural Address