Notes on the History of the International

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Notes

1. This article is based upon the “Introduction” to Marcello Musto (ed.), Workers Unite!: The International 150 Years Later (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2014), an anthology of key documents of the International. Citations given here as GC and PI refer to multi-volume official Minutes published under the respective titles General Council of the First International and Première Internationale. See notes 1 and 4 to the Documents section in this issue.

2. David Ryazanov, “Zur Geschichte der Ersten Internationale,” in Marx–Engels Archiv, vol. 1 (1925), 172.

3. Near the end of the life of the International when considering for approval the revised statutes of the organization, members of the General Council raised the question of whether “persons” should be substituted for “men.” Friedrich Engels responded that “it was generally understood that men was a generic term including both sexes,” making the point that the association was and had been open to women and men, GC, V, 256.

4. Quoted in G. M. Stekloff, History of the First International (New York: Russell & Russell, 1968 [1928]), ii.

5. Cf. Henry Collins and Chimen Abramsky, Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement (London: MacMillan, 1965), 34.

6. Johann George Eccarius to Karl Marx, 12 October 1864, in Marx–Engels-Gesamtausgabe, vol. III/13 (Berlin: Akademie, 2002), 10.

7. Marx to Engels, 4 November 1864, in Karl Marx – Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, 50 vol., 1975–2005 (Moscow: Progress Publishers [henceforth MECW]), vol. 42, 1987, 16.

8. At the founding meeting of the International, a Standing Committee was struck to organize the association. This became its Central Council, which subsequently became known as the General Council. Henceforth, these committees are referred to here simply as the General Council.

9. See Oscar Testut, L'Association internationale des travailleurs, Lyon: Aimé Vingtrinier, 1870, 310.

10. The Times, 5 June 1871.

11. See Julius Braunthal, History of the International (New York: Nelson, 1966 [1961]), 116.

12. Collins and Abramsky, Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement, 70; Jacques D'Hondt, “Rapport de synthèse,” in Colloque International sur la première Internationale, La Première Internationale: l'institution, l'implantation, le rayonnement (Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1968), 475.

13. Ibid., 289.

14. GC, I, 340–351.

15. Musto, Workers Unite!, Document 2; also, Karl Marx to Paul Lafargue, 19 April 1870, in MECW, vol. 43, 491: “The General Council was not the Pope, that we allowed every section to have its own theoretical views of the real movement, always supposed that nothing directly opposite to our Rules was put forward.”

16. See Georges Haupt, L'Internazionale socialista dalla Comune a Lenin, Turin: Einaudi, 1978, 78.

17. Collins and Abramsky, Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement, 65.

18. Musto, Workers Unite!, Document 2.

19. Ibid.

20. Jacques Freymond, “Introduction,” in PI, I, xi.

21. Various Authors, “Report of the [French] General Council,” 1 September 1869, in PI, II, 24.

22. Henri Collins, “The International and the British Labour Movement: Origin of the International in England” in Colloque International, La Première Internationale, 34.

23. Collins and Abramsky, Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement, 290–291.

24. Marx in fact continued not to attend congresses, with the exception of the crucial Hague Congress (1872).

25. Musto, Workers Unite!, Document 49.

26. Ibid., Document 6.

27. Ibid., Document 32.

28. Freymond, “Introduction,” in PI, I, xiv.

29. Musto, Workers Unite!, Document 3.

30. PI, II, 74.

31. Mikhail Bakunin, “Programme of the Alliance [International Alliance of Socialist Democracy],” in Arthur Lehning (ed.), Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings (London: Jonathan Cape, 1973), 174. The translation provided in this book is inaccurate and misleading. In Fictitious Splits in the International (GC, V, 356–409), Engels and Marx quoted directly from Bakunin's original document (“l'égalisation politique, économique et sociale des classes”).

32. Braunthal, History of the International, 173.

33. Freymond, “Introduction,” in PI, I, xix.

34. Jacques Rougerie, in “Les sections françaises de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs,” in Colloque International sur la premieère Internationale, 111, spoke of “some tens of thousands.”

35. Jacques Freymond (ed.), Études et documents sur la Première Internationale en Suisse (Geneva: Droz, 1964), 295.

36. Ibid., x.

37. Musto, Workers Unite!, Document 54.

38. Arthur Lehning, ‘‘Introduction,” in Idem. (ed.), Bakunin – Archiv, vol. VI: Michel Bakounine sur la Guerre Franco-Allemande et la Révolution Sociale en France (1870–1871) (Leiden: Brill, 1977), xvi.

39. Musto, Workers Unite!, Document 57.

40. Georges Haupt, Aspects of International Socialism 1871–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 25, warns against “the reshaping of the reality of the Commune in order to make it conform to an image transfigured by ideology.”

41. Karl Marx to Domela Nieuwenhuis, 22 February 1881, MECW, vol. 46, 66.

42. Karl Marx to Ludwig Kugelmann, 18 June 1871, in MECW, vol. 44, 157.

43. Collins and Abramsky, Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement, 222.

44. See Haupt, L'internazionale socialista dalla Comune a Lenin, 28.

45. Ibid., 93–95.

46. Nello Rosselli, Mazzini e Bakunin, Turin: Einaudi, 1927, 323–324.

47. Giuseppe Garibaldi to Giorgio Pallavicino, 14 November 1871, in Enrico Emilio Ximenes, Epistolario di Giuseppe Garibaldi, vol. I, Milan: Brigola 1885, 350.

48. Karl Marx, 15 August 1871, in GC, IV, 259.

49. Karl Marx, 17 September 1871, in PI, II, 152.

50. Miklós Molnár, Le déclin de la première internationale, Geneva: Droz, 1963, 127.

51. Musto, Workers Unite!, Document 74.

52. In the early 1870s the working-class movement was organized as a political party only in Germany. Usage of the word party, whether by followers of Marx or of Bakunin, was therefore very confused. Even Marx used the term more as synonymous with class. Debate in the International between 1871 and 1872 did not focus on the construction of a political party (an expression uttered only twice at the London Conference and five times at the Congress of The Hague), but rather on the “use … of the adjective ‘political’” (Haupt, L'Internazionale socialista dalla Comune a Lenin, 84).

53. Jacques Freymond and Miklós Molnár, “The Rise and Fall of the First International,” in Milorad M. Drachkovitch, The Revolutionary Internationals, 1864–1943 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1966), 27.

54. Various Authors, “Circulaire du Congrès de Sonvilier,” in PI, II, 264–265.

55. Various Authors, Risoluzione, programma e regolamento della federazione italiana dell'Associazione Internazionale dei Lavoratori, in Gian Mario Bravo, La Prima Internazionale, Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1978, 787.

56. See Freymond and Molnár, “Rise and Fall of the First International” (note 53), 27–28.

57. Haupt, L'Internazionale socialista dalla Comune a Lenin, 88.

58. See Karl Marx to Ludwig Kugelmann, 29 July 1872, in MECW, vol. 44, 413, where he noted that this congress would be “a matter of life and death for the International; and before I resign I want at least to protect it from disintegrating elements.”

59. Musto, Workers Unite!, Document 65.

60. Freymond, “Introduction,” in PI, I, x.

61. Musto, Workers Unite!, Document 69.

62. Karl Marx, 23 July 1872, in GC, V, 263.

63. Karl Marx, 20 September 1871, in PI, II, 195.

64. Musto, Workers Unite!, Document 56.

65. See Haupt, L'Internazionale socialista dalla Comune a Lenin, 100.

66. PI, II, 374.

67. Ibid., 376.

68. Ibid., 377.

69. Ibid., 378.

70. Various Authors, [“Statement of the Minority”], in Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC, C.P.S.U. (ed.) The Hague Congress of the First International, vol. 1: Minutes and Documents, Moscow: Progress, 1976, 199–200.

71. Friedrich Engels, 5 September 1872, in PI, II, 355.

72. Maltman Barry, “Report of the Fifth Annual General Congress of the International Working Men's Association, Held at The Hague, Holland, September 2–9, 1872,” in Hans Gerth, The First International: Minutes of The Hague Congress of 1872, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1958, 279–280. This report does not appear in The Hague Congress, vol. 1.

73. Friedrich Engels, 5 September 1872, in PI, II, 356.

74. Édouard Vaillant, Internationale et Révolution. A propos du Congrès de La Haye, in PI, III, 140.

75. Ibid., 142.

76. Ibid., 144.

77. Miklós Molnár, “Quelques remarques à propos de la crise de l'Internationale en 1872,” in Colloque International, La Première Internationale, 439.

78. Molnár, Le Déclin de la Première Internationale, 144.

79. Karl Marx, 22 September 1872, in PI, II, 217.

80. Mikhail Bakunin, “A Letter to the Editorial Board of La Liberté,” in Lehning (ed.), Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, 236–237.

81. Musto, Workers Unite!, Document 76.

82. Ibid., Document 78.

83. Mikhail Bakunin, “The International and Karl Marx,” in Sam Dolgoff (ed.), Bakunin on Anarchy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), 303.

84. On Bakunin's rejection of the conquest of the State by the working class organized in a political party, see Lehning, ‘‘Introduction” (note 38), cvii.

85. See James Guillaume, L'Internationale, Documents et Souvenirs (1864–1878), vol. II, New York: Burt Franklin, 1969 [1907], 342.

86. Musto, Workers Unite!, Document 75.

87. Bakunin, “The International and Karl Marx” (note 83), 294.

88. Ibid., 294–295.

89. Mikhail Bakunin, “Programme and Purpose of the Revolutionary Organization of International Brothers,” in Lehning (ed.), Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, 155.

90. Karl Marx, “Record of Marx's speech on Secret Societies,” in MECW, vol. 22, 621.

91. Mikhail Bakunin, “Aux compagnons de la Fédération des sections internationales du Jura,” in Arthur Lehning et al. (eds.), Bakunin – Archiv, vol. II: Michel Bakounine et les Conflits dans l'Internationale, (Leiden: Brill, 1965), 75.

92. Karl Marx, “Political Indifferentism,” MECW, vol. 23, p. 393.

93. Mikhail Bakunin, Marxism, Freedom and the State (London: Freedom Press, 1950), 21 [translation edited].