Karl Marx: Man and Fighter Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen-Helfen

Chapter 20: The Downfall of the International

Socialists in France in the sixties were either Proudhonists or Blanquists, with here and there an isolated Saint-Simonist. But there were no French Marxists. Not one in a hundred members of the International in France knew that the leader of the General Council in London was a German named Karl Marx. In the other Latin countries the situation was the same. The name of Lassalle meant a great deal to the German workers, even to those who were not his followers. They sang songs about him and his picture hung upon the walls of their rooms. The older generation in the Rhineland remembered Marx from 1848, but that was nearly a quarter of a century ago, and in the meantime most people had forgotten him. To only a minute proportion of the younger generation did his name mean anything at all. Not till the middle of the sixties did this situation slowly and gradually begin to alter, but even in 1870 his name was entirely unknown to the general public. In England Marx was less known than anywhere else. Perhaps here and there some Urquhartite or former Chartist could recollect his name, but that was all. Marx, who had no wish for popularity, set no store on his name being associated with the International, and his signature, when it appeared under any of the pronouncements of the General Council, was always tucked in among those of many others. He spoke at practically no public meetings, he wrote no signed articles, and sufficed himself with the immediate task before him, that of 'influencing the workers' movement behind the scenes,' as he occasionally wrote to a friend.

The Commune made him 'the best calumniated and the most menaced man of London,' as he described himself (the English phrase is his own) in a letter he wrote Kugelmann in the middle of June, 1871. 'It really does one good after being stuck in the mud for twenty years,' he added. He was constantly pestered by 'newspaper fellows and others' who wanted to see the 'monster' with their own eyes. For the man behind the International, that gigantic conspiracy against the whole world, who publicly declared his solidarity with its atrocious misdeeds in Paris, must necessarily be a monster. The French Government was very well informed about the International, and had had more to do with it than any other government in Europe. It had staged great trials of its members, set an army of spies after it and knew something of Marx's overwhelming influence on the General Council. On the day after the proclamation of the Commune it had an alleged letter of Marx's to the French sections of the International printed in Le Journal, containing the most violent criticism of their political acts. The letter reproved them for intervening in politics instead of confining themselves to the social tasks which should have been their only concern. This attempt to represent Marx as the good spirit of the 'good' International while the Communards were base renegades sadly missed its mark, for no one in Paris took it seriously. So the Versailles Government tried something else. On April 2 Le Soir announced that it had been authoritatively ascertained that Karl Marx, one of the most influential leaders of the International, had been private secretary to Count Bismarck in 1857 and had never severed his connection with his former patron. The Bonapartist papers spread this revelation throughout France. So Marx was a hireling of Prussia, and the real leader of the International was Bismarck, at whose instigation the Commune had been set up. This story hardly tallied with another, according to which the International was waging a war on the whole of civilised humanity, which was the reason why the Versailles Government requested and received Bismarck's help against the Commune. As Marx wrote to P. Coenen at the end of March, word was spread to the whole well-disposed Press of Europe 'to use falsehood as its greatest weapon against the International. In the eyes of these honourable champions of religion, order, the family and property there is nothing in the least wrong in the sin of lying.'

It was necessary for the Versailles Government to disguise the warfare it was waging upon the people of Paris. The International was represented as the enemy of France and of the French. Its chief, Karl Marx, was the enemy of the human race. A flick of the hand and hey-presto! Bismarck's agent was converted into a kind of anti-Christ. But this elevation of their political opponent, who after all really did exist in human form, into the demoniacal sphere did not suit the German philistines, who reduced him to more manageable proportions. Thus the Berlin papers invented a fairy-tale of how Karl Marx, leader of the International, enriched himself at the expense of the workers he misled. This story was subsequently often repeated. Soon afterwards the announcement of Marx's death in the Bonapartist L'Avenir Libéral served for a few days to relieve the terrified population of their nightmare. But their relief lasted a few days only. The hated chief of the hated International lived on. His name re-echoed across Europe, through which the spectre of Communism once more stalked abroad.

The Commune made a myth of the International. Aims were imputed to it that it never pursued, resources were ascribed to it that it never possessed, power was attributed to it of which it had never dared to dream. In 1869 the report of the General Council to the Bâle Congress had poured ridicule upon the alleged wealth with which the busy tongues of the police and the wild imaginations of the possessing classes had endowed it. 'Although these people are good Christians,' it stated, 'if they had lived at the time of the origins of Christianity they would have hurried to a Roman bank to forge an account for St. Paul.' The panic of Europe's rulers elevated the International to the status of a world power. 'The whole of Europe is encompassed by the widespread freemasonry of this organisation,' said Jules Favre in a memorandum he sent on June 6, 1871, to the representatives of France abroad, directing them to urge the governments to which they were accredited to common action against the common foe. England declined the invitation, but Lord Bloomfield, the British ambassador at Vienna, illustrating British concern, made diplomatic inquiries with regard to the extent of the activities of the International in the Austrian Empire. In the course of Bismarck's conversations with Count Beust, the Austrian Chancellor, at Gastein, the subject of the struggle against the International was discussed at length. Beust mentioned with satisfaction in his memorandum that both Governments had spontaneously expressed a desire for defensive measures and common action against it, after the 'sensational events that characterised the fall of the Paris Commune, in view of its expansion and the dangerous influence it is beginning to exert on the working class and against the present foundations of the state and society. The thought inevitably arises whether it might not be well to counter this universal association of workers with a universal association of employers, oppose the solidarity of possession to the solidarity of non-possession, and set up a counter-International against the International. The power of capital is still an assured and well-buttressed factor in public life.'

The situation, however, was not nearly so threatening as some feared and others hoped. If Bismarck behaved to some extent as though he were preparing to bow before the storm of a Commune in Berlin, he was actuated less by fear of an immediate outbreak than by his wish to frighten the Liberal bourgeoisie from forming even the loosest of alliances with the Socialist workers against the ruling Junkers. But in spite of all exaggerations and over-estimates, whether entirely fabricated or genuinely believed, one fact remained. Revolutionary workers had remained in power in Paris for more than two months. Whether the Commune had in every respect acted rightly might justifiably be doubted, but the time for criticism was not yet. One fact dominated everything else, and, in Marx's words, made the Commune 'a new point of departure of world-historical significance.' Workers had seized the power for the first time.

Hitherto the International had concerned itself primarily, though not 'of course exclusively, with economic matters such as the shortening of the working day, the securing of higher wages, supporting strikes, defence against strike-breaking, etc., and to the overwhelming majority of its members it had appeared as an organisation aiming primarily at the improvement of the economic position of the worker. But the situation had undergone a fundamental alteration now. History itself had placed the proletariat's struggle for the seizure of power upon the order of the day. After the Commune it was impossible for the International to continue to restrict itself to activities which were political only by implication. It was necessary to convert its sections from propagandist organisations and trade-union-like groups into political parties. After the Communards had fought on the field of battle it was impossible for the workers of the International to revert to the narrow struggle for their immediate economic interests in the factories and merely draw public attention to themselves from time to time by issuing a political proclamation from the side-lines, which might be read or not. They must enter the political field themselves, welded into a firm organisation, with a party that openly proclaimed its programme--the seizure of the state power by the working class as the preliminary to its economic liberation. The conclusion the governments of Europe drew from the Commune was that the International was a political world-power, menacing to them all. The conclusion the International drew from it was that it was the latter that, they must become.

With the 'politicalising' of the International the function of the General Council necessarily altered. In the past the General Council had practically not interfered at all in the life of individual sections, but now a thorough-going co-ordination of their activities, though within definite limits, had become imperative. That did not involve the assumption by the General Council of a kind of supreme command over the various sections, dictating to them from London the exact details of what they were to do. It did, however, involve a multiplication of the tasks devolving upon it, and the adoption by it of an entirely different position from that which it had adopted, and been compelled to adopt, in the past. And therewith internal questions arose of which not even the preliminaries had existed before.

Marx and Engels devoted the months that followed the collapse of the Commune to the task of energetically reconstructing the International. 'The long-prepared blow,' to use Marx's phrase, was struck at a conference held in London in the second half of September, 1874. In a number of countries the sections of the International had not recovered from the blows that had descended upon them as a result of the war and its aftermath, and these countries were not represented at the conference. That was the reason for the summoning of a conference instead of a congress. On this occasion Marx presided over the discussions of the International for the first time since 1865. He drafted a resolution concerning the question of the political struggle, which had become the central issue. The resolution observed that a faulty translation of the statutes into French had resulted in a mistaken conception of the International's position. The statutes provisionally set up by the General Council in 1864 stated: 'The economic emancipation of the workers is the great aim to which all political action must be subordinated as a means.' (The statutes were confirmed by the first Congress, held in 1866. In the French version of the Congress report issued by the Geneva section the words 'as a means' are missing. All the other versions have them. Neither in the surviving minutes of the Congress nor in the contemporary Press is there any mention of any alteration of the statutes. The fact that the last two words are missing from the French version is undoubtedly an accident and possibly merely a printer's error.) The conference reminded the members of the International 'that in the militant state of the working class its economic progress and political action are indissolubly united.'

Previous Congresses had only dealt incidentally with internal International affairs. At this conference, indicating the altered situation, they played the leading rôle. The conference adopted resolutions concerning the organisation of sections in those countries in which the International had been banned, as well as resolutions concerning the split in Switzerland, the Bakuninist Alliance, and other matters. The policy of the International Press was directed to be conducted along certain definite lines--a thing quite unprecedented in the past. All the conference's transactions were aimed at strengthening the structure of the International for the approaching political fray.

Marx, and Engels like him, believed that as soon as the period of reaction, which could not but be brief, was over the International was destined for a rapid and immense advance. For this the London conference was intended to prepare the way. But a year later the International was dead.

Of the two countries which had been its main support, France's withdrawal from the movement lasted not just for a few months or for a year but for a full decade. The advance guard of the French proletariat had fallen at the Paris barricades or was languishing in prison or perishing in banishment in New Caledonia. The small groups that survived were insignificant. Those that were not broken up by the police dissolved gradually of their own accord.

In the other of the two countries which had been the International's main support developments were unfavourable too. In England the workers' movement had no need to be urged to take the political road. Even before the reorganisation of the International it had taken that road itself, and was now pursuing definite if narrowly circumscribed political aims; but at the very moment when it should have been marshalling its ranks for a general attack on the power of the possessing classes, it withdrew from the struggle. So many of its demands had been granted that it started feeling satisfied. Stormy meetings and uproarious demonstrations had demanded universal suffrage, and universal suffrage had been attained. England's economic strides relieved the situation to such an extent that the Government no longer had cause to fear the consequences of reform. It was able to repeal a whole series of legal enactments that imposed oppressive restrictions on the trade unions, and this deprived the trade union leaders of yet another impulse towards political action. After the collapse of the Chartist movement only relatively small groups had worked to revive an independent political movement among the workers, and such a thing looked entirely superfluous now. Many prominent trade unionists once more drew nearer to the Liberals, who took advantage of the opportunity to make the trade union cause their own; or at least acted as if they did, though a debt of gratitude was certainly due to the energy of the Radical Liberals, men like Professor Beesly and Frederic Harrison. In many constituencies Liberals supported the candidature of trade union leaders. In these profoundly altered circumstances not much attention was paid to the General Council's admonition to create an independent political movement. Opposition to the General Council, weak at first but definite nevertheless, reared its head among the trade union leaders. Several other factors contributed to this. Objection was taken to Marx's definitely pro-Irish attitude, and the General Council's uncompromising partisanship of the Commune was felt as inopportune and disturbing by Labour leaders who had started associating themselves with the ruling system and, though the influence of this may at first only have been slight, in some cases had become members of royal commissions.

Opposition to the General Council first expressed itself in a demand for the formation of a special regional council for England. This demand was thoroughly justified according to the statutes. All the other countries had their own councils, but up to 1871 the General Council served also as regional council for England. This had come about quite spontaneously. London was the headquarters of the International and no one--least of all Marx--felt there was any necessity for a special council for England apart from the General Council. He formulated his reasons in a 'confidential communication' at the beginning of 1870. Although the revolutionary initiative was probably destined to start from France, he stated, England alone could provide the level for a serious economic revolution. He added that the General Council being placed in the happy position of having its hand on that great lever of the proletarian revolution, what madness, they might almost say what a crime it would be to let it fall into purely English hands! The English had all the material necessary for the social revolution. What they lacked was generalising spirit and revolutionary passion. The General Council alone could supply the want and accelerate the genuine revolutionary movement in that country and consequently everywhere. ... If one made the General Council and the English regional council distinct, what would be the immediate effects? Placed between the General Council of the International and the General Council of the Trades Unions, the regional council would have no authority and the General Council would lose the handling of the great lever.

This argument was as valid in the autumn of 1871 as it had been in the spring of 1870, but in the meantime the centrifugal forces in England had grown so strong that it was necessary to make concessions if the International as a whole were not to be jeopardised. The London conference decided that a British regional council should be formed. The immediate consequences appeared entirely favourable. The number of British sections increased rapidly, and relations between the regional council and the trades unions became closer and better. On the other hand the General Council lost its influence in England, and within a short time it became evident that there was a danger of the General Council severing its connection with the International altogether.

Though there were some countries in which the strength of the International had increased in 1870 and 1871, the result of the withdrawal of France and the altered situation in England was that it was extraordinarily weakened as a whole. For the advance of the German workers' movement and the shifting of the centre of gravity across the Rhine was an inadequate compensation.

These years saw the emergence in Germany of a workers' party which was the archetype and pattern of Continental workers' parties up to the Great War. It approximated closely to what Marx insisted should be the form of the political movement of the proletariat, though it failed to fulfil his demands in every way. Sharp, sometimes over-sharp criticism appear in the letters Marx addressed to the leaders of the German party. Nevertheless Marx on the whole approved of the path that the German Socialists had struck out upon. He approved of their work of organisation and propaganda, and of their attitude in Parliament and to the other parties. The party visibly grew from year to year and it was to be expected that within a short time it would play a leading rôle in the International. It never did so, for two reasons. The first was the severity of the German legal restrictions on the right of forming associations; the Government were constantly on the watch for an opportunity of suppressing the German workers' party, and its leaders therefore assiduously avoided doing anything that might have given them the opportunity of doing so under cover of legal forms. In the second place the German party was completely absorbed with its work in Germany. The German Socialists proclaimed their complete solidarity with the International, but that was practically all. The German Party remained practically without significance as far as the inner life of the International was concerned.

Marx blamed Wilhelm Liebknecht for the 'lukewarmness' with which he conducted the 'business of the International' in Germany. But it is doubtful whether anyone could have done better than Liebknecht, who was absolutely tireless and was completely devoted to Marx. After the London conference Marx informed Liebknecht that the General Council wished him to establish direct contact with the principal places in Germany. This task Liebknecht had already begun. He actually succeeded in forming sections in Berlin and other towns. These, however, led a very precarious existence and were not of much use to the General Council. In spite of all the sympathy with which the German Socialists regarded the International, they were prevented from helping the General Council by the fact that they embodied in a pronounced fashion the very thing which, in the eyes of its opponents, made the General Council unworthy of continuing to lead the International--namely 'authoritarian Socialism.' For such acts of 'subservience to the State' as participating in elections not only failed to impress but actually went far to repel many members of the International in those countries in which Bakunin's 'anti-authoritarian Socialism' was now triumphant.

The Commune had by no means corresponded to Bakunin's ideals. He had had no great hopes of it himself, and his friends in Paris had had to acquiesce in actions that conflicted sharply with what Bakunin demanded of a revolution. This, however, did not prevent Bakunin from annexing the Commune for his own 'anti-authoritarian Communism' and declaring that Marx's ideas had been thoroughly confuted by it. The pitiful end of the rising at Lyons had made him despair of the workers' capacity for revolt, but the glow of the burning Tuileries once more illumined the future in his eyes. So all strength and passion had not yet departed from the world. The revolution was not postponed into the indefinite future but was as imminent as it had been before Sedan. It was bound to come, soon, quite soon, perhaps to-morrow. To confine oneself to petty, philistine 'politicalising' as the German Social Democrats did was equivalent in Bakunin's eyes to a renunciation of the revolution. He resumed the work that he had interrupted for some months, and started spinning his web of secret societies anew. The Commune had made good the wrong done the world by the triumph of Prussia, and the workers' hatred of the butchers of Versailles was a guarantee of ultimate victory. That hatred must not be allowed to cool. Bakunin flung himself zealously into his task.

The Latin countries, especially Spain and Italy, seemed to him to hold out the most favourable prospects for the social revolution. Spain had been the scene of a lively struggle between Republicans and Constitutionalists since the expulsion of the Bourbons in 1868. The Constitutionalists intended the vacant throne for some foreign prince. The struggle broke out sporadically into civil war, and war to the death was declared on the Catholic Church as the mainstay of reaction; and everywhere the workers were stirring. Their new-won national unity brought the people of Italy no peace. The struggle with the dispossessed Pope kept the whole country on tenterhooks. Workers and peasants were as near as ever to starvation in the new kingdom that had been united after such suffering and sacrifice, and the intellectuals were deeply disappointed by what they had so ardently longed for. Bakunin rested his brightest hopes upon Italy and Spain. Sparks from the burning South would leap across into France, Belgium and Latin Switzerland.

Of Germany Bakunin had no hopes whatever. His hopes of that country had been weak before. Now, after the German victory, he felt compelled to abandon them altogether. For were the German Socialists not manifestly paying the state the same idolatry as the German bourgeoisie? Where were they when they should have been attacking the brutal victor, Bismarck? What had they done to save the Commune? That Bebel and Liebknecht had voted against war credits, that their protest against the mad orgies of unleashed militarism had caused them to be put on trial for high treason was forgotten or did not count. In his struggle for domination of the International Bakunin exploited with great skill the chauvinistic anti-German under-currents that had been stimulated by, and had survived, the war. Germany meant Bismarck, but it meant Liebknecht and Bebel too. A German, citizen of a country inclined to despotism by its very nature, was leader of the General Council, and he was the inventor and advocate of 'state socialism,' a conception that corresponded exactly with the German temperament. The International was in the hands of a Pan-German, and the 'League of Latin and Slavonic Races' must rescue it. In his private letters Bakunin placed no bridle upon his hatred of the Germans, and fanned chauvinistic inclinations to the utmost of his power, though in his public utterances he was noticeably more cautious.