At the Hague congress of the First
International Bakunin was finally expelled, provoking the wrath of the
anarchists and like-minded people, some of which walked out of the
organisation, like the Blanquists. At the same time, the opportunists
such as the English trade union leaders lined up with the ultra-left in
demanding greater autonomy for the local sections, all of course
complaining about the authoritarianism of Marx and the General Council.
The expulsion of Bakunin
Bakunin and his
chief lieutenant Guillaume were finally expelled at the Hague Congress.
Engels wrote:
“These expulsions constitute an open declaration of war by the
International to the ‘Alliance’ and the whole of Mr. Bakunin’s sect.
Like every other shade of proletarian socialism Bakunin’s sect was
admitted in the International on the general condition of maintaining
peace and observing the Rules and the Congress resolutions. Instead of
doing so, this sect led by dogmatic members of the bourgeoisie having
more ambition than ability tried to impose its own narrow-minded
programme on the whole of the International, violated the Rules and the
Congress resolutions and finally declared them to be authoritarian trash
which no true revolutionary need be bound by.“The almost incomprehensible patience with which the General Council
put up with the intrigues and calumny of the small band of
mischief-makers was rewarded only with the reproach of dictatorial
behaviour. Now at last the Congress has spoken out, and clearly enough
at that. Just as clear will be the language of the documents concerning
the Alliance and Mr. Bakunin’s doings in general which the Commission
will publish in accordance with the Congress decision. Then people will
see what villainies the International was to be misused for.” (Engels, On
the Hague Congress of the International, 17th September
1872, MECW, vol. 23, pp. 268-9)
Guillaume had already refused to appear before the committee set up
to investigate the activities of the Alliance. When he was called upon
by the chairman to defend himself, but declared that he would make no
attempt to defend himself as he was unwilling to take part in a “farce”.
The attack, he declared, was not directed against individuals, but
against the federalist (i.e., anarchist) tendency as a whole. The
supporters of this tendency had already drawn up a statement, which was
then read to the congress. It was signed by five Belgian, four Spanish
and two Jura delegates and also by an American and a Dutch delegate.
Engels later described the scene at the Congress:
"The debate on this question was heated. The members of the
‘Alliance’ did all they could to draw out the matter, for at midnight
the lease of the hall expired and the Congress had to be closed. The
behaviour of the members of the Alliance could not but dispel all doubt
as to the existence and the ultimate aim of their conspiracy. Finally
the majority succeeded in having the two main accused who were present –
Guillaume and Schwitzguébel – take the floor; immediately after their
defence the voting took place. Bakunin and Guillaume were expelled from
the International, Schwitzguébel escaped this fate, owing to his
personal popularity, by a small majority; then it was decided to amnesty
the others.” (Engels, On the Hague Congress of the International,
17th September 1872, MECW, vol. 23, pp. 268-9)
Engels, who spoke in the debate, said:
“The good faith of the General Council and of the whole
International, to whom to correspondence had been submitted, was
betrayed in a most disgraceful manner. Having once committed such a
deception, these men were no longer held back by any scruples from their
machinations to subordinate the international, or, if this were
unsuccessful, to disorganize it.” (Engels, Report on the Alliance of
Socialist Democracy presented in the name of the General Council to the
Congress at the Hague, late August 1872, MECW, vol. 23, p. 231)
Seeing that they were in a minority, as usual the Bakuninists
resorted to a manoeuvre. Allegedly in order to avoid a split in the
International, they declared that they were willing to maintain
“administrative relations” with the General Council, but rejected any
interference on its part in the internal affairs of the Federations. The
signatories of the Bakuninist resolution appealed to all federations
and to all sections to prepare themselves for the next congress in order
to carry the principle of free association (autonomie fédérative)
to victory.
However, the congress was not prepared to be sidetracked by such
tricks and sophistry. It voted to expel Bakunin immediately with 27
against 7 votes, 8 votes not being cast. Then Guillaume was expelled
with 25 against 9 votes, and 9 votes not being cast. The other expulsion
proposals of the committee were rejected, but it was instructed to
publish its material on the Alliance.
After the expulsion of Bakunin and Guillaume, the Alliance, which had
control of the Association in Spain and Italy, unleashed a campaign of
vilification against Marx and the General Council everywhere. It joined
forces with all the disreputable elements and attempting to force a
split into two camps. Marx was undismayed. He wrote to Nikolai
Danielson:
“However, its ultimate defeat is assured. Indeed, the Alliance is
only helping us to purge the Association of the unsavoury or
feeble-minded elements who have pushed their way in here and there.” (Marx
To Nikolai Danielson In St Petersburg, 12 December 1872, MECW,
Volume 44, p. 455)
After the Hague Congress
Crises and splits put people to the test. The result can have a
demoralizing effect on the weaker elements and people who are not
theoretically prepared. This was no exception. Writing on the 8th of
May, 1873, to Sorge, Engels declared:
“Although the Germans have their own squabbles with the Lassalleans,
they were very disappointed with the Hague congress where they expected
to find perfect harmony and fraternity in contrast to their own
wrangling, and they have become very disinterested.”
The split also had a demoralizing effect on the French émigrés, who
were already disoriented by the defeat of the Commune. Writing again to
Sorge on the 12th of September, 1874, Engels declared:
“The French emigrants are completely at sixes and sevens. They have
quarreled amongst themselves and with everyone else for purely personal
reasons, mostly in connection with money, and we shall soon be
completely rid of them … The irregular life during the war, the
Commune and in exile has demoralized them frightfully, and only hard
times can save a demoralized Frenchman.” (Engels
to Frierich Adolph Sorge In Hoboken, MECW, vol. 45, p. 40)
In Italy, the Bakuninists were strong and the Marxists were a small
minority. Engels wrote:
“I hope that the outcome of the Hague Congress will make our Italian
‘autonomous’ friends think. They ought to know that wherever there is an
organisation, some autonomy is sacrificed for the sake of unity of
action. If they do not realise that the International is a society
organised for struggle, and not for fine theories, I am very sorry, but
one thing is certain: the great International will leave Italy to act on
its own until it agrees to accept the conditions common to all.”
(Engels, Letters from London – More about the Hague Congress, 5th
October 1872, MECW, vol. 23, p. 283.)
The wavering elements naturally raised the banner of unity at all
costs. But the loud demands for unity were answered in advance by
the Bakuninists, who in their Rimini Conference, held at the beginning
of August 1872, publicly announced that they had split from the
International and formed a separate organization. By so doing they had
placed themselves outside the ranks of the IWA, as Engels pointed out:
“The Bakuninists have now finally placed themselves outside
the International. A conference (ostensibly of the International, in
reality of the Italian Bakuninists) has been held in Rimini. Of
the 21 sections represented, only one, that from Naples,
really belonged to the International. The other 20, in order not to
endanger their ‘autonomy’, had deliberately neglected to take all
the measures on which the Administrative Regulations of the
International make admission conditional; they had neither written to
the General Council requesting admission, nor sent their subscriptions.
And these 21 ‘International’ sections decided unanimously in Rimini on
August 6:“ ‘The Conference solemnly declares to all workers of the world that
the Italian Federation of the International Working Men’s Association
severs all solidarity with the General Council in London, proclaiming
instead, all the louder, its economic solidarity with all workers, and
urges all sections that do not share the authoritarian principles of the
General Council to send their representatives on September 2,
1872 not to The Hague, but to Neuchâtel in Switzerland in order
to open the general anti-authoritarian Congress there on the same
day’.” (Engels, On the Rimini Conference, 24th
August 1872, MECW, vol. 23, p. 216.)
Engels always spoke with the greatest contempt of the unity-mongers,
who went around shouting at the top of their voice that the split was a
disaster, that unity must be restored at any price, and all the rest of
it. In a letter to Bebel written on 20 June, 1873, he wrote:
“One must not allow oneself to be misled by the cry for ‘unity.’
Those who have this word most often on their lips are those who sow the
most dissension, just as at present the Jura Bakuninists in Switzerland,
who have provoked all the splits, scream for nothing so much as for
unity. Those unity fanatics are either the people of limited
intelligence who want to stir everything up together into one
nondescript brew, which, the moment it is left to settle, throws up the
differences again in much more acute opposition because they are now all
together in one pot (you have a fine example of this in Germany with
the people who preach the reconciliation of the workers and the petty
bourgeoisie) or else they are people who consciously or unconsciously
(like Mühlberger, for instance) want to adulterate the movement. For
this reason the greatest sectarians and the biggest brawlers and rogues
are at certain moments the loudest shouters for unity. Nobody in our
lifetime has given us more trouble and been more treacherous than the
unity shouters.” (Engels
to August Bebel, MECW, vol. 44, p. 512)
The Blanquists split
The subsequent proposal that the permanent residence of the General
Council be transferred to New York was dictated in part by purely
practical considerations. Given the prevailing wave of
counterrevolution, the International lost its base not only in France
and Germany, but also in England. But the proposal was bound to meet
with vigorous resistance from the German, French and English leaders,
and the resistance to it after the Hague Congress was ferocious and
embittered.
The immediate effect was that the Blanquists walked out of the
International. They were furious at the decision to move the Council to
New York because they had hoped to get control of it. They split from
the International as a result. The proposal of Marx and Engels to move
the General Council to New York had been taken in order to prevent the
Blanquists from using the Council to promote their adventurist tactics.
But by splitting from the International they consigned themselves to
oblivion.
On the two chief questions at issue, the question of political
activity and the question of strict centralization, the Blanquists were
in agreement with Marx, but their political adventurism and advocacy of
revolutionary coups made them an even greater danger than the reformists
in the prevailing conditions of European reaction. It was presumed that
the transfer of the International would be a temporary move, to be
reversed when conditions permitted. However, as it turned out, the Hague
Congress was the last of any significance in the history of the
International.
Eccarius, Jung and Hales
It frequently happens in politics, as in other aspects of life, that
the most trivial personal considerations (jealousy, ambition, spite
etc.) can play a disproportionate role in shaping events. Of course, in
the revolutionary movement, such factors play the role of a catalyst for
far more deep-seated political differences, which are not immediately
obvious, but become clearer ex post facto. To use the celebrated
expression of Hegel, necessity expresses itself through accident.
This was the case with Eccarius and Jung, two members of the General
Council who had been Marx’s most loyal comrades for years. But in May,
1872, a definite breach occurred between Marx and Eccarius. The
immediate cause was quite trivial. Eccarius announced that he was
leaving his position as General Secretary of the International, as he
was unable to live on his weekly salary of fifteen shillings.
Unfortunately, he was replaced by the Englishman John Hales and
Eccarius unjustly blamed Marx for this. On the other hand, Marx was
annoyed by the fact that Eccarius published information about the
internal affairs of the International in the bourgeois press in return
for payment, in particular information concerning the private conference
of the International in London.
To give an indication of the problems Marx and Engels had to put up
from Eccarius on the General Council, the following extract from the
meeting of 11 May 1872 will suffice. When questioned about his making
public the internal affairs of the General Council, Eccarius refused to
show the incriminating correspondence, taking refuge behind legalistic
arguments:
“Citizen Eccarius said he was in the same position as Hales; he kept
no copies and should decline to answer; he should stand on the principle
of English law, which was that those who prosecute should prove. […]“Citizen Marx considered Hales had been guilty of grave indiscretion,
as he had compromised the Council.“Citizen Engels agreed with the remarks of Citizen Marx. With respect
to the defence of Citizen Eccarius, the Council has nothing to do with
British law. It had a right to know: had Eccarius written the letter he
was charged with writing? Yes or no?“Citizen Eccarius thought when the charge was made the proofs would
be forthcoming, but instead of the proofs being produced he was asked to
acknowledge his guilt. He should refuse to give any answer until the
letter was in his hand. It had all along been assumed that he had been
guilty of criminal correspondence, and he should let those who made the
charge prove it.“Citizen Marx said he said nothing about criminal correspondence, but
he did say it was a crime if Eccarius wrote the letter which had the
damaging character – of destroying the influence of the Council.“With regard to the demand that the charge should be proved, he would
point out that this was not an ordinary tribunal where there was a
defendant and a prosecutor. It was a question of the conservation of the
influence of the Council. […]“Citizen Engels said that the sentimentality of the previous sitting,
when it was said it was cruel to let charges hang over a man’s head
etc., only made the cry for delay more comical.” (Documents of the
First International, vol. 5, pp. 191-2)
It is not the last time we have heard the demand that, in dealing
with disciplinary cases, the International must follow the strict
procedures of bourgeois law – an argument, which, as we see from the
above, was indignantly rejected by Marx and Engels, who also had no time
for appeals to sentimentality, hurt feelings and so on. The overriding
consideration was to defend the revolutionary organization. By releasing
internal information and spreading gossip, Eccarius had damaged the
influence of the General Council, and Marx considered this to be a
crime.
For his part, Jung was jealous of Marx’s closeness to Engels, with
whom he was in daily contact since he moved to London from Manchester.
Jung and Eccarius felt offended by this and complained that “the
General,” as Engels was nicknamed in the circle, had an abrupt
military tone. Whenever he took the chair at the meetings of the
General Council, there was usually a row, they said.
It is fairly typical of mediocre individuals to make such complaints
about the “tone” of a discussion, and the alleged “arrogance”
of people more able than themselves. Trotsky pointed out that it was
unworthy of a revolutionary to take offense because he or she has
suffered a “flip on the nose.” In revolutionary politics what is
important is not form but content, not the tone with which
something is said but what is said.
Sometimes, however, such secondary considerations can give rise to
friction and enmities that can later be filled with a political content.
That was the case with Jung and Eccarius. They were not necessarily bad
people, but they had a limited political understanding and allowed
their personal feelings and hurt pride to cloud their political
judgment. With Hales things were very different. When he was elected
General Secretary, a sharp personal conflict arose between him and
Eccarius. On the part of the latter it was mainly a question of jealous
resentment. But Hales was an opportunist and a reformist to the marrow
of his bones and he had always distrusted the revolutionary ideas of
Marx.
The London conference decided to set up an English Federation, and it
held its first congress in Nottingham on the 21st and 22nd of July.
This was Hales’ opportunity to build a counterweight to the General
Council and cancel out the influence of Marx. He proposed to the 21
delegates who were present that the Federation should establish contact
with the other Federations not through the General Council, but
directly, and that at the coming congress of the International the new
Federation should support a change in the Statutes of the International
with a view to reducing the authority of the General Council.
This was music to the ears of the Bakuninists, fitting in well with
their slogan of the “endangered autonomy of the Federations.” In fact,
the English trade unionists had absolutely nothing in common with the
ideas of the Bakuninists, being inclined to towards English Liberalism.
But none of this mattered. They were all agreed on one thing: implacable
opposition to Marx and the “authoritarian” General Council. In this way
an unholy alliance was formed between Hales, Eccarius and Jung.
Although, as we have seen, the reformist Hales had nothing in common
with the ideas of the anarchists, he had secretly entered into close the
relations with the Jura Federation at the Hague. This unprincipled bloc
was based on the well-known idea: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
For these people, any weapon or ally was useful if it gave one a stick
to beat Marx and the General Council!
On the 6th of November, writing in the name of the English Federal
Council, Hales declared that the “hypocrisy of the old General Council”
had now been exposed. On the 18th of September Hales moved a vote of
censure against Marx in the British Federal Council, using as an excuse
Marx’s comments at the Hague concerning the corrupt nature of some
English working-class leaders. The vote of censure was adopted. Hales
then gave notice that he intended to present a resolution for the
expulsion of Marx from the International, whilst another member gave
notice for a resolution rejecting the decisions of the Hague congress.
The theory of “two rival bureaucracies”
Hales developed an original and peculiar theory: Marx and Bakunin
were really… the same. According to Hales, Marx had attempted to
organize a secret society within the International on the pretext of
destroying another secret society which it had invented to suit its
aims. It was only a matter of one authoritarian bureaucracy fighting
against another authoritarian bureaucracy to get control of the
International!
At the same time, however, Hales pointed out that the English were
not in agreement with the Jura Federation politically. They (the
English) were convinced of the usefulness of political action. Here he
spoke the unvarnished truth, since the English trade union leaders were
trying to get into parliament, and for this purpose they needed the help
of the Liberals. However, they were quite prepared to grant complete
autonomy to all other federations as demanded by the different
conditions in the various countries – and the different interests of the
leaders.
Politics knows strange bedfellows. Although Hales and Eccarius had
previously entertained a violent dislike for each other, they now became
the most zealous allies, and Jung finally became one of the most
violent opponents of Marx and Engels. In the cases of both Eccarius and
Jung, they permitted their political judgment to be clouded by personal
jealousies and resentments. As Lenin once remarked, spite in politics
always plays the most destructive role.
In the past, Eccarius and Jung had become known to the whole
International as the most faithful defenders of the opinions of Marx.
Now they did a 180 degree somersault and appealed for support for the
Jura Federation against the “intolerance” of the Hague decision and the
“dictatorial tendencies” of Marx and Engels. However, the two men met
with vigorous resistance in the English sections, and in particular the
Irish. Even in the Federal Council they encountered opposition. So, as
befits such committed advocates of democracy and toleration, they
carried out a coup d’etat in the English branch of the International.
They issued an appeal to all sections and all members, declaring that
the British Federal Council was so divided against itself that further
co-operation was impossible. They demanded the calling of a congress to
reverse the decisions taken at the Hague.
The minority immediately replied to these manoeuvres with a
counter-appeal, probably written by Engels, which condemned the proposed
congress as illegal. Nevertheless, the congress took place on the 26th
of January, 1873. Hales delivered violent attacks on the old General
Council and on the Hague Congress, and was actively supported by Jung
and Eccarius. The congress unanimously condemned the Hague decisions and
refused to recognize the new General Council in New York, and declared
itself in favour of a new international congress. Hales intrigued quite
openly against the General Council and in August he was removed from his
post. But the split in the British Federation was by now an
accomplished fact.
The end of the International
The history of the First International really ends with the Hague
congress. The leading figure of the new General Council in New York was
Sorge, who was well acquainted with American conditions and a loyal
supporter of Marx. But still the moving of the new General Council to
New York failed to save the IWA. The movement in America lacked the
experience and material means to prosper there.
The sixth congress of the International was called by the General
Council in New York for the 8th of September in Geneva. But its only
purpose was to sign the death certificate of the International. The
Bakuninists organized their counter-congress in Geneva on the 1st of
September. It was attended by two English delegates – the old
arch-enemies Hales and Eccarius, five delegates each from Belgium,
France and Spain, four delegates from Italy, one delegate from Holland
and six delegates from the Jura.
Marx frankly admitted that the congress had been “a fiasco” and
advised the General Council not to emphasize the formal organizational
side of the International for the moment, but, if possible, to keep the
centre point in New York going, to prevent it from falling into the
hands of adventurers and others who might compromise the cause. Events
would assure the recreation of the International on a higher level in
the future. History was to prove Marx correct.
In 1876 the General Council in New York published the notice that the
First International had ceased to exist. For ten years the
International had dominated one part of European history. But now it
faced an uncertain future because of objective difficulties and internal
problems. In 1874, Engels wrote. “A general defeat of the working-class
movement such as was suffered in the period from 1849 to 1864 will be
necessary before a new international, an alliance of all proletarian
parties in all countries, along the lines of the old one can come into
being. At present the proletarian world is too big and too diffuse.”
Unlike its successors, the Second (Socialist) and Third (Communist)
Internationals, the First International was never a mass organization.
Moreover, in its beginnings it was politically confused, being made up
of all kinds of different elements: English reformist trade unionists,
French Proudhonists, followers of Mazzini, the Italian nationalist,
Blanquists, Bakuninists and others. But thanks to the patient and
tireless work of Marx and Engels, the ideas of scientific socialism
eventually triumphed.
In the building of a genuine International, the importance of ideas
is as fundamental as are strong foundations in the building of a house.
The International Workingman’s Association was the first real attempt to
establish an international organization of the working class. It was
the equivalent of laying down the foundations of a house. If a house is
to withstand the battering of the elements, it must have strong
foundations.
The great merit of Marx’s work in the IWA was that it established a
firm theoretical base for the movement, without which the future
development of the International would have been impossible. The First
International laid the basis for the creation of the mass
social-democratic workers’ parties in Germany, Switzerland, Denmark,
Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Holland and North America. It had established
the theoretical foundations for the future development of socialism on a
world scale.
An important role in this was the fierce ideological battle with
other trends, especially Bakuninist anarchism. In the end, the
combination of an extremely unfavourable objective situation following
the defeat of the Paris Commune and the destructive factional intrigues
of the Bakuninists undermined the International. Marx and Engels
transferred the centre to New York, partly to prevent it from falling
into the hands of the Bakuninists and other intriguers, but partly
because they hoped that the workers’ movement in North America would
come to the rescue.
In the end, these hopes did not materialize, and they were compelled
to recognize that the IWA had played out its historical role. The
International, as an organized force, ceased to exist. But the tradition
of the International lived on. It survived as an idea and a
programme, to re-emerge about a decade later on a higher level. The
emergence of mass workers’ parties and trade unions towards the end of
the 19th century provided the basis for the founding of a new
International – the Second International.
In July 1889 the International Socialist Congress opened its doors in
Paris, attended by delegates from 20 countries. They founded the new
Socialist International and declared May Day an international
working-class holiday. And they adopted the principles of the
International Workingmen’s Association founded a quarter of a century
before. The International, like the phoenix of ancient legend, had risen
from the ashes to spread its mighty wings.
