International, THE. The International Working-men's Association was founded at London in 1864. It was, however, not the first attempt to establish an international combination of workmen. As early as 1839 a number of exiles, chiefly German, had taken part in an unsuccessful rising at Paris, and removing to London had formed a league in the interests of labour. Containing workmen from most of the countries of northern Europe to whom German served as a common tongue, the league naturally assumed an international character. It entered into relation with Karl Marx in 1847, and under his influence was reconstituted under the name of the Communist League. In its name Marx and his friend Fr. Engels drew up the manifesto of the Communist party, an expression of the most violent revolutionary and international socialism. The manifesto was published on the eve of the revolution of 1848, and the members of the league represented the most extreme section of the fighting democracy in Germany during that time of trouble. The failure of the revolution was soon followed by the dissolution of the league.
The association of 1864, usually called the International, began in the visit of some French workmen to the International Exhibition in London, 1862. This visit was encouraged or supported by the Emperor Napoleon. In London the Frenchmen fraternised with their English brethren; wishes for common action in the cause of labour were interchanged, a course which was furthered by the desire of the emperor, through the workmen, to influence public opinion in favour of Poland. Finally, in September 1864, at a great meeting in London, it was decided to establish an international association of working-men.
Mazzini was first commissioned to draft a constitution for the association, without satisfactory result; and the task fell upon Marx, who, in the inaugural address and in the statutes, embodied the aims of the new movement with masterly force and clearness. Notwithstanding the enormous progress of industry in recent years, Marx contended that the lot of the workmen had not improved; that the economic subjection of the worker under the monopolist of the instruments of labour, that is, of the sources of life, was the cause of servitude, in all its forms, of social misery, intellectual degradation, and political dependence; and that the economic emancipation of the working-class, therefore, was the great end to which every political movement should be subordinated as means. Fearing that the new hopes now awakened might be rendered vain through the want of union, he maintained that the emancipation of the working-class was neither a local nor a national, but a social task, which concerns all countries where modern society exists, and whose solution depends on the practical and theoretical co-operation of the most advanced countries. The association declared that all societies and individuals adhering to it recognise truth, justice, and morality as the rules of their conduct to each other and to all men without distinction of colour, creed, or nationality; no duties without rights, no rights without duties. While intended to act as a centre of combination and systematic co-operation between the working-men of various countries, the International left intact the organisation of existing societies which might join it. There was to be an annual congress, which should name the general council, and the general council would hold in its hands the control of the association.
The statutes drawn up by Marx were adopted by the first congress held at Geneva, 1866; and the socialistic principles which from the first were implied in its constitution received explicit development at that and subsequent congresses, Lausanne (1867), Brussels (1868), Basel (1869). The meeting at Brussels was in every way the most decisive; it declared that mines, land, and means of communication should become the common property of the state, and by it be handed over to associations of working-men to be utilised under conditions favourable to the common good; and that only through co-operative societies and the organisation of mutual credit could the workmen own and control the machines. The congress further condemned all appropriation by capital of rent, profit, or interest; labour should enjoy its full right and entire reward. Against the war then imminent between France and Germany, and against war generally, the congress raised a solemn protest, and recommended a universal strike in the event of its breaking out. 'At the congress of Basel a proposal for the abolition of the right of inheritance was not carried.
Apart from the meeting of congresses, it is not easy exactly to define the development of the International. Though speedily suppressed by the French government, it had some influence in directing and supporting strikes in that country, while it assisted English trades-unions by preventing the importation of cheap labour from the Continent. It had adherents in every country of western and central Europe; but its influence always depended more on the vast and undefined possibilities of the cause it represented than on its actual strength. Its finances were weak, its organisation loose; the adhesion of many of its members was of a very platonic character. Undoubtedly the most real and effective gain to the International was in Germany, where the workers' unions constituting the Eisenach branch of the Social Democracy declared their adhesion to it.
In 1870 the International proposed to hold its annual congress at Paris, the ancient seat of the revolutionary movement, but the Franco-German war intervened to prevent it. The revolt of the Commune with its disastrous consequences rendered a congress impossible also in 1871. The International had little or nothing to do with originating the Commune; only a few of its members were involved in the rising, and on their individual responsibility. After the suppression of the revolt, Marx in the name of the general council wrote a trenchant manifesto fully endorsing the action of the Commune. He saw in it a rising of the proletariat against a clique of bourgeois adventurers who had seized on the central power of France. It was a revolt of the proletariat, the class of which socialism claims to be the special champion; and it was an assertion, against the centralising government of the middle classes, of the political form requisite for the development of socialism, the commune or self-governing local group of workers.
From the first the control of the International had depended mostly on a group of German exiles, of whom Marx was the undoubted chief. The followers of Blanqui and Proudhon exercised some influence, but it could not be compared with that of Marx. In 1869 Bakunin, the apostle of anarchism, with a body of followers entered the International. Naturally they objected to the authority and centralising methods of Marx, and at the Hague congress of 1872 a rupture ensued. The anarchists were expelled from the association, the seat of which was also transferred by the Marx party to New York. In 1873 both parties held congresses at Geneva, which did nothing notable. The Marx International really ceased to exist from that time. The Anarchist International, which was most powerful in the Romance countries, such as Spain and Italy, continued to act for some years subsequently; and particularly it was responsible for the risings in the cities of southern Spain in 1873-74, where the insurgents seized on part of the ironclad fleet, and were suppressed not without difficulty.
No formal organisation styling itself International now exists, but the socialist parties of the different countries, especially those adhering to the Marx school, fully recognise the international character of the movement in which they are engaged. Foremost in every respect among those parties is the German Social Democracy, with its strongly-pronounced indifference and even hostility to many of the accepted national interests of the country. Since the downfall of Marx's association international socialism has found expression in congresses, as that of Ghent in 1877. In 1889 the centenary of the Great Revolution, two large international congresses assembled at Paris, one representing the more uncompromising Marx school, the other consisting of delegates who are not indisposed to co-operate with other democratic parties. The proposal made in 1889 by the Swiss government for an international conference on the protection and regulation of labour did not excite much attention; but it was felt that the whole question had entered on a new stage when in the spring of 1890 the German emperor assembled a similar conference at Berlin. It is needless to say, however, that this International of the European governments concerned itself with only a small portion of the great task undertaken by the association so called. An international demonstration of workmen in favour of the compulsory limitation of the working day to eight hours took place in most populous European and American centres on May 1, 1890 (in London the principal gathering was on Sunday, 4th May).
See Laveleye's Socialism of To-day; John Rae, Contemporary Socialism; R. Meyer's Emancipationskampf des vierten Standes (vol. i. contains the documents bearing on the International); E. Villetard, Histoire de l'Internationale.