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The Advance of Capitalism
in the 1850s

p Although the revolutions of 1848 had not ended in victory, the forces of reaction by this time were unable to halt the advance of social progress. The rapid growth of capitalism in Europe and America lay at the basis of these social changes in the second half of the nineteenth century. Mechanised production had already ousted manual labour in the majority of the countries of Europe and the USA. Large capitalist factories were appearing on the scene in all branches of industry. Important technological innovations were transforming the economy of these countries. The switch from wood to coal and then oil as the main source of fuel also promoted industrial progress. The new method for converting melted cast iron into steel devised by Henry Bessemer and open-hearth furnaces made metal production a much quicker and more streamlined process. Rapid advance in metallurgy acted as a stimulus to other spheres of production. This period also saw rapid expansion of the railways. The total length of the world’s railways, which had been a mere 220 miles in 1830, exceeded 150,000 miles in 1870. Important discoveries in physics, particularly in the field of electricity, soon gave rise to the appearance of a new form of communication—the telegraph.

p In 1859 Charles Darwin’s famous work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published; it was to play a decisive role in the subsequent development of the natural sciences. Important advances were also made in agronomy. More progressive methods of land cultivation were introduced.

Major industrial advance was to be observed in all developed industrial countries from the beginning of the 1850s onwards. However in 1857 Europe and the United States were hit by a new type of crisis, a crisis of overproduction. This was the first time 472 a crisis of such serious dimensions had been encountered on an international scale. But it was not the last: economic crises of this type have since recurred in the capitalist world at regular intervals—approximately once every ten years.

The Workshop of the World

p The most advanced capitalist country at that time was Britain. By subjecting the peoples of a vast empire to cruel exploitation and extorting vast wealth from the colonies, the British bourgeoisie had been able to industrialise the country’s economy extremely rapidly. Factory chimneys dotted the British skyline everywhere. By 1870, Britain had become a predominantly urban country with two-thirds of the population living in the towns. Britain produced half the world’s iron and her mills produced more cotton material than those of the rest of the world put together. Britain also occupied a leading position in other spheres of industry; she had the world’s largest foreign trade and the largest merchant navy.

p Britain was at the height of her power during the Victorian era, under Queen Victoria (1837-1901). However, "Merry England" was extremely gloomy for many, with her highly uneven disHbution of wealth. The factory owners, bankers, shipping magnates and landlords amassed enormous fortunes during this period. The domestic and foreign policy of the country furthered their interests and the incessant colonial wars in India, China and Africa brought them enormous profits. In the years 1853-1856 when Britain, together with France and Turkey, was waging war against Russia in the Crimea it was above all the common people, on whom the war was forced by the ruling classes of both sides, that suffered.

p The working people of Britain were still suffering from extremely hard living and working conditions, portrayed so graphically by the outstanding English novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) in his major works of that period, such as Bleak House, Hard Times and Little Dorrit. These novels presented a vivid picture of the cruel calculating rich and the suffering of the honest poor in Victorian England.

p The peasants were still worse off, and all the oppressed poor of Ireland, let alone the subject millions in the British colonies, were exposed to merciless exploitation and even physical extermination, like the Maoris in New Zealand.

p Britain’s working class had grown considerably by this time and it was also more organised. More and more of the workers were starting to join trade unions. By means of strikes and 473 political demonstrations the British workers succeeded in wresting various concessions from the ruling classes: a ten-hour working day and a law on the protection of child labour. It was largely due to pressure exerted by the workers that the Second Reform Bill was introduced in 1867, giving a much wider section of the population the right to vote. As the working class grew in number and became more politically active, the astute bourgeoisie started resorting to various complicated manoeuvres. The most important among these was a campaign to bring about a split within the working class. With part of the tremendous profits reaped by means of colonial exploitation they decided to buy round the more prosperous sector of the proletariat, the skilled workers. By paying these workers considerably higher salaries and creating for them a number of other privileges the bourgeoisie promoted the creation of a kind of "industrial aristocracy”. This aristocracy soon cut itself off from the broad mass of the industrial proletariat and gradually became the tool of the bourgeoisie within the ranks of the working class.

By their efforts to split the proletariat and making occasional democratic concessions in social and labour legislation in the 1850s and 1860s, the British ruling classes managed to consolidate their positions without turning to the army or the police for support.

The American Civil War

p While capitalism was already far advanced in Britain, various obstacles held up its development in the other countries of Europe and America.

p Throughout the nineteenth century capitalism was developing extremely rapidly in the United States. The exploitation of more and more new lands as the settlers moved westwards, driving out the Indians as they went, and the labour shortage (despite the increasing influx of immigrants) stimulated a rapid and widescale introduction of machinery.

p Capitalist development in the United States did not proceed at a uniform rate. Capitalist production relations soon asserted themselves in the North where large industrial centres grew up, and in the West, which was predominantly agricultural. In the South meanwhile, slave-labour was still being used and the number of plantations employing slave-labour was actually on the increase. The southern part of the United States was by this time the world’s major centre of slave-labour, and by 1860 there were over four million Negro slaves there. Negro slaves could be sold, mutilated or even killed with impunity and they could be forced 474 under threat of flogging to work from morn till night under their harsh masters on the cotton or tobacco plantations.

p These two entirely different systems—that of the North and West, that was capitalist and based on hired labour, and the slave-owning South—were inevitably destined to come to blows sooner or later.

p Over the decades the contradictions between the two systems grew, sometimes giving rise to sharp conflict. Finally in 1861, after Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)—the son of a poor farmer, an honest democrat and one of ardent opponents of slavery (or abolitionists as they were known in the United States)—had been elected President, the slave-owners from the South organised an 475 open revolt against the federal government, splitting away from the Union to set up the Confederate Southern States of America with its own government and President. The rich slave-owning planter, Colonel Jefferson Davis, was elected President, who did not hesitate to declare in public that the Negro was inferior to the white man and that slavery was the normal condition for him.

p From 1861 to 1865 the United States was in the throes of a grim Civil War. At first the odds were on the side of the Confederates, since the latter were better versed in the military arts. However, as more and more of the American people joined the war against the South and the war assumed a more revolutionary character the position changed. The turning point of the war was Abraham Lincoln’s decree to the effect that plots of land in the West would be allotted to all those who were ready to work them (the Homestead Law) and that all slaves belonging to the Southern rebels were declared free as from January 1st, 1863. These laws possessed great revolutionary significance and attracted many recruits to the Northern Army. From then on the Confederates suffered one defeat after another and by the spring of 1865 they were finally routed.

The Civil War resulting in the abolition of slavery represents a heroic chapter in the history of the American people, a second 476 revolution, as it were. However, the people did not succeed in retaining its hold over the harvest of victories reaped in the course of this heroic struggle. On April 14, 1865, five days after the Southerners had capitulated, President Lincoln, who had nobly led the American people throughout the critical years of the Civil War, was shot by an agent of the defeated slaveowners. In the years that followed the big bourgeoisie gained firm control of the country’s state apparatus. Now that slavery no longer presented an obstacle to its advance, capitalism made rapid strides in the United States, outstripping the older capitalist states of Europe in its pace of development.

The Unification of Italy

p National unity, liberation from foreign domination, and independent statehood were still to be achieved by a number of countries and peoples of Europe. This became a particularly vital issue in Italy at this period. After the unsuccessful revolutions of 1848-1849 Italy still consisted of eight separate states, while French troops were stationed in Rome, and Lombardy and Venetia in the North were in Austrian hands.

p Patriotic Italians were burning to drive out the foreign oppressors and unite the country as a single independent state. There were two main standpoints on how these objectives might best be achieved.

p In the North, in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the wealthy circles—factory owners, liberal landowners, high-ranking government officials—who were wary and distrustful of the popular masses, held the opinion that the unification of the country should be engineered "from above”, with the Piedmontese monarchy as its central nucleus, by means of diplomatic and political manoeuvring, without involving the masses. The main proponent of this approach was the Premier, the rich landowner Count Camillo Benso di Cavour. Hoping to establish closer links with Louis Napoleon’s France and thus secure her military and political support for this cause, Cavour had involved Piedmont in the Crimean War (1853-1856). However, participation in this war had in no way furthered the interests of the Italian people: all that was left as a monument to this campaign was the Italian cemetery in Sebastopol. In 1859, after a secret agreement had been concluded between Cavour and Napoleon III, France and Piedmont went to war with Austria, and gained two notable victories at the battles of Magenta (June 4th) and Solferino (June 24th). Yet at the very moment when the Austrians faced imminent defeat, Napoleon III betrayed his Italian allies and secretly 477 concluded a separate armistice and then peace with Austria, under which Lombardy was ceded to Piedmont, the Austrians retained Venetia, and Savoy and Nice were handed over to France. Thus Cavour’s scheming did little good.

p Meanwhile, supporters of a different kind of campaign for political unification of Italy were also active. These were the members of the "Young Italy" movement (Giovane Italia) led by the outstanding Italian patriots Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) and Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882). The "Young Italy" movement did not place its hopes in foreign governments and political intrigue but on the courage and bold revolutionary action of its members. This party instead of fearing the people sought its support. When Cavour’s opportunist schemes to engineer "revolution from above" were foiled, "Young Italy’s" influence in the country gained ground rapidly and from then on it started to play a leading role in the movement for unification.

p In 1859 a popular rising led by "Young Italy" in the northern principalities of Parma, Modena and Tuscany and in papal Romagna succeeded in overthrowing their rulers and uniting with the Kingdom of Piedmont. Later a popular uprising also broke out in the Kingdom of Sicilies, and Garibaldi hurried to the rescue.

Two ships dropped anchor off the rocky shores of Sicily one day in May 1860, and detachments of armed men in red shirts disembarked. This was Garibaldi’s famous “Thousand”, who rallying to the battle-cry of "Viva 1’Italia”, proceeded to do battle with the government troops. Supported by the local peasants, Garibaldi’s Redshirts inflicted a crushing defeat on the army of the Neapolitan King. After this volunteers flocked to join Garibaldi’s contingent and on a forced march, making short work of the King’s regiments they met on the way, his by now sizable army made its way across the whole of Southern Italy and broke into Naples. The Bourbon monarchy was soon overthrown and a jubilant Naples greeted Garibaldi as a national hero. However he and his followers proved ill-equipped to unite the country on a republican basis. In the autumn of 1860, the North and South were united under the sceptre of the King of Piedmont-Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel, who marched in triumph into Naples, where Garibaldi of his own free will surrendered to him his powers of dictatorship accorded him by the people. The services of the legendary hero were no longer required and he returned to the obscurity of his native fishing island of Caprera. Herzen wrote that he was dismissed "like a cabby who had brought his passenger to the required destination”. In March 1861, the united Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in Turin, and King Victor Emmanuel was hailed as its ruler.

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p The final unification of the country was not achieved until a few years later. In 1866 Venetia was freed from the Austrians as a result of the Austro-Prussian War, and in September 1870, after the fall of the Second Empire, the ancient capital Rome was once more restored to Italy.

The unification of Italy was effected by two parallel processes, one "from above" and one "from below”. The decisive role in this movement was played by the revolutionary activity of the popular masses headed by Garibaldi and Mazzini. However, they proved unable to carry this process forward to its logical conclusion—namely, the creation of a republic—and the liberal 479 bourgeoisie, once it had taken power into its own hands, secured its ambition of uniting Italy in the form of a bourgeois constitutional monarchy. Yet the very fact that the country was now united represented an important step forward in the history of the Italian people.

National Liberation Movements in the Balkans

The enslaved peoples of the Balkan peninsula also waged a staunch struggle against their foreign oppressors. For many decades the Rumanians, Bulgars, Serbs, Albanians and Montenegrins had been suffering from cruel Turkish oppression. On several occasions they had taken up arms against their oppressors. In the 1850s and 1860s the liberation movement against the Turks entered a new, more effective stage.

The Bulgarian Liberation Movement. Serbia

p In 1850, the Bulgarian peasants in the Vidin region rose up against their Turkish masters. The uprising was crushed, but the Bulgarian people’s liberation struggle continued in other forms. A major role in the preparation of armed insurrection against the Turks was played by the outstanding Bulgarian revolutionary Georgi Rakovsky (1821-1867). Later his place was to be taken by Vasil Levsky (1837-1873) and Lyuben Karavelov (1837-1879), democratic champions of the people, who were both ardent republicans, despite various divergences in their political views. The Bulgarian Central Revolutionary Committee was set up under Levsky and Karavelov in 1870, and this body was to become the organisational headquarters of the struggle of the Bulgarian people against Turkish domination.

As early as 1830, Serbia had gained the status of a selfgoverning principality, obliged however to recognise the Sultan of Turkey as its supreme ruler. However, in the 1860s she made important advances along the road to complete independence. In 1867 the Turkish garrisons stationed in Belgrade and other Serbian fortresses were withdrawn from the Serbian principality.

The Establishment of the Rumanian State

In 1859 the Rumanian inhabitants of two princedoms which had been artificially split away from each other—Moldavia and Walachia—united as one state, Rumania as it was to be called 480 from 1861 onwards. Colonel Alexander Cuza was elected Prince of Rumania, but in 1866 he was overthrown by reactionary nobles and officers, and a German Hohenzollern prince was installed in his place. Nevertheless, the unification of the Rumanian state was in itself progressive. Although Rumania still officially acknowledged the Sultan as its supreme ruler, for all practical purposes from 1859 onwards Rumania was an independent state.

The Cretan Uprising

However not all the liberation movements of this period were crowned with success. In 1866 an uprising broke out on the island of Crete, where the people had been driven to despair by merciless Turkish oppression, and they rose up as a man to fight to free themselves from the foreign yoke. Many champions of freedom set out from Europe to join the fight for the Cretans’ just cause. Among them was the French revolutionary and friend of Blanqui, Gustave Flourens (1838-1871). However none of the great powers came to the help of little Crete and in 1869 the uprising was ruthlessly suppressed.

The Polish Insurrection of 1863

p Ever since the partition of Poland by Russia, Prussia and Austria at the end of the eighteenth century, the people’s struggle for liberation had gone on uninterrupted. The Poles strove to liberate their country from foreign domination and reunite it. This task was made all the more difficult by the fact that Poland’s oppressors were three powerful European powers, tsarist Russia, the Kingdom of Prussia (later Germany) and the Austrian Empire. In order to achieve success against such strong adversaries it was vital that the whole Polish people should stand united. The main problem besetting the Polish liberation movement was the fact that its leaders belonged to the nobility and gentry, who were wary of the peasantry and failed to trust or properly acquaint themselves with its just demands. Some of the leaders staked their main hopes on receiving help from the Western powers, convinced that they and not the Polish people would prove the decisive factor in the restoration of their country’s sovereignty.

This inherent weakness in the Polish liberation movement determined the negative outcome of the 1863 insurrection, despite the tremendous bravery and heroism that were displayed. The leaders of the rising continued to fear the peasants and pursued a very indecisive policy with regard to them, thereby failing to 481 rally them to the rising from the very outset. Meanwhile, tsarist Russia and Prussia quickly reached an agreement on what line of action to adopt, while the Western powers, guided by their own ulterior motives, gave no serious consideration to helping the Poles. British and French workers and progressive circles in Russia at once voiced their sympathies with the Polish people but they were unable to give them anything but moral support. The odds were such that by the spring of 1864 the insurrection had been cruelly crushed.

The Unification of Germany

p German unification also remained to be achieved. The political reaction which had set in after the revolution of 1848 had been crushed was unable to hold back the rapid economic advance of the German states. In the Rheinland, Saxony, Silesia and Berlin a powerful well-equipped industry grew up and brought about a rapid growth in the proletariat. This rapid capitalist development made the lack of political and economic unity stand out as a still more intolerable anachronism left over from the Middle Ages.

p As had been the case in Italy, so in Germany, unification could be achieved by one of the two methods, one starting "from above" and the other "from below”. The latter course was followed by progressive German workers led by August Bebel (1840-1913), a talented self-taught turner, who was to become an outstanding organiser of the German workers’ movement, and the journalist Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826-1900), a pupil and follower of Karl Marx, with whom he had been on close terms while in exile in London. Bebel and Liebknecht first led workers’ unions and later after they had made the acquaintance of Marx and Engels they set up a German Social-Democratic Party in 1869. Well aware of the vital need to unify Germany, they considered that this could only be achieved by revolutionary action on the part of the people whose single goal should be the setting up of a German democratic republic. However Bebel and Liebknecht did not have the support of all the German workers, many of whom joined the General Association of German Workers ( Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein) founded in 1863 by Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864). This talented speaker and publicist, who had a way with an audience, was not a true proletarian revolutionary when it came to either his theoretical views or his political activity. With regard to the question of German unity, Lassalle was in favour of the creation of a united Germany under the Prussian monarchy, and even had secret talks with Bismarck 482 on the subject. His successors among the leaders of the General Association of German Workers continued to pursue this incorrect, opportunist policy. This split in the workers’ movement reduced its influence on the course of events leading up to unification.

p The unification of Germany was destined to be achieved by other methods. From 1862 onwards, the Prussian government was headed by Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898). This reactionary Pomeranian Junker was at the same time a ruthless man of action and a cunning, subtle politician. Bismarck was well aware of the need to unify Germany, but he spared no effort to make sure that this unification was effected by strictly Prussian methods. "This policy,” he said, "cannot succeed through speeches, and shooting-matches, and songs; it can only be carried out through blood and iron.”

Indeed the unification of Germany was achieved through "blood and iron”. In 1864 in alliance with Austria, Prussia went to war with Denmark, thereby gaining possession of the province of Schleswig while Holstein went to Austria. Two years later in 1866 Prussia declared war on her ally of but a few years before. On June 3rd, 1866, the Austrian army was routed at the battle of Sadowa, and peace was concluded a mere seven weeks after the war had begun. After this defeat Austria was no longer in a position to stand in Prussia’s way as the latter proceeded to bring about the unification of Germany under her own hegemony.  [482•*  Austria also surrendered to Prussia a number of German states which had fought on her side in the war, such as Holstein and Hannover. In 1867 Bismarck succeeded in setting up the North German Confederation, consisting of 22 states and in which Prussia was to play the leading role. This was another important landmark on the road to German unification.

The Second Empire

p Yet there was another serious obstacle standing in the way of a Germany united under Prussian leadership—Louis Napoleon’s France.

p Under the Second Empire France’s industrial revolution had taken place. A period of rapid economic development followed and the introduction of up-to-date mechanisation increased France’s industrial production three times over. Yet while large modern factories were developing apace, small-scale manual production still continued to play a significant role in the 483 manufacture of luxury articles and haute couture. This important economic advance was far from bringing prosperity to all: many small-scale entrepreneurs went bankrupt, unable to compete with large industrial concerns. A sharp rise in the cost of living made things extremely difficult for all the working people.

p Meanwhile, the working class was subjected to still greater exploitation than before. All the advantages gained from the new economic progress were enjoyed by the factory owners, entrepreneurs and financiers. The latter were able to line their pockets particularly rapidly by means of all kinds of speculation and financial intrigue indulged in on an unprecedented scale during the years of the Second Empire. The big bourgeoisie and all kinds of dealers made fabulous profits out of the various wars engaged in by the Emperor.

p “The Empire means peace,” declared Napoleon III soon after he came to power. In actual practice, however, the contrary was to prove the case. There was one war after another and not only because they brought enormous riches to the financiers and industrialists, but because they also served the dynastic interests of the Emperor. The adventurer, now at the helm of state in France after seizing power by force and making capital out of the name of his famous uncle, realised that in order to reinforce his authority he needed military successes. Soon after the beginning of the Second Empire, in 1853, Napoleon III led France to war against Russia. This war lasted for three years, cost France a great deal and took a heavy toll of lives, without bringing her any appreciable advantages. The results of the war of 1859 with Austria were equally insignificant, for while France gained Savoy and Nice she also gained a new enemy in the Italians.

p During the 1850s and 1860s France continued to wage incessant colonial wars. This period saw increased French penetration of Algeria and the annexation of a large part of the Sahara. In 1857-1858 and 1860 France waged a war of plunder against China after which she embarked on a war of annexation against Vietnam which was to last for a whole decade. Cambodia and Cochin-China also fell prey to the French colonialists. In 1862 a colonial adventure on an ambitious scale began in Mexico. However this "great imperial enterprise" was to end in a fiasco, and in 1867 the French expeditionary force was obliged to leave Mexico after a humiliating showdown.

p The failure of the Mexican expedition was one of the major defeats of the Second Empire, and it was to be followed by a number of others. The opportunistic foreign policy pursued by the Second Empire led to a deterioration in France’s relations with a number of major powers such as Russia, Italy and Britain. Napoleon was to suffer his final defeat in his policy 484 towards Germany. During the Austro-Prussian War France remained neutral, hoping as a result to receive considerable compensation. However Prussia had no such intentions and made no attempt to help France out of her impasse.

By this time there was no concealing the bankruptcy of the Second Empire’s foreign policy, which had revealed its inherent weakness and served to hasten its ultimate collapse. The tactics of manoeuvring and courting favour with various groups indulged in by Napoleon Ill’s government, was not destined to muster support for the regime. The elections held at the end of the 1860s revealed that the majority of the population—although different classes for reasons of their own—opposed the corrupt regime of the Bonapartist Empire. The famous writer and democratic thinker Victor Hugo (1802-1885) had written his Napoleon le Petit as far back as 1852, and from that time onwards had never ceased to polemicise against the Second Empire. Hugo’s anti-Bonapartist sentiments were now shared by the vast majority of the French people.

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871

p Despite the deepening crisis on the home front, Napoleon Ill’s government continued to embark on new adventures, still convinced that the crisis could only be averted by means of military successes. The obvious enemy at this time was Prussia, who had already cunningly out-manoeuvred France on the diplomatic battle-field. On July 19, 1870, the government of the Second Empire declared war on Prussia.

p In Paris, policemen disguised in workers’ garb came out into the streets to rally the crowd with cries of "To Berlin!" Napoleon III was made Commander-in-Chief and set out to join the army. Both he and his military advisers were hoping for a rapid victory. However, from the very outset the French troops proved a poor match for the enemy. This war provided yet another reminder of the tottering power of the Bonapartist regime. One defeat followed another and finally, a mere six weeks after war had been declared, on September 2nd, 1870 at the battle of Sedan a 100,000-strong French army led by Napoleon III surrendered to the Germans.

This military disaster decided the fate of the Second Empire. On September 4, 1870 the insurgent people of Paris overthrew the hated government of the Second Empire now stained with yet another humiliating defeat and for the third time a republic was proclaimed.

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The Completion of the Unification of Germany

The war continued and Prussian tactics now assumed an unmistakably aggressive character. On January 18, 1871 Wilhelm I of the House of Hohenzollern was proclaimed Emperor of Germany in Versailles occupied by German soldiers. The southern states including Bavaria and Saxony were incorporated into the new Empire. Under the terms of the Peace of Frankfurt concluded with France on May 10, 1871, the German Empire was also to include the newly conquered provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. So at last German unity had been attained by means of "blood and iron" after a war of conquest, and a militaristic Empire headed by reactionary rulers from the Prussian house of Hohenzollern came into being.

The International Workers’ Movement

p The rapid advance of capitalist industry inevitably went hand in hand with the rapid growth of the working class. The class consciousness of the proletariat, its organisation and militancy also developed apace. By this time the working class had amassed considerable experience in class struggle.

The lessons of the revolutions and counter-revolution of 1848-1849 had also been invaluable experience. Workers began setting up their own organisations; trade unions appeared in Britain, France, the USA and Germany. Strikes became more and more frequent and successes scored by this means served as a stimulus to the movement as a whole. Socialist groups and circles were set up, and workers no longer approached their problems from the narrow angle of their own particular factory, town or country. International proletarian solidarity was gaining ground rapidly, particularly by the beginning of the 1860s. The French and British workers manifested their support for the Polish insurgents in 1863. During the Civil War in the United States, when the British government sought means of helping the slave-owning South, the British workers’ organisations put strong pressure to bear on it.

The First International

p By the 1860s, after it had amassed considerable experience and attained new heights of class consciousness the workers’ movement was ready to unite its forces on an international basis. The first international proletarian organisation, the Communist League, had ceased to exist after the beginning of the 1850s and was 486 ill-equipped to become a mass organisation. The time had now come to unite the working masses in a new international organisation.

p On September 28, 1864, the International Working Men’s Association was founded at a meeting in London attended by workers from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and various other countries. The representative of the German workers on the presidium was Karl Marx, the outstanding leader of the proletariat’s liberation struggle. He was entrusted with the drawing up of the Inaugural Address and the General Rules. He and Frederick Engels were the movement’s main political leaders and its outstanding thinkers. Workers who had attained varying levels of class consciousness joined the International and for this reason its programme—the Inaugural Address—had to be drawn up in such a way as to be clear and acceptable to all while remaining true to the basic principles of scientific communism. Marx carried out this task with remarkable skill. The Inaugural Address described the grim conditions in which workers lived under capitalism and pointed out that for this reason, "the attainment of political power has become the task of first priority before the working class”. It was pointed out in the Address that the working class was already large enough to wage a successful struggle, but organisation and experience were no less important than numbers. The Inaugural Address also appealed to the workers to oppose wars of conquest and aggression.

p At that time no working-class political parties yet existed but many trade unions, co-operatives, workers’ education groups and other organisations in various countries of Europe and the United States joined the First International. National branches of the International Working Men’s Association were set up in all these countries and within a short period the International had become a broad international proletarian organisation. Its main executive body was its Congress, and during the intervals between congresses the International’s activities were presided over by a General Council which sat in London. The political leader of the General Council was Karl Marx, whose writings provided its inspiration.

p At the same time Marx was carrying out major theoretical work. In 1867 he completed and published the first volume of Capital, on which he had been working for more than twenty years. This work contained a profound analysis of the economic and social aspects of capitalism, and a scientific substantiation of the rise of capitalism and the inevitability of the system’s ultimate demise. This great work provided the working class with vital knowledge and a clear guide in its struggle.

p While carrying on his theoretical work Marx never abandoned 487 his daily pursuit of practical revolutionary work in the ranks of the workers’ movement. Under his leadership, the General Council became the militant headquarters of the international workers’ movement. The International gave active help—both political guidance and material assistance—to the workers’ strike movement. At that period large strikes were being organised in a number of countries, such as Britain, Switzerland and Belgium. The help and guidance of the International enabled many workers’ strikes to score successes and wrest significant concessions from their employers. This fact served to consolidate and enhance the authority of the International among the proletariat. Events now convinced the workers of how much it was possible for them to attain by striving to put the International’s slogan "Workers of the World, Unite!" into practice.

At the congresses of the International the members of the General Council and Marx’s friends and followers took pains, citing examples from the day-to-day course of the workers’ struggle, to explain the inconsistencies of the petty-bourgeois socialism of Proudhon and Bakunin, who both had a sizable following among French, Spanish, Belgian and various other workers. The Proudhonists and Bakuninists although approaching this problem from their own particular angle, both saw the main force capable of transforming the world to lie not in the working class but in petty proprietors and this misguided thesis provided the basis of their whole policy. In the heated debates which went on at the congress meetings scientific communism gradually came to be accepted in preference to other theories. Both from an ideological and organisational point of view, the First International was to become an increasingly close-knit and influential workers’ organisation. The liberation struggle of the working class against the oppressors of the working people had by this time attained impressive new heights.