In the legends of its enemies as well as of its admirers, the International was presented as a vast organization with tremendous financial resources. In the third trial under the French Empire of members of the central committee of the French section (8 June 1870) charged with membership of a secret society, the public prosecutor gave the total membership of the International as 811,513, including 433,785 in France, 45,000 in Switzerland, 150,000 in Germany, 100,000 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 80,000 in England and 2,728 in Spain. Its enormous size and the open declaration that its aims 'could be realized only through revolution and only in a democratic and social republic', he added, made the International a 'danger to society'.[1]
A month later, on 4 July 1870, fourteen leading members of the Social Democratic movement in Austria were in court, answering charges of high treason. The public prosecutor began his opening speech with a description of that 'important act of high, if as yet invisible, importance for the working-class movement of the whole world', namely the founding of the International on 28 September 1864. Since then, he went on, the International had 'very quietly developed into a shadow government, a second government in the state, forming a dangerous opposition all the more serious because this second power, this second government, draws its strength and sustenance not from state alone, but from the whole world'.[2] The public prosecutor refrained from giving details of 'this second power's' strength. A few weeks later these details were supplied by the Vienna Police Headquarters in a memorandum to the Home Secretary. After a fairly well-informed account of the International's history and development, the report concluded that 'it is at present, as has been established, an organization with revolutionary aims and a membership of over 1,000,000, covering the whole of Europe and North America'.[3]
That semi-official organ of the English upper classes, The Times, soon improving on the Paris and Vienna estimates, gave the International a membership of about 2,500,000.[4] Even The Times's estimate seems to have been too modest. Oscar Testut, who spent a lifetime studying the International and who published a well-furnished collection of documents on its history as well as a two-volume account of its activities in Europe, reached a figure of 5,000,000.[5] On the financial side, General Friedrich von Bernhardi was able to report 'from reliable sources' a fund of more than £500,000 deposited in London and at the complete disposal of the International.[6]
These were accounts by the International's enemies. But its friends' statements were almost equally exaggerated. Johann Philipp Becker claimed a membership of about 30,000 in German Switzerland and César de Paepe a strength of 64,000 in Belgium. Andrew C. Cameron, editor of the Working Man's Advocate in Chicago, addressing a congress of the International as a delegate of the National Labor Union, claimed to speak for 800,000 organized workers in America. And L'Internationale, the organ of the Belgian section, reported (27 March 1870) that the International 'had already assembled several million workers under its aegis in Europe and America'.[7]
In sober reality the International never disposed of anything like this strength, and accounts of its vast financial resources were even more ludicrously exaggerated.
Throughout its existence the International was almost pathetically short of money. The General Council at one of its early sittings had first fixed the annual membership subscription at 1s. a head, and 3d. a head for members of affiliated unions. The unions regarded this figure as too high and the General Council then reduced it to ½d.[8] But even this was too much for the unions and the General Council had to be satisfied with whatever they felt able to contribute on a yearly basis. For example, the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners with 9,000 members contributed £2 a year; the Bricklayers with 4,000 members gave £1; the Tobacco Workers paid £1 9s., the Coventry Ribbon Weavers 5s. for their 1,000 members, one of the Bookbinders' unions contributed 17s. 6d., the Organ-builders 2s. 1d. and the Birmingham Trades Council £1. No complete statement of the General Council's annual income has been found among its papers. But a report by the treasurer, Cowell Stepney, has been found covering the income of the General Council from individual members' subscriptions for the first six years. The figures were: 1865—£23; 1866—£9 13s.; 1867—£5 17s.; 1868—£14 14s.; 1869—£30 12s.; 1870—£14 14s. The last financial report submitted by Engels to the Hague Congress for the years 1870–2 showed a deficit of 'more than £25' owed by the General Council to 'members of the General Council and others'.[9] For example, the total income of the General Council for 1869–70 was £51 7s. 1d. Expenditure for the same year amounted to £47 7s. 5d., but there was still £4 0s. 4d. outstanding in arrears of rent.
Payment of rent and of the general secretary's salary was a source of constant worry to the General Council. The rent, amounting to 4s. a week, was hardly ever paid in full, in spite of repeated reminders and threats of legal eviction. 'The General Council owes five weeks' rent and is in debt to its Secretary,' complained Marx in a letter to Engels (24 July 1869).[10] No decision was taken regarding a salary for the secretary before the Geneva Congress of September 1866. Up to then William Randall Cremer served as honorary secretary, without pay. Marx proposed to the General Council that his successor should receive £2 a week, but the General Council reduced the figure to £1. But money was rarely available to pay even this modest sum. At the end of May 1867 the General Council reduced the salary to 10s. 6d. and decided to raise the money by a levy on the members who were present at each meeting. These collections amounted to 11s. in the first week and in subsequent weeks to 9s., 8s., 7s. 6d., nil, 6s., nil, 3s. and finally 8s., after which the weekly collection was abandoned. As it became continually harder to find 10s., 6d. a week for the International's secretary, John Hales suggested on 11 October 1870 that the amount be reduced to 5s. a week; the motion however was defeated by six votes to one.
With what pitiful resources the general secretary had to work is illustrated by such entries in the Minutes as: 'The sum of 6d. was paid to President Eccarius to pay the postage of letters to Germany on the tailors' strike (27 March 1866); and 'the Secretary was authorized to buy a cash ledger' (2 February 1869). Marx was hardly joking when he told the Executive of the German Social Democratic party in a confidential letter (24 March 1870) that 'the finances of the General Council are below zero, with constantly increasing negative quantities'.[11] General Bernhardi, like so many others, had considerably overestimated the financial resources of the International.
As to the organizational strength of the International, it is hard to sift the truth from the innumerable legends about a vast organized army. There are no reliable figures of total membership,[12] but the number of individual members was certainly small. In England, for instance, there were no more than 294 by the end of 1870. In France and Switzerland, though numbers were considerably higher, they cannot have amounted to more than a few thousand. The Paris Central Committee, for example, reported as few as thirty-six local sections in 1870.[13]
It seemed particularly hard to recruit members in Germany. In a letter to Engels on 5 August 1865, Marx complained that Liebknecht 'was unable to form even one branch of the International in Germany with six members'.[14] August Bebel joined only in 1867. Becker, however, was more successful in recruiting members in Germany from his base in Switzerland. Johann Philipp Becker (1809–86) was both emotionally and intellectually a committed revolutionary, who had distinguished himself as a guerrilla leader in Baden during the revolution of 1848. His thinking was strongly influenced by Garibaldi, as in the case of Lassalle, and by Marx, as in the case of Bakunin. At the end of 1865 he founded in Geneva the monthly journal, Der Vorbote. Intended for Germany as well as Switzerland, the paper was recognized by the General Council as an official organ. In the very first issue of 1 January 1866, Becker appealed to his readers to form local sections of the International with at least three members. Such branches were established in Leipzig, Stuttgart, Solingen, Cologne, Berlin, Magdeburg, Hamburg and other towns in Germany and Switzerland, which together constituted the 'German speaking section' of the International under Becker's leadership. But numbers remained small. For example, the Berlin branch had only six members in January 1866; Stuttgart had only nine in February 1866; and the Cologne branch was only seventeen strong in March 1866. By the end of 1871 the German section of the International contained fifty-eight local branches, about half of them in Germany, with a total membership of only 385.[15] Even after the Eisenach Congress in August 1869 had established the Social Democratic party of Germany, the International's membership failed to grow. '... The German labour movement's attitude to the International never really became clear,' complained Engels in a letter of May 1892 to T. Cuno. 'It remained a purely platonic relationship, there was no real membership of individuals either. …'[16] 'The number of German workers who joined the International as individual members was always small,' according to Franz Mehring, the historian of German social democracy. 'There were hardly ever more than a thousand members.[17]
Smaller still was the number of individual members of the International in Austria. This country became a constitutional monarchy, replacing a régime of absolutism, only in 1866, and the first labour organization—the Workers' Educational Society in Vienna—was formed as late as December 1867. Philipp Becker immediately established contacts, and his appeal evoked enthusiastic response. Karl Marx, as well as the General Council of the International, were invited to a rally in September 1868 celebrating the fraternization of the working men of all countries, and the nascent Austrian labour movement was represented at the Fourth Congress of the International in Basle in 1869 by two of its leaders, Heinrich Oberwinder and Ludwig Neumayer.[18] Yet the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, in reply to an inquiry by the British Ambassador, Lord Bloomfield, in July 1871, about affiliations in Austria to the International, informed him in a confidential letter that 'despite the most rigorous police observation, and despite even the treason trial of working-class leaders in 1870, it has been impossible to establish any link with a local section of the International'. He added, however, that the police had discovered membership cards of the International,[19] when searching the houses of 'several of the most active members of the Vienna Workers' Educational Society'.
In Italy the working-class organizations were under the control of Mazzini. The great and only object of his life's work was the achievement of national unity. In struggling for this, he aimed at uniting all classes of the Italian people. Consequently he repudiated Socialism as a workers' movement with narrow, class aims. At first he hoped to use the International to further his aim of a united Italy. When this failed, he became its declared enemy.
In spite of this, the International managed to sink roots in the south of Italy. In May 1866 the Italian Workers' Association in Naples announced its adherence to the International. In the General Council's report to the Basle Congress in 1869, the Italian Society was credited with about 600 members. But it was the Paris Commune in 1871 which stimulated the spread of the International in Italy. The Italian workers had greeted the Commune enthusiastically, but Mazzini, still at the head of the Italian working-class movement, had vehemently denounced it. In contrast, Garibaldi acclaimed the Commune and put his services at its disposal. Soon afterwards, the revolutionary wing of Mazzini's workers' organization, disgusted at his attitude to the Commune, broke away and organized an opposition movement, Il Fascio Operaio, under the leadership of Ludovico Nabruzzi and Ermissio Pescatori, at their congress in Bologna in December 1871. Within a short time, sections of the International began to develop in Bologna, Turin, Milan, Ravenna and Faenza. Benoit Malon, a member of the Paris section of the International up to its suppression after the fall of the Commune, when he had to flee as a leading Communard and take refuge in Italy, spoke of the establishment of about a hundred internationalist and revolutionary groups.[20] Total membership in 1871 was claimed to be 10,000. Cesare Lombroso, however, put it as low as 2,000.
These contrasting figures can be explained by the peculiar social structure of the movement. Leonido Bissolati described the International in Italy at the time as an assortment of intellectuals, eccentrics, poets, enthusiasts, altruists and fanatics with no specific programme or clear-cut aim.[21] They were united only by deeply felt revolutionary sentiments and impulses, and formed not so much a distinctive organization as a coalition of heterogeneous forces and bodies linked by vaguely conceived moral objectives. Robert Michels, who quotes this remark of Bissolati in his own work, accepts it only in part. So far as the International was concerned, he insists, its members were recruited from the urban and rural proletariat. However, even the proletariat of Italy was still too immature to develop stable organizations: under the impact of spectacular events or of powerful oratory they came flooding into the branches of the International, but they tended to drift out again after a short time.
In Spain an independent Socialist movement developed only after the first Spanish revolution of September 1868. A month later the General Council of the International issued a declaration, 'To the Workers of Spain', and the Socialists, who had formed until then a wing of the Republican party, broke with them and set up an independent working-class organization. The new body was mainly under Anarchist leadership. In March 1869 a section of the International was founded in Barcelona, and soon afterwards in Madrid. In the revolutionary atmosphere of Spain at the time it soon spread its influence, particularly in Catalonia and Andalusia. Farga-Pellicer, one of the two Spanish delegates to the Basle Congress in September 1869, reported 195 sections in his country with approximately 20,000 members of the International; they included twenty-eight sections with 7,080 members in Barcelona. Engels, however, in his report to the General Council, was less sanguine. The movement in Spain, he believed, was suffering from the internal struggles between Anarchists and Marxists, and was also feeling the effects of government persecution.[22]
In the United States the first German sections appeared as early as 1868. Soon afterwards, American, French, Czech, Irish and Scandinavian sections of the International were formed in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans, Newark, Springfield, Washington and Williamsburg—a total of thirty sections with about 5,000 members, in 1871.[23] But in the following year a section consisting mainly of intellectuals broke away from the proletarian elements in the North American Federation of the International, which brought about a sharp drop in membership. At their congress in July 1872 there were only twenty-two sections, with a total of 950 members—the sections being organized along national lines, twelve of them German, four French, three American, and an Irish, an Italian and a Scandinavian section.[24]
There are few surviving sources from which accurate membership figures for the International can be derived, but a careful examination of reports from national sections to the General Council gives us the figures recorded above. In assessing the size and influence of the International, however, it is important to realize that individual members formed only one part of the organization. Much stronger, numerically, was the other part, consisting of affiliated trade-union and political organizations.
The General Council saw as one of its main tasks the winning of the support of the English unions.[25] It sent delegations to meetings of trade union executives to persuade them to affiliate, or at least give their moral support. It was a major triumph for the General Council when the Conference of Trade Unions at Sheffield in 1866 went on record as 'fully appreciating the efforts made by the International Association to unite in one common bond of brotherhood the working men of all countries' and recommended the 'various societies here represented' to affiliate. By the time of the Basle Congress in September 1869, trade unions with memberships totalling some 50,000 were affiliated to the International.
Such affiliations often took place as the result of bitter industrial disputes. One of the specific tasks which English trade-union leaders had allocated to the International at its foundation was the prevention of blackleg labour being brought in from abroad and the organization of solidarity action in support of workers on strike. The General Council acted in this respect as an agency of the British trade-union movement. Half of its members were prominent trade unionists. George Odger, its president, was at the same time secretary of the London Trades Council. The General Council's secretary and treasurer were also active trade unionists, as was the German tailor, George Eccarius. At almost every meeting of the General Council, industrial disputes figured on the agenda, with communications or delegations arriving from unions engaged in strikes, requesting the International to use its considerable contacts to prevent the import of foreign blacklegs and to raise money in support of strikers.
The General Council did intervene, and with considerable effect, in a good many strikes which were threatened in this way, including strikes by the London wire workers, Edinburgh tailors, London tobacco workers, Manchester tailors, London basket-makers and London tailors. Through its national sections, and through working-class papers in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, the General Council made contact with workers recruited by agents of English employers, workers who were often unaware that they were intended to serve as blackleg labour. The General Council was often successful in persuading such workers to refuse offers of work in England. 'One of the main indictments in the proceedings against the leaders of the Paris section of the International,' said the General Council in a circular to English unions in July 1869, 'was that they had prevented the departure to England of French workers during the strikes of the English zine workers, tailors and railway employees.'
Such useful acts of solidarity carried the fame of the International into thousands of working-class families. Most of the men engaged in these disputes would have learned for the first time at strike meetings and from newspaper reports of the existence of a working-class brotherhood which had the power to support the struggles of the workers in Manchester, Edinburgh and London by means of actions in France, Holland and Belgium. It was natural, in the light of such experiences, for such men to feel that they belonged to the International. It was equally inevitable that the occasional strikes which owed their success to the International helped in spreading the legend of its power and ubiquity.
The first major success in this field was the International's aid in the struggle of the Paris bronze workers in February 1867. The employers had locked out about 1,500 workers and threatened to lock out another 4,000 because they had refused to renounce their union, which had recently been established. The workers appealed to the International for help. The General Council at once asked the London Trades Council and the European sections of the International for financial support. Large and small amounts came in: £10 from the London bookbinders, £20 from the London carpenters, £5 from the English tobacco workers; but in addition, £4,000 from a collection among the French unions and a loan of £10,000 from the English hatters' union. This was the first time the International had collected money from workers in more than one country in support of a strike. According to Fribourg, a member of the Central Committee of the Paris section, its impact on both workers and employers was overwhelming.[26] It increased the self-confidence of the workers and demoralized the employers. As soon as the employers learned of the arrival of large sums of money from London, they withdrew their demands and reopened their shops. The Paris section of the International shortly had hundreds of working-class recruits.
When in the spring of 1868 the building workers of Geneva struck for a reduction in the working day from twelve to ten hours, the mere rumour that the London General Council had promised the Geneva workers a loan of 40,000 francs a month for the duration of the strike was enough to persuade the employers to discuss a compromise. The strike had aroused the interest of the whole town. The International had triumphed in a head-on collision with the employing class, and about a thousand new members joined the Geneva section.
A similar effect, though on a much larger scale, was achieved by the General Council's intervention in the strike of the silk weavers of Lyon. 'In spite of police intimidation, the workers publicly announced their affiliation to the International,' as the General Council reported to the Basle Congress; 'other groups of workers followed their example and we gained more than 10,000 new members'.
The news of the International's successes spread to many countries. The Minutes of the General Council contain many references to appeals for help from workers engaged in struggle, including the spinners of Rouen, the typesetters of Leipzig, the Paris iron-foundry workers for a loan during a strike, which they obtained from the Amalgamated Society of Engineers in England following a request from the General Council; the paper workers of New York, who requested the General Council to prevent the entry of cheap sweated labour from Europe; the weavers of Vienne in France, the German and later the Belgian tobacco workers, and the Social Democratic party of Germany for a loan to the miners on strike at Waldenburg.
As we have seen, the General Council had no financial resources of its own. Even the unions' funds were small, and none of the International's various sections was either rich or powerful. Some indication of the way in which the International obtained financial aid for workers on strike can be found in the case of the 800 silk dyers and ribbon weavers of Basle whose appeal was presented to the General Council at its meeting on 9 March 1869. The men had been locked out because they had openly affiliated to the International, to the great displeasure of the town's respectable citizens. The General Council transmitted the appeal to its affiliated sections. The first collection raised about £300, including £4 from the General Council, £1 from the London Weavers' Union, £3 7s. from the German Communist Workers' Education Society in London, 30 francs from the Geneva section of the International, 135 francs from a public meeting in Paris and 62 francs from a public meeting in Basle. It was also reported that the inhabitants of two villages in the neighbourhood of Basle had sent potatoes, apples, green vegetables and firewood to the workers during the lock-out. In the event the workers stood their ground and the employers had to accept the affiliation of the workers to the International.
There were substantial affiliations to the International in Belgium, following the bloody clashes between miners and troops in the mining districts of Charleroi. During an economic crisis in the spring of 1869 the coal barons had reduced the working week in the pits to four days, and at the same time imposed a wage-cut of ten per cent. The miners replied with strikes and demonstrations. Troops intervened, fired at the demonstrators and even pursued the wounded through the streets of Charleroi. There followed the arrest of a number of workers including the leading members of the Belgian section of the International. On 4 May 1869 the General Council issued a manifesto written by Marx, 'To the Workers of Europe and the United States', which denounced the Belgian government before world public opinion in the most scathing terms.[27] At the same time it organized collections for the victims of the struggle, and legal aid for the accused. The events in the mining district had aroused the workers of the entire country, and they affiliated to the International in their thousands.
According to Rudolf Meyer, strikes in France during 1868 and 1869—of the cotton-workers in Rouen, silk-spinners in Lyon and miners in Saint-Etienne—caused the membership of the International to increase by more than 50,000.[28]
Yet the great majority of those who joined the International in the heat and excitement of battle soon drifted away. But they retained some feeling of identification with the great international workers' organization which had helped them so loyally in their time of need.
The relations between the International and the various Socialist parties rested on a rather more solid foundation. But during the period of the First International the elements of Socialist parties on a national scale existed only in Germany and Austria. In Germany there was the General Association of German Workers founded by Ferdinand Lassalle in 1863, and the Association of German Workers' Organizations led by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel. At the Eisenach Congress in August 1869 these two organizations came together to form the Social Democratic party of Germany. Neither of these parties joined the International officially, since as Bebel explained at the time of the congress at Eisenach, 'the Social Democratic Party of Germany must first constitute itself as an effective national organization; except on this basis an international organization would be a mere shadow'.[29] But both parties declared their solidarity with the International. The programme adopted by the Eisenach Congress followed almost word for word the declaration of principles in the Rules of the International and stated that 'so far as the law of association permits, we regard ourselves as a branch of the International Working Men's Association'. Moreover, the congress recommended members of the party to join the International as individuals.
The Austrian Social Democratic movement dealt with its relations to the International in much the same way. Austrian Social Democracy originated with the Vienna Workers' Educational Society founded in December 1868 and soon acquiring astonishing support. The Austrian government had officially described the objects of the International as 'a danger to the state'. Any organization which openly affiliated to the International was liable under the penal code to be prosecuted for treason. Formal affiliation was therefore impossible, but unofficially the party acted as though it were in fact a section of the International.[30] This fact was well recognized by the government, which in July 1870 put fourteen leading members of the party on trial, charged with high treason. The indictment did not claim to establish formal affiliation to the International, but supported the charge with evidence that Andreas Scheu and Heinrich Oberwinder, the main accused, had addressed the Eisenach Congress 'on behalf of almost 100,000 Austrians', and had expressed in speeches and newspaper articles not only sympathy with, but their determination to realize, the ideas and principles of the Eisenach programme which embodied the principles of the International.[31] As the accused made no attempt to deny the charges, they were found guilty of high treason and sentenced to six and five years' hard labour.
Although the Austrian party was not affiliated to the International and the number of individual members was very small, and although the figures of '100,000 comrades', in whose name Scheu and Oberwinder greeted the Eisenach Congress, must have been greatly exaggerated, it was still reasonable to conclude that a large number of Austrian workers felt some kind of emotional link with the International. When in the summer of 1872 the governments of Austria-Hungary and Germany called a conference to discuss measures against the International, a memorandum prepared by Schmidt-Zabierow, a high official in the Austrian Civil Service, suggested that in Vienna '20,000 workers could be regarded as active supporters of the International or, rather, of the Social Democratic party, while a further 150,000 were not yet subjected to organized political influence'.[32]
The contrast between the small individual membership of the First International and the emotional response it was capable of evoking from the working class was particularly impressive in France, more especially in Paris, Lyon, Marseille and other large centres. The local French sections of the International contained for the most part small nuclei of activists, though a few had memberships running into hundreds. But through the influence of its members in trade unions, friendly societies, political clubs and other working-class organizations, and favoured by an increasingly revolutionary atmosphere, the International became a mass movement in France, as well as in Belgium and Italy, towards the end of the 1860s.
Typical of the way in which the International's influence could spread in favourable conditions was the story of its American section. Even at its brief zenith this organization contained, as we have seen, only a few thousand members, among them, as Marx reported to the General Council, Wendell Philips, one of the leaders of the anti-slavery movement.[33] But they enlisted the sympathy of the National Labor Union, a grouping of more than sixty trade unions which had been founded at a congress at Baltimore in 1866 under the leadership of William H. Sylvis. In May 1866 the General Council invited them to send a delegation to the forthcoming Basle Congress of the International. At its congress in Philadelphia in August 1869 the National Labor Union accepted the invitation, and elected A. C. Cameron as representative. As already mentioned, he brought greetings to the Basle Congress in the name of 800,000 American workers. And a year later, at its congress in Cincinnati in August 1870, the National Labor Union declared its 'adherence to the principles of the International Working Men's Association', adding that it would 'join in a short time'.[34] But the promise was not fulfilled, since the National Labor Union succumbed to the prevailing apathy among the working class which followed heavy defeats in the widespread strike movement of 1871 and 1872.
But the decline of the American Labour movement did not, apparently, lead to a falling-off of public interest in the International. A typical example of the way in which its prestige was maintained can be seen from a debate in the United States House of Representatives on 15 December 1871, dealing with the appointment of a commission of inquiry into labour conditions. The draft of the Bill was submitted by the Republican Member, R. Hoar, later Attorney-General in the Cleveland administration. Moving the draft Bill, Hoar sought to prove its importance by stating that 'the great International Working Men's Association, an organization which extends over the whole of Europe, which makes its voice heard everywhere and its power felt in all circles, has asked the United States Congress for the measure now before it'. He added that 'the International Association of European and American workers has earned the right to our respect, because it has brought the nations of the earth closer together and because it recognizes a link between man and man, a relationship which springs from the common bond of labour'. And he reminded Congress of 'the dark days of our own war', when the 'ruling classes of England and the Emperor of France' had threatened the North American states with intervention 'which had been prevented only by the angry growls of the workers of Lancashire'. Finally he got the Clerk of the House to read out the resolutions of the International's London Conference of 1871 and its Geneva Congress of 1866, calling for a statistical inquiry into the conditions of the workers in all countries.[35] The House, after repeatedly applauding Hoar, approved the draft and the Senate agreed to appoint a commission of inquiry, though it deferred action on the other part of the Bill which had called for the establishment of a national statistical office.
This is all we have been able to find out about the International's membership and influence at various stages of its history. It does not add up to a complete picture. More detailed figures are simply not available. But at least such evidence as exists shows that the reports of a highly organized army of millions, directed by the General Council of the International from London, are fantasy. The International did not control great masses of working people. It was rather, as the London Times described it on one occasion, 'a great idea in a small body'. But it did succeed in making the idea of working-class solidarity live for a large number of people, and it won the support of a good many progressive intellectuals and reformers. This was the source of its strength, which was so feared by the ruling classes of its day.
1. Oscar Testut, L'Association internationale des travailleurs (Lyon, 1870), p. 310; Edmond Villetard, Histoire de l'Internationale (Paris, 1872), p. 313.
2. Quoted in Der Wiener Hochverratsprozess (Vienna, 1911), pp. 648–50.
3. Quoted in Ludwig Brügel, Geschichte der österreichischen Sozialdemokratie (Vienna, 1922–5), p. 46.
4. The Times, 5 June 1871.
5. Oscar Testut, op. Cit., and Le Livre bleu de l'Internationale (Paris, 1871) and L'Internationale et le jacobinisme au ban de l'Europe (Paris, 1872). A shortened version of these books appeared in German under the title Die Internationale, ihr Wesen und ihre Bestrebungen (Leipzig, 1872).
6. Friedrich von Bernhardi, Tägebuchblätter aus dem Jahre 1867 bis 1869 (Leipzig, 1901), vol. VIII, p. 406.
7. It seems to be in the nature of politics for leaders of mass movements to exaggerate the number of their supporters so as to enhance their importance. VIctor Adler, who was normally anything but a demagogue, once said to Scheidemann: 'You know, I have never been mean with the millions. I have more than once spoken in the name of a few millions, even if only a few hundred people were behind me.'—Philipp Scheidemann, Der Zusammenbruch (Berlin, 1921), p. 125.
8. Minutes of the General Council, 9 September 1866.
9. The First International—Minutes of the Hague Congress of 1872, with related documents, edited by Hans Gerth (Madison, 1958), p. 123.
10. Marx-Engels Briefwechsel, vol. IV, p. 251.
11. Der Hochverratsprozess wider Liebknecht, Bebel, Hepner (Berlin, 1894), p. 337.
12. Respecting the list of members, Marx said at the meeting of the General Council, it would not be well to publish what the real strength was as the outside public always thought the active members much more numerous than they really were—Minutes of the General Council, 20 December 1870.
13. Minutes of the General Council, 19 July 1870; E. Dolléans, Histoire du movement ouvrier, vol. I, 1830 –71 (Paris, 1936); G. M. Steklov, History of the First International (London, 1928).
14. Marx-Engels Briefwechsel, vol. III, p. 337.
15. Morgan, op. cit., pp. 74–83, 180. Morgan's study contains a wealth of first-hand material.
16. Quoted in Morgan, op. cit., p. 186.
17. Franz Mehring, Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie, vol. III, p. 179.
18. Herbert Steiner, 'Die Internationale Arbeiterassoziation und die österreichische Arbeiterbewegung', Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, vol. IV.
19. Brügel, op. cit., vol. II, p. 100. According to a report by the intelligence branch of the police to the government, there were only thirty members of the International in Vienna in 1869—Haus-Hof und Staatsarchiv, 592/1869, in Steiner, op. cit., p. 86.
20. Benoit Malon, Il Socialismo, suo passato, suo presente e suo avenire (Lodi, 1875), quoted by Robert Michels, 'Proletariat und bourgeoisie in der sozialistischen Bewegung Italiens', in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, vol. XXI, p. 358. See also Richard Hostetter, The Italian Socialist Movement, 1860–80 (Princeton, 1958).
21. 'In Italy,' wrote Friedrich Engels in a letter to Laura Lafargue, daughter of Marx (on 11 March 1872), 'Journalists, lawyers and doctors have pushed themselves [into the foreground of the labour movement] so much so that until now we [the International] are unable to get into touch with the workers; now it has begun to change, and we are discovering that the workers, as everywhere, are quite different from their spokesmen'—Friedrich Engels, Paul et Laura Lafargue. Correspondence, vol. I: 1868–86 (Paris, 1956), p. 27.
22. Minutes of the General Council, 3 January 1870.
23. Morris Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States (New York and London, 1906), pp. 196–7.
24. Hermann Schlüter, Die Internationale in Amerika (Chicago, 1918), p. 177. See also John R. Commons, A History of Labor in the United States, 2 vols. (New York, 1921).
25. George Howell, Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and Labour Leaders (London, 1902); A. W. Humphrey, Robert Applegarth (London, 1913).
26. E.-E. Fribourg, L'Association internationale des travailleurs (Paris, 1871), p. 101
27. For the text of the manifesto, see Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels über die Gewerkschaften (Berlin, 1953), pp. 152ff.
28. Rudolf Meyer, Der Emanzipationskampf des vierten Standes (Berlin, 1874), vol. I, p. 122. Meyer's work, in two volumes, is the most complete source for documents of the history of the First International and its sections in German. See also Gustav Jaeckh, Die Internationale (Leipzig, 1904), and G. M. Steklov, History of the First International (London, 1928).
29. Mehring, op. cit., vol. III, p. 368. For a discussion of the tactical considerations which led von Schweitzer as well as Liebknecht to adopt a waiting attitude to the International, see Morgan, op. cit.
30. Steiner, op. cit.
31. Der Wiener Hochverratsprozess, pp. 278–9.
32. For the Memorandum of 8 June 1872, see Brügel, op. cit., vol. II, p. 145.
33. Minutes of the General Council, 15 August 1871.
34. Hillquit, op. cit., p. 181.
35. Schlüter, op. cit., pp. 144–5.