Workers Unite!

"Preface." Workers Unite!: The International 150 Years Later. Ed. Marcello Musto. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. xiii–xvii. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 29 Sep. 2021. <>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 29 September 2021, 20:22 UTC. Copyright © Marcello Musto, 2014. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. Preface Th e bequest of the International Working Men ’ s Association may be divided into two categories: (1) the minutes and documents of the General Council in London and (2) the records of congresses of the organization and interventions made at its various gatherings. Of all this material, never translated into any language in its entirety, approximately 7,000 pages have been published in the various original editions. In English, the fi rst of the above collections of texts appeared in Moscow, edited by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in the Soviet Union and under the imprint of Progress Publishers, in fi ve volumes entitled Th e General Council of the First International , to mark the hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the International. Th e fi rst volume (1963 – issued in 8,500 copies) comprises texts from the 1864 – 66 period; the second (1964 – 8,700 copies) texts from the years 1866 – 68; the third (1966 – 8,000 copies) texts from 1868 to 1870; the fourth (1967 – 3,500 copies) texts from 1870 to 1871; and the fi ft h (1968 – 4,000 copies) texts from 1871 to 1872. Th ey were published aft er the Russian edition (1961 – 65), from which they reproduced explanatory notes and indexes, and were reprinted between 1973 and 1974, in editions of about 3,000 copies each. Th ese books, each roughly 500 pages in length, are not easy to read and are mainly intended for the use of scholars and specialists. More popular, and with a larger diff usion, is the volume of Marx ’ s writings entitled Th e First International and Aft er , fi rst published in London by Penguin/New Left Review in 1974 (currently available by Verso). Being an anthology of texts by a single author, however, it tended to reinforce the impression that a highly complex collective history could be captured in the texts written by Marx alone. Moreover, the selection lacked important documents such as the resolutions of the Brussels Congress of 1868, one of the most signifi cant events in the life of the organization. WWorkersorkers UUnite!.indbnite!.indb xxiiiiii 88/21/2014/21/2014 44:46:33:46:33 PPMM xiv Preface As to the documents of the congresses of the International, they have never appeared in English. Th ey have been published in French, in Switzerland, in two diff erent publications of the Graduate Institute of International Studies, under the direction of Jacques Freymond. Th e fi rst, La premi è re Internationale (Geneva: Droz, 1962), appeared in two volumes (the fi rst relating to the 1866 – 68 period, the second to 1869 – 72), edited by Henri Burgelin, Knut Langfeldt and Mikl ó s Moln á r. Th e second, with the same title but edited by Bert Andr é as and Mikl ó s Moln á r, was also published in two volumes: Les confl its au sein de l ’ Internationale, 1872 – 1873 and Les congr è s et les conf é rences de l ’ Internationale, 1873 – 1877 (Geneva: Institut Universitaire de Hautes É tudes Internationales, 1971). Both of these key works were naturally very bulky (1,000 pages for the 1962 collection, more than 1,500 pages for the one published in 1971), and so, as with the Moscow edition on the General Council – or even more so, given the rather poor knowledge of French in English-speaking countries – their reception was limited mainly to experts in the fi eld. Furthermore, since Soviet orthodoxy operated with a false schema of perfect congruity between the life of the Association and the biography of Marx, it paid no special attention to congresses in which he did not participate in person – Geneva 1866, Lausanne 1867, Brussels 1868 and Basel 1869 – and refused to consider any aft er 1872 (the year in which he withdrew) as part of the history of the organization. Th e only congress of the International translated into English was the one held in Th e Hague. Its proceedings were published in 1958 in Madison by the University of Wisconsin, in a volume edited by Hans Gerth with the title Th e First International: Minutes of the Hague Congress of 1872. Nearly 20 years later, the Institute of Marxism-Leninism published with Progress in Mos- cow a new and more complete edition of this last great gathering: Th e Hague Congress of the First International . Th e fi rst volume, Minutes and Documents , appeared in 1976; the second, Reports and Letters, in 1978. Finally, a set of fur- ther materials covering the activity of the new General Council in New York was included in the Annali dell ’ Istituto Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (fourth volume of 1961, printed the following year), under the editorship of Samuel Bernstein and with the title Papers of the General Council of the International Working- men ’ s Association. New York (1872 – 1876). Th ese books helped to fi ll a number of gaps, but they were intended mainly for scholars of Marxism and left -wing WWorkersorkers UUnite!.indbnite!.indb xxiviv 88/21/2014/21/2014 44:46:33:46:33 PPMM Preface xv political militants, who in those days were legions and knowledgeably debated such issues. Th e present anthology is seeing the light of day in a very diff erent context. Whereas the publications around the time of the centenary of the International appeared in the period of the greatest struggle against the capitalist system, the hundred and fi ft ieth anniversary of its foundation takes place in the midst of a deep crisis. Th e world of labour has suff ered an epochal defeat. Th e barbarism against which it fought and won important victories has returned to become the reality of our times. Moreover, it is sunk in profound ideological subordination to the dominant system. Th e task today, then, is to build again on the ruins, and direct familiarity with the original theorizations of the workers ’ movement may help signifi cantly to reverse the trend. Such is the fi rst motivation for this book. Off ering to a new and inexperienced generation, in the clear and accessible form of an anthology, the beginnings of the long path taken by those who sought to ‘ storm the heavens ’ and not to obtain mere palliatives to the existing reality, so that the legacy of the International may live again in the critique of the present day. Th e choice of texts in this volume has a precise aim: to show the economic and political shape of future society that members of the International were seeking to achieve (see especially the sections: ‘ Political Programme ’, ‘ Cooperative Movement and Credit ’ , ‘ Th e Right to Inheritance ’ , ‘ State and Collective Ownership ’ and ‘ Th e Paris Commune ’ ). It therefore seemed essential to include all the writings that outlined the alternative to the capitalist system, including reformist measures to be obtained hic et nunc (see especially ‘ Inaugural Address ’ , ‘ Labour ’ , ‘ Trade Unions and the Strike ’ and ‘ Education ’ ). Other signifi cant elements in the volume are texts analysing major issues of international politics (in ‘ Internationalism and Opposition to War ’ , ‘ Th e Irish Question ’, and ‘ Concerning the United States ’ ), as well as the fundamental – and perennial – discussion on political forms (in ‘ Political Organization ’ ). Without denying Marx ’ s indispensable contribution – he is the author or co-author of 30 of the 80 documents – the elaboration of all these themes was a collective process, as we can see here from the writings of more than 30 internationalists, many of them ordinary workers. Th e emphasis on debates about the shape of socialist society made it seem appropriate to omit documents concerning the origins and development of the various federations, which are mainly of WWorkersorkers UUnite!.indbnite!.indb xxvv 88/21/2014/21/2014 44:46:33:46:33 PPMM xvi Preface historical interest, and as far as possible those regarding the confl ict between communists and anarchists, which has been the object of many exhaustive studies. It should also be pointed out that the selection covers only ‘ offi cial ’ texts of the International (the only exception is document 56, in so far as it reproduces what may be seen as a kind of closing speech at the London Conference of 1871). For this reason, the anthology omits journalistic articles, extracts from published works, letters and participant reconstructions in later years of the life of the International. Many texts of this kind are easy enough to obtain, and they could have distracted the reader ’ s attention from the debates that actually took place at the sessions of the General Council and the various congresses of the International. Rather, the conscious editorial preference, based on available editions of the texts of the International, has been to highlight salient points of the political-theoretical debate. Th e volume accordingly reproduces for the fi rst time in English – 33 of the 80 were unpublished in that language – previously inaccessible materials, including the reports of working commissions (documents 5, 6, 10, 14, 24, 25 and 27), various documents of local sections (documents 8, 9, 20, 33, 36 and 43), two short interventions by Bakunin (documents 30 and 36) and the important resolutions of the Saint- Imier Congress (document 78).

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