The other current of communist ideas had its fountainhead in the “International” which Caesar de-Paepe, Marx and Bakounine succeeded in winning over to their collectivist ideas. The congresses of the “Association” in Brussels in 1868 and in Bâle in 1869 adopted resolutions of a collectivist character, and many members of the French section were won over to the new ideas.[36]
The success of the “International” in France in 1869 was the sudden result of the strike-movement which swept the country during the last years of the Second Empire. The members of the “International” succeeded in obtaining financial support for some strikers. This raised the prestige of the “Association”, and a number of syndicats sent in their collective adhesion. It is estimated that toward the end of 1869 the “International” had a membership of about 250,000 in France.
These facts had their influence on the French leaders of the “International”. They changed their attitude toward the strike, declaring it “the means par excellence for the organization of the revolutionary forces of labor”.[37] The idea of the general strike suggested itself to others.[38] At the Congress of Bâle in 1869, one of the French delegates advocated the necessity of organizing syndicats for two reasons: first, because “they are the means of resisting the exploitation of capital in the present;” and second, because “the grouping of different trades in the city will form the commune of the future” ... and then ... “the government will be replaced by federated councils of syndicats and by a committee of their respective delegates regulating the relations of labor—this taking the place of politics.”[39]
Under the influence of the “International” the syndicats of Paris—there were about 70 during the years 1868-1870—founded a local federation under the name of Chambre Fédérale des sociétés ouvrières de Paris. This federation formulated its aim in the following terms:
This agreement has for its object to put into operation the means recognized as just by the workingmen of all trades for the purpose of making them the possessors of all the instruments of production and to lend them money, in order that they may free themselves from the arbitrariness of the employer and from the exigencies of capital.... The federation has also the aim of assuring to all adhering societies on strike the moral and material support of the other groups by means of loans at the risk of the loaning societies.[40]
These organizations were entirely swept away by the events of 1870-71: the Franco-Prussian War, the Proclamation of the Republic, and especially the Commune. After 1871 the workingmen had to begin the work of organization all over again. But the conquests of the previous period were not lost. The right to strike was recognized. The policy of tolerating workingmen's organizations was continued, notwithstanding a few acts to the contrary. But, above all, the experience of the workingmen was preserved. The form of organization which they generally advocated after the Commune was the syndicat. The other forms (i. e., the Compagnonnages and the secret Société de résistance) either disappeared or developed independently along different lines, as the friendly societies.
In other respects, the continuity of the labor movement after the Commune with that of the preceding period was no less evident. As will be seen in the following chapter the problems raised and the solutions given to them by the French workingmen for some time after the Commune were directly related to the movement of the Second Empire. The idea of co-operation, the mutuellisme of Proudhon, and the collectivism of the “International” reappeared in the labor movement under the Third Republic.