Violence and the Labor Movement

by Robert Hunter

"That all efforts aiming at that great end have hitherto failed from the want of solidarity between the manifold divisions of labor in each country, and from the absence of a fraternal bond of union between the working classes of different countries;

"That the emancipation of labor is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists, and depending for its solution on the concurrence, practical and theoretical, of the most advanced countries;

"That the present revival of the working classes in the most industrial countries of Europe, while it raises a new hope, gives solemn warning against a relapse into the old errors and calls for the immediate combination of the still disconnected movements." [(23)]

In this brief declaration we find the essence of Marxian socialism: that the working classes must themselves work out their own salvation; that their servitude is economic; and that all workers must join together in a political movement, national and international, in order to achieve their emancipation. Unfortunately, the Proudhonian anarchists were never able to comprehend the position of Marx, and in the first congress at Geneva, in 1866, the quarrels between the various elements gave Marx no little concern. He did not attend that congress, and he afterward wrote to his young friend, Dr. Kugelmann: "I was unable to go, and I did not wish to do so, but it was I who wrote the program of the London delegates. I limited it on purpose to points which admit of an immediate understanding and common action by the workingmen, and which give immediately strength and impetus to the needs of the class struggle and to the organization of the workers as a class. The Parisian gentlemen had their heads filled with the most empty Proudhonian phraseology. They chatter of science, and know nothing of it. They scorn all revolutionary action, that is to say, proceeding from the class struggle itself, every social movement that is centralized and consequently obtainable by legislation through political means (as, for example, the legal shortening of the working day)." [(24)] These words indicate that Marx considered the chief work of the International to be the building up of a working-class political movement to obtain laws favorable to labor. Furthermore, he was of the opinion that such work was of a revolutionary nature.

The clearest statement, perhaps, of Marx's idea of the revolutionary character of political activity is to be found in the address which he prepared at the request of the public meeting that launched the International. He traces there briefly the conditions of the working class in England. After depicting the misery of the masses, he hastily reviews the growth of the labor movement that ended with the Chartist agitation. Although from 1848 to 1864 was a period when the English working class seemed, he says, "thoroughly reconciled to a state of political nullity," [(25)] nevertheless two encouraging developments had taken place. One was the victory won by the working classes in carrying the Ten Hours Bill. It was "not only a great practical success; it was the victory of a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class." [(26)] The other victory was the growth of the coöperative movement. "The value of these great social experiments cannot be overrated," he says. "By deed, instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands." [(27)] Arguing that coöperative labor should be developed to national dimensions and be fostered by State funds, he urges working-class political action as the means to achieve this end. "To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes." [(28)] This is the conclusion of Marx concerning revolutionary methods; and it is clear that his conception of "revolutionary action" differed not only from that of the Proudhonians and Mazzinians, but also from that of "the bourgeois democrats, the revolution-makers," [(29)] who "extemporized revolutions." [(30)]

At the end of Marx's letter to Kugelmann, he tells of the beginning already made by the International in London in actual political work. "The movement for electoral reform here," he writes, "which our General Council (quorum magna pars) created and launched, has assumed dimensions that have kept on growing until now they are irresistible." [(31)] The General Council threw itself unreservedly into this agitation. An electoral reform conference was held in February, 1867, attended by two hundred delegates from all parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Later, gigantic mass meetings were held throughout the country to bring pressure upon the Government. Frederic Harrison and Professor E. S. Beesly, well known for their sympathy with labor, were appealing to the working classes to throw their energies into the fight. "Nothing will compel the ruling classes," wrote Harrison in 1867, "to recognize the rights of the working classes and to pay attention to their just demands until the workers have obtained political power." [(32)] Professor Beesly, the intimate friend of Marx, was urging the unions to enter politics as an independent force, on the ground that the difference between the Tories and the Liberals was only the difference between the upper and nether millstones. In all this agitation Marx saw, of course, the working out of his own ideas for the upbuilding of a great independent political organization of the working class. All the energies of the General Council of the International were, therefore, devoted to the political struggle of the British workers. However, in all this campaign, emphasis was placed upon the central idea of the association—that political power was wanted, in order, peaceably and legally, to remedy economic wrongs. The wretched condition of the workers in the industrial towns and the even greater misery of the Irish peasants and English farm laborers were the bases of all agitation. While occupied at this time chiefly with the economic and political struggles in Britain, the General Council was also keeping a sharp eye on similar conditions in Europe and America. When Lincoln was chosen President for the second time, a warm address of congratulation was sent to the American people, expressing joy that the sworn enemy of slavery had been again chosen to represent them. More than once the International communicated with Lincoln, and perhaps no words more perfectly express the ideal of the labor movement than those that Lincoln once wrote to a body of workingmen: "The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds." [(33)]

To unite thus the workers of all lands and to organize them into great political parties were the chief aims of Marx in the International. And in 1869 it seemed that this might actually be accomplished in a few years. In France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy, and other countries the International was making rapid headway. Nearly all the most important labor bodies of Europe were actually affiliated, or at least friendly, to the new movement. At all the meetings held there was enthusiasm, and the future of the International seemed very promising indeed. It was recognized as the vehicle for expressing the views of labor throughout Europe. It had formulated its principles and tactics, and had already made a creditable beginning in the gigantic task before it of systematically carrying on its agitation, education, and organization. Marx's energies were being taxed to the utmost. Nearly all the immense executive work of the International fell on him, and nearly every move made was engineered by him. Yet at that very time he was on the point of publishing the first volume of "Capital," the result of gigantic researches into industrial history and economic theory. This great work was intended to be, in its literal sense, the Bible of the working class, as indeed it has since become. Certainly, Jaurès' tribute to Marx is well deserved and fairly sums up the work accomplished by him in the period 1847-1869. "To Marx belongs the merit," he says, " ... of having drawn together and unified the labor movement and the socialist idea. In the first third of the nineteenth century labor struggled and fought against the crushing power of capital; but it was not conscious itself toward what end it was straining; it did not know that the true objective of its effort was the common ownership of property. And, on the other hand, socialism did not know that the labor movement was the living form in which its spirit was embodied, the concrete practical force of which it stood in need. Marx was the most clearly convinced and the most powerful among those who put an end to the empiricism of the labor movement and the utopianism of the socialist thought, and this should always be remembered to his credit. By a crowning application of the Hegelian method, he united the Idea and the Fact, thought and history. He enriched the practical movement by the idea, and to the theory he added practice; he brought the socialist thought into proletarian life, and proletarian life into socialist thought. From that time on socialism and the proletariat became inseparable." [(34)]

FOOTNOTES:

[Q] The dramatic story of his life is wonderfully told in L'Enfermé by Gustave Geffroy. (Paris, 1904.)

[R] In the authority cited below this appears as "the minority," but I notice that in Jaurès' "Studies in Socialism," p. 44, it appears as "the majority."