278 THE CLASS STRUGGLE MARX AND THE INTERNATIONAL 279 The Inaugural Address, this first official declaration of the new organization, still lacks, as Marx himself remarked, the old daring language.
the impossibility of accepting their proposed programs, he brought in his Inaugural Address to the Working Classes as a substitute for the proposals of the others. To this Engels answered: am eager to see your Address to the Working Classes. It must, in truth, be a work of art, after all that you told me in your letter about these people. But am glad that we are coming into contact with people who at least represent their class, and after all, that is the most important consideration. But on the whole, suspect that the new association will soon split up into its theoretical bourgeois and its theoretical proletarian elements, as soon as the work of precision shall have begun.
Here, too, there is nothing that suggests that Marx activity in the Workingmen Association was part of a preconceived plan for the unification of the proletariat of all countries. Marx became active there only when everything had already been arranged. In no way did he force himself into an official capacity into the organization. On the contrary, he was with difficulty persuaded to do so, against his own preferences. But once in the General Council, he used his whole power to direct the new Workingmen Association into the channel that, in his opinion, alone could fulfil the requirements that would have to be met. His experience, his keen mind soon assured him that influence upon the central body, that made it possible for him to direct and form the declarations and decisions of the International, to become its head.
The International Workingmen Association was not the creation of one man. It came into existence as the necessary product of economic development, which forced the working class in all countries to unite more closely, in order to strengthen its position in the struggle.
But its principles, on the whole, were thoroughly in accord with the contents of the Kommunist Manifesto, and the closing sentence of this manifest Proletarians of all countries, unite, was also the closing sentence of the Inaugural Address.
The International Workingmen Association had found its theoretic basis before it was founded. Of course it was not possible to force the full recognition of these principles in the International at once. In France Proudhon ideas dominated the Socialist leaders. In England the masses had almost forgotten the revolutionary ideals of the Chartists. The narrow trade union conception that had become dominant in the labor movement of that country determined the attitude of the working class. It was necessary, therefore, first of all, to emphasize the points of likeness between these various groups and theories, to push the differences of opinion slightly into the background, lest the International at the outset become the arena for inner quarrels and differences.
Karl Marx, who by his wisdom and his farsightedness had quickly become the acknowledged head of the General Council, was particularly capable in this respect. He kept the unifying forces of the labor movement consistently in the foreground, and thus succeeded in bringing Socialists, Proudhonists, Communists and Trade Unionists together for the achievement of a common goal. Only a Marx, with his clear conception of the contents of the Labor movement, with his remarkable understanding of the subject, could accomplish this herculean task. Without him the international unification of the working class would have had to wait many years for its realization, It was for this reason Marx pushed the idea of the class struggle into the foreground in his inaugural address, to create a foundation upon which all workers might stand, to determine the lines of cleavage between the capitalist world and the world III.
We would have to write a history of the International Workingmen Association in order to describe in detail the work of Karl Marx in this first organization of the labor movement of all countries.