280 THE CLASS STRUGGLE MARX AND THE INTERNATIONAL 281 99 of labor. He described the purpose of capitalist development in the years after 1845. He described the terrible misery that existed on the one hand, the mad thirst for wealth of the ruling class on the other. It is a great fact, that the misery of the working class has not decreased from 1848 to 1864, and yet this period has been unequalled in the development of industry and the growth of trade. The increase of riches and power in these years was truly enormous, but it was limited to the ruling classes. And while these ruling classes climbed up on the social ladder, the mass of the working people sank down into ever increasing want at least in the same ratio that marked the rise of the upper classes. Hunger lifted its head in the capital of Great Britain and became a social institution, and the inmates of the prisons of England received better food than the free workers of the country. He showed that, with a slightly different local color and a somewhat smaller degree, English conditions were being reproduced in every country on the continent that was in the process of industrial development. The fate of the workers of England will be the fate of the workers of the world!
Against all these factors labor possesses only one element of success its numbers. But numbers are a determining factor only if they are united by an organization and led by knowledge.
For this reason the workers of all countries must be united. For this reason they must overcome their prejudices. For this reason they, the proletarians of all nations, must unite in one band of brotherhood. Like the Inaugural Address, all of the other numerous important declarations of the General Council of the International were written by Marx. He determined the direction along which the movement was to go, within the leading authority of the International, and backed up this decision in the published manifesto. And the effect, particularly upon English politics, was far greater than is generally recognized.
Thus, for instance, the International played a prominent role in the agitation for extended suffrage in England, which in 1867 created another million of new voters.
For the purpose of carrying on this agitation the English workers had founded a Reform League. Concerning this Karl Marx wrote to Friedrich Engels on May 1, 1865: The great success of the International Association is this: The Reform League is our work.
In the inner committee of 12 (six middle class men and six workingmen) the workingmen are all members of our Council.
All middle class bourgeois efforts to mislead the working class we have baffled. If this regalvanization of the political movement of the English working class succeeds, our Association, without making any fuss, will have done more for the European working class than would have been possible in any other way.
And there is every promise of success. few days later, on the 13th of May, Marx added a postscript to this letter to Engels. Without us, this Reform League would never have been founded, or it would have fallen into the hands of the middle class.
After the reform movement during the following year had assumed an absolutely revolutionary character, after the labor speakers, who at the same time were members of the Council of the International, had recalled, in mass demonstſations, that once before the people of England had beheaded its King, Marx again wrote to Engels on July 7, 1866: The London Labor demonstrations are miraculous, compared to what we have been accustomed to seeing in England since 1849. And yet they are purely the work of the International. Mr. Lucraft, for instance, the chief on Trafalgar Square, is one of our council. That is the difference between working behind the scenes, hidden from the public eye, and showing off in public, according to the favored manner of the Democrats, while one does nothing.
It was Karl Marx also, who led the General Council to take a stand in the Irish question, to demand the solution of this problem from the point of view of the working class.
He showed that the working class in England would never be capable of decisive action until its Irish policy was distinctly separate from that of its ruling classes; that it must not only