DECLINE OF THE I.W.M.A.

DECLINE OF THE I.W.M.A

The I.W.M.A’schief problems were still those set by its class enemies.

Basle was followed by a general intensifying of class war. In Britain, the Liberal reluctance to run working-class candidates was answered by the forming of a Land and Labour League as a distinct independent working-class political body. In Germany, the Liberals who had sought to ally with the Marxists ended their approaches. In France, the Imperial Government raided the International’s bureau. However, these problems were reduced by the French defeat the following year in the Franco-Prussian War. Notonly did the French Empire fall as aresult, but most of Germany was united as an Empire under the Prussian hegemony. This encouraged further Socialist unity between the Marxists under the anti-Prussian Liebknechtand August Bebel (1840- 1913) and the pre-Prussian Lassealleans, all of whom could oppose the new capitalist order and its first repressive move - the imprisonment of the Marxists for opposing the new Empire’s seizure of Alsace- Lorraine. In France, the new regime’s attempt to hold back too radical a change had the immediate result of provoking the Paris Commune. This first, localized workers’ state was influenced less by Marx than by the communal perspectives of Proudhon and the insurrectionism of Blanqui, the followers of both of whom dominated its government.

Nonetheless, Marx drafted the I.W.M.A’s statement of unconditional support for the Commune asa working-class state in insurrection against the state of the capitalists.

The Commune’s defeat intensified the pressures weakening the International. Their identification was used to justify new repression of working-class bodies in France, Spain and Germany. The I.W.M.A.

was not strong enough to weather the storm. Its more right-wing British trade union leaders had achieved their aims as regards the franchise, expected to get freedom for their unions and were, in any case, annoyed with Marx because he supported both a successful rank-andfile movement for a nine hour day and the Commune. His support for the latter gave them an excuse for resigning. In Germany the growing unity of the Socialists, both Marxist and Lassallean, was stimulated by the persecution of the new Empire but this also gave both groups the excuse to distance themselves from an International body that compromised them more than ithelped them.

At the same time the Commune’s rising and its suppression by the new French Republican State encouraged illusions in the local communalist hostility to all (save, in effect, localized) state power : the illusions of Bakhunin’s followers, the Anarchists. Marx’s support for the insurrection could not be related accurately to his belief in working for political reform. The Anarchists grew in number to dominate the International’s sections in Switzerland, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy; in France itself the Blanquists remained dominant.

TheI.W.M.A. tried toremain united.

At its London Congress in September 1871, it promised to investigate many of the issues raised by the Anarchists. The remaining British members were allowed their own Federal Committee, though a separate Irish section with its own place on the General Council was formed atthe sametime. The attempt failed: mutual ill-feeling increased as European capitalism’s attacks increased. Marx and Engels blamed the Lassalleans as well as the Anarchists for disrupting the I.W.M.A.

the Furst day of Samuary ISG Gee, Clty This merely caused their German followers to react towards national unity and against internationalism.

However, the Anarchists themselves were divided; the Italians broke with the I.W.M.A. before the next Congress. There, at the Hague, their comrades were expelled. The Blanquists were alienated by the decision to move the International Centre to New York. Finally, the remaining British leaders, who objected to Ireland’s independent section, attacked Marx when he reasserted the principle of independent workingclass political action against class collaboration. They left the International to block with the Anarchists, whose objections were to political action as such. From 1873 world slump weakened the working-class and hence the I.W.M.A. It liquidated at Philadelphia in 1876. The Anarchist breakaway survived it by a year. Harried by capitalist economics and politics, particularly in Germany, the Labour movements retreated tactically to concentrate on immediate matters. oe —— Oe sl 5366 ee INTERNS WORKING MENS ASSOCI® * -v vi ASSOCIATION INTERN ms OUYRIERS \ t aS > lees 2 ee 7 ‘ 5 INTERN ARBEITER ASSOCI® ”* ASSOCI** INTEREY D OPERAL. x ' rs MEMBERS ANNUAL SUBSERILTION CARD.

wns adautted acMemberon * end pod ashes Aunuel Subseryrhon