Preface to Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume (20)

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Volume 20 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels contains works written between September 1864 and July 1868. It is the first in a group of volumes that reflect the activity of Marx and Engels as the leaders of the International Working Men’s Association (the First International). The volume includes documents of the International drawn up by them, reports, pamphlets, articles, statements, records of speeches, drafts, etc., written up to November 1867, the period of the setting up of the international proletarian organisation and the beginning of the struggle to establish socialist principles in its programme. Extending slightly beyond this chronological framework are the notes and reviews written by Marx and Engels in connection with the publication of the first volume of Capital in September 1867, and also Engels’ synopsis of this volume, which are published in a special section.

The founding of the Association, the first mass international organisation of the proletariat, heralded a new stage in the development of the working-class movement and in the history of Marxism. It marked the beginning of the international proletarian movement and created new conditions and opportunities for the broad dissemination of the ideas of scientific communism. “It is unforgettable, it will remain for ever in the history of the workers’ struggle for their emancipation,” Lenin wrote of the First International (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, Moscow, 1980, p. 240).

The International was set up when the working-class movement began to gain momentum in the late 1850s. The world economic crisis of 1857 and the growing strike movement that followed it were awakening in the workers’ consciousness an understanding of the importance of their fraternal solidarity in the struggle against capital. The activity of the working class was also stimulated by the revolutionary events of the time: the struggle for the unification of Italy, the Civil War in the United States of America, the Polish national liberation uprising of 1863-64, and others. All this drew broad masses of workers into political life and strengthened the desire for concerted action by the proletariat of the different countries.

However, the spontaneous urge to establish international connections was not in itself enough for the creation of an independent international working-class organisation. Of decisive importance for its formation and activity was the participation of Marx and his supporters, including former members of the Communist League. It was the influence of Marx and the proletarian revolutionaries who managed to express the vital interests of the workers of all countries, that ensured the development of the International Working Men’s Association as a truly proletarian association, and made it possible to overcome such obstacles to this as the ideological dependence of many workers on bourgeois democracy, the widespread nationalistic prejudices among them, and the reformist and sectarian dogmas of petty-bourgeois socialism.

The works published in this and the three subsequent volumes, and the relevant correspondence volumes, illustrate clearly the leading role which Marx played in the International Working Men’s Association. He was the author of all its programmatic documents and most of its addresses and statements. Personally or through his colleagues he guided the work of the congresses and conferences of the International Association and drafted their most important resolutions. He was in fact the head of the Central (General) Council of the International, the headquarters of the international proletarian organisation, and directed the activity of its executive body, the Standing Committee or Sub-Committee. On behalf of the General Council Marx drew up the political programme of the International, thereby outlining the strategy and tactics of the whole international working-class movement.

Marx was greatly assisted by Engels in the guidance of the International. Until his move from Manchester to London in the autumn of 1870 Engels could not participate directly in the work of the General Council, but even before then he assisted with all its main undertakings, explaining in the press and in letters to active members of the working-class movement, particularly in Germany, the position of the International Working Men’s Association on many theoretical and tactical questions.

In guiding the International Marx had to take into account the differing conditions for the struggle of the proletariat and the varying degrees of its organisation and ideological level in the individual countries. He saw the prime task of the international organisation as being to unite the different streams of the proletarian movement, and to single out the proletariat from the general democratic camp and to ensure its class independence. Marx sought step by step to bring the workers to accept a common theoretical programme and general tactical principles, thus promoting the combination of scientific communism and the mass working-class movement. “In uniting the labour movement of various countries, striving to channel into joint activity the various forms of non-proletarian, pre-Marxist socialism (Mazzini, Proudhon, Bakunin, liberal trade-unionism in Britain, Lassallean vacillations to the right in Germany, etc.), and in combating the theories of all these sects and schools, Marx hammered out a uniform tactic for the proletarian struggle of the working class in the various countries” (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, Moscow, 1977, p. 49).

Marx’s consistently revolutionary and at the same time flexible line as leader of the International manifested itself already in the drafting of the organisation’s first programme documents—the “Inaugural Address of the Working Men’s International Association” and the “Provisional Rules of the Association”, with which the present volume opens. Here Marx succeeded in resisting attempts to impose on the Association a declaration of principles written in a bourgeois-democratic spirit and Mazzini’s rules for Italian working-men’s mutual aid societies that were full of sectarian-conspiratorial tendencies. Thanks to his efforts the International Working Men’s Association based its programme and rules according to the theoretical and organisational principles of scientific socialism.

Working on the Inaugural Address and Rules Marx sought to reflect in them the sum total of social development since the Revolution of 1848 and the further development of revolutionary theory, particularly his economic teaching. In this respect the inaugural documents of the International are a step forward from the first programmatic work—the Manifesto of the Communist Party. On the other hand, not all the propositions of the Communist Manifesto could be reproduced in the new documents, and Marx had to expound some of its ideas in a form comprehensible to the members of the proletarian movement of his day. International unification of the various detachments of the working class, and ensurance of the mass nature of the organisation being set up, were possible at that time only on a platform which, without making any concessions to reformist and sectarian trends, did not simultaneously close the door on British trade-unionists, French, Belgian and Swiss Proudhonists, and German Lassalleans. “It was very difficult to frame the thing so that our view should appear in a form which would make it acceptable to the present outlook of the workers’ movement,” Marx wrote to Engels in this connection on November 4, 1864. “It will take time before the revival of the movement allows the old boldness of language to be used. We must be fortiter in re, suaviter in modo [forcible in deed, gentle in manner].” Marx believed that as the influence of reformist and sectarian trends was overcome and the working class accumulated practical experience, the programme of the International would be extended and, first and foremost, supplemented by propositions concretising the socialist aims of the working-class movement and ways of achieving them.

The first programmatic documents of the International stressed that the contradictions between labour and capital would inevitably deepen as capitalism developed. Hence the conclusion that the radical transformation of society was the only way to free the proletariat and all working people from oppression. The abolition of all class rule was proclaimed as the aim of the working-class movement. “The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves” (this volume, p. 14). These opening words of the preamble to the Provisional Rules express the idea that the political and ideological independence of the working-class movement is the most important condition for the successful outcome of the proletariat’s struggle against capitalism.

In the Inaugural Address Marx noted two great victories won by the working class: the passing of the Ten-Hours’ Bill in Britain and the development of the co-operative movement. However, he pointed out that neither legislative restriction of the working day nor experiments with the creation of workers’ cooperatives could lead to a transformation of the economic foundations of bourgeois society under capitalism. An insuperable obstacle to this is the exploiting classes’—the magnates of land and the magnates of capital—monopoly of political power. “To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes” (this volume, p. 12). Pointing out that the workers possessed one of the elements of success—numbers—Marx emphasised that “numbers weigh only in the balance, if united by combination and led by knowledge” (ibid.). This idea helped members of the working-class movement to understand the importance of creating a proletarian party armed with revolutionary theory.

The principles of proletarian internationalism were profoundly substantiated in the first documents of the International. “Past experience has shown,” wrote Marx in the Inaugural Address, “how disregard of that bond of brotherhood which ought to exist between the workmen of different countries, and incite them to stand firmly by each other in all their struggles for emancipation, will be chastised by the common discomfiture of their incoherent efforts” (this volume, p. 12). The summons “Proletarians of all countries, Unite!” put forward by Marx and Engels on the founding of the Communist League, became the new organisation’s watchword. As one of the International’s main tasks the Inaugural Address put forward the struggle against the aggressive foreign policy of the ruling classes, calling on workers “to vindicate the simple laws of morals and justice, which ought to govern the relations of private individuals, as the rules paramount of the intercourse of nations” (this volume, p. 13).

In working out the organisational structure of the International Marx also took account of the historically developed forms of the working-class movement. The International Working Men’s Association did not oppose existing workers’ organisations, but sought to base itself on them and lead their activity to a common goal. The Rules provided for both individual membership of the Association and collective membership by craft, trade, cooperative, educational and other societies and unions. The truly democratic structure of the organisation, recognition of congresses as the supreme bodies, in the intervals between which leadership was concentrated in the hands of the Central Council, the elective nature of all posts, accountability, collective decision-taking, the granting of extensive rights to local sections with observance of a certain degree of centralisation necessary for unity of action—all these propositions in the Rules were in keeping with the truly emancipatory nature of the struggle of the working class and with the task of drawing the broad proletarian masses into this struggle.

The resolutions on the composition of the Provisional Central Council, the records of a number of speeches delivered by Marx at meetings of the Council, and also of proposals made by his colleagues on his initiative, the English text of the General Rules and Administrative Regulations passed at the Geneva Congress in 1866 and prepared for publication with Marx’s assistance, and other documents, testify to the attention which he devoted to perfecting the structure and organisational forms of the activity of the International Working Men’s Association.

The new organisation became the centre of the international mutual assistance of the proletariat in the struggle for its economic interests. “It is one of the great purposes of the Association,” Marx stated, “to make the workmen of different countries not only feel but act as brethren and comrades in the army of emancipation” (this volume, p. 186). Already in the early years of the Association’s existence its support enabled the workers of a number of countries to hold successful strikes. The leaders of the Association frequently succeeded in thwarting factory owners’ plans to use foreign workers as strike-breakers. A characteristic document in this respect is the Central Council’s appeal, written by Marx, entitled “A Warning”. Addressing German tailors whom employers were trying to recruit for work in Scotland so as to break strikes, Marx urged them not to become the “obedient mercenaries of capital” (this volume, p. 163).

Marx devoted a special paper to the theoretical substantiation of the importance of the economic struggle. He considered it essential to refute mistaken views on this subject, including those of the Lassalleans and Proudhonists who denied the role of strikes and trade unions. In the Central Council itself the Owenist John Weston tried to argue the futility of the workers’ struggle for higher wages. In reply to this attempt Marx presented a report on June 20 and 27, 1865 to the Central Council, which is published in this volume under the title of Value, Price and Profit (also known under the title of Wages, Price and Profit). In this report Marx demonstrated most convincingly the invalidity of Weston’s arguments. The tendency of capital, Marx explained, to make the working day as long as possible and reduce wages to a minimum, that is, to the cost of the means of subsistence physically necessary for the worker and his family to stay alive, is by no means a kind of fatal, “iron” law. The cost of labour power, he noted, is variable, and depends not only on physical, but also on social factors, the standard of living in this or that country, the different phases of the economic cycle and, in particular, the degree of resistance offered by the workers to the capitalists. Without this resistance, which stimulates the workers to organise themselves for struggle, “they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation” (this volume, p. 148). However, the proletariat cannot be content with mere improvements in the conditions for selling labour power, Marx stressed, and also attacked the British trade-unionists’ attempts to limit the workingclass movement to achieving economic concessions. The daily “guerilla war” against the consequences and not the causes of the exploitation of the workers must, he taught, be subordinated to the final aim of the working class—to overthrow the exploitatory system, destroy the system of wage labour itself (ibid., p. 149).

Marx’s report did not contain only his polemic with Weston and those who supported his views. In it, two years before the publication of the first volume of Capital, Marx set out in popular form some of the main propositions of his economic teaching, revealing, first and foremost, how surplus value, the source of all types of unearned income, is formed and thereby explaining the true nature of the relations between capitalists and wage workers. Value, Price and Profit is one of the most important works of Marxist political economy.

A splendid example of how revolutionary theory can be used to define the practical tasks of the working-class movement is the document entitled “Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council. The Different Questions”, drawn up by Marx, which served as the basis for the work and resolutions of the Geneva Congress of the International Working Men’s Association in 1866. Developing and expanding the first programmatic documents of the International, the Instructions concretised the broad programme of its activity.

The Instructions orientated members of the working-class movement to all-round international mutual assistance in the economic struggle. Marx endeavoured to give the highly important task of strengthening international proletarian solidarity a concrete content, by searching at each stage of the activity of the International for new ways of uniting the proletariat of different countries. In order to put the struggle for the workers’ economic interests on a scientific basis, Marx advanced the idea of a statistical inquiry into the condition of the working class and outlined a general scheme for such an inquiry. The Instructions attached special importance to the restriction of the working day. Having substantiated the demand for an eight-hour working day, Marx turned this demand into a common slogan for the proletariat of the whole capitalist world.

Outlining measures against the capitalist exploitation of female and child labour, Marx at the same time showed the progressive nature of drawing women and adolescents into material production. He advanced a number of propositions concerning the education and upbringing of the younger generation which served as a point of departure for the development of the theory and practice of socialist education. The main thing here was the idea of polytechnical training, the combining of the mental and physical education of children and adolescents with a study of the main principles- of production, and the initiation in productive labour. Marx saw this as a means of raising the intellectual level of the working class and, in future socialist society, as a way for ensuring the formation of the harmoniously developed individual.

In the section of the Instructions on co-operative labour, Marx, unlike the Proudhonists and other petty-bourgeois reformers, showed that the co-operative movement in itself could not transform the capitalist social system. Radical changes in the social system could never “be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, viz., the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves” (this volume, p. 190).

Of particular importance is the section on trades’ unions. Here thoughts concerning the place and role of the trade-union movement in the revolutionary emancipatory process expressed by Marx at different times, and his ideas on the need to combine the economic and political struggle of the working class, were systematised and developed. Lenin subsequently remarked that, after the Geneva Congress adopted the resolution on trade unions reproducing the corresponding propositions in the Instructions, “the conviction that the class struggle must necessarily combine the political and the economic struggle into one integral whole has entered into the flesh and blood of international SocialDemocracy” (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, Moscow, 1977, p. 177). Outlining the ways of turning the trade unions into schools of revolutionary education for the proletarian masses and training them for decisive battles with capital, Marx pointed out that professional organisations should not limit themselves to the narrow everyday requirements of their members, and that they were obliged to take part in any social and political movement aimed at the emancipation of the working class.

A considerable number of works and documents included in this volume reflect the position of the International, led by Marx, on the most important political questions of the day. Marx believed that the consistent carrying out of urgent bourgeois-democratic transformations would facilitate the task of organising the forces of the proletariat and be a step towards its emancipation. Therefore, unlike the supporters of Proudhon and other pettybourgeois Utopians who maintained that intervention in politics distracts the workers from the solution of social problems, Marx sought to turn the International Working Men’s Association into an influential political force, a vanguard fighter for democracy, peace between peoples and the liberation of oppressed nations.

In the congratulatory address of the Central Council to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, on the occasion of his re-election to this post in autumn 1864, drafted by Marx, the International expressed its solidarity with the struggle of the revolutionary-democratic forces of the United States against the Southern slave-holders (see this volume, pp. 19-21). Marx was also the author of the address of the International Working Men’s Association to President Andrew Johnson in May 1865 in connection with the murder of Lincoln by an agent of the slave-holders (ibid., pp. 99-100). Marx orientated his supporters in Germany towards unification of the country by democratic, revolutionary means. He regarded the struggle against the Bonapartist regime as the most important task of the International in France. In reply to the obstacles which the French authorities raised to the activity of the International Working Men’s Association, Marx suggested intensifying the denunciatory campaign against the Bonapartist regime (see his speech on this question at the meeting of the General Council on November 27, 1866, this volume, p. 414).

The note to Hermann Jung about Ernest Jones’ letter, and the brief records of speeches at meetings of the Central Council, in particular, those of January 24, February 14 and 28 and April 25, 1865, testify to the efforts which Marx was making to induce the leading body of the International to assume the role of organiser of a mass movement for democratic parliamentary reform in Britain and to exert an influence on the activity of the Reform League, founded in spring 1865, as a centre of this movement. Under the influence of Marx and the Central Council, the League advanced the demand for universal male suffrage. The movement for reform did not live up to Marx’s expectations, however. The trade-union leaders, who were members of the Council of the League and inclined to compromise, renounced the platform which the Central Council of the International had outlined for the League. Taking advantage of the League’s weakness, the government passed a moderate reform in 1867, leaving most of the workers without the right to vote.

Already in the early years of the activity of the International Working Men’s Association Marx and Engels devoted considerable attention to substantiating the internationalist position of the working class in relation to the national liberation movement. In this period they spoke out with particular frequency on the Polish question. Marx and Engels regarded support of the fighters for the freedom of the Polish people and other oppressed nations as a most important task of the proletarian organisation, proceeding from the conviction that the solution of urgent national problems in a revolutionary-democratic manner was a condition of the successful development of the working-class movement. This idea runs through the Central Council’s “Correction”, written by Marx in April 1865, in connection with the silence of the British liberal press concerning the position of the International on the Polish question, and Marx’s speech at a meeting in London on January 22, 1867 to mark the anniversary of the Polish insurrection of 1863-64 (see this volume, pp. 97-98, 196-201).

Marx was compelled to defend the internationalist line with respect to Poland in a struggle against the Proudhonists, who had inherited from their teacher a nihilistic attitude to the national liberation movements and denied their progressive nature. He also had to contend with the misunderstanding about the real ways of liberating Poland, with the allegation made by the right wing of the Polish emigration, that the policy of the ruling classes of the Western powers, in particular bourgeois France, was in keeping with the national aspirations of the Poles. On the Central Council the English democrat Peter Fox sought to defend this point of view. It was refuted in a number of speeches by Marx at meetings of the Standing Committee and Central Council in December 1864-January 1865 (see this volume, pp. 311-27, 354-56). On the matter of liberating Poland Marx took the view that one should look not to the so-called “help” of the Western powers, but to internal revolutionary-democratic forces, a union of the popular masses of Poland and Russia (he had already expressed this idea in letters to Engels during the Polish insurrection of 1863-64) and support from the European proletariat.

Engels also criticised Proudhonist views on the Polish question. In a series of articles entitled What Have the Working Classes to Do with Poland? he showed that in the interests of its own emancipation the working class should irreconcilably oppose the policy of national oppression and be at the forefront of the struggle for the national independence of enslaved peoples. At the same time Engels warned of the danger of reactionary forces making use of national movements, especially those of small peoples, an example of which was the speculation of ruling circles in the Bonapartist Second Empire on the “principle of nationalities”.

Marx regarded the international solidarity of the proletariat as a powerful means of combating militarism, the unleashing of bloody wars by the ruling classes. He stressed that “the union of the working classes of the different countries must ultimately make international wars impossible” (this volume, p. 426). At the same time Marx sought to teach the working-class movement to combine the struggle for peace with the class approach to war, with an ability to analyse the nature of this or that military conflict. This aspect of Marx’s activity was seen during the discussion in the Central Council on the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, an analysis of which from the military strategic point of view was provided by Engels in the series of articles entitled Notes on the War in Germany. In spite of their laconic nature, the notes in the Council Minute Book give an idea of the active part which Marx took in this discussion. The resolution passed by the Council under his influence shows his deep understanding of the contradictory nature of the war in which objectively progressive aims—the unification of Germany—were intertwined with the dynastic and territorial claims of the ruling classes of the belligerent states. The International recommended workers to adopt a neutral stand, and at the same time placed responsibility for the military conflict on the governments of the belligerent parties (ibid., p. 411).

In the Resolution on the Attitude of the International Working Men’s Association to the Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom and the speech on this subject at the meeting of the General Council on August 13, 1867, Marx formulated a number of propositions concerning joint action by workers and members of the bourgeois pacifist movement (see this volume, pp. 204, 426-27). While supporting in principle collaboration with all progressive forces in the struggle against the growing military danger, Marx stressed that this collaboration should take forms which did not threaten the working class with the loss of its own independent, class line and with ideological submission to bourgeois democracy. The proletarian organisation could not assume responsibility for all the weaknesses and illusions of the pacifist movement, which, although it really did reflect the anti-military mood of the broad masses, was characterised by an abstract approach to war, a reluctance to see the capitalist system as its source, and a tendency to replace real struggle for peace by high-flown declarations.

The materials and documents published in the volume reflect the intense activity of Marx and Engels to create and strengthen local organisations of the International and to draw into its ranks the workers of Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and the USA.

In Britain Marx sought to make such mass working-class organisations as the trade unions a bulwark for the International. To this end he drafted the resolutions on terms for the admission of workers’ organisations to membership of the International Working Men’s Association and the Address of the Central Council to working men’s societies, based on these resolutions (see this volume, pp. 18, 372-73). The Minute Book of the General Council contains a report of a speech by Marx on July 23, 1867, from which it is clear that he played an active part in defending trade unions against attacks by reactionary forces trying to ban or restrict their activity (see this volume, pp. 424-25).

In seeking to use the organisational experience and influence among the masses of trade-union leaders of the day in the interests of strengthening the position of the International, Marx did not overlook their characteristic reformist interpretation of the aims of the working-class movement, their respect for bourgeois authorities, their uncritical acceptance of pacifist rhetoric, and their compliance with respect to bourgeois radicals. Marx considered it his duty to combat the manifestation of such tendencies. Thus, on his initiative, the General Council dissociated itself from the panegyric of Bismarck made by George Odger, an eminent trade unionist (see this volume, p. 416).

The Central Council’s resolutions on the conflict in the Paris section and a number of preparatory materials for this document (see present volume, pp. 82-83, 329-36) throw light on Marx’s endeavours to strengthen the International’s sections in France. Rejecting in these resolutions the claims of bourgeois democrats to a leading role in the French sections of the International Working Men’s Association and denying their ill-founded accusations levelled at members of the Paris Administration (Proudhonist workers), Marx at the same time sought to complement it with revolutionary-proletarian elements. He hoped to induce the Administration to turn from propagating Utopian Proudhonist projects of social reform to organisational work among the proletarian masses.

Marx showed constant concern for the creation of a massive base for the International in Germany. This task could be solved by the affiliation to the International Working Men’s Association of the General Association of German Workers, the foundation of which in 1863 was an important step towards emancipating German workers from the political tutelage of the liberal bourgeoisie. However, the General Association’s programme, drawn up by its first president Ferdinand Lassalle, contained Utopian dogmas (in particular, on solving the social question by setting up producer associations with state help) diametrically opposed to the principles of the International. Lassalle oriented the Association towards support of the Prussian government’s policy of uniting Germany under the aegis of Prussia in return for the promise of universal suffrage.

By drawing the General Association of German Workers into the ranks of the International Marx hoped to influence the former and bring about a revision of its reformist programme and a change in its tactics. Not possessing at that time any means for the wide propagation of their own ideas and for their criticism of Lassalle’s views in Germany, Marx and Engels agreed to collaborate on the Social-Demokrat, a newspaper founded by one of the leaders of the General Association of German Workers Johann Baptist von Schweitzer. The newspaper published the authorised translation of the “Inaugural Address of the Working Men’s International Association”, and also the German text of the Association’s Provisional Rules.

In connection with the death of Proudhon in January 1865, Marx wrote an article about him for the Social-Demokrat. He paid tribute to Proudhon’s services—his attack on capitalist property, his critique of religion and the church, and his courageous defence of the June insurgents in 1848. At the same time he exposed the petty-bourgeois essence of Proudhon’s views, the contradictory, Utopian nature of the projects for social transformations advanced by him. In Proudhon’s writings and ideas Marx detected features characteristic also of other reformist and sectarian trends of petty-bourgeois socialism, including Lassalleanism—superficial playing with philosophical and economic categories instead of the scientific analysis of reality, apriori formulae for solving social questions, which were dogmatically presented as universal panaceas for social ills (see this volume, p. 29). Without mentioning Lassalle’s name, he suggested that, like Proudhon’s proposals, Lassalle’s recipes were also the result of indulging in hare-brained social schemes. Marx’s sharp criticism in this article of Proudhon’s attempts to justify the coup d’état of 1851 and the Bonapartist regime in France contain a direct condemnation of the flirting by Lassalle and his supporters with Bismarck.

Publishing in the Social-Demokrat a translation of the old Danish folk song “Herr Tidmann” with a commentary (see this volume, pp. 34-35), Engels stressed the importance of the revolutionary traditions of the peasant movement, unlike the Lassalleans who regarded peasantry as “one reactionary mass”.

The collaboration on the Social-Demokrat did not last for long. The paper’s content soon convinced Marx and Engels that Schweitzer and Lassalle’s other successors had no intention of renouncing Lassallean doctrines and tactics of accommodation to the Bismarck regime. It became clear to Marx and Engels that the Lassallean leaders were preventing the German workers from joining the International. This induced Marx and Engels not only to break off relations with the Social-Demokrat, but also to make the breach public. In their statement of February 23, 1865, to the editors, contained in this volume, they strongly criticised the tenor that the Lassalleans had given the newspaper, and characterised Lassalleanism itself as “royal Prussian governmental socialism” (this volume, p. 80). A number of other letters by Marx to the press published in this volume (his “Statement regarding the causes of the breach with the Social-DemokraV”’, “To the Editor of the Berliner Reform”, and “The ‘President of Mankind’) also denounced the paper’s editor, Schweitzer, and other Lassallean leaders.

Engels’ pamphlet The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers’ Party which substantiates the tactics of the German proletariat on the major questions of political life in Germany, was also full of criticism of Lassalleanism. The pamphlet analysed the alignment of class forces in the constitutional conflict that had arisen between the Prussian government and the liberal bourgeoisie in connection with the government’s proposals for reorganising the army. In the prevailing circumstances, the pamphlet’s author made it clear, the need to create an independent workers’ party in Germany was most acute. Outlining its tactical line, Engels, unlike the Lassalleans, argued the need not only to criticise the inconsistency and cowardice of the bourgeois Party of Progress, but also to wage an unrelenting battle against the military-bureaucratic monarchy and its social bulwark—the reactionary class of Junker landowners.

In the struggle against Junker-monarchistic forces, the workers’ party, Engels stressed, must be able to expose the social demagogy of the head of the Prussian state, Bismarck, his feigned willingness to grant concessions to the working class, which concealed his intention to use it to put pressure on the bourgeois opposition. Comparing Bismarck’s actions with the political methods of the bourgeois ruling circles in the Second Empire in France, Engels reveals the reactionary nature of Bonapartism, pointing out such characteristic features of it as manoeuvring between classes with the aim of suppressing all resistance to the reactionary regime, savage repression of the workers’ movement under the pretence of protecting the workers, the transformation of a democratic institution, universal suffrage, into a means of deceiving the masses, and consolidating the military-police dictatorship (ibid., pp. 72-73). In so doing Engels warned German workers against the Lassallean idealisation of universal suffrage, showing that its real value for the working class was determined by the social and political conditions under which it took effect.

The writings of Marx and Engels promoted the disillusionment of the German workers with Lassallean dogmas and the tactics of the leaders of the General Association of German Workers. Opposition to the Lassallean leaders grew within the organisation itself. The workers became increasingly drawn to the International, to creating its sections in Germany. Marx followed these changes in the German working-class movement closely. At the meeting of the General Council on October 8, 1867 he reported as a great victory for the German working class the election to the North German Imperial Diet of Wilhelm Liebknecht who, together with August Bebel, supported the policies of the International (see this volume, p. 438). On October 22, 1867, Marx considered it necessary to acquaint members of the Council with extracts from Liebknecht’s speech in the Imperial Diet, in which he criticised Bismarck’s foreign policy (ibid.).

In September 1867 a great event took place in the history of social thought and the international working-class movement: the publication of Volume One of Marx’s main work, Capital. “As long as there have been capitalists and workers on earth,” Engels wrote, “no book has appeared which is of as much importance for the workers as the one before us. The relation between capital and labour, the axis on which our entire present system of society turns, is here treated scientifically for the first time” (this volume, p. 231). By revealing in Capital the laws of development of the capitalist mode of production, Marx made a revolution in economic science. His work was a tremendous step forward in the development of other component parts of Marxist teaching also—dialectical and historical materialism and the theory of scientific communism. Capital was a theoretical weapon for the working class in its struggle against capitalist slavery.

Marx’s book played an exceptionally important role in the activity of the International. In Capital the international pro-letarian organisation acquired an ideological source for elucidating the revolutionary aims of its struggle, and an indispensable guide for determining its position on man y questions of vital importance for the working-class movement. The propagand a of the ideas contained in Capital, in which eminent members of the International Association joined, accelerated the development of the class consciousness of participants in the working-class movement and their liberation from the influence of petty-bourgeois Utopians, helping the proletarian masses to master revolutionary socialist teaching and turn to scientific communism. For Marx and his colleagues this process helped to solve the task which they had set at this stage of the International’s activity, namely, that of bringing the workers in its ranks to a clear understanding of the need for socialist revolution and the communist transformation of society and inserting corresponding propositions in the programme of the international proletarian organisation.

The works by Marx and Engels, published in a special section of this volume and dealing with the publication of Volume One of Capital, reflect the initial stage of the popularisation of this work and also the ideological struggle around it, when bourgeois ideologists abandoned their tactics of silence and sought to belittle its importance and distort its content.

A great role was played by Engels in breaking the “conspiracy of silence” with which official academic circles and the bourgeois press met the appearance of Capital. He wrote a number of reviews for liberal and democratic newspapers as if considering the book from the viewpoint of a bourgeois scholar sufficiently objective, however, to assess its scientific merits. “Th e studies made in this book are of the greatest scientific subtlety,” Engels wrote in a review for the Zukunft newspaper (this volume, p. 208). “... it is a most scholarly work which has a claim to be regarded as most strictly scientific,” he remarked in a review for the Elberf elder Zeitung (ibid., p p . 214-215). One of the devices that Engels used in his reviews was to compare the theoretical level of Marx’s work with the academic level of bourgeois, particularly German, economists, in order under the guise of lamenting the deplorable state of official economic thought in Germany to show the superiority of Marxist political economy to bourgeois political economy.

Addressing himself in the above-mentioned reviews primarily to a bourgeois audience, Engels sought to dispel the idea widespread among it that Marx’s teaching was a type of Utopian socialism. He emphasised that by his economic theory Marx had provided “the scientific basis for socialist aspirations which neither Fourier nor Proudhon nor even Lassalle had been able to do” (ibid., p. 215). In a review for the Beobachter Engels described the basic difference between the Marxist and the Lassallean approach to the major questions of the day as follows: “If Lassalle had big ideas about Bismarck’s fitness to introduce the socialist Millennium, Herr Marx refutes his wayward pupil loudly enough” (ibid., p. 225).

Engels frequently drew attention to Marx’s application of the dialectical method, and his consistent historical approach to events, hailing this as a great scientific achievement of the author of Capital. “We must confess,” he wrote, “that we are much impressed by the sense of history which pervades the whole book and forbids the author to take the laws of economics for eternal truths, for anything but the formulations of the conditions of existence of certain transitory states of society” (this volume, p. 208). Thus Engels led the reader to the conclusion that from the scientific point of view the capitalist system was just as historically transient as the feudal and slave-owning systems before it, and that it would inevitably be succeeded by a different, higher organisation of society. In his review for the liberal Rheinische Zeitung Engels states unambiguously in this connection that the representatives of revolutionary Social-Democracy should see Marx’s work as “their theoretical bible, as the armoury from which they will take their most telling arguments” (ibid., p. 210). It was evidently no accident that the editors of this newspaper refused to publish it. Engels’ long article for the British journal The Fortnightly Review was not published either (ibid., pp. 238-59).

Engels’ review for the workers’ newspaper Demokratisches Wochenblatt was of a different nature. Here he could express openly his solidarity with the author’s views. In his exposition of the fundamentals of Marx’s economic teaching he laid emphasis on the pinpointing of the exploitative nature of the relations between capitalists and workers, the mechanism of extracting surplus value by entrepreneurs, the inevitable aggravation of the class antagonisms inherent in bourgeois society and the growing struggle between labour and capital. Engels expounded clearly Marx’s idea that the very development of capitalism creates the material prerequisites for the revolutionary transition to a communist system. “Capitalist production is the first to create the wealth and the productive forces necessary for this, but at the same time it also creates, in the numerous and oppressed workers, the social class which is compelled more and more to claim the utilisation of this wealth and these productive forces for the whole of society—instead of their being utilised, as they are today, for a monopolist class” (this volume, p. 237).

The synopsis of Volume One of Marx’s Capital which Engels may have written as an outline for a special pamphlet, covers the content of almost four of the six chapters in the first edition of the book (see this volume, pp. 263-308). This work is a fine example of the popular exposition of the complex economic problems examined in Marx’s work.

The volume also contains Marx’s article “Plagiarism” and the manuscript outline of his article “My Plagiarism of F. Bastiat”. The first of these works criticises the misuse and crude distortion by Lassallean leaders and publicists of individual propositions of Capital (see this volume, pp. 219-23). In this article Marx warns against the danger of debasing Marxist political economy. In the second work, having refuted the assertion by bourgeois reviewers of Capital that he had borrowed his theory of value from Bastiat, one of the French vulgar economists (ibid., pp. 260-62). Marx refuted attempts by his opponents to belittle the scientific value of his economic teaching by false references to its alleged lack of originality.

The section “From the Preparatory Materials” contains drafts and notes by Marx that show his preparations for various speeches in the Central Council of the International Working Men’s Association and other aspects of his activity as a leader of the Council, and Marx’s minutes of the Central Council meeting on January 16, 1866. It also contains notes made by Engels during his travels round Sweden and Denmark in July 1867.

The Appendices contain records of Marx’s speeches published according to the Minute Book of the General Council or newspaper reports, and also extracts from the Minute Book that throw light on the discussion of various matters in the Council in which Marx took part. Here too are extracts from the minutes of the London Conference of the International in 1865 which was held under Marx’s leadership, and also documents of the Central (later General) Council drawn up with his assistance, including the Council Report to the Lausanne Congress of the International. The Appendices also include some contributions by Marx’s associates edited by him and letters from Jenny Marx to Johann Philipp Becker with information that came from Marx and was intended for publication. Also published here are circulars from the Schiller Institute in Manchester, of which Engels was Chairman at the time.

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This volume contains 55 works by Marx and Engels, of which 21 are published in English for the first time, among them the statement by Marx and Engels to the Social-Demokrat of February 6, 1865, a number of other statements and letters from Marx to the editors of German newspapers, and also his articles “The ‘President of Mankind"', “Plagiarism” and “My Plagiarism of F. Bastiat”. Of Engels’ works the pamphlet The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers’ Party and most of the reviews of Volume One of Capital are published in English for the first time. Of the documents contained in the Appendices nine are appearing in English for the first time.

In cases where documents of the International written by Marx or with his participation have survived in more or less authentic versions in several languages, the English version—manuscript or printed—is reproduced in this volume. Significant differences in reading with versions in other languages are indicated in the footnotes.

All the texts have been translated from the German except where otherwise stated. Headings supplied by the editors where none existed in the original are given in square brackets. The asterisks indicate footnotes by the author; the editors’ footnotes are indicated by index letters.

Misprints in quotations, proper and geographical names, figures, dates, and so on, have been corrected with reference to the sources used by Marx and Engels. The known literary and documental sources are referred to in footnotes and in the index of quoted and mentioned literature. Words written in English in the original are given in small caps.

The compilation of the volume, its preface and notes, the index of quoted and mentioned literature and the glossary of geographical names, are the work of Tatyana Vasilyeva, under the editorship of Lev Golman (CC CPSU Institute of Marxism-Leninism). The name index and the index of periodicals were prepared by Yeli zaveta Ovsyannikova (CC CPSU Institute of Marxism-Leninism).

The translations were made by Rodney Livingstone, Leonard E. Mins, Barrie Selman, Barbara Ruhemann, Christopher Upward and Joan and Trevor Walmsley (Lawrence and Wishart), Cynthia Carlile, Jane Dgebuadze, Glenys Ann Kozlov and Victor Schnittke (Progress Publishers) and edited by Nicholas Jacobs (Lawrence and Wishart), Natalia Karmanova and Margarita Lopukhina (Progress Publishers) and scientific editor Vladimir Mosolov (CC CPSU Institute of Marxism-Leninism).

The volume was prepared for the press by the editors Natalia Karmanova, Margarita Lopukhina and Alia Varavitskaya.