Preface to Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume (23)

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Volume 23 of the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels contains pamphlets, articles, documents of the International Working Men’s Association (the First International) and other items written between October 1871 and July 1874.

These years mark an important stage in the development of the international working-class movement. After the Paris Commune of 1871 the general socio-political situation, and the shifts that had occurred in the movement itself, intensified the need for independent proletarian parties capable of leading the workers’ class struggle in the specific conditions of their own countries. The activities of the First International helped to prepare the ideological and organisational ground for the formation of such parties. And it was to this historic task that Marx and Engels devoted their efforts.

The materials in this volume show the all-round development and promulgation in these years of the basic principles of the scientific proletarian worldview, the struggle waged by Marx and Engels against trends hostile to the proletariat.

Their main thrust is towards the theoretical generalisation of the historical experience of the Paris Commune, a task Marx had begun in his The Civil War in France (see present edition,

Vol. 22). Basing themselves on the experience of the Commune, Marx and Engels develop and enrich their theory of the state, the position and role of the working class in bourgeois society, the conditions required for its winning of political power, and the functions of the proletarian state. Inseparably linked with these problems are those relating to the character and tasks of the proletarian parties. And it is precisely these problems that provide the battleground for the fight against the non-proletarian socialist trends—Proudhonism, Lassalleanism, Bakuninism, and others.

The volume begins with the new edition of the “General Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Working Men’s Association”, drawn up by Marx and Engels soon after the London Conference of 1871 and issued by the General Council in three languages. This document played a crucial role in spreading the ideological and organisational principles of the International in the period following the Paris Commune. In the light of its lessons the programmatic proposition contained in the Rules on the role of political struggle in the emancipation of the working class, which had more than once been distorted in Proudhonist publications, was of especial importance.

Marx’s desire to deepen the programme of the International, and to perfect its organisational structure in the spirit of democratic centralism, is expressed in the “Amendments to the General Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Working Men’s Association”. These Amendments, made in preparation for the Hague Congress, reproduced in substance the resolution passed by the London Conference of the International on political action by the working class. As a result,for the first time ever, a fundamental conclusion arrived at earlier by Marxist thought and confirmed by the analysis of the Paris events of 1871 was incorporated into a programmatic document of the International Working Men’s Association—the conclusion that to ensure the victory of the proletarian revolution the working class had to have its own political party.

Marx and Engels never tired of explaining to the working class the world historic significance of the Paris Commune. For example, in the resolutions written in March 1872 for the mass meeting of members of the International and the Commune refugees in London, Marx pointed out that the proletariat would regard the Commune “as the dawn of the great social revolution which will for ever free the human race from class rule” (see this volume, p. 128).

In contrast to the reformists, who tried to gloss over the revolutionary essence of the Commune, and to the anarchists, who interpreted it as an example of the destruction of the state as such, Marxism saw it as the first attempt by the working class not only to break the bourgeois state machine, but to replace it by a state of a new, proletarian type—an instrument for the socialist transformation of society. Attaching exceptional importance to this historical lesson, Marx and Engels in 1872 found it necessary to make a special addition to the Manifesto of the Communist Party. In the preface to the new German edition they noted that the Commune had proved that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery”, and that to achieve its aims it would therefore have to set up a truly democratic state system of an entirely different class nature (p. 175).

In his article “Political Indifferentism” Marx exposed the theoretical bankruptcy and political harmfulness of the Proudhonist doctrine preached by the Bakuninists that the working class should renounce political struggle, and of the anarchist idea of the immediate “abolition of the State”. He showed that in practice these ideas disarm the workers and condemn them to the status of obedient servants of the bourgeoisie. Criticising these anarchist views, Marx demonstrates the historical need to replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by the revolutionary dictatorship of the working class.

The Marxist propositions on the attitude of the proletarian revolution to the state are also substantiated in the essay “On Authority” by Engels. The essay shows that the anarchists’ repudiation of authority, of any kind of guiding or organising principle, is in deep contradiction to real life, to the actual conditions of material production. Organisation of modern industry, transport and agriculture, Engels observes, is impossible without authority. There is also an obvious necessity for authority in the future socialist society, which must be based on highly developed, scientifically organised production requiring strict regulation and control.

Engels demonstrated the anti-scientific and anti-revolutionary essence of the anarchist idea that political authority should be abolished as the first act of the social revolution, that the political state should be “abolished at one stroke”, even before the destruction of all the social relations that engendered it. “A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon—authoritarian means, if such there be at all... Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?” (p. 425).

One of the sources that enriched revolutionary theory was the experience of the bourgeois revolution in Spain, 1868-74, especially the culminating stage of its development. During this stage the republican system was established at the beginning of 1873 and cantonal revolts were instigated in the summer of that year by the extremist group of the left-wing bourgeois republicans, the “Intransigents”, and their Bakuninist allies. The article by Engels “The Republic in Spain” and his series of articles The Bakuninists at Work analyse these events. Both works are a contribution to Marxist theory on working-class tactics in the bourgeois-democratic revolution.

In the first of these works, while opposing idealisation of the bourgeois republic, Engels nevertheless argues that this type of republic is in a certain sense more advantageous to the proletariat than to the bourgeoisie because it is “the type of state that frees the class struggle from its last fetters” (p. 419). An indispensable condition for successful opposition to the rule of the bourgeoisie, he notes, is the ideological maturity of the working-class movement, a maturity which the Spanish workers had not at that time achieved. Warning against precipitate action, Engels insistently advises the workers to use the republican system to consolidate and organise their ranks. If they did so, the bourgeois republic would have prepared “the ground in Spain for a proletarian revolution” (p. 420).

In his series of articles The Bakuninists at Work Engels notes that one of the most pernicious aspects of Bakuninist tactics was that they ignored the bourgeois-democratic tasks of the revolution. The Bakuninists, who at that time had the support of a considerable section of the Spanish proletariat, were incapable of evolving a correct political orientation and in practice were inevitably destined to fall in with the extremist wing of the bourgeois republicans. It was their fault that the Spanish workers, who represented a real force, capable of influencing the course of events in a democratic spirit, were drawn into the adventuristic actions of the instigators of local revolts. The result was a grievous defeat. “The Bakuninists in Spain,” Engels stressed, “have given us an unparalleled example of how a revolution should not be made” (p. 598).

To the Bakuninist position Engels contrasts the tactical line that should have been adopted by the advanced workers in a country where the conditions for the transference of power to the working class had not yet matured. He believed that energetic participation in the democratic revolution and intense political activity by the proletarian masses could accelerate the maturing process, that representatives of the working class should enter the revolutionary government in order to coordinate popular action from below with the actions of the revolutionary organs of power from above. Since matters had got to the point of armed struggle, Engels noted, the struggle should have been waged according to the rules of military art, without which no armed uprising could succeed. Above all, it was essential to prevent the insurgent forces from splitting up and getting out of touch, to establish centralised leadership and, by means of offensive action, to prevent the concentration of government troops and spread the uprising across the whole country.

Some essential aspects of the theory of socialist revolution were highlighted in the speech made by Marx in Amsterdam on September 8, 1872, at the meeting of members of the International that followed the Hague Congress. When choosing the tactical means and forms of struggle for establishing working-class power and building a socialist society, Marx said, one had to take into consideration the specific historical conditions proceeding from general revolutionary principles—”the institutions, customs and traditions in the different countries must be taken into account” (p. 255). Developing the thesis he had proposed in the 1850s, on the possibility of different roads—non-peaceful and peaceful—for the advance of the proletarian revolution, Marx admitted that in some countries where at that time there was no powerful military-bureaucratic state apparatus, specifically, in Britain and the USA, the proletariat could achieve its class aims by peaceful means. On the other hand, taking into account the situation obtaining in the majority of European countries at that time, Marx emphasised, “it is force which must be the lever of our revolution” (ibid.). He also envisaged the possibility of a situation in which the peaceful course of a revolution in Britain or other similarly placed countries might be interrupted by the resistance of the exploiting classes with the result that the working class would have to wage an armed struggle with its enemies.

Engels’ The Housing Question, one of the most important works of scientific socialism, substantiates and defends a number of fundamental propositions of Marxist theory. Written in polemical form, this work is aimed both against the pettybourgeois ideologists who saw the housing shortage as the basic evil of the whole capitalist system, and against the bourgeois social reformists who thought they could save and perpetuate the existing system of exploitation by relieving the workers of the worst consequences of capitalist development, specifically by improving their living conditions. Engels scathingly criticised the views of the German Proudhonist Mülberger, who had advanced the Utopian idea of turning every worker into the owner of his dwelling as a means of solving the social problem in the spirit of the Proudhonist ideal of “eternal justice”. Revealing the flaws in this remedy, Engels shows the petty-bourgeois nature and anti-scientific nature of the views held by Proudhon and his followers. In this work Engels thus continued the criticism of Proudhonism, which Marx had begun in his The Poverty of Philosophy, characterising Proudhonism as one of the most typical expressions of petty-bourgeois socialism; Engels also struck a blow at its other varieties. He considered the tendency to camouflage defence of the capitalist system with apparent concern for the good of the working people as a characteristic feature of many bourgeois studies of the housing question, and regarded their authors as representatives of bourgeois socialism. Like the petty-bourgeois ideologists, he wrote, the bourgeois socialists are deeply hostile to the revolutionary workingclass movement, sidetrack the workers away from the class struggle, and preach the false idea of the harmony of class interests. “Bourgeois socialism extends its hand to the petty-bourgeois variety” (p. 340).

The housing shortage, Engels tells us, is a logical consequence of the capitalist system. It does not become any less acute with the development of capitalism. However, while affecting the vital interests of the workers and also many categories of the middle strata, the housing question is not the main and decisive social problem. The crucial contradictions of capitalism are to be sought not in the sphere of the relations between the tenant and the house-owner. They are rooted in the sphere of production, in the conditions of the exploitation of labour power by the capitalists. To prove these truths Engels expounds in simple terms the main propositions of Capital. As in a number of his other works, he writes as an indefatigable propagandist of Marx’s economic theory. He stresses that to do away with the housing shortage, solve the housing question and other social questions generated by the capitalist system, the capitalist mode of production must be abolished and the conditions for the exploitation of wage labour removed. This means that the working class has to win political power, and that the political and economic domination of the bourgeoisie must be eliminated. To achieve these aims the proletariat needs an independent political party armed with the theory of scientific socialism and pursuing a consistent class policy (see p. 372).

Dealing with the question of the possible roads towards the socialist transformation of society, Engels put forward the fruitful idea that these roads would depend on the specific historical conditions of the given country. These conditions would, in particular, determine how and in what form the socialisation of the instruments and means of production owned by the capitalists would be effected by the victorious proletariat (see pp. 385-87).

Engels linked the socialist transformation of society with the problem of eliminating the antithesis between town and country. Arguing against Mülberger’s proposition that this antithesis is “natural”, and that the desire to get rid of it “utopian”, Engels shows that the abolition of the exploiting classes as a result of the socialist revolution will clear the road towards the complete solution of this problem. In socialist society the close intrinsic connection between industrial and agricultural production will lift the rural population out of its millennia of isolation and backwardness.

In “The Nationalisation of the Land”, one of Marxism’s programmatic documents on the agrarian question, Marx showed that the economic development, growth and concentration of the population would by natural necessity demand the use of collective labour in agriculture. A stable expansion of agricultural production could be attained only on the basis of broad application of the achievements of science and technology. “...The scientific knowledge we possess,” Marx stressed, “and the technical means of agriculture we command, such as machinery, etc., can never be successfully applied but by cultivating the land on a large scale” (p. 132).

In defining the socio-economic significance of the nationalisation of the land, Marx proceeded from analysis of the peculiarities of the agrarian systems in various countries. For Britain, where the land was not owned by peasants but concentrated in large estates, land nationalisation had become, in Marx’s view, “a social necessity”. At the same time, Marx exposed the reformist notions that the agrarian question could be completely solved within the framework of capitalist society by means of land nationalisation. Only in a state where the working class held power, he emphasised, would “agriculture, mining, manufacture, in one word, all branches of production ... gradually be organised in the most adequate manner. National centralisation of the means of production will become the national basis of a society composed of associations of free and equal producers, carrying on the social business on a common and rational plan” (p. 136).

Many of the works and documents included in this volume expose the sectarian activity of the Bakuninists, who had become particularly active at that time. Expressing the moods of the petty bourgeoisie who were going bankrupt and thrown into the ranks of the proletariat, especially in such economically backward countries as Italy and Spain, and peddling the “leftist” phrases that went down well in such circles, the Bakuninists made a fresh bid to impose their dogmas on the working-class movement and take over its leadership. Their activities created a serious threat to the unity and solidarity of the International and could have weakened its resistance to the all-round offensive launched by the forces of reaction. The danger became particularly acute when the Bakuninist attacks on the leadership of the International and its line were backed by other sectarian and reformist trends—the Belgian Proudhonists, the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois reformists in the USA, the British reformists, and the German followers of Lassalle.

The struggle between the Marxist trend in the International and anarchism flared up after the London Conference (1871), whose resolution on the need for the working class to win political power and set up independent working-class parties had been furiously opposed by Bakunin’s followers. In November 1871, the Bakuninist congress in Sonvillier countered this resolution with the doctrine that the workers should abstain from political activity, and put forward the principle of complete autonomy and repudiation of discipline. As Engels noted in his article “The Congress of Sonvillier and the International”, the Bakuninist dogmas tended to deprive the proletariat of any organisation of its own. The incompatibility of Bakunin’s ideas with the aims of the International, with the task of creating independent political parties of the proletariat, made the ideological defeat of anarchism in the working-class movement a matter of great urgency.

The General Council’s private circular, Fictitious Splits in the International, which was written by Marx and Engels, struck a blow at Bakuninism. This work was designed to uphold proletarian party principles in contrast to anarchist sectarianism. The actions of the Bakuninist Alliance of Socialist Democracy, states the circular, are imbued with the spirit of bellicose sectarianism and aimed at undermining the International—the true militant organisation of the proletarians of all countries, “united in their common struggle against the capitalists and the landowners” (p. 107). Marx and Engels showed that sectarianism was a characteristic feature of the early, immature stage of the working-class movement, and regarded the Bakuninists’ attempt to revive it as thoroughly retrograde.

Exposing the anarchists’ pseudo-revolutionary phraseology, Marx and Engels show that their programme “is nothing but a heap of pompously worded ideas long since dead” (ibid.). All the basic tasks of the working-class struggle for emancipation—the winning of state power and using it to build a classless society with the further prospect of the withering away of the state—were ignored by the anarchists, who proposed beginning the revolution by destroying all state apparatus. Most damaging of all for the working-class movement was the attempt to sow anarchy in the ranks of the movement itself, a tactic which amounted to disarming the proletariat in their struggle with the exploiters, who had at their disposal all the power of the state apparatus. The Bakuninist attacks on the principles of democratic centralism and party discipline, their demand that the functions of the General Council be reduced to the role of a mere correspondence and statistical bureau, which amounted to robbing the International of centralised leadership, were fraught with disorganisation. The campaign that Marx and Engels waged against the anarchists on the question of the functions and powers of the General Council was, in essence, a campaign for the organisational principles of the proletarian party.

After Fictitious Splits in the International had been published, the campaign against the Bakuninists entered a new phase. Marx and Engels began receiving information to the effect that the Alliance of Socialist Democracy which the Bakuninists claimed to have disbanded had in fact been kept going as a strictly conspiratorial society. The very people who accused the General Council of “authoritativeness”, Engels observed, “in practice, constitute themselves as a secret society with a hierarchical organisation, and under a, not merely authoritative, but absolutely dictatorial leadership” (p. 206).

The existence within the International Working Men’s Association of a secret international organisation of Bakuninists with its own rules and programme meant that Bakunin and his supporters were in practice splitting the Association. “For the first time in the history of the working-class struggles,” Engels wrote, “we stumble over a secret conspiracy plotted in the midst of that class, and intended to undermine, not the existing capitalist regime, but the very Association in which that regime finds its most energetic opponent” (p. 209). The task of the leaders of the International now was not only to bring about the ideological defeat of the Bakuninist Alliance but also to substantiate and carry out organisational measures to rid the Association’s ranks of this alien body.

As can be seen from a number of documents published in this volume, specifically, the appeal “The General Council to All the Members of the International Working Men’s Association” and the “Report on the Alliance of Socialist Democracy Presented in the Name of the General Council to the Congress at The Hague”, Marx and Engels acted promptly to expose the true face of the secret Bakuninist Alliance before all members of the International, to show the harm that was being done to the working-class organisation by the illegal existence within its ranks of this secret society. They both attached especial importance to unmasking the Bakuninists in the eyes of the workers of Spain and Italy. In their appeal “To the Spanish Sections of the International Working Men’s Association” they explained that the aims and character of the Alliance, its activities, were in glaring contradiction to the spirit and letter of the Rules of the International. The attempt by anarchistic groups in Italy to usurp the name of the International was rebuffed in the address written by Engels to the Italian sections concerning the Rimini Conference (see p. 217), and other documents.

While exposing the anti-proletarian activity of the Bakuninists, Marx and Engels and their supporters also had to wage a campaign to root out other elements alien to the revolutionary working-class movement who were trying to use the International Working Men’s Association for their own purposes. When such an attempt was made by the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois reformists in the USA, for example, Marx and Engels resolutely opposed these forays against the proletarian character of the International. Their position on this question was reflected in the “Resolutions on the Split in the United States’ Federation Passed by the General Council of the I.W.A. in Its Sittings of 5th and 12th March, 1872”, written by Marx, in his manuscript “American Split”, and in Engels’ article “The International in America” (see pp. 124-26, 636-43 and 177-83).

Marx and Engels also had to beat off the attacks by bourgeois politicians and journalists who were trying to distort the aims and purposes of the International Working Men’s Association and to discredit its leaders. In the statements with which the General Council reacted to the speeches of the British M.P., Alexander Cochrane, in letters to The Eastern Post of December 20, 1871, Le Corsaire of September 12, 1872, and in the article “Stefanoni and the International Again” and other documents, they exposed the dishonest slanders of the working-class movement put about in bourgeois circles.

The documents and articles connected with the Congress of the International at The Hague (September 2-7, 1872) form one of the most important group of items in the volume.

The Hague (fifth) Congress of the I.W.M.A. was a crucial landmark in the long struggle waged by Marx and Engels and advanced workers in various countries to establish the foundations of the revolutionary proletarian worldview in the international working-class movement. Through 1872 Marx and Engels did an enormous amount of work in preparation for the Congress, and the agenda and dates of the Congress were those that they proposed.

The Congress assembled more than a year after the fall of the Paris Commune, when international reaction was on the rampage. The Congress proceedings enjoyed the direct guidance of Marx and Engels and their most active participation. An acute ideological conflict developed between the advocates of the revolutionary proletarian line, grouped round Marx and Engels, and the anarchist delegates, who were supported by the British reformists. The discussion centred on two inseparably connected issues: open recognition, as a programmatic proposition of the International, of the idea that the proletariat should win state power, and proclamation as a guiding principle of the international workingclass movement that political mass parties of the proletariat should be set up independently of the bourgeois parties. The solution of these problems in the spirit of the proposals made by Marx and Engels and their comrades meant that the key ideas of Marxism were embodied in the I.W.M.A. programme and marked the victory of Marxist theory over anarchist and reformist ideology.

The report that Marx presented to the Congress on behalf of the General Council gave a profound analysis of the situation facing the International after the Commune, and the qualitative changes that had taken place in the working-class movement as a result of I.W.M.A. activities (see pp. 219-27).

Most of the resolutions of the Hague Congress were written by Marx and Engels; the rest were based on proposals they made at the General Council meetings during preparations for the Congress. By decision of the Congress the basic content of the above-mentioned resolution of the London Conference on working-class political action was incorporated in the General Rules of the International, and the articles specifying and expanding the

powers of the General Council were included in the Administrative Regulations. The resolution on the Bakuninist Alliance of Socialist Democracy in fact declared this organisation incompatible with the International and expelled the Alliance leaders—Bakunin and Guillaume—from the International Working Men’s Association.

At the proposal of Marx and Engels, who based themselves on the actual historical situation that had taken shape in the Europe of the early 1870s, a resolution was passed transferring the seat of the General Council to New York (see p. 240). This step was also prompted by the danger that if it remained in London, the Council might be saddled with a majority of British reformists, or émigré Blanquists bent on adopting adventuristic conspiratorial tactics.

Taken together, the Congress decisions defined the tasks and prospects of the working-class movement in the new historical conditions. They laid the theoretical foundation for the formation in the immediate future of mass proletarian parties within the framework of the national states.

Directly related to the documents of the Hague Congress is the group of articles written by Marx and Engels in order to publicise the key decisions of the Congress. They include the abovementioned speech by Marx at the meeting of International members in Amsterdam, the articles by Engels “On the Hague Congress of the International”, “The Congress at The Hague Letter to Enrico Bignami)”, “Letters from London.— II. More about the Hague Congress”, and “Imperative Mandates at the Hague Congress”.

In their published writings on the Hague Congress, Marx and Engels showed its historical significance and revealed the essence of the struggle that had taken place there between the revolutionary-proletarian trend and the anarchist-reformist bloc.

They summed up the results of the battle against the Bakuninists in the pamphlet The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men’s Association, written at the request of the Hague Congress. On the basis of numerous documents this pamphlet presented an exhaustive picture of the Bakuninist Alliance’s disorganising activities within the International and exposed the intrigues and subterfuges to which the leaders of the Alliance had resorted in order to assert their dominance in the I.W.M.A.

After making a critical analysis of the programmatic documents of the Alliance and what its leaders were publishing in the press, the authors of the pamphlet revealed the futility of the Bakuninists’ ideological arsenal, their petty-bourgeois levelling notions of the future society in the spirit of “barrack communism”, their calls for rebellion and general destruction, and their orientation on the déclassé sections of society as allegedly the most revolutionary force. Marx and Engels regarded as totally unworthy of revolutionaries the contempt which the Alliance leaders showed for the ethical standards accepted in the working-class movement, their indiscriminate choice of methods of struggle, their use of mystification and deceit, and their actions based on the principle of “the end justifies the means”.

The chapter “The Alliance in Russia” demonstrated the harm that Bakunin’s and Nechayev’s adventuristic activities had done to the Russian revolutionary movement. Marx and Engels contrasted to the Bakuninists’ line the Russian revolutionary trend that was taking shape under the influence of Nikolai Chernyshevsky, of whom they wrote with great respect. As we see from his correspondence, it was at this time that Marx had the idea of writing a biography of that Russian revolutionary democrat and socialist.

The pamphlet noted that after the Hague Congress the anarchistic sectarians had launched a hostile campaign aimed at discrediting its decisions and openly refused to submit to them at their separate congresses and local rallies. Their example was followed by the British reformists. The answer to these splitting actions came with the resolutions passed on January 26 and May 30, 1873, by the New York General Council, which signalled the final organisational disassociation from the anarchists. According to these resolutions, all federations, sections and individuals who refused to recognise the decisions of the Hague Congress were declared to have placed themselves outside the ranks of the International Working Men’s Association.

A substantial body of materials included in the volume reflect the systematic support that the founders of Marxism gave to the activities of the International’s national organisations. Before the Hague Congress they had performed this work mainly as corresponding secretaries of the General Council for several countries—Marx for Germany and Russia, Engels for Italy, Spain, and Portugal. In this capacity they wrote numerous documents and appeals addressed to the sections of the International and individual members, explaining the various tasks that faced the international proletarian organisation and publicising its decisions (see pp. 54-56, 60-61, 74-76, 137-38, 153, 168-69, 184, 211-13, 217, 288-93). At meetings of the General Council Marx and Engels reported regularly on the state of the working-class movement in various countries. After the Congress in The Hague and the General Council’s move to New York these activities did not cease, although they assumed a different character. Marx and Engels constantly helped the Council as its representatives in Europe and supplied it with important information (see, for example, the “Notes for the General Council” compiled by Engels, pp. 414-16).

Because of the great moral authority they enjoyed, they exerted a direct influence on the working-class movement in various countries. They strengthened their connections with the leaders of national contingents of the working class, and their correspondence with them became even more intensive.

The contribution of the founders of Marxism to the working class press of various countries, their journalistic writings continued to play an important part in rallying and providing revolutionary training for those who participated in the proletariat’s struggle. Articles and despatches from Marx and Engels were published in the German newspaper Der Volksstaat, and in the Arbeiter Zeitung, which came out in German in the USA, in the British papers The Eastern Post and The International Herald, in the Spanish La Emancipation, the Portuguese O Pensamento Social, the Italian La Plebe, Gazzettino Rosa, and others.

The contributions that Engels made to the Italian paper La Plebe, for example, were of great importance in establishing the Italian working-class movement. His articles about English agricultural labourers’ strike, the Hague Congress, the actions of the Irish members of the International in defence of arrested Fenians, and the situation in Spain (see pp. 148-50, 283-84, 294-96, 298-300), published under the general title of “Letters from London”, kept Italian workers informed about the proletarian movement in other countries and helped Italy’s working class to strengthen its international ties and overcome anarchist influence.

Some of the documents published in this volume are connected with the part Marx and Engels continued to play in those years in the British working-class movement. The position of the International, which openly declared its solidarity with the Paris Commune, brought about the final break between the General Council and a number of trade union leaders who had taken part in the founding and activities of the International Working Men’s Association but were negative in their attitude to the Commune. The British Federal Council, set up in October 1871 by decision of the London Conference of the International, gave Marx and Engels a stronghold in the struggle for the broad masses of the British working class from 1871 to 1873. Making every effort to boost the revolutionary trend in the British working-class movement, they helped the British Federal Council to consolidate its ties with the workers, popularised the ideas of scientific socialism through its members, and guided the struggle against the reformist elements that had infiltrated the Council.

Marx and Engels did all they could to draw the participants in the Irish working-class movement into the International. They supported the idea of creating an independent Irish organisation of the International, regarding it as the basis for the future formation of an Irish working-class party independent of the bourgeois nationalists. Marx and Engels fought hard to overcome the hostility between English and Irish workers that was being artificially inflamed by the English bourgeoisie, and to dispel the chauvinistic prejudices spread by the English reformist leaders. “If members of a conquering nation called upon the nation they had conquered and continued to hold down to forget their specific nationality and position, to ‘sink national differences’ and so forth, that was not Internationalism, it was nothing else but preaching to them submission to the yoke, and attempting to justify and to perpetuate the dominion of the conqueror under the cloak of Internationalism,” Engels said at the meeting of the General Council on May 14, 1872 (p. 155).

For Marx and Engels, one of the crucial means of influencing the British workers in the struggle against reformist ideology was their contributing to the newspaper The International Herald, which was in practice the organ of the British Federal Council. In an effort to use this paper to broaden the oudook of British working-class readers and awaken their interest in the emancipation struggle of their class brothers in other countries, Engels published in several of its issues in 1873 the “Communication from the Continent” and “News on the International Labour Movement”.

Actions by the reformist elements against the decisions of the Hague Congress brought the internal conflict in the British Federation to a higher pitch, and in December 1872 this led to a split in the British Federal Council. A number of documents reflect the efforts of Marx and Engels to rally the revolutionary forces in the British organisations of the International. The “Address of the British Federal Council to the Sections, Branches, Affiliated Societies and Members of the International Working Men’s Association”, and the “Reply to the Second Circular of the Selfstyled Majority of the British Federal Council”, both of which were written by Marx, and the appeal composed by Engels and entitled “The Manchester Foreign Section to All Sections and Members of the British Federation” showed up the splitting activities of the reformists who had been expelled from the International. Marx and Engels helped to consolidate the victory over the reformists at the Manchester Congress of the British Sections, held in June 1873. The decisions of this congress—recognition of the need to set up a working-class party, and to nationalise all the means of production, recognition of the workers’ right to offer armed resistance to the exploiters, proclamation of the red banner, the banner of the British organisations in the International, etc.— testified to the acceptance of Marxist ideas by the vanguard of Britain’s working class. Engels pointed out that “no English workers’ congress has ever advanced such far-reaching demands” (p. 449). The activities of the British Federation of the International, guided by Marx and Engels, kept alive the revolutionary tendency in the British working-class movement, despite the temporary dominance of reformism in the movement.

Marx and Engels saw the causes of the increasing influence of reformist ideology on union-organised British workers in the peculiar development of British capitalism, in the economic situation in Britain at that time. In his article “The English Elections”, written in February 1874, Engels noted that “no separate political working-class party has existed in England since the downfall of the Chartist Party in the fifties. This is understandable in a country in which the working class has shared more than anywhere else in the advantages of the immense expansion of its large-scale industry. Nor could it have been otherwise in an England that ruled the world market...” (p. 613). Emphasising that, in the mass, the English workers participated in political struggle “almost exclusively as the extreme left wing of the ‘great Liberal Party’ “, Engels pointed out that the English proletariat was confronted with the task of organising a strong independent working-class party.

Marx and Engels attached exceptional importance to developing the German proletariat’s emancipation struggle. The course of events after the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune increasingly confirmed Marx’s and Engels’ conclusion that the centre of the European working-class movement was shifting from France to Germany, where the first ever national working-class party to accept the revolutionary principles of the International had been operating since 1869. They saw the German Social-Democratic Workers’ Party as a bastion for rallying the forces of the international working class, as its vanguard contingent. In current conditions it was a task of utmost urgency to get German Social-Democracy on to a sounder theoretical basis, to inoculate it against petty-bourgeois tendencies, and strengthen its ties with the masses. Marx and Engels maintained permanent contact with Bebel, Liebknecht and other party leaders, and helped them to work out a tactical platform and to overcome individual mistakes; they became regular contributors to the party’s central organ—Der Volksstaat. Engels was a particularly frequent contributor. He explained to the German workers the situation in the international working-class movement and exposed the Lassalleans’ slanderous attempts to misrepresent the campaign waged by the revolutionary proletarians against the Bakuninists at the Hague Congress and after it (see “From the International”, “On the Articles in the Neuer Social-Demokrat”’, “The International and the Neuer”, etc.).

Engels used the opportunities afforded by the SocialDemocratic press as a means of training the German working class and its party to be irreconcilable towards the reactionary internal system and the aggressive foreign policy of the ruling classes, towards militarism and chauvinism. In his articles “The ‘Crisis’ in Prussia” and “The Imperial Military Law” he showed that the German Empire, created in 1871 under the aegis of the Prussia of the Junkers, was a military police state, a forcing ground for the arms race and preparations for new wars of aggression. Engels noted the hostility towards the masses, especially the proletariat, of the policy pursued by Bismarck’s government, its desire to provide maximum protection for the interests of the most reactionary class—the Junkers, who were clinging to their feudal privileges. Engels poured scorn on the liberal bourgeoisie and its crawling subservience to Bismarck. “The Prussian bourgeoisie,” he wrote, “does not want political dominance; rotten without having reached maturity, ... it has already arrived, without ever having ruled, at the same stage of degeneration that the French bourgeoisie has attained after eighty years of struggles and a long period of dominance” (p. 405).

In his works of those years Engels laid bare the Bonapartist nature of the state system of the German Empire and the policies of its upper crust. He noted that the form of state that had developed in Prussia, and in Germany’s imperial structure which was built according to the same pattern, “is pseudoconstitutionalism, a form which is at once both the present-day form of the dissolution of the old absolute monarchy and the form of existence of the Bonapartist monarchy” (p. 363). Taking as an example the Prussian-Bismarckian version of the Bonapartist state, Engels singled out the essential features of Bonapartism: manoeuvring between the main contesting classes of bourgeois society, concentration of power in the hands of the military-bureaucratic caste, apparent independence of the state apparatus, decay and corruption of the ruling clique, etc.

A profound analysis of the socio-political situation that had arisen in the Germany of the early 1870s is to be found in the supplement Engels wrote in 1874 to the Preface of 1870 for The Peasant War in Germany. Proceeding from this analysis, Engels formulated the tasks confronting the advanced German workers. Lenin described the thoughts he expressed in this connection as “recommendations to the German working-class movement, which had become strong, practically and politically” (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 370). Engels showed the immense importance of revolutionary theory for the socialist working-class movement. He pointed out that the proletarian party could fulfil its historic mission only if it were armed with the theory of scientific socialism and had learned to dovetail this theory with the practice of revolutionary struggle. “...Socialism,” Engels wrote, “since it has become a science, demands that it be pursued as a science, that is, that it be studied. The task will be to spread with increased zeal among the masses of workers the ever more lucid understanding thus acquired and to knit together ever more strongly the organisation both of the party and of the trade unions” (p. 631). Defining the three inseparably linked directions in which the working-class struggle should be pursued—theoretical, political and economico-practical— Engels stressed that the warrant of success lay in the unity of these three forms of class struggle.

Engels put a high priority on implanting the ideas of proletarian internationalism among the German workers. He indicated that German Social-Democracy, as the most highly organised contingent of the international working-class movement, bore a special responsibility. He urged it “to safeguard the true international spirit, which allows no patriotic chauvinism to arise and which readily welcomes every new advance of the proletarian movement, no matter from which nation it comes” (ibid.).

Linked with the published works of Engels are his manuscript

“Varia on Germany”, which emerged from an unaccomplished plan to write a detailed historical study that would help the German workers to draw correct lessons from their country’s past. In these “Varia” the Marxist conception of German history from the late Middle Ages is expounded in compact form. Engels reveals the causes of Germany’s fragmentation, its political and economic backwardness, and the historical roots of reaction. The adventuristic, anti-popular policy of the ruling classes of the German states, particularly Junker Prussia, the inability of the German burghers and their heirs, the bourgeoisie, to find a revolutionary solution in the struggle with feudalism had resulted in Germany’s being unable right up to the middle of the 19th century to complete the process of bourgeois reforms. Engels compared Germany’s historical development with that of several other European countries and offered profound thoughts on the process of the formation of nations and national states, and also on German culture, literature and philosophy.

Looking into the future, Engels predicted the collapse of the Prussian-German militarist state.

By the autumn of 1873, during preparations for the Congress of the International in Geneva, Marx and Engels came to the conclusion that the International Working Men’s Association, as an organisation for uniting the militant forces of the proletariat, no longer measured up to the new historical conditions. They were both as free of dogmatism over matters concerning the organisation of the proletarian struggle as they were in other matters. They believed that the very process of its development generated the need to change its organisational forms. This development virtually brought the activities of the International Working Men’s Association to an end in late 1873, although it was not officially disbanded until 1876. “The First International had played its historical part, and now made way for a period of a far greater development of the labour movement in all countries in the world, a period in which the movement grew in scope, and mass socialist working-class parties in individual national states were formed” (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, 1977, p. 49).

The First International, guided by Marx and Engels, performed its historical tasks. It gave an enormous impulse to the development of the working-class struggle for emancipation and rallied tens of thousands of proletarians in Europe and America round the banner of proletarian internationalism. For the first time, the working-class movement emerged on the international scene as a powerful factor of social progress, as a standard-bearer in the struggle for peace, democracy and socialism. Thanks to the efforts of Marx and Engels and their comrades, an important step was taken towards imbuing the broad masses with the ideas of scientific socialism. During the years of the International the ideological arsenal of revolutionary theory was itself notably enriched with new conclusions and generalisations. Various kinds of pre-Marxist petty-bourgeois socialism were defeated and loosing their influence. A revolutionary proletarian party was founded in Germany and the ground was prepared for the setting up of similar parties in other countries. A whole galaxy of proletarian revolutionaries—organisers, journalists, propagandists—was formed in the ranks of the International Working Men’s Association under the guidance of Marx and Engels. The International performed a great service in evolving the tactics of proletarian organisations, in establishing trade unions, and in developing the working-class press. Its revolutionary traditions of solidarity action by the workers of different countries in defence of the economic and political interests of the working people, of opposing aggressive wars and supporting national-liberation movements have been of enduring value to subsequent generations of proletarian fighters. “It is unforgettable, it will remain for ever in the history of the workers’ struggle for their emancipation” (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, 1977, p. 240).

* * *

The volume contains 110 works by Marx and Engels. Of these, 40 were written in English, 25 in German, 16 in French, 20 in Italian, and 8 in Spanish; one work was written in the mixture of English, French and German. Twenty-eight works are published in English for the first time.

Any misprints or slips of the pen have been corrected in the text with explanations in footnotes where necessary.

Foreign words and expressions in the text of the original have been preserved in the form in which they were used by the authors, and are given in italics, with the translation usually supplied in a footnote. The English words and expressions used by Marx and Engels in texts written in German, French and other languages, are given in small caps; large passages written in English are marked with initial and closing asterisks.

The volume was compiled, the text prepared and the preface and notes were written, the index of quoted and mentioned literature, and the subject index were prepared by Tatyana Vasilyeva. The name index and the index of periodicals were prepared by Yelizaveta Ovsyannikova. The volume was edited by Lev Golman (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU).

The translations were made by David Forgacs, John Peet, Barrie Selman, Veronica Thomson, Joan and Trevor Walmsley (Lawrence & Wishart); Geoffrey Nowell-Smith; Sergei Syrovatkin (Progress Publishers), and edited by Nicholas Jacobs (Lawrence 8c Wishart), Yelena Kalinina, Mzia Pitskhelauri, Jane Sayer, Victor Schnittke, Andrei Skvarsky, Anna Vladimirova, Yelena Vorotnikova (Progress Publishers) and scientific editor Vladimir Mosolov (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU).

The volume was prepared for the press by Margarita Lopukhina, Lyudmila Mikhailova, Alia Varavitskaya and Yelena Vorotnikova (Progress Publishers).