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Rh delegate, M. Le Lubez, organized the proletarian expression of international solidarity under the name of the International Workingmen's Association—the first International.

Karl Marx actively participated in the preliminary work necessary for the calling of the conference. As the corresponding secretary for Germany, he was at the same time a member of the committee elected to draw up the constitution, programme or platform, etc, also to which the temporary management of the young organization's affairs was entrusted. Needless to say, the drafting of the association's declaration of principles and constitution was quite a delicate and complicated matter, and necessitated a thorough knowledge of working-class conditions in the different European countries. Furthermore, at that early state of capitalist development, relatively speaking of course, the programme of the International Workingmen's Association had to be formulated in such a manner as not to collide or be of hindrance to the different countries in their various stages of capitalist evolution. Under such manifold social and political conditions and at this particular period of capitalist development, the functions of the International could be at best only such of an advisory and educational capacity, and their effect in the main of a moral character. The International was to be a permanent or standing manifestation of the international solidarity of the proletariat, and its offices were to be employed to encourage, develop and cement these relations amongst the workers in the different countries wherever possible. Marx knew that only an internationally organized and class-conscious proletariat could hope to cope with and defeat the capitalist class and destroy the capitalist mode of production—an international institution; he also knew that organization and education of the workers would have to go hand in hand with the development of capitalism, if the workers were to achieve their end; he knew that no economic system ever disappeared or was relieved by another system until it had developed all faculties inherent in it; he, therefore,