Page:Karl Marx The Man and His Work.pdf/74

72 Then also capitalism was at this period commencing to carve out its national destiny in countries like Germany, France, Italy, the United States, etc., and in this process a series of so-called national problems was raised: problems, however, that had a disruptive influence and a disintegrating effect upon the International. In this connection I desire to cite the Franco-Prussian War which had resulted in the unification of the various German states and the organization of a powerful capitalist class in Germany. The reaction of the German conquests and annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, and the beastly crushing of the Paris Commune with the aid of Bismarck, had inflamed and aroused the national pride of the French people, and conjured the spectre of "revenge" upon the scene. England's undisturbed conquest of the world's markets, a conquest securely cemented by lucrative colonial possessions, had brought an era of prosperity to the British workers, of course relatively speaking; and the plan of the British imperialists to create a so-called world-empire, of course under the protectorate of Great Britain, a plan that was skilfully advocated by Lord Beaconsfield and that actually turned the heads of quite a few prominent men in the English labor movement, amongst them Joseph Cowen, who had been a strong supporter of the International, created such a spirit of jingoism in England and was productive of a national arrogance, which at this late day only finds its, parallel in certain types of German workers.

These were the conditions and motives which prompted the Congress of the International at the Hague, in 1872, to transfer the seat of the organization's General Council to New York: a decision that in reality and practical effect actually implied the disbandment and the end of the International Workingmen's Association.

As a member of the General Council, Marx remained true to the International to the end. And to him the dissolution of this much-dreaded body implied only the reorganization of the proletarian forces on a larger and more class-conscious scale. The