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 Now, the French working men who came to London in 1862 being mostly Proudhonian "Mutualists," and the British Trade Unionists being mainly followers of Robert Owen, British "Owenism" thus joined hands with French "Mutualism," with the result of giving birth to a powerful international Labour organisation. In Marx and several others this union of the two leading Socialist currents of the time found the intellectual support of the secret political organisation of the "Materialist Communists" (Communistes Matérialistes), an organisation which represented what was still living of the secret societies, once so powerful in the "thirties" and "forties" under Blanqui and Barbès, these societies themselves having originated in the conspiracy of the authoritarian Communists, organised by Babeuf in 1794–1795.

We saw in a previous chapter that the years 1856–1862 were years of a wonderful revival in science and philosophy. They were also years of a general political revival of Radicalism in Europe and America. And this was stirring everywhere the working men, who began to see that they themselves must prepare the proletarian revolution. The International Exhibition of 1862 was described as a great Fete of the World's Industry, which would mark a new departure in the struggle of Labour for its emancipation; and now the creation of an International Working Men's Association, which boldly announced its rupture with the old political parties, and the firm resolution of the working men to take the work of their liberation into their own hands, made a very deep impression.

The Association began to spread rapidly in the Latin countries. Its fighting power soon became menacing, while at the same time its Federations and its yearly Congresses offered to the working men the opportunity of discussing and bringing into shape the ideas of a Social Revolution.

The near approach of such a Revolution was generally expected at that time, but no definite ideas as to its possible form and its immediate steps were forthcoming. On the contrary, several conflicting currents of Socialist thought met together in the International.

The main idea of the Association was a direct struggle of Labour against Capital in the economic field—i,e., the emancipation of Labour, not by middle-class legislation, but by the working men themselves.