Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/714

 692 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL While Lassalle lived, these opponents could effect nothing against his overpowering personality, but immediately after his premature death in 1864 the work of undermining was begun by the Marxist group, and especially by Liebknecht. The' International Association of Labour,' founded in the autumn of 1864, and resting its creed on Marx's 'Communist Manifesto' of 1848, led the way as pioneer. It held that the economic dependence of the workers on capitalists and landlords was the source of servitude in every form, of social misery and political oppression. The new aim of the working-classes was accordingly none other than to achieve eonom/c emancipation: every political agitation was merely ancillary to this. Since how- ever, the established economic mechanism in all civilized countries involved always the slavery of the masses, it was necessary that this economic redemption should be attained by way of an inter- national movement through the co-operation of all the oppressed elements.. This fundamental idea, according to a critic of the ' International,' is like a shut fan: dull, blunted and insignificant in its verbosity, it needs only to be unfolded to reveal a painting of the Social Democratic constitution of the future, hit off to a nicety. Thus it was possible for the International to present in the first instance a confederacy uniting equally German Social Demo- crats and English Trade-Unionists, Italian Anarchists (petrolierO .and Liberal Philanthropists d /a Jules Simon and Chaudey, French and Russian Terrorists and fantastic Social reformers of every shape and variety. That so motley a crew could not be permanently held together is self-evident. While it lasted, it only afforded Germany, where it never numbered more than a thousand members, a base from which to take the offensive against the Lassallites. Meanwhile the regular troops of the Marxists were first furnished by the 'Federation of German Labour Unions.' This was the confederacy of working-men, which, founded in 1863 by the Progressist party through the in- fluence of Liebknecht on its chairman, August Bebel, especially, .had little by little been pilo. ted right into the tideway,f Co. mm. un- ram. In 1868 the Federation declared openly for tl pmncples of the 'International,' and in 1869, in company with seceded members of the 'General Gemnan Socialist elements constituted itself Labour Party.' Their programme, which Labour as the Union' and other 'Social Democratic was settled in August 1869 at Eisenach, 'is consequently drawn up in a specifically Marxist sense, only containing certain concessions to the ideas which