The year was 1872, and the factional cleavages inside the International Working Mens' Association - a broad non-party coalition that included revolutionary socialists from different traditions, one or two British trade union leaders and politicised members of a controversial religious minority - could no longer be hidden.
It was pretty damn obvious that the IWMA now lacked the ability to keep such an essentially irreconcilable range of forces together. Unsurprisingly, an opposition grouping was starting to coalesce around a charismatic maverick.
It had long been established that Mikhail Bakunin was a political shyster. He routinely exaggerated the numbers of IWMA members in branches sympathetic to him, for instance.
Moreover, this man was virulently anti-semitic, and although he professed to be on the left, that didn't stop him maintaining financial ties with shady bourgeois elements in some of the world's most reactionary regimes.
As IWMA secretary, Karl Marx had long been aware of all this, but had hitherto been prepared to overlook it. But now control of the organisation was at stake.
Marx and his supporters quickly decided to precipitate matters, and issued a pamphlet called 'The Fictitious Splits in the International'. The very title was designed to mislead. Divisions with the Bakuninites were very real indeed, as the first page of the document - now only of historical interest, of course - makes amply plain.
Bakunin responded with the demand that a congress should be held to settle matters once and for all. The gathering duly convened in Hague, in September of the year in question. According to what we know today, it immediately went into closed session. One account reveals:
'The arguments were both angry and prolonged; for three days the rival factions jostled for advantage by challenging the credentials of almost all of their opponents ...
'At the end of the three-day marathon it was clear that the anarchists were heavily outnumbered. Some delegates, unable to stay away from work any longer, then returned home without waiting for the actual debates and votes; others wandered off in search of more stimulating congress in the local brothels.
And a contemporary newspaper article speaks of:
'... applause and interruptions and pushing and jostling and tumultuous cries, and personal attacks and extremely radical but nevertheless extremely conflicting declarations of opinion, with recriminations, denunciations, protests, calls to order, and finally a closure of the session, if not of the discussion, which at past ten o'clock, in a tropical heat and amid inexpressible confusion, imposed itself by the force of things.'
Luckily, leftwing political conferences today no longer take place in such a patently intolerable atmosphere. How differently Marxists conduct their relations with other leftists 135 years later!
Marx - pictured above - then embarked on tactics expressly designed to wreck IWMA rather than allow anyone else any meaningful say in its internal affairs. His master stroke was to produce secret documents, indisputably proving financial impropriety that Bakunin had earlier denied. Finally, he successfully moved that the General Council of the association be relocated from London to New York.
Ostensibly, the Marxists had retained control. Yet the congress - designed as it was to bring about unity - proved to be the beginning of the end. History records that the IWMA went into rapid decline and formally dissolved in 1876.
Thought for the day: if you wait by the river long enough, you will see the corpses of your enemies float by - Sun Tzu
Posted at 01:33, 1 November 2007
Comments (18)
And your point is?
Yes, I can't see your point either. And, apart from that, this oft-quoted statement attributed to Sun Tze is patently untrue, and reeks of kung-fu-Caine-type inverted racism - i.e. some stupid shit is great wisdom because some old Chinese guy said it.
Also - it's Sun Tzu, not Tze
Brilliant! A historical story that can be used to provide analogical criticism of all participants in factional battles. This is the perspective we need!
"And, apart from that, this oft-quoted statement attributed to Sun Tze is patently untrue, and reeks of kung-fu-Caine-type inverted racism - i.e. some stupid shit is great wisdom because some old Chinese guy said it."
Yeah, so radically different from people using quotes from Marx or Engels to "prove" that something is "true".
Racism indeed. You berk.
"Jock McTrousers"?
What kind of stereotyping is that for a pseudonym? Go and sit on the naughty step and think about what you have done.
Yes, Dave what is your point?
To have a discussion about Bukunin and the squabble in the First International we would refer to Carr's study of him, and the relatively sympathetic light cast on the Bukunin and his supporters in Mehring's classic biography of Karl Marx. Not to mention more recent books (Google this one).
To have a serious discussion about the relations of the First International and at least one important group of trade unions (Britain) we would look at, say Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement by Henry Collins.
All these would show not only something about the nature of left-wing in-fighting but the more important connections of the International with the nascent workers' movement.
For a simple account of leftist sectarian fights all we need is to glance at 'As soon as this Pub closes'.
For the reconstitution of the First International!
Well I appreciated it dave and thought it was really funny. Thanks.
And goodness gracious, how racist it is to quote a respected Chinese author.
Second time as farce...
I wonder who could possibly now be playing Bakunin ("deeply anti-semitic...financial ties with shady bourgeois elements in some of the world's most reactionary regimes"...)???
Actually, I think it's an interesting post. And very familiar to anyone on the left in the last 25 years.
And I think it also shows that Marx was not some secular saint but a wheeler dealer faction fighter like the rest of us.
If only people were prepared to look at his writings in the same way. A marxian influenced critical left is important - a "Marxist" dogmatism is an enemy of human progress.
LotB
Can one simultaneously be both a 'marxian-influenced critical leftist' and a Blairite?
Just asking, like ...
Dave,
The texts are on my shelves so clearly it is possible. After all, the Eurocomms all read their Marx and Gramsci and they had a profound impact on Blairism.
John Reid completed his PhD and Alan Milburn did some of his!
I also think that Blairites have been quicker to apply a "class" analysis (though they'd never use that term themselves) to the state's services - ie in whose benefit are they run - than the readitional left.
But I'm not claiming to be a Marxist (Charlie and I would agree on that) but to be precisely what I said - part of a marxian-influenced critical left.
traditional left I meant. No idea how it came out as "readitional"
LotB:
"I also think that Blairites have been quicker to apply a "class" analysis (though they'd never use that term themselves) to the state's services - ie in whose benefit are they run - than the traditional left." (Not quite sure what, if anything, that means.)
Unfortunately they fall down on the wrong side of the class divide - not I suspect because they apply a conscious class analysis. Rather they are trapped by their own bourgeois belief that capitalism is the natural order of things and private enterprise magically is better at providing goods and services.
And there's me thinking that the Blairite analysis is that 'we are all middle class now' - apart from that pesky underclass who need a firm hand. (Or is that precisely what passes for "class analysis" in Blairite terms?)
Glad you don't claim to be a Marxist, Last, but still puzzled as to quite what the "marxian-influenced critical left" content of NuLabour/Blairism is.
Bakunin "This Jewish world today stands in large part at the disposal of Marx on the one hand and of Rothschild on the other. This may seem strange. What common ground can there be between communism and the big bank? Oh! but the communism of Marx wants a powerful governmental centralisation and where this exists there must inevitably be a central State Bank and where such a bank exists the parasitic Jewish nation, which speculates in the labor of the people will always find means to exist".
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/ressources/funny/chap7.html
Quoted in http://www.engageonline.org.uk/ressources/funny/
Glad you don't claim to be a Marxist, Last, but still puzzled as to quite what the "marxian-influenced critical left" content of NuLabour/Blairism is.
Well, me and Karl both on the first then. Karl was a social democrat and so am I.
The marxian influenced critical left influence?
How about a minimum wage? Opposed for 75 or more years by the advocates of trade union inspired economism but implemented by this New Labour government.
"Karl was a social democrat and so am I."
Come off it, you know fine well that the meaning of 'social democrat' has shifted massively from its original use.
As to the minimum wage, I would be genuinely interested in more info re your assertion that it was 'opposed for 75 or more years by the advocates of trade union inspired economism'. Implementation of the minimum wage, of course, is not evidence of a 'marxian influenced critical left influence', it's just part of the NuLab managerialist tool-kit.
Well, Lobby, the world has changed massively too. My assertion is that today's social democracy is the direct descendant of that of 130 years ago (as is Leninism). My tradition is no less legitimate a claimant of the First International as any other.
I'd say we also contributed a damn sight more to human happiness in the intervening period too.
In the 1970s the craft unions were bitterly opposed to anything that wasn't "free collective bargaining" (a slogan shared by both the CPGB's industrial department and the Conservative Reasearch Department).
Those of us who take a wider view of the universal interest mught recognise that protecting the wage differentials between fitters and kitchen staff is indeed the socialism of numpties.