On the 150th anniversary of the 1st International
- By Heiko Khoo
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E-mail China.org.cn, September 30, 2014
Lincoln's representative, Ambassador Abrahams, wrote back to the International, saying,
"Nations do not exist for themselves alone, but to promote the welfare and happiness of mankind by benevolent intercourse and example. It is in this relation that the United States regard their cause in the present conflict with slavery, maintaining insurgence as the cause of human nature, and they derive new encouragements to persevere from the testimony of the workingmen of Europe that the national attitude is favored with their enlightened approval and earnest sympathies."
In the 1860s supporters of the International led the struggle for male suffrage in England. Mass protests assembled in London's Hyde Park led by the Reform League in 1866 and 1867. They won a big extension of the vote for working men, although this still fell short of universal male suffrage.
After the defeat of France at the hands of Prussia (the leading German state) in 1870, the angry and starving masses of Paris rose up against their government in March 1871. War became the mother of revolution as the Parisian masses took destiny into their hands and established the Paris Commune. All officials were elected and subject to immediate recall. No official received more than a worker's wage. And the masses were armed to defend their revolution. The International hailed the Commune as the birth of the new society. But the Commune was condemned by mainstream society as having destroyed all order and authority. The Commune held out for 72 days but was finally drowned in the blood of thousands of revolutionaries.
After this defeat, Marx battled to hold together squabbling groups of revolutionaries in the International. He eventually abandoned the task in the mid-1870s, and the International was dissolved in 1876. A new International was formed in 1889, and was led by Friedrich Engels. It became a mass force, with significant parliamentary representation, but its leaders betrayed the workers in 1914 by voting to support World War I, a war in which workers slaughtered each other on behalf of "their" national capitalists. The war gave birth to revolt in the French army in 1916 and to revolution in Russia in 1917. Soon this revolution spread to Germany and the war was ended on the streets of Berlin. These events gave rise to a new Third International, which China's Communists joined. The workers of the world began to collaborate on a genuinely international basis.
The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://china.org.cn/opinion/heikokhoo.htm
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