Belgium, Italy and Spain, and to the Lassalleans in Germany. Marx, who drew up this programme to the satisfaction of all parties, trusted entirely to the intellectual developmont of the working-class, which was sure to result from combined action and mutual discussion. The very events. and vicissitudes of the struggle against capital, the defeats even more than victories, could not help bringing home to men's minds the insufficiency of their various favorite nostrums, and preparing the way for a more complete insight into the true conditions of working-class emancipation. And Marx was right. The International on its breaking up in 1874 left the workers quite different men from what it had found them in 1864. Proudhonism in France, Lassalleanism in Germany, were dying out, and even the conservative English Trades' Unions, though most of them had long since severed their connection with the International, were gradually advancing towards that point at which in the year 1887 at Swansea, their President could say in their name, 'Continental Socialism has lost its terrors for us.' In fact, the principles of the Manifesto' had made considerable headway among the workingmen of all countries.

"The Manifesto' itself thus came to the front again. The German text has been, since 1850, reprinted several times in Switzerland, England and America. In 1872 it was translated into English in New York, where the translation was published in Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly.' From this English version a French one was made in 'Le Socialiste' of New York. Since then at least two more English translations, more or less mutilated, have been brought out in America, and one of them has been reprinted in England. The first Russian translation, made by Bakunin, was published at Hertzen's Kolokol' office in Geneva, about 1863; a second one, by the heroic Vera Zasulitch, also in Geneva, 1882. A new Danish edition is to be found in 'Socialdemokratisk Bibliothek,' Copenhagen, 1855; a fresh French translation in 'Le Socialiste,' Paris, 1886. From this latter a Spanish version was prepared and published in Madrid, 1886. The German reprints are not to be counted; there have been twelve altogether, at the least

6

Thus

the history of the 'Manifesto' reflects, to a great extent, the history of the modern working-class movement; at present

it is undoubtedly the most widespread, the most international production of all Socialist literature, the common platform, acknowledged by millions of working men from Siberia to California.

"Yet, when it was written we could not have called it a Socialist Manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand, the adherents of the various Utopian systems (Owenites in England, Fourierists in France, both of them already reduced to the position of mere sects, and gradually dying out); on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks, who, by all manners of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances; in both cases men outside the working class movement, and looking rather to the 'educated' classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class had become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed the necessity of a total social change, that portion, then called itself Communist. It was a crude, rough-hewn purely instinctive sort of Communism; still, it touched the cardinal point and was powerful enough among the working class to produce the Utopian Communism, in France, of Cabet, and in Germany, of Weitling. Thus, Socialism was, in 1847, a middle-class movement, Communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, respectable'; Communism was the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very beginning, was that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself,' there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take. Moreover, we have ever since been far from repudiating it. "The 'Manifesto' being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition. which forms its nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition is: that in every historical epoch the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following it, form the basis upon which is built up and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and

exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolutions in which, now-a-days, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class (the bourgeoisie) without, at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class-distinction and class-struggles.

"This proposition which, in my opinion, is destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology we, both of us, had been gradually approaching for some years before 1845. From our joint preface to the German

edition of 1872, I quote the following:

"However much the state of things may have altered during the last 25 years, the general principles laid down in this 'Manifesto' are, on the whole, as correct to-day as ever. In view of the gigantic strides. of Modern Industry since 1848, and the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February revolution, 1848, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details become antiquated. . But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we have no longer any right to alter."

LONDON, 30th January, 1888.

FRIEDERICK ENGELS.

SECOND INTERNATIONAL

After the dissolution of the First International in which Marx had not dared, as yet, to embody the radical ideas of his Manifesto, came a decade of intense and unifying education of workers for the cause of Communism, a marshalling of phalanxes of trained and educated leaders to direct the revolutionary movement of the working class and to eliminate the confusion of doctrines, the vagueness of unpractical doctrinaires, the irresponsible violence of anarchists, the sentimentalities of upper class socialists who knew nothing of the conditions and problems of the working classes.

Powerful leaders like Bebel and Liebknecht in Germany, Jaurès and Guesde in France, established that vital connection with the workers that was absolutely essential to success.

Although the Second International did not come to life until 1889, six years after Marx's death in 1883, it was even more thoroughly his work than the first had been, because through his educational efforts Socialist organizations had been everywhere founded in connection with labor and were based on Marxian theories in practically every case. Chaos was replaced by unity. How had results been reached before 1889? The strength of the new doctrine of Marxism is its all-inclusiveness and its appeal to self-interest. It proposes a completely new society. It covers distribution as well as production and promises a millennium to the proletariat. If we accept the interpretation of Marxism given by its moderate followers it allows evolution as well as revolution as a method of transforming society. And this moderate or evolutionary and democratic theory is the one followed by the Second International; while the violent, revolutionary undemocratic theory of the dictatorship by a minority of the proletariat is the interpretation of his system supported, with logical force, by Lenin and the Third International.

During the ten or fifteen years before 1889, the situation was being transformed throughout Europe by the formation of national branches of a new party in politics, the Social Democratic Party, based on Marxism, and through the organization of workingmen's unions, imbued with the same ideas. They first took shape in Germany. It was in 1867 that the Social Democratic Party of Germany first went to the polls. The two great leaders of Socialism were Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, who had studied with Marx in London. Bebel was a workingman, a powerful and rugged speaker, and under his influence the trade unions grew in power and became imbued with Socialism. This was between 1862 and 1867. But it was only in 1875 that a United Socialist Party, with the extensive support of a united workingmen's party entered German politics on a large scale, gaining steadily in 1877. Bismarck tried in vain to repress them. The Social Democratic Party secured power and influence over legislation, and gave a model in its organization and methods that was followed in other European countries. Extraordinary attention was paid by the party to educational matters and the rank and file of the workingmen were given an unequalled train

ing that made them able to discuss economic questions with intelligence and to create a distinct class consciousness and unity of purpose and action.

Of France, Hunter, himself a brilliant Socialist, truly said in 1908: "France is the birthplace of nearly all the idealism that gave rise to the modern movement. Ever since the great revolution, the philosophy of Socialism has fascinated some of the most brilliant minds in France; but the fulness of their inspiration and the variation in their tendencies have prevented them from establishing one school." (Op. cit., p. 57.) Before 1871 all groups worked against the government of Napoleon III, under the Old International - the Proudhon anarchists, the Blanqui conspirators, the Marxist working-class political agitators. All fell apart in 1871.

It was Jules Guesde, who, returning to France in 1877, full of the doctrines of Marx, started to capture for Socialism the working-class movement and to organize a political party that should abandon anarchism and conspiracy and have coherent political action. In October 1879 he organized a congress of workingmen at Marseilles, with the motto: "The land for the peasant; the tool for the laborer; and work for all." Out of the confusion of this "Socialist Labor Congress arose a program written by Guesde and Paul Lafargue, Karl Marx's son-in-law, and so the French movement was captured by the Marxians, who alone had a clear program. But soon other French Socialist leaders, especially Brousse, revolted against Marxian dictatorship and gained control everywhere but in the north of France where Guesde remained supreme. Still Guesde was unable to capture the trade-union movement and turn it in favor of political action. When the Confédération Générale du Travail was founded in 1895, as the successor to the oid Federation of Trade Councils of 1884, it decided against parliamentarism and in favor of the general strike as the only weapon. The Frenchmen glory in individual differences of opinion and despise the sheep-like following of cut-and-dried programs by the Germans. A new group of independents was formed led by men who were to loom so largely in French life Millerand (the present premier), Jaurès (murdered in 1914), Viviani (also premier). This was the position in 1889.

In Italy the Socialist Party from the beginning has enlisted among its practical leaders men of the middle class, especially