Marx’s Critique of German Social Democracy: From the International to the Political Struggles of the 1870s

The workers’ organizations that founded the International Working Men’s Association in 1864 were something of a motley. The central driving forces were British trade unionism and the mutualists, long dominant in France but strong also in Belgium and French-speaking Switzerland. Alongside these two components, there were the communists, grouped around the figure of Karl Marx, elements that had nothing to do with the socialist tradition, such as the followers of Giuseppe Mazzini, and some groups of French, Belgian and Swiss workers who joined the International with a variety of confused theories, some of a utopian inspiration. The General Association of German Workers—the party led by followers of Ferdinand Lassalle—never affiliated to the International but orbited around it. This organization was hostile to trade unionism and conceived of political action in rigidly national terms.