Marx's fight for Marx's

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MARX and Engels' correspondence with American socialists lasted for nearly half a century. Buginning with the aftermath of the great revolutionary upheavals of Europe in 1848, through the American Civil War, the establishment of the International Workingmen's Association (First International) in 1864 and its subsequent dissolution after the defeat of the Paris Commune (1871), the publication of Capital, the death of Marx in 1883, the founding of the Second (Socialist) International six years later to the great rise of the working class movement internationally in the 1890s ... through this long period the correspondence touches on scores of different topies.

There are economic subjects, questions of strategy and tactics,/ problems of publication, portraits of personalities of the socialist and radical movement-even a letter dealing with folk-songs! All these are interspersed with Marx's constant quest for money and Engels' persistent demands for information on military matters.

Above all, however, the letterg-as Lenin pointed

Andrew Hor Marx's and E to America

out in his introduction to a Russian edition of them in 1907—provide vivid illustration of the method by which Marx and Engels analysed the question of the necessary relation between Marxists, their party and the mass of the working class.

At every point, the founders of scientific socialism stress the need to relate to the real struggles of the workers. They condemn doctrinaire socialists who remain aloof from these struggles; they condemn middle class philanthropists who see themselves as the liberators of the working class instead of understanding that liberation is the task of the workers themselves; and they attack opportunist socialists and trade union leaders who blocked the way to the founding in America of an independent mass workers' party. Public enemy number one is sectarianism in all its varieties.

the German emigrants in America in the 1850s included i Marxists. But most of the socialists who had come from Germany tended to sit about in German-speaking discussion circles, making, no attempt to relate to the

nung introduces ingels' Letters

struggles of the day.

If some of the German workers in America who claimed to be socialists turned their backs on the living struggles going on around them because of a wrong attitude towards theoretical purity, other German emigrants followed the reformist utopian ideas of Ferdinand Lassalie.

Writing to Bolte in 1871 Marx emphasised the importance of the First International's fight against sectarianism of all kinds. 'The 'International' was founded," he says, *in order to replace the socialMarx ist and semi-socialist sects by a really militant organisation of the working class... The development of socialist sectarianism and that of the real working class movement always stand in inverse proportion to each other. Sects are (historically) justified so long as the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historical movement. As soon as it has attained maturity all sects are essentially reactionary."

The task now in America, as Marx and Engels saw it, was to raise up that "real working class movement" in a country where the proletariat was immature.

Despite that immaturity, as early as 1866 militant workers —Marxists- among them -had founded the National Labur Union, a union which aimed to organise both skilled and unskilled workers and establish a distinct unionbased Labour Party. That, Marx and Engels, stressed repeatedly over the next thirty . years, was exactly the right direction for the American working class.

Soon after its foundation, the Lassalleans took control of the NLU and turned it towards an alliance with the National Labour Reform Party. In effect this meant hitching a genuine workers' movement to a middle-class quack sect that was interested in nonsensical monetary reforms' and not class struggle.

Through the 1870s, Marx and Engels correspondence is peppered with attacks on the anarchists and on German middle-class "friends of the workers" • Both express their anger at the weakness of the German Marxist leaders, Liebknecht and Bebel, faced with the growth of opportunism and Lassallean foolishness.

Next week: Marx and Engels on the Labour Party in the US. press saw reports that 'Trotskyist" Alan Thornett had defeated 'moderate challenger" Tom White.

Thornett's victory at the branch was followed two years later in December 1977 with a complete victory for the left in the convenor and deputy convenor elections. Fryer was re elected convenor. Promptly Jack Jones and the TGWU bureaucracy, who had originally installed Parsons, laid trumped up charges in a move to expel the new leadership from Dear l'erbers, Brother Jin: Barson Brother Mick Taylor . Brother Ic: y Glen Brother Scryshrook Brother Albert Paintir Prothis Tony whally Prother Phil Masters Pay one comment on the precedent involved in White's letter.

And before they criticise Fryer for allowing management to censor his letter they should say why they approved of TGWU bureaucrats censoring publications like Branch News by the use of rule 11?

White's letter was the result of a decision taken at the highest level in the WRP. It was designed to use the right wing TGWU leadership and BL management to eliminate those with whom they disagree.

Fortunately they failed. indidates pis IP IS REQUIPZD, A IE/DERSIP THAT FILL "dil knor shat I i have Body Shop QT Asserbly Body Poctification liorth 'S' Intjaction 'E' Pairt lorih Cido Arre-bly howih Cide Drivers

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 18 February, 1982 Page 1/ by BILL BL: BACKGROUND TOTHE BETRAYALS Part 2 of an account PETERS thing Edwardes had always wanted.

They even allowed the 39 hour week negotiated in 1979 to become enmesh-

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