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THE BIRTH OF MODERN SOCIALISM 149
Marx no little concern. He did not attend that congress,
and he afterward wrote to his young friend, Dr.
Kugelmann "I was unable to go, and I did not wish
:
to do so, but it was I who wrote the program of the
London delegates. I limited it on purpose to points
which admit of an immediate understanding and common
action by the workingmen, and which give immediately
strength and impetus to the needs of the class struggle
and to the organization of the workers as a class. The
Parisian gentlemen had their heads filled with the most
empty Proudhonian phraseology. They chatter of science,
and know nothing of it.
They scorn all revolutionary
action, that is to say, proceeding from the class
struggle itself, every social movement that is centralized
and consequently obtainable by legislation through political
means (as, for example, the legal shortening of the
working day)." (24) These words indicate that Marx
considered the chief work of the International to be the
building up of a working-class political movement to obtain
laws favorable to labor. Furthermore, he was of
the
opinion that such work was of a revolutionary nature.
The clearest statement, perhaps, of Marx's idea of the
revolutionary character of political activity is to be
found in the address which he prepared at the request
of the public meeting that launched the International.
He traces there briefly the conditions of the working
class in England. After depicting the misery of the
masses, he hastily reviews the growth of the labor movement
that ended with the Chartist agitation. Although
from 1848 to 1864 was a period when the English working
class seemed, he says, "thoroughly reconciled to a
state of political nullity," (25) nevertheless two encouraging
developments had taken place. One was the vie-