Polemic on General Line of International ... - From Marx to Mao

tional at its Hague Congress, in which Marx personally participated.Engels said that if the Marxists had adopted an unprincipledand conciliatory attitude towards the divisive activities of theBakuninists at the Hague, it would have had grave consequencesfor the international working-class movement. Hestated, “Then the International would indeed have gone topieces — gone to pieces through ‘unity’!” 1Led by Marx and Engels, the First International foughtagainst opportunism and splittism and laid the basis for thesupremacy of Marxism in the international working-classmovement.With the announcement of the end of the First-Internationalin 1876 there began the successive establishment of masssocialist workers’ parties in many countries. Marx and Engelsfollowed the establishment and development of these partieswith close attention in the hope that they would be establishedand developed on the basis of scientific communism.Marx and Engels devoted particular attention and concernto the German Social-Democratic Party which then occupiedan important position in the working-class movement inEurope. On many occasions, they sharply criticized the GermanParty for its rotten spirit of compromise with opportunismin the pursuit of “unity”.In 1875 they criticized the German Social-Democratic Partyfor its union with the Lassalleans at the expense of principleand for the resultant Gotha Programme. Marx pointed outthat this union was “bought too dearly” and that the GothaProgramme was “a thoroughly objectionable programme thatdemoralizes the Party”. 2 Engels pointed out that it was a“bending of the knee to Lassalleanism on the part of the whole1“Engels to A. Bebel, June 20, 1873”, Selected Correspondence ofMarx and Engels, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, p. 346.2“Marx to W. Bracke, May 5, 1875”, Selected Correspondence of Marxand Engels, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, pp. 360, 361.308