KARL MARX

THE INTERNATIONAL
372
the Bakuninists would not get a majority at the next congress and that the
(General Council (on which an uncomfortable number of Blanquists were
sitting) would still be subject to his influence; and neither of these was
certain if the Council continued to sit in London. Marx felt increasingly
frustrated by his inability to spend time on Capital and seemed to have
seriously considered retiring as early as September 1871, a decision which
be had made definite by May 1872. 154
The International did not die immediately. Marx and Engels were very
busy broadcasting the resolutions of the Hague Congress and for some
time kept up a regular correspondence with New York. In the International
as a whole the anti-Marxian forces were now much stronger, and
only in Germany did Marx retain substantial personal following. The
anarchists held a rival congress immediately following the Hague: the
Italians, Spaniards and Swiss alone were represented, but they soon contacted
the Belgians and the Dutch, all of whom were represented at a
congress in 1873. There was also a strong contingent from England
present. After the Hague the English branches of the International continued
functioning very effectively, but the Federal Council split, with a
majority of its members (led by Hales) seceding. Both branches of the
Federal Council then declined rapidly and by 1874 Marx wrote to Sorge:
'In England the International is for the time being as good as dead and
the Federal Council in London still exists as such only in name, although
some of its members are active individually.' 155 The General Council in
New York attempted to organise a congress in Geneva in 1873, but it
was a fiasco: the Council could not send even one representative and
Marx discouraged his supporters from attending. A congress was held in
1874, with Eccarius as the only delegate from England. Sorge resigned
from the General Council in the same year. In Philadelphia in 1876
the International was formally dissolved. The rival International of the
anarchists struggled on for longer: functioning as a federation of autonomous
national branches with no General Council it held its last Congress
in 1877, after which it split into its anarchist and social-democratic
elements.
NOTES
1. Marx to Schweitzer, MEW XXXII 568 f.
2. It is obviously impossible to give anything but a very sketchy history of the
International here. Two good general books are, G. D. H. Cole, History of
Socialist Thought, 11 (London, 1954) 88 ff., and J. Braunthal, History of the
International, 1 75 ff. The British side of the International, and Marx's part