Marx for the propaganda of international socialism. As a matter of fact,
its starting point was the practical effort of British trade union
leaders to organize the workingmen of the Continent and to prevent the
importation of Continental strike-breakers. That Karl Marx wrote its
_Inaugural Address_ was merely incidental. It chanced that what he wrote
was acceptable to the British unionists rather than the draft of an
address representing the views of Giuseppe Mazzini, the leader of the
"New Italy" and the "New Europe," which was submitted to them at the
same time and advocated elaborate plans of cooperation. Marx emphasized
the class solidarity of labor against Mazzini's harmony of capital and
labor. He did this by reciting what British labor had done through the
Rochdale system of cooperation without the help of capitalists and what
the British Parliament had done in enacting the ten-hour law of 1847
against the protest of capitalists. Now that British trade unionists in
1864 were demanding the right of suffrage and laws to protect their
unions, it followed that Marx merely stated their demands when he
affirmed the independent economic and political organization of labor in
all lands. His _Inaugural Address_ was a trade union document, not a
_Communist Manifesto_. Indeed not until Bakunin and his following of
anarchists had nearly captured the organization in the years 1869 to
1872 did the program of socialism become the leading issue.

The philosophy of the _Internationale_ at the period of its ascendency
was based on the economic organization of the working class in trade
unions. These must precede the political seizure of the government by
labor. Then, when the workingmen's party should achieve control, it
would be able to build up successively the socialist state on the
foundation of a sufficient number of existing trade unions.

This conception differed widely from the teaching of Ferdinand Lassalle.