Karl Marx

“ Although he borrows his array of “figures” as to the resources of the General Council from the accounts yearly laid by that same Council before a public “International Congress,” Mr. George Howell must not derogate from his “imitative” dignity by stooping to touch the obvious question: how came it to pass that, instead of taking comfort from the lean budgets of the General Council, all the governments of Continental Europe took fright at “the powerful and formidable organisation of the International Working-men’s Association, and the rapid development it had attained in a few years.” ”

“ After the fall of the Paris Commune, all working class organisation in France was of course temporarily broken, but is now in an incipient state of reforming. On the other hand, despite all political and social obstacles, the Slavs, chiefly in Poland, Bohemia, and Russia, participate at present in this international movement to an extent not to be foreseen by the most sanguine in 1872. Thus, instead of dying out, the International did only pass from its first period of incubation to a higher one where its already original tendencies have in part become realities. ”

“ We will take the liberty of remarking that the expression, ‘democratic and socialist basis’, is a very simple one as regards Poland, where the social framework needs reconstruction quite as much as the political framework, and where this basis has been laid down by the decrees of the anonymous government of 1863, and accepted by all classes of the nation. ”

“ However, from the lofty standpoint of an insular “philistine,” Mr. George Howell reveals to the “cultured people” of the “Nineteenth Century,” that the International was a “failure,” and has faded away. ”

“ Since then, the statements of this Address have been fully borne out by the Enquires of the French Rural Assembly, the evidence taken before the Versailles Courts-Martial, the trial of Jules Favre, and the memoirs of persons far from hostile to the victors. ”