The nineteenth century proletariat, lacked all kinds of rights, lived in terrible conditions, working to exhaustion for a meager salary, caused discontent. the first protests and first union organizations. In History of the First International: Marxism and Anarchismwe will tell you how the labor movement came together, the appearance of new ideological and political movements and what consequences it had.
If industrialization already had an international character, social problems and labor movements they were too. Sporadic strikes and protests were not enough.
The positive experience, which led to the creation of large organizations such as The Trade Unionsalso had its downside, the replacement of striking workers by other foreigners.
The solution had to go through the creation of an international organization.
The impact of the 1848 revolution
Also known as the spring of the peoplesit was not just a single revolution but a revolutionary wave that began in France to later spread throughout much of Europe.
The reasons that gave rise to this revolutionary wave were basically, economic and social.
Reasons that led to the Revolutions of 1848
A serious economic crisis emerged in France in 1847, as a result of a period of poor harvests, especially wheat and potatoes, staple foods for the most disadvantaged population, causing a major crisis in the agricultural sector.
As if it were a chain, this crisis would soon move to the dependent sectors of the countryside, influencing industry and financial sector. The consequences were immediatelack of work led to unemployment to many workers.
All this coupled with denial of freedoms and rights to certain social sectors such as the petty bourgeoisie, students and workers, they were the germ of the revolution of 1848.
Consequences of the Revolutions of 1848
Despite the failure of the Revolutions of 1848, this experience influenced working class ideologies. So:
- The revolutionary movement that had started with the union of workers and petty bourgeoisies, they definitely drifted apart, they both shared different interests and goals. Hereinafter social revolutions would start from the working class.
The petty bourgeoisie, made up of the new rich thanks to the Industrial Revolution, were afraid that the revolution would turn into a social revolution.
- The petty bourgeoisie abandoned its struggle alongside the proletariat to join the upper bourgeoisie. Later both bourgeois groups would enter into political conflict, moderates vs radicals.
- The proletariat found itself alone in the struggle for rights and freedoms, the Marxist concept of “class consciousness” emergesinitially acting in a disorderly way, soon became a totally autonomous movement and outside of bourgeois interests.
- After the political and social advances achieved in the first upheavals of the revolution, farmersnow liberated from the old stately regime, they moderate in their demands, changing their objectives and trying to preserve the gains they had achieved.
Nonetheless, 1848 marked the beginning of a series of improvements such as universal male suffrage and above all, the incorporation of a new objective for the proletarian class, the political struggle of the most disadvantaged class, the workers.
Marxism
What consequence of the Revolution of 1848, a new current of thought arises, a current of socialist ideology that, after the failure of the revolution, replaced the dominant working-class ideology, utopian socialism. This new trend was called Scientific Socialism or Marxism.
Marxism would be the referent and the impulse of a large part of the revolutionary movements that followed the revolution of 1848.
It was precisely in this year when the communist manifesto, the most important work of Marxism, written by German philosophers, sociologists, economists, revolutionary journalists and friends Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Marxism became a school of thought characterized by the profound and critical rejection of the capitalist systemincluding the economic system, advocating for the class struggle and the need to create a society of equals, without classes.
The main goal of Marxism is establish a classless societythis society would be achieved thanks to the workers themselves, who would manage the means of productionalways through the State.
Quite the opposite of what happened in 19th century society, where power and control of the means of production were in the hands of a minority exploiting a majority, the workers. Marxism has served as ideological basis for communism and even to different types of socialisms.
The increase in the pace of work, the use of child labor and labor exploitation, provides greater benefits to the employer, the latter being a lower number, compared to the workers and dispossessed who increase exponentially.
With these ideals, Marxism became the most influential ideological current between the social and labor movements. Some ideals that led at the beginning of the 20th century to a proletarian revolution, the Russian Revolution and the appearance of the USSR.
anarchism
An ideology that together with Marxism form one of the currents of socialism. These two ideologies coincide in the rejection of capitalism and the need for its disappearance. So far the coincidences since their differences intensify when choosing the means to achieve it.
Anarchism advocated the good nature of the individualbeing the State and the institutions derived from it, the one that corrupts it.
Anarchism emerges in the second half of the 19th century, although it was always a minority movement, as an international social movement, it gradually lost power due to the new current anarcho-syndicalistbecoming absorbed by it.
The greatest relevance of anarchism occurred in less industrialized societies as they were, Spain, Italy or Russia. The most industrialized countries supported more the ideological current of Marxism.
In Spain anarcho-syndicalism led to the creation of organizations such as the National Confederation of Labor or CNT.
The formation of the International Workers Association (AIT)
The AIT, arises to give response to working conditions that workers suffer as a result of the Industrial Revolution. It was born with a very clear objective, to move away from capitalism, to create a much more just and egalitarian social order.
It was about unify international solidarity among workers. The idea was born in 1862, when the trade union leaders from the English Trade Unions and the French labor movements met in London to take advantage of the International Exhibition.
A great exhibition of the works of the industry at an international level. What would later be known as the Universal Exhibition.
That was where the idea of create a labor organization that would unite all workers internationally. In 1864, in London, a committee was formed with the aim of drafting both the program and the statutes of a future International Workers Association.
It was a center for cooperation and communication between workers from different countries, this association would be directed by a General advicemade up of workers from different nations represented.
The statutes were approved in 1866. However, at first it was not very successful and its affiliation was not massive. In France it did have more repercussions, where it got a great membership, largely thanks to Tolain, who was in favor of creating a formal organization.
In Spain it went unnoticed until the arrival of Fanelli, as a representative of the anarchist group of the International, who got some repercussion in Barcelona. Later it would be Lafargue, of Marxist ideology, who would get set up in Madrid first and afterin much of the north of the country.