The First International in the history of the European labour movement

Abstract

The history of the First International cannot be separated from the history of the working-class movement in the different European countries at the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century. In its turn the history, apparently autonomous, of the working-class movement has no sense but as far as the history of the capitalism development is concerned. Taking these interdependences into consideration one tries to follow, though in a general way, the historical movement of the political and ideological trend that was drawn in the practice of the First International and has been prevailing, up to now, in the Communist parties in power or in the opposition. Three main features characterize this trend at first: for the first time in the history of the working-class movement, the struggle of trade unions was clearly defined as inseparable from the political struggle; also for the first time a form of working-classe political organization overpassed the «sect» spirit and prepared the coming of the «party»; for the first time, finally, there was the passage, at the level of political ideology, from the idea of «nation» to the «class» consciousness. Dissolved in 1876, not by a tactic mistake of Marx but by a necessity determined by the internal divisions inside the working-class movement at the European level, the First International has survived in the end, as a political and ideological trend, up to now.