ideal communities in which a new world
should be built, where all should be free and equal, and where
fraternity would be based upon a perfect economic communism. Some really
noble spirits in France, England, and America had devoted time, love,
energy, and wealth to this propaganda and in actual attempts to
establish these utopias. But after '48 the upper classes were despaired
of. Their brutal reprisals, their suppression of every working-class
movement, their ferocious repression of the unions, of the press, and of
the right of assembly--all these materially aided Marx's theory in
disillusioning many of the philanthropic and tender-hearted utopians.
And from then on the hope of every sincere advocate of fundamental
social changes rested on the working class--on its organizations, its
press, and its labors--for the establishment of the new order.

The most striking characteristic of the period which follows was the
attempt of all the socialist and anarchist sects to inject their ideas
into the rising labor movement. With the single exception of Robert Owen
in England, the earlier socialists had ignored the working classes. All
their appeals were made to well-to-do men, and some of them even hoped
that the monarchs of Europe might be induced to take the initiative. But
Marx and Engels made their appeal chiefly to the working class. The
profound reaction which settled over Europe in the years following '48
ended all other dreams, and from this time on every proposal for a
radical change in the organization of society was presented to the
workers as the only class that was really seeking, by reason of its
economic subjection, basic alterations in the institutions of property
and the constitution of the State. The working classes of Germany,
France, England, and other countries had already begun to form groups
for the purpose of discussing political questions, and the ideas of Marx
began to be propagated in all the centers of working-class activity.

The blending of labor and socialism in most of the countries of Europe
was not, however, a work of months, but of decades. The first great
effort to accomplish that task occurred in 1864, when the International
Working Men's Association was launched in St. Martin's Hall in London.
During the years from '47 to '64, Marx and Engels, with their little
coterie in London and their correspondents in other countries, spent
most of their time in study, reading, and writing, with littl