uch a movement was an
historic and economic necessity and that the time for it had arrived.
They intended to set about that work and to knit together the
innumerable little organizations then forming in all countries. They
sought to institute a meeting ground where the social and political
program of the workers could be formulated, where their views could be
clarified, and their purposes defined. It was not to be a secret
organization, but entirely open and above board. It was not for
conspiratory action, but for the building up of a great movement. It was
not intended to encourage insurrection or to force ahead of time a
revolution. In the opinion of Marx, as we know, a social revolution was
thought to be inevitable, and the International was to bide its time,
preparing for the day of its coming, in order to make that revolution as
peaceable and as effective as possible.

The Preamble of the Provisional Rules of the International--entirely the
work of Marx--expresses with sufficient clearness the position of the
International. It was there declared: "That the emancipation of the
working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves;
that the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not
a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights
and duties, and the abolition of all class rule;

"That the economic subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of
the means of labor, that is, the sources of life, lies at the bottom of
servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation,
and political dependence;

"That the economic emancipation of the working classes is therefore the
great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a
means;

"That all efforts aiming at that great end have hitherto failed from the
want of solidarity between the manifold divisions of labor in each
country, and from the absence of a fraternal bond of union between the
working classes of different countries;

"That the emancipation of labor is neither a local nor a national, but a
social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists,
and depending for its solution on the concurrence, practical and
theoretical, of the most advanced countries;

"That the present revival of the working classes in the most industrial
countries of Europe, while it raises a new hope, gives solemn warning
against a relapse into the old errors and calls for th