The International Labor Union was a trade union in the northeastern United States from 1878-1887.
49-636: The ILU was founded by members of the Workingmen's Party of the United States who were upset with the parties turn toward political action after the Newark convention of December, 1877. Some members wanted to concentrate on the economic organization of the working class and split from the renamed Socialistic Labor Party to found the International Labor Union in 1878. Members of the provisional committee of
98-403: A "stateless federation of communes free from all outside coercion and authority." Marx, on the other hand, saw a long process of education and organization as a necessary precursor for a revolutionary overthrow of the ruling class, followed by a "withering away" of the coercive state in the new non-exploitative world. In short, Bakunin and Marx agreed upon little, rejected the fundamental ideas of
147-579: A battle between anarchists and socialists. More than an ideological battle, this struggle also fell into the realm of personal antipathy between the primary leaders of the two wings, the German émigré Karl Marx and the Russian émigré Mikhail Bakunin . Marx saw a socialist future as the inevitable result of a process of economic growth and development, with the revolutionary transformation making it possible conducted by an educated and disciplined working class led by
196-665: A collection of socialist ideas from different groups, most notably followers of Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle . The Lassallean faction believed in forming a socialist political party to advance their agenda incrementally through the electoral process. Marxian socialists, however, opposed to reformism believed in forming a socialist party as an instrument of organization of the proletariat to propagate consciousness leading to an ultimate revolutionary seizing of state power. They championed strong trade unions, strikes, and boycotts to develop class consciousness through class conflict. The party at first had little influence over any politics in
245-695: A joint meeting of the German and French sections of New York City voted to accept the London Council's plan. This was followed in December 1870 by the formal launch of the "Central Committee of the International Workingmen's Association for North America" by the German, French, and Czech sections. Within six months this body would include representatives of 10 sections of the International, including 8 from New York City and 2 from Chicago. This would be
294-658: A national, then international centralized union of all workers. In practice its organizing efforts were largely concentrated among textile workers in New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. It had 700 members in July 1878. After leading a textile strike in Paterson, and organizing efforts in Fall River, Massachusetts, membership had grown to a reported 8,000. By February 1880 the organization had rapidly shrunk to 1,400-1,500 in eight branches. By
343-649: A new governing body called the Federal Council. Both Section 12 and Section 1 appealed to the General Council in London to resolve the dispute. In March 1872 the General Council issued its ruling, suspending Section 12 from the organization and ordering the two rival executive bodies to unite into a single provisional committee pending formal resolution at the next national convention. Section 12 continued an independent existence, ultimately convening its own convention at
392-437: A political party. In the view of Bakunin, the new world would emerge via the revolt of the poor and oppressed masses, workers and peasant farmers alike, suffering under the heel of an exploitative semi-feudal economic and political structure. Bakunin was contemptuous of the educated industrial workers favored by Marx, believing they were "infected with a bourgeois outlook," and instead favored an alliance of radical intellectuals,
441-504: A powerful labor party can resolve upon beginning it." Although the WPUS was largely unsuccessful in the strikes it helped lead, on August 6, 1878 the party had managed to gain enough popularity to capture 5 out of 7 seats in Kentucky state legislature . As news spread around the country of the success of the WPUS, more "Workingmen's Parties" formed in cities around the country, some chartered by
490-633: A ticket for city political office in the election of 1868. This effort was met with voter apathy, however, and the first campaign of the Social Party of New York also proved to be its last. Following the 1868 electoral failure, the Social Party of New York dissolved and its leading German-speaking members established a new organization called the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein (General German Workers' Association). This group had an unabashed international socialist orientation and
539-471: A wide range of dissident intellectuals, including in the first place tinsmith and abolitionist William West. Also active in Section 12 was Stephen Pearl Andrews , an abolitionist who had previously established a failed utopian socialist community on Long Island called "Modern Times." Andrews had later established a commune on Manhattan called "Unitary Home" and had with his wife launched a political group called
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#1732852230811588-445: Is extant, scholarly estimates of the total number of American participants have generally clustered in the vicinity of 5,000, Samuel Bernstein , perhaps the most careful scholar of the subject, indicates that total membership "very likely did not go beyond 4,000, after the increase in the first part of 1872." The French events also seem to have helped radicalize Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin , editors in 1870 of
637-621: Is no hope for France but in the Reds." In addition to the abolitionist movement, an additional source of broad support for the goals and methods of the Paris Commune came via various newspapers associated with the Spiritualist movement. The largest Spiritualist weekly, Banner of Light , attempted to explain for its readers the motivations and actions of the Communards, declaring they were "weary of
686-731: The Apollo Theater in New York City. This gathering nominated a ticket headed by Victoria Woodhull as its candidate for President of the United States. The main body of the IWA opened its 1st National Convention in New York on July 6, 1872, with representatives of 22 sections in attendance. The gathering adopted a new formal name for the American organization — the North American Federation of
735-583: The United States of America took the form of a loose network of about 35 frequently discordant local "sections," each professing allegiance to the London-based IWA, commonly known as the "First International." These sections were divided geographically and by the language spoken by their members, frequently new immigrants to America, including those who spoke German, French, Czech, as well as Irish and "American" English-language groups. The peak membership of
784-406: The industrial unionism of McDonnell and Sorge. Both saw the wages system as a despotism. Immediate demands included reduction of hours, state and local labor bureaus, workplace inspection and prohibition of child labor. Reflecting the industrial unionist aspect of the organization were its goals to organized the unskilled and unorganized, to affiliate already existing unions with itself and to create
833-468: The 1870 conclave. In the fall of 1869, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein, also known as Labor Union No. 5 of New York, affiliated as a group with the International Workingmen's Association, becoming "Section No. 1 of New York." The group would not only become the bulwark of the International in America, but it would ultimately outlive the International itself, terminating only in 1874, two years after
882-461: The American movement was fragmented, with American sections speaking one or another language communicating directly with corresponding secretaries in that language in London — a situation which was deemed as contributing to factional rivalry and personal animosity. It was deemed desirable that a single Central Committee should be established in the United States to smooth the transmission of official communications to and from London. On October 2, 1870,
931-581: The Complexion and Cleansing the Blood." Following Victoria's divorce from her drunken and philandering first husband, the pair set up shop as "Tennessee Claflin and Victoria Woodhull, Clairvoyants" and managed to stack up a substantial nest egg from gullible believers. Their list of satisfied clients ultimately included among them none other than Cornelius Vanderbilt , one of the country's richest men. Backed with Vanderbilt's cash through silent partnership, in 1870
980-528: The IWA in America was spurred enormously by the launch of the Paris Commune on March 26, 1871. Vilified by the conservative press, iconoclasts and radicals of all stripes in America rallied to the revolutionary city government of Paris, which was closely linked with the International Workingmen's Association in the public mind, if not in actual practice. Although the Parisian barricades were overrun by defenders of
1029-417: The International Workingmen's Association — as well as compiling a new set of organizational bylaws. The Americans were not the only national division of the International fighting a factional war for control of the organization. The General Council, which had long been divided between moderate trade union reformers and international socialist revolutionaries, was becoming the object of a still greater fight —
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#17328522308111078-590: The New Democracy, members of which went on to help launch Sections 9 and 12 of the IWA in New York City. A sharp difference of opinion emerged between the committed centralists of German-speaking Branch 1 of New York City and the predominantly middle class English-speaking Branches 9, 12, and 26 — with Branch 12 in the leading role. These latter have been described by historian Samuel Bernstein as "American autonomists," who "by reason of faith in their respective blueprints of what America ought to be, counted first, on
1127-582: The United States ( WPUS ), established in 1876, was one of the first Marxist -influenced political parties in the United States . It is remembered as the forerunner of the Socialist Labor Party of America . On July 15, 1876, ten Americans and one German convened in Philadelphia to announce the abolition of the General Council of the International Workingmen's Association . The Workingmen Party of
1176-459: The United States in 1866 and attempted to organize an American section. Orsini managed to win the support of a number of a handful of émigré socialists in New York City , in addition to gaining a sympathetic hearing from several prominent political figures, including newspaper editor Horace Greeley , abolitionist orator Wendell Phillips , and radical Republican Senator Charles Sumner . At
1225-598: The United States on a national or local level. Much like the International Workingmen's Association in America before it, the WPUS was widely viewed as socialistic. However, during the railroad strikes during the summer of 1877 , the party, led by the charismatic and well-spoken American Albert Parsons , showed some of its power by rallying support for the striking railroad workers. As the WPUS formed, co-founder Joseph Patrick McDonnell stated, "The Trades Unions should be guided to renounce political action until
1274-613: The United States was formed on July 19, with the involvement of Friedrich Sorge . The foundation of the party was pushed by the Social-Democratic Workingmen's Party of North America , which broke away from the International Workingmen's Association in 1874. The WPUS was unable to field its own ticket in the 1876 presidential election and its members supported Peter Cooper and the Greenback Party instead. The party, composed mostly of foreign-born laborers, represented
1323-535: The WPUS and some not. The WPUS held its first national convention in December 1877, and was attended by 38 delegates. The Lassallean-led organization reorganized the party into the Socialist Labor Party of America . International Workingmen%27s Association in America Progressive Era Repression and persecution Anti-war and civil rights movements Contemporary The International Workingmen's Association ( IWA ) in
1372-427: The death of the International. Section 1 maintained contacts with various trade unions in New York City and around the country and was instrumental in helping to establish new sections of the International. Early in 1870 a French-speaking section was established in New York City, with a Czech-speaking section following the fall of that same year. Communication between the executive of the International in London and
1421-426: The eclectic Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly . Woodhull and Claflin were daughters of a religious revivalist mother and a father reckoned by his contemporaries as a grifter; Victoria had attempted to escape through marriage at age 15, while Tennessee had been exploited as a purported psychic healer and namesake of a homebrewed quack remedy concocted by her parents, "Miss Tennessee's Magnetio Life Elixir for Beautifying
1470-481: The fall of 1871 calling for it to take control over the entire American movement. Section 12 had its friends on the General Council, including general secretary John Hales and corresponding secretary for the United States George Eccarius . It pushed forward with its own program of eclectic social reform in 1872, bringing a protest from the doctrinaire international socialists of Section 1, who demanded
1519-572: The formal governing body of the IWA in America. The IWA was not geographically limited to New York City and its environs. In fact the first formal section of the International was established in the West Coast city of San Francisco in March 1869. Within a year supporters of the International were playing a role in the movement for the 8-hour day in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and New York. Growth of
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1568-469: The gamut from abolitionism to feminism to labor reform to Spiritualism, in 1871 the paper dedicated significant coverage to the Paris Commune and the entity commonly imagined to be behind it, the IWA. The paper reprinted official documents of the International and ran an interview with Karl Marx himself, with Marx returning the favor by providing the controversial female editors with a first-hand account by his daughter Jenny of her expulsion from France. It
1617-485: The new organization included Ira Steward , George Gunton , Albert Parsons , Friedrich Adolph Sorge , Otto Weydemeyer , J. P. McDonnell , George McNeill, Carl Speyer and George Schilling . It held its first congress in Paterson, New Jersey in December 1878. The outlook and goals of the organization were broad. The ILUs program represented an amalgam of the eight-hour philosophy that Steward had been propagandizing, and
1666-661: The next year, a single branch in Hoboken . The organization was dissolved when the leader of the Hoboken branch, Sorge, moved to Rochester, New York in 1887. This article related to one or more trade or labor unions is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Workingmen%27s Party of the United States Progressive Era Repression and persecution Anti-war and civil rights movements Contemporary The Workingmen's Party of
1715-576: The old regime in May amidst a bloody reaction that claimed as many as 20,000 lives, the French events nevertheless occupied the thinking of a generation in much in the same way that the Russian Revolution of 1917 would have a polarizing and far reaching impact nearly half a century later. While most of the American press denounced the revolutionaries of Paris, radical reformers took up the revolutionary vision in
1764-450: The one hand and the official "American Corresponding Secretary" of the General Council of the IWA in London. In effect these parallel channels of communication replicated the factional divisions of the European organization. The tension between labor-reformist and revolutionary visions of the IWA would find reflection in the factional warfare within the organization in America. Andrew Cameron
1813-503: The pages of their own journals. The National Anti-Slavery Standard carried regular dispatches from Paris and kept its readers informed of the legal and political retribution levied against Commune leaders in the aftermath of the failed uprising. The Boston magazine Commonwealth, established by a Southern abolitionist minister, likewise defended the Commune in its pages. So, too, did radical abolitionist Wendell Phillips, who declared, "There
1862-402: The peasant masses, as well as the most impoverished and unwashed workers of the cities. Bakunin rejected the coordinated trade union and political action favored by the international socialists, instead professing the expedience and necessity of the armed uprising. He sought the forcible destruction of state power and its replacement with what historian Juilius Braunthal has characterized as
1911-476: The purpose of the IWA were not the modest goals of raising wages, lowering working hours, and liberalizing election law through international cooperation, but rather the construction of an international organization as a tool for the winning of state power from the bourgeoisie . In this era of imperfect transatlantic communications the message of the IWA was spread through personal communication, with parallel networks emerging between Karl Marx and his associates on
1960-747: The servitude that practically accompanies the wages condition, when all exercise of political power is denied it." By September 1871 there were 19 sections of the International in the US, of which 3 were "American" and 16 were non-English speaking. Eight more sections were added the next month and another 7 in November. By the end of 1871 the IWA in America included a total of about 35 sections, including groups in Philadelphia , Washington, DC , St. Louis , New Orleans , Newark, New Jersey , and Springfield, Massachusetts , among other places. While no hard membership data
2009-414: The sisters Woodhull and Claflin had become stockbrokers , establishing the first brokerage managed by women up to that date. It was with the profits from Woodhull, Claflin & Co. that Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly had sprung. The paper's reformist political line was pumped up and made profitable with a sensationalistic approach and a hyperbolic writing style. Covering a broad range of subjects running
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2058-464: The spread of enlightenment and the democratic process to cleanse government of corruption, and then, on meliorative laws to direct the nation toward their primal model. Thus a boundary divided autonomists; but they lined up together against centralized authority." Section 12 disputed the authority of the Central Committee, dominated by Section 1, writing a letter to the General Council in London in
2107-464: The suspension from the organization for their ideological heresy of their erstwhile comrades. A fight for control of the American movement ensured, with Section 1 in the minority, supported by most of the German and the Irish sections, with Section 12 winning the American, two of the German, and most of the French sections for its program. In response, Section 1 and its supporters split the IWA, establishing
2156-498: The time of its establishment, the International was far from a revolutionary organization, seeking rather to advance the cause of labor through international cooperation of organized workers around a general program based upon the notions of liberty and justice. This somewhat tender trade unionist perspective was not universal among its members, however, as from the outset it gained the participation of German émigrés Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and many of their co-thinkers, for whom
2205-729: The various sections of the International Workingmen's Association in the United States has been variously estimated in the vicinity of 4,000 to 5,000. The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), commonly known as the First International, was established in London in 1864. The organization was initially strictly European in composition, including prominently English, French, German, Polish, and Italian labor leaders and political activists. The International made its way to American soil in 1866 when Italian socialist Cesare Orsini, brother of an attempted assassin of Napoleon III , arrived in
2254-676: Was a delegate of the National Labor Union who attended the Basle Congress (1869) . In December 1867 a first step towards formal organization on behalf of the International took place in New York City when a call was issued for a meeting to be held the next month at the Germania Assembly Rooms, located in the city's Bowery district. Those calling the meeting were activists in the German-American labor movement. This event
2303-416: Was an unlikely vehicle for the social revolution, and the opportunistic sisters with their unconventional lifestyle deeply alienated the German international socialists of Section 1. Woodhull and Claflin were instrumental in the organization of a second English-language branch of the International in New York City, IWA Branch 12, making use of the newspaper's office as a meeting location. Section 12 attracted
2352-611: Was held successfully and served as the foundation convention for an independent political party known as the Social Party of New York and Vicinity . The Social Party adopted a platform which incorporated elements both of the program of the International as well as that of the fledgling National Labor Union (NLU) established less than two years earlier by William H. Sylvis . The group elected parallel Executive Boards, one each for its German-speaking and English-speaking membership. These two executive bodies cooperated in naming and running
2401-539: Was later recalled by Friedrich Sorge to have consisted "almost exclusively" of "plain wage-workers of every possible trade." In February 1869, shortly after its formation, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein was admitted to the National Labor Union as "Labor Union No. 5 of New York." The group sent delegates to the 1869 and 1870 national conventions of the NLU, but withdrew from the organization immediately after
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