any one country the workers cannot win strikes when these are isolated affairs; they can only win strikes when the workers in separate factories combine for mutual support, when they found a joint organisation, and when they conduct a united campaign against all the factory owners. It is just the same for the workers living in the various bourgeois States. They can only gain the victory when they march shoulder to shoulder, when they do not quarrel among themselves, when the proletarians of all lands unite, feeling themselves to be a single class with interests common to them all. Complete mutual trust, a brotherly alliance, united revolutionary action against world capitalism — these alone can bring victory to the working class. THE WORKERS’ COMMUNIST MOVEMENT CAN CONQUER ONLY AS AN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST MOVEMENT.
The need for an international struggle on, the part of the proletariat has long been recognised. In the forties of the last century, on the eve of the revolution of 1848, there already existed an international secret organisation known as the Communist Federation. Marx and Engels were its leaders. At the London conference of the organisation they were instructed to write a manifesto in its name. Such was the origin of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, in which the great champions of the proletariat gave the first exposition of communist teaching.
In 1864 there was constituted under Marx’s leadership the International Working Men’s Association, now commonly spoken of as the First International. In the First International there were associated a number of working-class leaders from various countries, but unity was lacking. Moreover, the organisation was not yet based upon the broad masses of the workers, but rather took the form of an international society of revolutionary propagandists. In 1871 the members of the International took part in the rising of the Parisian workers (the Commune of Paris). There ensued everywhere a persecution of the branches of the International. It collapsed in 1874, having been greatly weakened by internal