Labor Movement Origins: From Luddites to the First International
Origins of the Labor Movement
Luddites and Trade Unions: The initial labor movement manifested as violent opposition to machines, known as Luddism. This movement, named after Ned Ludd, who destroyed a loom in 1779, was present in early industrialization across countries. Unions emerged as resistance against capital. In 1834, the Great Trade Union was formed, uniting around 500,000 members. The British trade union movement was characterized by in-office associations, sometimes leading to rivalries, and high affiliation contributions, primarily representing skilled workers. The labor movement also expressed itself through cooperatives, cultural organizations, and schools.
Chartism and Democratic Republicanism
Between 1838 and 1848, the British labor movement took a political form: Chartism, named after a letter in 1838 advocating democratic universal male suffrage. The labor movement also had a political expression in France, where many workers joined republican organizations advocating for universal male suffrage. These were interclass organizations, including artisans, middle classes, and workers. After the revolution, socialist doctrines spread, leading to the desire for class-based organizations.
Utopian Socialisms
Early socialist currents aimed to define a perfect social model with equality and harmony, believing these utopias were achievable through propaganda and example. Key thinkers included Count Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Etienne Cabet. Fourier proposed the falansteri, a community of 1600 members with collective ownership and rotating tasks. Cabet designed an ideal communist country called Icaria, but attempts to create it in the USA failed. Robert Owen in Britain and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in France had greater impact. Owen advocated for cooperatives, successfully applying them in New Lanark. Proudhon advocated for individual freedom, mutuality, and confederalism; many of his followers later embraced anarchism.
Anarchism and Marxism: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels proposed a scientific socialism, developing historical materialism based on dialectics and materialism.
- History is a class struggle between exploiters and exploited.
- Capitalism is an unjust system that oppresses the working class through the appropriation of gain.
- The working class should lead a revolution and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat as a step towards communism.
Anarchism, primarily presented by Mikhail Bakunin, defends individual liberty, collective property, and atheism.
The First International
The First Steps (1864-1870)
Internationalist doctrine arose among exiled democrats in the first half of the 19th century. Increased contact between French and British workers led to the formation of the International Association of Workers (TIA), also known as the First International. From 1868, amid economic crisis and strikes, the TIA grew in Belgium, France, and Germany, and established ties with labor movements in other countries.
Crisis and Decline of the TIA (1870-77)
The AIT faced a crisis in 1870 due to political repression and internal divisions between Marxists and anarchists. The Paris Commune led to repression against the labor movement. From 1871, a dispute arose between Marxists and anarchists. The International Alliance of Socialist Democracy joined the AIT, leading to conflict with Karl Marx. Anarchists opposed political action and a workers’ state, while Marxists condemned anarchism. At the Congress of The Hague (1872), most anarchists were expelled, and the General Council moved to New York, where the TIA was dissolved (1876). Anarchist sectors formed another TIA that lasted until 1877.