First International in the United States

The International Workingmen's Association (IWA) in 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 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.

Organizational history

Background

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 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 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 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 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.