The Emancipation of Labor: A History of the First International

(Hardback)

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This study chronicles the emergence and evolution of the International Working Men's Association, known historically as the First International. Katz offers a non-ideological history of the group and its personalities, surveying the first international in the context of the general history of the period 1846-1847, as well as in the context of the contemporary movements of worldwide liberation. The major role the First International played in the process of the revival and expansion of the West European Labour movement is also fully detailed.

Reviews

This posthumous study by Katz, former International Secretary of the Labour History Society, continues the tradition of fine Eastern European scholarship on the history of socialism and the Left with a spirited account of Karl Marx's First International. This distinguished volume accomplishes a smooth merger of the labor situation in the early 1860s with the need to end the isolation of radical political theory. This detail adds a great deal to our knowledge of the International's origins and functionaries with clarity and economy. The chapter on Bakunin and the International uses much from Arthur Lehning and Max Nettlau, as any good study properly should. The confrontations between Marx and Bakunin, often sensationalized in earlier works, are played out with a context of the International's struggles to find an independent course between French and German delegates during the difficult period just before and after the Franco-Prussian War. In the International's last years before its collapse in 1876, the growing fragmentation between northern and southern European socialists becomes the pathway of the final chapters. A fine book and a good guide to the European manuscript collections dealing with this topic. Advanced undergraduate to faculty.-Choice
"This posthumous study by Katz, former International Secretary of the Labour History Society, continues the tradition of fine Eastern European scholarship on the history of socialism and the Left with a spirited account of Karl Marx's First International. This distinguished volume accomplishes a smooth merger of the labor situation in the early 1860s with the need to end the isolation of radical political theory. This detail adds a great deal to our knowledge of the International's origins and functionaries with clarity and economy. The chapter on Bakunin and the International uses much from Arthur Lehning and Max Nettlau, as any good study properly should. The confrontations between Marx and Bakunin, often sensationalized in earlier works, are played out with a context of the International's struggles to find an independent course between French and German delegates during the difficult period just before and after the Franco-Prussian War. In the International's last years before its collapse in 1876, the growing fragmentation between northern and southern European socialists becomes the pathway of the final chapters. A fine book and a good guide to the European manuscript collections dealing with this topic. Advanced undergraduate to faculty."-Choice

Author Bio

HENRYK KATZ was Honorary Research Fellow of the Coventry (England) Polytechnic, and a former instructor in the History and Politics Department at the University of Nottingham. He authored numerous books, articles, and journal reviews.