Earlier this month Marxmail subscriber Joonas Laine asked about
books that cover the history of the first International, known
rather unfortunately as the International Workingman’s
Association. I should add that this was more than just a sexist
oversight. One of the standard histories of the first
international written by G.M. Stekloff that can be read online at
the Marxist Internet Archives describes the exclusion of women
from the Paris branch of the IWA by its Proudhonist majority:
"Regarding this matter, the French … had decided by a large
majority: ‘Woman’s place is the home, not the forum; nature has
made her nurse and housewife, do not let us withdraw her from
these social functions and from her true sphere in life; for the
man, work, and study of the problems of society for the woman, the
caring for children and the beautifying of the worker’s home.’
Consequently, to the great scandal of the advocates of the
so-called emancipation of woman, they had decided against the
admission of women to the International."
These were the words of E.E. Fribourg, a Proudhonist who had
written his own history in 1871, just around the time that the IWA
was collapsing.
I read Stekloff’s book as well as the first chapter of Raymond
Williams Postgate’s history as background for a series of posts on
the four attempts to build socialist internationals. Ever since
Hugo Chavez issued a call for a Fifth International, I had
promised myself to carve out some time to take up this question.
Most people who are veterans of the Trotskyist movement were
indoctrinated to believe something like this. The internationals
that preceded our own—the fourth—failed for one reason or the
other. I was more familiar with the second and the third, which
succumbed to the kinds of social democratic and Stalinist sins
that our movement devoted so much energy to exposing. I knew much
less about the first international, which usually received a brief
review in a new member’s class or an educational. Of course, our
own Fourth International was destined to lead the workers to power
all over the world, just as long as they didn’t get misled by the
bevy of Fourth Internationals that were pretenders to the throne
of Leon Trotsky.
full article:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/history-of-the-marxist-internationals-part-1-the-iwa/
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