>the suggestion that M's comment
>in his 1864 inaugural address to the 1st Int'l was based on 'unreliable
>testimony from trade union leaders' is erroneous...
I said *probably* based on unreliable testimony of trade union leaders. But as it happens, I think it is probably true.
>Engels writes favorably about Chartism in his 1844 review essay Carlyle
>_The Past and Present_ entitled *The Condition of England*...Chartism,
>often relegated to having been a movement (and an unsuccessful one at
>that) for universal manhood suffrage and parliamentary reform also
>involved various kinds of agitation about other issues, including
>factory reform...
There can be little doubt that Chartists did talk about factory reform, but no demands were ever put to the government. Especially with the 10 Hours Act passed in 1850, the aftershock of the revolutions of 1848 were still being felt and it was typical of governments of this time to not yield (and to be seen not to yield) to pressure from below. I know of no evidence for Parliament taking on board Chartist demands. What there is evidence for is ruling class paternalism, as exemplified by Lord Shaftesbury, the moving force behind the legislation. He treated all the working class as if they were mindless children and was bitterly opposed to them having the vote. It is possible that Chartist and trade union papers genuinely misconstrued the reasons for (or put the best gloss on) the government's decision as a capitulation to a movement which had just ended in total failure.
>in the 1848 *Manifesto*, M&E assert that the organized working class
>'compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the
>workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie
>itself. Thus the ten-hours bill in England carried.' (Marx
>characterizes this as split between landlords and money-lords in his
>above-noted address)...and the tract refers specifically to the
>Chartists as a working class party in its closing paragraphs...Engels
>returns to the subject in 1850 articles entitled *The English Ten
>Hours Bill* & *The Ten Hours Question*...
Whatever there other merits, the Chartist movement had no bearing on the passing of the 10 Hours Acts. After the second petition of 1842 was rejected, Chartism was largely defunct and although a third Chartist petition was presented in 1848 (a year after the 1847 10 Hours Act) this was rejected even more decisively by the government. Another 10 Hours Act was passed in 1850. The Charter concentrated exclusively on demands for universal suffrage.
>at the time Marx was invited (belatedly, he was unaware of plans until
>one week prior) to the founding meeting of what became the IWMA, he had
>few connections to English radicals & trade unionists (Chartist Ernest
>Jones was a notable exception)...Marx's politics during the 1st Int'l
>period were largely 'practical' - direct taxation, universal manhood
>suffrage, shorter work week, cooperatives, land nationalization...
>writing in 1871 to German socialist leader Friedrich Bolte, M argues
>that workers should engage in incessant struggles, even for limited
>objectives....
Jones was a friend and Chartist journalist, but almost the entire British section of the IWMA were trade unionists. Marx and Engels took a keen interest in trade unions, and had written extensively for trade union papers. Although Marx did have many practical concerns during his period in the IWMA, I think it is misleading to characterise his politics during this period as "largely practical" with the examples you give. It was of course a feature of working class existence at this time that, whether they wanted to or not, they had to engage in incessant struggles, even for limited objectives.
>Marx should be read dialectically...for example, in Capital Vol 1 (ch.
>10) he tempers his approval of the ten-hours bill by emphasizing the
>advantages of Factory Acts to big capital...but, as he writes in
>Capital Vol 3, the 'primary requisite' of the 'realm of freedom' is
>a shorter work-day'(something that Marx both championed and struggled
>for throughout his life while always keeping his 'eyes on the prize' -
>the overthrow of capital)... Michael Hoover
Marx did indeed welcome progressive reform, and he thought a shorter work-day was particularly important (though I am not aware of him having struggled for it throughout his life), nevertheless the real objective is, as you say, the overthrow of capital.
-- Lew