Workers Party of Ireland commemorates the foundation of the First International Workingmen’s Association

On 28 September 1864, the First International Workingmen’s Association was founded at a meeting in St Martin’s Hall in London. This historic meeting was an important step forward in the history of the struggle for a socialist world, for international solidarity, and against imperialism and war. 

The meeting brought together socialists from different countries, including France, Britain, Italy, Ireland and Germany. Karl Marx, to whom the task of writing the foundational documents of the International was delegated, quickly became the leading light in it. 

The First International’s Inaugural Address noted the poverty, ill-health, and suffering of workers and their families caused by capitalism and the effects of war. The Address also noted that the meeting happened during a period of ascendant reactionary forces, with the parties of the working class across Europe disorganised and demoralised, and class consciousness at a low ebb in the decades following 1848. 

Marx and the others realised that such a time was exactly when socialist internationalism was of the greatest importance and that the International had never been more needed. They set about the task of organising it to build the socialist alternative to capitalism, to increase the class consciousness of working people, and to ensure that the sparks of hope nevertheless evident – the wrenching of improved working hours from reluctant governments and the growth of the cooperative movement – could be fanned into the flames of resistance. 

The Address noted that signs of a socialist revival were emerging, focusing on the most important goal for the working class: the acquisition of state power. In these circumstances, the existence of the International was all the more important. It sought to coordinate the socialist struggle across borders, to combat the alliance of reactionary and ostensibly liberal governments that enforced and defended capitalism, and to combat the wars on which the status quo thrived. 

The Workers Party of Ireland recognises the urgent need for proletarian internationalism today. The First International is not of merely historical interest – its motivations, aims, and example are as important and as essential now as they were then. We also live in an age of rampant reaction, of the retreat of progressive and socialist forces following disappointed hopes, of a low level of class consciousness, and of confident and aggressive imperialist powers increasingly engaging in war. At both the national and international level, our work is just as urgent, made all the more so by the very real danger of environmental collapse created and accelerated by capitalism. 

The Workers Party of Ireland remains committed to the goal of the First International for a government, economy, and society organised in the interests of the working class. We remain committed to uniting our efforts with those of our comrades abroad. We remain committed to an international struggle for socialism, the only way to achieve the emancipation of humankind.

Workers of all countries, unite!

International Section

Central Executive Committee

Workers Party of Ireland

Email: wpi.international@gmail.com