ABSTRACT
Ideas of international working class co-operation as a means towards the emancipation of the proletariat had been present in Marx's thinking since the late 1840s. Such notions, expressed for example in the Communist Manifesto, had been formulated primarily with reference to ‘the leading civilized countries’. The emergence of the International thus provided the occasion for Marx's return to direct political activity, something from which he had withdrawn, for all practical purposes, ever since the breakup of the Communist League at the beginning of the 1850s. Given the sacrifices which Marx was prepared to make for it in terms of his theoretical writing and his family's welfare, it is obvious that he considered the International to be a force of great potential. Marx's account of the founding of the IWMA, contained in his letter of 4 November 1864 to Engels, indicates his rather poor opinion of the kinds of ‘knowledge’ possessed by some of the International's other founders.
