the victory of a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight
the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political
economy of the working class."[26] The other victory was the growth of
the cooeperative movement. "The value of these great social experiments
cannot be overrated," he says. "By deed, instead of by argument, they
have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the
behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a
class of masters employing a class of hands."[27] Arguing that
cooeperative labor should be developed to national dimensions and be
fostered by State funds, he urges working-class political action as the
means to achieve this end. "To conquer political power has therefore
become the great duty of the working classes."[28] This is the
conclusion of Marx concerning revolutionary methods; and it is clear
that his conception of "revolutionary action" differed not only from
that of the Proudhonians and Mazzinians, but also from that of "the
bourgeois democrats, the revolution-makers,"[29] who "extemporized
revolutions."[30]

At the end of Marx's letter to Kugelmann, he tells of the beginning
already made by the International in London in actual political work.
"The movement for electoral reform here," he writes, "which our General
Council (_quorum magna pars_) created and launched, has assumed
dimensions that have kept on growing until now they are
irresistible."[31] The General Council threw itself unreservedly into
this agitation. An electoral reform conference was held in February,
1867, attended by two hundred delegates from all parts of England,
Scotland, and Ireland. Later, gigantic mass meetings were held
throughout the country to bring pressure upon the Government. Frederic
Harrison and Professor E. S. Beesly, well known for their sympathy with
labor, were appealing to the working classes to throw their energies
into the fight. "Nothing will compel the ruling classes," wrote Harrison
in 1867, "to recognize the rights of the working classes and to pay
attention to their just demands until the workers have obtained
political power."[32] Professor Beesly, the intimate friend of Marx, was
urging the unions to enter politics as an independent force, on the
ground that the difference between the Tories and the Liberals was only
the difference between the upper and nether millstones. In all this
agitation Marx saw, of course, the working