egregated and limited to certain places in the Latin
countries; but everywhere the name of the International was being used
by all sorts of elements that could only injure the actual labor
movement. The exploits of Nechayeff, of Bakounin, and of certain Spanish
and Italian sections had all conveyed to the world an impression of the
International which perhaps could never be altogether erased.
Furthermore, in Germany and other countries the seeds of an actual
working-class political movement had been planted, and there was already
promise of a huge development in the national organizations. What moved
Marx thus to destroy his own child, the concrete thing he had dreamed of
in his thirty years of incessant labor, profound study, and ceaseless
agitation, will perhaps never be fully known, but in any case no act of
Marx was ever of greater service to the cause of labor. It was a form of
surgery that cut out of the socialist movement forever an irreconcilable
element, and from then on the distinction between anarchist and
socialist was indisputably clear. They stood poles apart, and everyone
realized that no useful purpose would be served in trying to bring them
together again.

Largely because of Bakounin, the International as an organization of
labor never played an important role; but, as a melting pot in which the
crude ideas of many philosophies were thrown--some to be fused, others
to be cast aside, and all eventually to be clarified and purified--the
International performed a memorable service. During its entire life it
was a battlefield. In the beginning there were many separate groups, but
at the end there were only two forces in combat--socialists and
anarchists. When the quarrel began there was among the masses no sharply
dividing line; their ideas were incoherent; and their allegiance was to
individuals rather than to principles. Without much discrimination, they
called themselves "communists," "Internationalists," "collectivists,"
"anarchists," "socialists." Even these terms they had not defined, and
it was only toward the end of the International that the two combatants
classified their principles into two antagonistic schools, socialism and
anarchism. Anarchism was no longer a vague, undefined philosophy of
human happiness; it now stood forth, clear and distinct from all other
social theories. After this no one need be in doubt as to its meaning
and methods. On the other hand, no thoughtful person need longer r