bor movement must be centered upon the all-important contest
for control of political power. They fought incessantly with their pens
to bring home the great truth that every class struggle is a political
struggle; and, while they were working to emphasize that fact, they
began in 1864 actually to organize the workers of Europe to fight that
struggle. The first great practical work of the International was to get
votes for workingmen. It was the chief thought and labor of Marx during
the first years of that organization to win for the English workers the
suffrage, while in Germany all his followers--including Lassalle as well
as Bebel and Liebknecht--labored throughout the sixties to that end. Up
to the present the main work of the socialist movement throughout the
world has been to fight for, and its main achievement to obtain, the
legal weapons essential for its battles.

Let us try to grasp the immensity of the task actually executed by Marx.
First, consider his scientific work. During all the period of these many
battles every leisure moment was spent in study. While others were
engaged in organizing what they were pleased to call the "Revolution"
and waiting about for it to start, Marx, Engels, Liebknecht, and all
this group were spending innumerable hours in the library. We see the
result of that labor in the three great volumes of "Capital," in many
pamphlets, and in other writings. By this painstaking scientific work of
Marx the nature of capitalism was made known and, consequently, what it
was that should be combated, and how the battle should be waged. In
addition to these studies, which have been of such priceless value to
the labor and socialist movements of the world, Marx, by his pitiless
logic and incessant warfare, destroyed every revolution-maker, and then,
by an act of surgery that many declared would prove fatal, cut out of
the labor movement the "pan-destroyers." Once more, by a supreme effort,
he turned the thought of labor throughout the world to the one end and
aim of winning its political weapons, of organizing its political
armies, and of uniting the working classes of all lands. Here, then, is
a brief summary of the work of this genius, who fertilized with his
powerful thoughts the proletarian movements of both worlds. The most
wonderful thing of all is that, in his brief lifetime, he should not
only have planned this gigantic task, but that he should have obtained
the essentials for its complete