Third Brussels Congress of the First International in 1868

Congress of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA), held September 6–13, 1868, in Brussels, attended by a total of 99 workers' delegates from Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and Spain, making it the largest congress in the history of the IWA.

Marx did not attend the Congress, but drafted the report of the General Council. The Congress heard the report of the General Council drafted by Marx, emphasized the basic ideas of the Inaugural Address and the General Rules of the International Workingmen’s Association, and emphasized the important significance of the “international” unity of the proletariat. At that time, the conflict between Prussia and France for hegemony was becoming more and more acute, and there was a danger that a new war was about to break out. The Congress adopted a resolution calling on the proletariat to rise up to stop the war between the nations and called for a general strike to resist it. The Brussels Congress also adopted the resolution submitted by Lessner on behalf of the German delegation which proposed that workers of all countries study Marx’s Capital and assist in translating it into languages that have not yet been translated. In addition, the Congress adopted a resolution on the introduction of public property in the means of production, emphasizing that economic development made communal property in the land necessary for society and that all means of production, forests, land and communication ought to remain the common property of society. The Brussels Congress established the principle of public property within the International, fundamentally denied Proudhonism, and demonstrated that Marxism defeated Proudhonism during the First International.