Congress of the General German Workers’ Association

Congress of the General German Workers’ Association, held in September 1868 in Nuremberg. The founding of the General German Workers’ Association has attracted great attention from the international workers’ movement. After the founding of International Workingmen’s Association, Marx suggested that the General German Workers’ Association join the International Workingmen’s Association. Although Lassalle’s successors, Bernhard Becker (1826–1882) and Johann Schweitzer (1833–1875), declared their support for the principles of the First International, they refused to join the International on organizational grounds, on the pretext that the Prussian government had a decree forbidding participation in foreign organizations. Under these circumstances, Marx and Engels decided to recruit individual members among the workers in the industrial cities of Germany and to use various legal organizations to establish secret branches of the International, to educate the German workers in scientific socialism, and to free the German workers' movement from the influence of Lassalleanism and the control of the Lassallean elements. Wilhelm Liebknecht and other members of the Communist League also actively propagated the ideas of Marx and Engels among the German workers, distributed communist works and spread Marxism, so that the influence of the First International among the workers gradually expanded. This congress in September 1868 adopted a programme centered on the basic contents of the constitution of the First International and decided to join the First International, freeing the Association completely from the control of the liberal bourgeoisie and making it the largest workers' organization under the guidance of the First International.