International Workingmen’s Association 1868
Source: MECW Volume 21, p. 11;
Written: by Karl Marx;
Adopted: by the General Council on August 25, 1868;
First published: in The Bee-Hive, August 29, 1868.
The text of this resolution, adopted at the General Council meeting of August 25, 1868 in connection with the preparations for the Brussels Congress, has been preserved in the minutes of this meeting; it was also published in The Bee-Hive, August 29, 1868.
At the Brussels Congress this resolution was moved by Eccarius and read in the report of the commission on reducing the working day on September 12, 1868.
It was published in English in the reports of the Congress sittings in The Times, September 17, 1868 and in the pamphlet The International Working Men’s Association. Resolutions of the Congress of Genera, 1866, and the Congress of Brussels, 1868 published in London in 1869; in French it was published in a special supplement to Le Peuple Belge, September 18, La Cigale, September 20 and La Tribune du Peuple, November 8, 1868.
A resolution having been passed unanimously by the Congress of Geneva 1866 to this effect: “That the legal limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition indispensable for the ulterior social improvements,” the Council is of opinion that the time is now arrived when practical effect should be given to that resolution and that it has become the duty of all the branches to agitate that question practically in the different countries where International Working Men’s Association is established.