The philosophy of the Internationale at the period of its ascendency was based on the economic organization of the working class in trade unions.  These must precede the political seizure of the government by labor.  Then, when the workingmen’s party should achieve control, it would be able to build up successively the socialist state on the foundation of a sufficient number of existing trade unions.

This conception differed widely from the teaching of Ferdinand Lassalle.  Lassallean socialism was born in 1863 with Lassalle’s Open Letter to a workingmen’s committee in Leipzig.  It sprang from his antagonism to Schultze-Delizsch’s[16] system of voluntary cooperation.  In Lassalle’s eagerness to condemn the idea of the harmony of capital and labor, which lay at the basis of Schultze’s scheme for cooperation, he struck at the same time a blow against all forms of non-political organization of wage earners.  Perhaps the fact that he was ignorant of the British trade unions accounts for his insufficient appreciation of trade unionism.  But no matter what the cause may have been, to Lassalle there was but one means of solving the labor problem-political action.  When political control was finally achieved, the labor party, with the aid of state credit, would build up a network of cooperative societies into which eventually all industry would pass.

In short, the distinction between the ideas of the Internationale and of Lassalle consisted in the fact that the former advocated trade unionism prior to and underlying political organization, while the latter considered a political victory as the basis of socialism.  These antagonistic starting points are apparent at the very beginning of American socialism as well as in the trade unionism and socialism of succeeding years.

Two distinct phases can be seen in the history of the Internationale in America.  During the first phase, which began in 1866 and lasted until 1870, the Internationale had no important organization of its own on American soil, but tried to establish itself through affiliation with the National Labor Union.  The inducement held out to the latter was of a practical nature, the international regulation of immigration.  During the second phase the Internationale had its “sections” in nearly every large city of the country, centering in New York and Chicago, and the practical trade union part of its work receded before its activity on behalf of the propaganda of socialism.

These “sections,” with a maximum membership which probably never exceeded a thousand, nearly all foreigners, became a preparatory school in trade union leadership for many of the later organizers and leaders of the American Federation of Labor:  for example, Adolph Strasser, the German cigar maker, whose organization became the new model in trade unionism, and P.J.  McGuire, the American-born carpenter, who founded the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and who was for many years the secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Labor.