Why, in its first heroic effort to bring the workers of the world together, did the International run amuck? It was not from any external opposition but solely from its own inner strife and discord. It could unite on the great phrases, but at the first attempt to construct policies the war was on. The war was on, moreover, precisely as it is now on between the I. W. W. on one side, and the American Federation of Labor, together with all of our more disciplined Socialists, on the other.
What drove the International from pillar to post was the presence of the Anarchist. The Anarchist refuses to submit to "group discipline." His name for the Devil is any sort of authority outside himself. For temporary shifts he will form a group, but the individual is not held by it.
He is continually slipping out of the restraining group and playing his hand alone after his own temperament. This, in the field of action, is the essence of anarchy.
For almost twenty years the International struggled with this outlaw element until the Association was driven to New York city, where it staggered on for a few years under the guidance of Johann Most.
The trade unions were of course first to discover the impossibility of working with this body. Then, one by one, it was abandoned by socialist groups. In this short history, we actually find the Anarchists themselves splitting into three warring sections each with its own emphasis.
