International Workingmen's Association - After 1872

After 1872

The sixth Congress of the International was held in Geneva in September 1873, but was generally considered to be a failure. The International disbanded three years later, at the 1876 Philadelphia conference. Attempts to revive the organization over the next five years failed. However, the Second International was established in 1889 as its successor. Meanwhile, the anarchists continued to consider that they were unfairly ejected from the IWA, and in 1872 held a new congress at Saint-Imier over two days, September 15 and 16, 1872, where they declared themselves to be the true heirs of the International (see Anarchist St. Imier International). Later, after the anarchist International collapsed in 1877, a year after the remnants of the rival Marxist group, there was an attempt to refound an anarchist International in 1881, with the International Working People's Association. This so-called "Black International" gradually passed out of existence after the late 1880s, until the anarcho-syndicalists decided to re-found the "First International" in a congress held at Berlin in 1922 as the International Workers Association. The IWA still exists.