Marx-Engels Correspondence 1887
Source: Marx Engels On Britain, Progress Publishers 1953;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
What you say about the leaders of the Trades Unions is quite trite. We have had to fight them from the beginning of the International. From them have sprung the MacDonalds, Burts, Cremers and Howells, and their success in the parliamentary line encourages the minor leaders to imitate their conduct. If you can get the Trades Unionists of the North to consider their Unions as a valuable means of organisation and of obtaining minor results, but no longer to regard “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work” as the ultimate end, then the occupation of the leaders will be gone.