Upon the whole, the Provisional Central Council recommend the plan of Organisation as traced in the Provisional Statutes. Its soundness and facilities of adaptation to different countries without prejudice to unity of action have been proved by two years' experience. For the next year we recommend London as the seat of the Central Council, the Continental situation looking unfavourable for change.
The members of the Central Council will of course be elected by Congress (5 of the Provisional Statutes) with power to add to their number.
The General Secretary to be chosen by Congress for one year and to be the only paid officer of the Association. We propose £2 for his weekly salary.(1)
The uniform annual contribution of each individual member of the Association to be one half penny (perhaps one penny). The cost price of cards of membership (carnets) to be charged extra.
While calling upon the members of the Association to form benefit societies and connect them by an international link, we leave the initiation of this question (établissement des sociétés de secours mutuels. Appui moral et matériel accordé aux orphelins de l'association(2)) to the Swiss who originally proposed it at the conference of September last.
Endnotes
[138] of the Association's members should be put at the beginning of the programme. When Marx was drawing up the "Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional Central Council", he inserted this point in the first section (see this volume, p. 185). This schedule was one of the first of those submitted by Marx for the statistical inquiry into the condition of the working class. With some editorial alterations, it was included in the second section of the "Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional Central Council. The Different Questions". Eugène Dupont, a member of the Central Council, reported on it at the Geneva Congress. This document was drawn up by Marx in August 1866, when final preparations for the Geneva Congress were being made. It was written in English (a few last pages of Marx's rough manuscript beginning with the words "everyday necessities", Section 6, second paragraph, have survived) and translated into French by Paul Lafargue. The Geneva Congress of the International took place between September 3 and 8, 1866. It was attended by 60 delegates from the Central Council, various sections of the International and workers' associations in Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland. Hermann Jung was elected its chairman. Marx's "Instructions" were read as the official report of the Central Council. The Congress became a scene of struggle between Marx's followers and the Proudhonists who enjoyed a third of the votes and countered the "Instructions" with their own programme on all the items on the agenda. Opponents of the revolutionary class struggle, who denied the importance of strikes and trade unions, the Proudhonists sought to confine the activities of the International to mutual aid in the sphere of credit and commodity exchange and to cooperative societies. They advocated the principles of "home education". In heated debates with the Proudhonists, Jung, Eccarius, Dupont, Carter and other supporters of the Central Council succeeded in having most of the points in the "Instructions" adopted in the form of Congress resolutions on international action by the working class, a reduction of working hours, on children's and women's labour, and on cooperative labour, trade unions and standing armies. The Proudhonists managed to have their resolutions passed only on issues of secondary importance (international workers' credit societies, etc.). Their attempt to introduce the principle that no person engaged in mental labour should be admitted as an official in the Association also failed; only over the Polish question did they manage to have a vague compromise resolution passed instead of the relevant point in the "Instructions". The Geneva Congress approved the Rules (based on the Provisional Rules drawn up by Marx) and the Regulations of the International Association. The Congress marked the end of the organisational period in the life of the International as an active proletarian organisation. The "Instructions" were published, among other reports on the Geneva Congress and its documents, first in German in the article "Der Kongreß der Internationalen Arbeiterassociation in Genf", in the journal Der Vorbote, Nos. 10 and 11, October and November 1866; then in English in The International Courier, Nos. 6/7 and 8/10, February 20 and March 13, 1867 and The Working Man, March 1 and April 6, 1867; and in French in Le Courrier international, Nos. 8/10 and 11, March 9 and 16, 1867. Later, the document was reprinted in full or in part in other press organs of the International as well. Certain points of the "Instructions" (in the form of the Congress resolutions) were printed in the pamphlet Die Internationale Arbeiterassociation by W. Eichhoff, Berlin, 1868 and in The International Working Men's Association, Resolutions of the Congress of Geneva, 1866, and the Congress of Brussels, 1868, London, 1869 (put out on decision of the General Council and prepared under Marx's supervision).