I
On the practical means by which to enable the International Working Men's Association to fulfil its function of a common centre of action for the working classes, female and male, in their struggle tending to their complete emancipation from the domination of capital.
II
That our Congress programme be published in the Courrier Français, that no branch has a right to put forth a programme of its own, that the Council alone is empowered to draw up the Congress programme, and that the General Secretary be instructed to send the Council programme to the Courrier and communicate the foregoing resolution to the Paris Committee.
Adopted by the General Council on Reproduced from the Minute July 9 and 23, 1867 Book of the General Council
Resolution I first published as a leaflet and in The Working Man, No. 16, The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 300, and The Commonwealth, No. 75, July 13, 1867
Endnotes
[154] The Vienna Congress of European monarchs and their ministers (September 1814-June 1815) established a system of all-European treaties after the Napoleonic wars. The decisions of the Congress helped to restore the feudal system and a number of old dynasties in states that had been subjugated by Napoleon and to preserve the political dismemberment of Germany and Italy, sanctioned the annexation of Belgium by Holland and the partition of Poland, and planned measures to combat the revolutionary movement. With this aim in view, the main participants in the Congress shortly afterwards founded the Holy Alliance (see Note 144) which Marx mentions below. Congress Poland—that part of Poland which by decision öf the Vienna Congress of 1814-15 was annexed to Russia under the official name of the Kingdom of Poland, its capital Warsaw included. Marx sent this refutation to Ludwig Kugelmann in Hanover on February 18, 1867 with a request to have it published there in the Zeitung für Norddeutschland or any other local newspaper. Marx was particular about this because he intended in a few weeks to take his manuscript of Vol. I of Capital to Germany, to the Hamburg publisher Otto Meissner. Instead of this statement, the Zeitung für Norddeutschland published the following item on February 21, 1867: "According to a statement sent by Herr Karl Marx from London, the English newspapers' announcement (see the Zeitung für Norddeutschland, No. 5522) that he intends to take an active part in the preparations for a future insurrection in Poland and with this aim in view plans to travel all over the Continent, is a fabrication." On June 4, 1867, during preparations for the regular Lausanne Congress of the International, the General Council empowered a special commission to draw up an address containing its programme. When this document was considered at the Council meeting on July 9, Marx submitted a proposal concerning the first point on the Congress agenda (Resolution I). It was reproduced in the "Address of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association. To the members and affiliated societies" adopted at this meeting and published in London as a leaflet. By decision of the Council, the "Address" was also published in French, the translation being done by Paul Lafargue and edited by Marx. Its text was considerably improved in comparison with the English (see this volume, pp. 421-23). By having this resolution passed and distributed in English, French and other languages, Marx sought to direct the work of the future congress to the consolidation of workers' international solidarity in the struggle for their class interests, in contrast to some French members of the International who wanted to direct the Congress along Proudhonist lines. With this aim, as early as February 1866, the Paris Section worked out for the Congress its own agenda, which was permeated with Proudhonist ideas about mutual aid societies in the sphere of credit and commodity exchange being the main lever of social transformation. This agenda was reproduced in the Address of the Paris section to all workers' associations, published in Le Courrier français, No. 25, July 20, 1867. This compelled Marx to submit, at the General Council meeting of July 23, a resolution against the separatist actions of the section and in defence of the Council's prerogatives to draw up the Congress programme.