That the delegates of the Council be instructed not to take any official part in the Peace Congress, and to resist any motion that might be brought forward at the Working Men's Congress tending to take an official part.[155]
Adopted by the General Council on August 13, 1867
ARTICLES AND REVIEWS WRITTEN IN CONNECTION WITH THE
PUBLICATION OF VOLUME ONE OF CAPITAL
(October 1867-July 1868)
Endnotes
[155] 55 The League of Peace and Freedom was a pacifist organisation set up in 1867 with the active participation of Victor Hugo, Giuseppe Garibaldi and other democrats. Voicing the anti-militarist sentiments of the masses, the League's leaders did not reveal the social sources of wars and often confined anti-militarist activity to mere declarations. The inaugural Congress of the League was to open on September 9 (originally on September 5) in Geneva and was specially timed to coincide with the end of the Lausanne Congress of the International (September 2-8, 1867). At the General Council meeting of August 13, Marx spoke against the International's official participation in the League's Congress, since this would mean solidarity with its bourgeois programme; but he recommended that some members of the International should attend the Congress on their own in order to make it adopt revolutionary-democratic decisions (see the record of Marx's speech in this volume, pp. 426-27). Concluding his speech, Marx submitted this resolution, which the Council adopted. In the Minute Book of the General Council, the speech and resolution are reproduced in the form of a clipping from The Bee-Hive carrying a report of the Council meeting. The Lausanne Congress ignored the General Council's resolution and, influenced by petty-bourgeois elements, resolved officially to take part in the Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom. The Congress of the League, however, attended by several General Council and some other International members revealed great differences between the proletarian and the abstract, pacifist approach to the struggle for peace. Marx's tactics in regard to the League was fully approved at the Brussels Congress of the International in 1868, which opposed official affiliation to the League but called upon the working class to combine efforts with all progressive anti-military forces.