At its extraordinary meeting on January 1, 1870, the General Council resolved:
1) We read in the Égalité of December 11, 1869:
"It is certain that it" (the General Council) "is neglecting extremely important matters.... We remind it of them" (the General Council's obligations) "with Article 1 of the Regulations, etc.: 'The General Council is commissioned to carry the resolutions of the Congress into effect'.... We could put enough questions to the General Council for its replies to make up quite a long report. They will come later.... Meanwhile... etc." [3]
The General Council does not know of any article, either in the Rules or in the Regulations, which would oblige it to enter into correspondence or into polemic with the Égalité or to provide "replies" to "questions" from newspapers. The Federal Council of Romance Switzerland alone represents the branches of Romance Switzerland vis-à-vis the General Council. When the Romance Federal Council addresses requests or reprimands to us through the only legitimate channel, that is to say through its secretary, the General Council will always be ready to reply. But the Romance Federal Council ^ has no right either to abdicate its functions in favour of the Égalité and the Progrès, or to let these newspapers usurp its functions. Generally speaking, the General Council's correspondence with the national and local committees cannot be published without greatly prejudicing the Association's general interests. Consequently, if other organs of the International were to follow the example of the Progrès and the Égalité, the General Council would be faced with the alternative of either discrediting itself publicly by its silence or violating its obligations by replying publicly.[3]
The Égalité joins the Progrès (a paper which is not sent to the General Council) in inviting Le Travail (a Paris paper which has not hitherto declared itself an organ of the International, and which is also not sent to the General Council) to demand an explanation from the General Council.b That is almost a League of Public Welfare.[119]
2) Now, assuming that the questions put by the Egalité come from the Romance Federal Council, we shall answer them on condition that such questions do not reach us in such a manner in future.
3) Question of a Bulletin. In the resolutions of the Genevac
Congress, which are inserted in the regulations, it is laid down that the national committees shall send the General Council documents dealing with the proletarian movementd and that the General Council shall thereupon publish a bulletin in the different languages as often as its means permit ("As often as its means permit, the General Council shall publish a report, etc.").e
The General Council's obligation was thus made dependent on conditions that have never been fulfilled. Even the statistical inquiry provided for by the Rules, decided by consecutive General Congresses, and demanded yearly by the General Council, has never been made. No document has been presented to the General Council. As far as the means are concerned, the General Council would have long since ceased to exist had it not been for
a In the manuscript, after the word "publicly", Marx had crossed out the words: "The Progrès (which is not sent to the General Council as it should be in accordance with resolutions thrice adopted by General Congresses) has taken the initiative in usurping the Federal Council's functions."—Ed.
local contributions from England and the personal sacrifices of its members.
Thus, the Regulations passed at the Geneva'' Congress have remained a dead letter.(1)
As regards the Basle Congress, it did not discuss the fulfilment of these existing Regulations. It discussed the possibility of issuing a bulletin in good time and it did not pass any resolution (see the German report published in Basle under the eyes of the Cong-ress(2)).
For the rest, the General Council believes that the purpose of the bulletin is at the moment perfectly fulfilled by the different organs of the International published in the different languages and exchanged among them. It would be absurd to do by costly bulletins what is being done already without any expense. On the other hand, a bulletin which would print what is not contained in the organs of the International would only help our enemies to see behind the scenes.
4) Question of separating the General Council from the Federal Council for England.
Long before the foundation of the Egalité, this proposition was made periodically inside the General Council by one or two of its English members.[12]" It was always rejected almost unanimously.
Although' revolutionary initiative will probably come from France, England alone can serve as the lever for a serious economic Revolution. It is the only country where there are no more peasants and where landed property is concentrated in a few hands. It is the only country where the capitalist form, that is to say combined labour on a large scale under capitalist masters, embraces virtually the whole of production. It is the only country where the great majority of the population consists of WAGES-LABOURERS. It is the only country where the class struggle and the organisation of the working class by the TRADES UNIONS have acquired a certain degree of maturity and universality. It is the only country where, because of its domination on the world market, every revolution in economic matters must immediately affect the whole world. If landlordism and capitalism are classical features in England, on the other hand, the material conditions for their destruction are the most mature here. The General Council now being in the happy position of having its hand directly on this great lever of the proletarian revolution, what folly, we might say even what a crime, to let this lever fall into purely English hands!
T h e English have all the material necessary for the social revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalisation and revolutionary ardour. It is only the General Council that can provide them with this, that can thus accelerate the truly revolutionary movement in this country, and consequently everywhere. T h e great results we have already achieved in this respect are attested to by the most intelligent and influential of the newspapers of the ruling classes, as e.g. The Pall Mall Gazette, Saturday Review, The Spectator and The Fortnightly Review, to say nothing of the so-called radicals in the COMMONS and the LORDS who, a little while ago, still exerted a great influence on the leaders of the English workers. They accuse us publicly of having poisoned and almost extinguished the English spirit of the working class and of having pushed it into revolutionary socialism.
The only way to bring about this change is to act like the General Council of the International Association. As the General Council we can initiate measures (e.g., the founding of the Land and Labour Leaguev21) which later, in the process of their execution, will appear to the public as spontaneous movements of the English working class.
If a Federal Council were formed apart from the General Council, what would be the immediate results?
Placed between the General Council and the General Council of 1 rades Unions',*[22] the Federal Council would have no authority whatever. On the other hand, the General Council of the International would lose control of the great lever. If we had preferred the showman's chatter to serious and unostentatious work, we would perhaps have committed the mistake of replying publicly the Égalités question as to why the General Council permits "such a burdensome combination of functions".
England cannot be treated simply as a country along with other countries. It must be treated as the metropolis of capital.
5) Question of the General Council Resolution on the Irish Amnesty:' If England is the BULWARK of landlordism and European capitalism, the only point where official England can be struck a great blow is Ireland.
In the first place, Ireland is the BULWARK of English landlordism. If it fell in Ireland, it would fall in England. In Ireland this is a h u n d r e d times easier because the economic struggle there is concentrated exclusively on landed property, because this struggle is at the same time national, and because the people there are more revolutionary and more exasperated than in England. Landlordism in Ireland is maintained solely by the English army. The moment the forced union between the two countries 12S ends, a social revolution will immediately break out in Ireland, though in outmoded forms. English landlordism would not only lose a great source of its wealth, but also its greatest moral force, i.e., that of representing the domination of England over Ireland. On the other hand, by maintaining the power of its landlords in Ireland, the English proletariat makes them invulnerable in England itself.
In the second place, the English bourgeoisie has not only exploited Irish poverty to keep down the working class in England by forced immigration of poor Irishmen, but it has also divided the proletariat into two hostile camps. The revolutionary fire of the Celtic worker does not go well with the solid but slow nature of the Anglo-Saxon worker. On the contrary, in all the big industrial centres in England there is profound antagonism between the Irish proletarian and the English proletarian. The average English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers wages and the STANDARD OF LIFE. He feels national and religious antipathies for him. He regards him somewhat like the POOR WHITES of the Southern States of North America regarded black slaves. This antagonism among the proletarians of England is artificially nourished and kept up by the bourgeoisie. It knows that this scission is the true secret of maintaining its power.
Moreover, this antagonism is reproduced on the other side of the Atlantic. The Irish, chased from their native soil by the bulls and the sheep, reassemble in North America where they constitute a huge, ever-growing section of the population. Their only thought, their only passion, is hatred for England. The English and American governments (that is to say, the classes they represent) play on these feelings in order to perpetuate the covert struggle between the United States and England. They thereby prevent a sincere and serious alliance between the working classes of both sides of the Atlantic, and, consequently, their common emancipation.
Furthermore, Ireland is the only pretext the English Government has for retaining a big standing army, which, if need be, as has happened before, can be used against the English workers after having had its drill in Ireland.
Lastly, England today is seeing a repetition of what happened on a monstrous scale in ancient Rome. Any people that oppresses another people forges its own chains.
Thus, the position of the International Association with regard to the Irish question is very clear. Its first concern is to advance the social revolution in England. To this end a great blow must be struck in Ireland.[3]
The General Council's resolutions on the Irish amnestyb serve only as an introduction to other resolutions[124] which will affirm that, quite apart from international justice, it is a precondition to the emancipation of the English working class to transform the present forced union (i.e., the enslavement of Ireland) into equal and free confederation if possible, into complete separation if need be.c
For the rest, the naïve doctrines of the Égalité and the Progrès about the CONNEXION, or rather, the NON-CONNEXION, between the social movement and the political movement have never, as far as we know, been recognised by any of our International congresses. They run counter to our Rules. The Rules say [125]:
"That the economical emancipation of the working classes is therefore the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means.,,d
The words "as a means"e were omitted in the French translation made in 1864 by the Paris Committee.[1] When questioned by the General Council, the Paris Committee excused itself by the difficulties of its political situation.[8]
a After the words "in Ireland" the manuscript has the following words crossed out: "and the Irish economic-national struggle must be exploited in all ways possible".— Éd.
b See this volume, pp. 3-4 and 83.— Ed. 0 After "if need be" the following words are crossed out in the manuscript: "The difficulties and even personal dangers which face General Council members who take such a stand may be judged by the fact that The Bee-Hive in its reporting of our meetings not only omitted our resolutions but did not even mention the fact that the General Council is concerned with the Irish question. The General Council was thus obliged to print its resolutions and send them to all TRADES UNIONS separately. The oracles of L'Égalité are now at liberty to say that it is a 'local political movement', that, in their opinion, a Eederal Council should deal with such bagatelle, and that there is no need to 'better the existing governments'. LÉgalité might just as well have said that we intend to 'better the Belgian Government' by denouncing its massacres. "— Ed.
There are other mutilations of the authentic text. Thus the first clause of the preamble to the Rules reads: "The struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means ... a struggle ... for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class rule"a
The Paris translation has "equal rights and duties", i.e., it reproduces a general phrase which may be found virtually in all democratic manifestoes of the last hundred years and which means different things in the mouth of different classes, but leaves out the concrete demand: "the abolition of all class rule"}
Further, in the second clause of the preamble to the Rules we read: "That the economical subjection of the man of labour to the monopoliser of the means of labour, that is, the sources of life, etc."
The Paris translation substitutes the word "capital" for "the means of labour, that is, the sources of life", an expression which includes the land as well as the other means of labour.
The original authentic text was, however, restored in the French translation published in pamphlet form in Brussels by the Rive Gauche (1866).[126]
6) Liebknecht-Schweitzer Question. The. Egalité writes:
"Both these groups belong to the International. " That is incorrect. The Eisenachers' group (which the Progrès and the Egalité would like to turn into Citizen Liebknecht's group) belongs to the International. Schweitzer's group does not belong to it.c
Schweitzer himself exp'ainëd at length in his newspaper (Social-Demokrat) why the Lassallean organisation could not join the International without destroying itself.d Without realising it, he was speaking the truth. His artificial sectarian organisation is opposed to the historical and spontaneous organisation of the working class.
The Progrès and the Egalité have summoned the General Council to state publicly its "opinion" on the personal differences between Liebknecht and Schweitzer. Since Citizen Johann Philipp
Becker (who is slandered as much as Liebknecht in Schweitzer's papere) is a member of the Égalité's editorial board, it seems most strange that its editors are not better informed about the facts. They should have known that Liebknecht, in the Demokratisches Wochenblatt? publicly invited Schweitzer to accept the General Council as arbiter of their differences,*" and that Schweitzer no less publicly refused to acknowledge the authority of the General Council.0
For its part the General Council has employed all possible means to put an end to this scandal.d It instructed its Secretary for Germanye to correspond with Schweitzer; this has been done for two years, but all attempts by the Council have broken down in the face of Schweitzer's firm resolution to preserve at all cost his autocratic power together with the sectarian organisation. It is up to the General Council to determine the favourable moment when its public intervention in this quarrel will be more useful than damaging.
7) Since the Égalité's accusations are public and could be considered as emanating from the Romance Committee of Geneva, the General Council is to communicate this reply to all committees corresponding with it.
By order of the General Council
ORGANE DES SECTIONS BELGES DE L'ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONALE DES TRAVAILLEURS.
P A K A I S S A N T L E S A M E D I .
Endnotes
[118] 18 Marx wrote this circular letter in connection with the campaign launched by Bakunin and his followers against the General Council in November 1869. At the Basle Congress of the IWMA, Bakunin had tried to take over the leadership of the International by transferring the General Council from London to Geneva. Having failed in this, he changed his tactics and launched an open campaign against the General Council. A group of Bakunin's followers gained the majority in L'Egalité. The article "Le Bulletin du Conseil Général" (L'Égalité, No. 42, November 6, 1869) accused the General Council of violating clauses 2 and 3 of the Rules envisaging the publication by the Council of an information bulletin on the condition of workers in different countries. The article "L'Organisation de l'Internationale" (L'Égalité, No. 43, November 13, 1869) proposed that a special Federal Council for England should be set up, allegedly to help the General Council in fulfilling its functions as regards the general affairs of the International. The leading article "Les Parties Politiques à Genève et l'Internationale" (L'Égalité, 45, November 27, 1869) preached abstention from politics and referred to the distorted French translahon of the General Rules. Finally, the leading article "Réflexions" (L'Égalité, No. 47, December 11, 1869) contained comments on the General Council's resolution against Gladstone (see this volume, p. 83), with sharp attacks on the Council for its position in the Irish question. Similar attacks on the General Council were made by another pro-Bakunin newspaper, Le Progrès. The Egalité and Progrès attacks were first discussed at the General Council meeting of December 14, 1869. The text of the circular letter to the Federal Council of Romance Switzerland, drawn up by Marx, was approved by the Council at an extraordinary meeting on January 1, 1870 and sent out to all sections of the International. Meanwhile, early in January 1870, before it received the circular, the Romance Federal Council launched a decisive campaign against the Bakuninists and managed to have Perron, Robin, and other Alliance supporters withdrawn from the Egalité editorial board (for details see this volume, p. 123). The circular letter was originally not intended for publication, but part of it was published in 1872 in the confidential circular Fictitious Splits in the International drawn up by Marx and Engels. The full text of the letter was first printed in Die Neue Zeit, Vol. 2, No. 15, July 12, 1902. There are several copies of the text: three in manuscript (one made by Mrs. Marx and corrected by Marx, another by Jung, and the third by Dupont, which is now in the Lyons municipal archives). There is also Marx's own manuscript, attached to his letter of March 28, 1870, to Ludwig Kugelmann and known as "Confidential Communication" (see this volume, pp. 112-24). The latter version was published in Die Neue Zeit. In this volume the circular letter is printed from Mrs. Marx's copy corrected by Marx (Marx's insertions were made on separate sheets) and has been collated with his manuscript as sent to Kugelmann and with Jung's copy. The circular letter was first published in English in Letters to Dr. Kugelmann by Karl Marx, Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, Moscow-Leningrad, 1934, pp. 105-09.
[119] Fhe reference is presumably to the League of Public Welfare—an association of pacifist organisations, heterogeneous in composition and views, founded in France in 1863 by the petty-bourgeois journalist Edmond Potonié. Later it merged with the League of Peace and Freedom (see Note 56).
[12] The Fourth Annual Report of the General Council (the first report was submitted to the London Conference of the International in September 1865) was written by Marx (approved by the General Council on September 1, 1868) for the Third Congress of the International held in Brussels on September 6-13, 1868. The Brussels Congress was attended by nearly 100 delegates representing workers from Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and Spain. Marx, who took an active part in the preparations for the Congress, was absent. However, he helped the General Council representatives there, since he was kept informed almost daily by Friedrich Lessner. The French text of the report drawn up by Marx was read at the Congress by Dupont on September 7. The Congress adopted an important resolution on the necessity for transferring railways, mineral resources, collieries and mines, woods and arable land into public property. This resolution showed that most of the French and Belgian Proudhonists had become supporters of collectivism, and it marked the victory of proletarian socialism over petty-bourgeois reformism within the International. The Congress also adopted the resolutions (drawn up by Marx) on the eight-hour working day, on the use of machinery under capitalism and on the attitude towards the congress of the bourgeois-pacifist League of Peace and Freedom (see present edition, Vol. 20, p. 204), and a resolution, moved by Lessner for the German delegates, recommending the workers of all countries to study Marx's Capital and secure its translation from German into other languages. The fourth annual report was included in the official French edition of the minutes of the Brussels Congress— Troisième congrès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs. Compte rendu officiel. Supplement to Le Peuple Belge, September 8, 1868 and reprinted in La Liberté, No. 64, September 13, 1868. The English text, written by Marx, was published in Eccarius' correspondence "International Working Men's Congress" in The Times, No. 26225, September 9, 1868 and reprinted in The Bee-Hive, No. 361, September 12, 1868. The German text of the report, also written by Marx, was printed in Der Social-Demokrat, No. 106, September 11, the Demokratisches Wochenblatt, No. 38 (supplement), September 12 and Hermann, No. 506, September 12, 1868. The report was also published in a number of newspapers and books in Germany, Britain, Belgium, Switzerland and France. Abridged translations appeared in Russian and Flemish. In this volume the annual report is reproduced from The Times and checked with the handwritten copy in German made by Mrs. Marx and slightly differing from the English text. The main discrepancies are indicated in footnotes,
[22] From November 1805 until the formation of the Eisenach Party in 1869, the Central Committee of German sections in Switzerland headed by Johann Philipp Becker was an organising centre for sections uniting German workers not only in Switzerland but also in Germany, Austria, the L'nited States and countries where German émigré workers lived. Becker's activities, in particular his Vorbote (on the significance of this monthly see Mrs. Marx's letter to Becker of January 29, 1866, present edition, Vol. 42), did much to spread the ideas of the International among the German workers at a time when conditions for establishing an organisation in Germany itself were still lacking.
[124] Yhe position of the International on the Irish question, as expounded in this document, essentially anticipated the resolution on item 2 of. the programme for the debate on this question in the General Council as proposed by Marx early in November 1869, namely, on the item defining the attitude of the English working class to the liberation struggle of the Irish people. Even though other official documents of the International were soon to remove the need for a special resolution on this issue, Marx stuck to his idea of continuing the debate on the Irish question in the General Council. Circumstances hindered this, notably Marx's protracted illness which prevented him from attending Council meetings regularly in the winter and spring of 1870. Later, more urgent matters arose, and in July 1870 the Franco-Prussian war broke out, which absorbed the attention of the Council. The Council therefore confined itself to the decisions already adopted on the Irish question, p. 89
[125] Here and below, Marx compares the texts of the English and French editions: Address and Provisional Rules of the International Working Men's Association (London, 1864) and Congrès Ouvrier. Association Internationale des Travailleurs. Règlement Provisoire (Paris, 1864) which contains Proudhonist distortions of the preamble to the International's Provisional Rules. For details concerning the various publications of the Rules, see present edition, Vol. 20 (notes 1 and 351).
[1] In the autumn of 1867 the General Council of the International Working Men's Association launched a widespread campaign among the English workers in support of the Irish national liberation movement led by the Fenians. The memorial written by Marx was an integral part of this campaign. The Fenians were Irish revolutionaries who named themselves after the "Féne"— a name of the ancient population of Ireland. Their first organisations appeared in the 1850s in the USA among the Irish immigrants and later in Ireland itself. The secret Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, as the organisation was known in the early 1860s, aimed at establishing an independent Irish republic by means of an armed uprising. The Fenians, who expressed the interests of the Irish peasantry, came chiefly from the urban petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia and believed in conspiracy tactics. The British Government attempted to suppress the Fenian movement by severe police reprisals. On September 18, 1867, the Fenians made an armed attack on a prison van in an attempt to liberate Kelly and Deasy, two of their leaders. The latter managed to escape but a policeman was killed during the clash. Five Irishmen (Maguire, Condon, Larkin, Allen and O'Brien) were charged with murder and brought to trial. Although there was no direct evidence, they were sentenced to death. Maguire was subsequently pardoned, and Condon, as an American citizen, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. The others were executed. The Fenian trial in Manchester aroused a storm of protest in Ireland and England. On the insistence of Marx, the General Council of the International began, on November 19, a discussion on the Irish question during which the leaders of the international proletarian organisation expressed their solidarity with the struggle of the Irish people for independence and condemned the position of the reformist trade union leaders who, in the wake of the English bourgeois radicals, denied the right of the Fenians to resort to revolutionary methods in the struggle. The discussion was scheduled to continue on November 26 (see this volume, pp. 189-93), but when the news of the conviction was received, the General Council convened a special meeting on November 20 and addressed a memorial to the Home Secretary asking for the commutation of the death sentence. The British Government ignored the memorial. Because of opposition from the trade union leaders, the English labour press did not publish the memorial in its original wording. A report on the special meeting of the General Council, published in The Bee-Hive, No. 319, November 23, 1867, only summarised it, and named the General Council members who had signed it. The French translation was published by Le Courrier français, No. 163, November 24. In English the memorial was first published in full in The General Council of the First International. 1866-1868, Moscow, 1964. This document is also preserved in the form of the manuscript copy made by Mrs. Marx which fully coincides with the text entered into the Minute Book. Written as an article, this copy was apparently to be sent to the press. In this volume the memorial is reproduced from this copy.
[8] s The question of machinery and its effects under capitalism was raised by the General Council on January 28, 1868 and was to go on the agenda of the Brussels Congress. It was initially discussed by the General Council at its meetings of July 28 and August 4, 1868. The discussion was opened by Marx who put forward the basic ideas developed by him in Volume One of Capital, chapter "Machinery and Modern Industry" (for the record of Marx's speech see this volume, pp. 382-84). Summing up the discussion on August 4, Marx proposed that the General Council should record its conclusion in the form of a resolution. The resolution was drawn up by Marx and adopted at the next Council meeting, on August 11. At the Brussels Congress this resolution was moved by Georg Eccarius at the session of September 9, 1868, and became part of the preamble of the Congress resolution. At the same session, Friedrich Lessner read some extracts from Capital to substantiate Marx's stand on this question. The resolution was published in English in The Times, No. 26229, September 14, 1868, in Eccarius' report of this Congress session; in The Bee-Hive, No. 362, September 19, 1868, and in a special pamphlet published in London in 1869: The International Working Men's Association. Resolutions of the Congress of Geneva, 1866, and the Congress of Brussels, 1868; in French it was printed in: a special supplement to Le Peuple Belge, No. 392, September 11, La Liberté, No. 64, September 13, La Cigale, No. 38, September 20, La Tribune du Peuple, No. 10, November 8, 1868 and L'Égalité, No. 14, April 24, 1869; in German the resolution appeared in the Demokratisches Wochenblatt, No. 38, September 19, 1868 and in the Arbeiter-Zeitung (New York), No. 28, August 16, 1873. It was included in various other editions in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian.
[126] Marx refers to the French translation of the Provisional Rules made by Charles Longuet and published in the pamphlet Manifeste de VAssociation Internationale des Travailleurs suivi du Règlement provisoire issued in Brussels in summer 1866 by the newspaper La Rive Gauche.
[3] Marx wrote this item on the basis of a letter from Johann Baptist Schweitzer dated April 29, 1868. The item was included in the report of the General Council meeting of May 12, 1868 published in The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 344, May 16, 1868, but is not to be found in the Minute Book. Informing Engels of Schweitzer's letter, Marx wrote to him on May 4, 1868 that he intended "to use this question in the interests of the Party", and insisted on an inquiry into the condition of the workers employed in the iron trade of the Rhine Province (see this letter and Marx's letter to Engels of May 7 and the latter's reply of May 6-7, 1868, present edition, Vol. 43).