TO THE MEMBERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION
IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES
In the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association, of November, 1864, we said:—"If the emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfil that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices and squandering in piratical wars the people's blood and treasure?" (1) We defined the foreign policy aimed at by the International in these words: "Vindicate the simple laws of morals and justice, which ought to govern the relations of private individuals, as the laws paramount of the intercourse of nations."(2)
No wonder that Louis Bonaparte, who usurped his power by exploiting the war of classes in France, and perpetuated(3) it by periodical wars abroad, should from the first have treated the International as a dangerous foe. On the eve of the plebiscite he ordered a raid on the members of the Administrative Committees of the International Working Men's Association throughout France, at Paris, Lyons, Rouen, Marseilles, Brest, etc., on the pretext that the International was a secret society dabbling in a complot for his assassination, a pretext soon after exposed in its full absurdity by his own judges.[2] What was the real crime of the French branches of the International? They told the French people publicly and emphatically that voting the plebiscite was voting despotism at home and war abroad.(4) It has been, in fact, their work that in all the great towns, in all the industrial centres of France, the working class rose like one man to reject the plebiscite. Unfortunately the balance was turned by the heavy ignorance of the rural districts. The Stock Exchanges, the Cabinets, the ruling classes and the press of Europe celebrated the plebiscite as a signal victory of the French Emperor. over the French working class; and it was the signal for the assassination, not of an individual, but of nations.
The war plot of July, 1870, is but an amended edition of the coup d'état of December, 1851.[3] At first view the thing seemed so absurd that France would not believe in its real good earnest. It rather believed the deputy denouncing the ministerial war talk as a mere stock-jobbing trick.[3] When, on July 15th, war was at last officially announced to the Corps Législatif? the whole opposition refused to vote the preliminary subsidies, even Thiers branded it as "detestable"0; all the independent journals of Paris condemned it, and, wonderful to relate, the provincial press joined in almost unanimously.
Meanwhile, the Paris members of the International had again set to work. In the Réveil of July 12th they published their manifesto "to the workmen of all nations", from which we extract the following few passages:
"Once more," they say, "on the pretext of the European equilibrium, of national honour, the peace of the world is menaced by political ambitions. French, German, Spanish workmen! Let our voices unite in one cry of reprobation against war!... War for a question of preponderance or a dynasty, can, in the eyes of workmen, be nothing but a criminal absurdity. In answer to the warlike proclamations of those who exempt themselves from the impost of blood, and find in public misfortunes a source of fresh speculations, we protest, we who want peace, labour and liberty!... Brothers of Germany! Our division would only result in the complete triumph of despotism on both sides of the Rhine.... Workmen of all countries! Whatever may for the present become of our common efforts, we, the members of the International Working Men's Association, who know of no frontiers, we send you as a pledge of indissoluble solidarity the good wishes and the salutations of the workmen of France."
This manifesto of our Paris section was followed by numerous similar French addresses, of which we can here only quote the declaration of Neuilly-sur-Seine, published in the Marseillaise of July 22nd:
"The war, is it just?—No! The war, is it national?—No! It is merely dynastic. In the name of humanity, of democracy, and the true interests of France, we adhere completely and energetically to the protestation of the International against the war."[3]
These protestations expressed the true sentiments of the French working people, as was soon shown by a curious incident. The Band of the 10th of December, first organised under the presidency of Louis Bonaparte, having been masqueraded into blouses and let loose on the streets of Paris, there to perform the contortions of war fever,[4] the real workmen of the Faubourgs came forward with public peace demonstrations so overwhelming that Piétri, the Prefect of Police, thought it prudent to at once stop all further street politics, on the plea that the realb Paris people had given sufficient vent to their pent up patriotism and exuberant war enthusiasm.0
Whatever may be the incidents of Louis Bonaparte's war with Prussia, the death knell of the Second Empire has already sounded at Paris. It will end as it began, by a parody. But let us not forget that it is the Governments and the ruling classes of Europe who enabled Louis Bonaparte to play during eighteen years the ferocious farce of the Restored Empire.
On the German side, the war is a war of defence, but who put Germany to the necessity of defending herself? Who enabled Louis Bonaparte to wage war upon her? Prussia! It was Bismarck who conspired with that very same Louis Bonaparte for the purpose of crushing popular opposition at home, and annexing Germany to the Hohenzollern dynasty. If the battle of Sadowa had been lost instead of being won, French battalions would have overrun Germany as the allies of Prussia.[5] After her victory did Prussia dream one moment of opposing a free Germany to an enslaved France? Just the contrary. While carefully preserving all the native beauties of her old system, she superadded all the tricks of the Second Empire, its real despotism and its mock democrat-ism, its political shams and its financial jobs, its high-flown talk and its low legerdemains. The Bonapartist regime, which till then only flourished on one side of the Rhine, had now got its counterfeit on the other. From such a state of things, what else could result but war?
If the German working class allow the present war to lose its strictly defensive character and to degenerate into a war against the French people, victory or defeat will prove alike disastrous. All the miseries that befell Germany after her (5) war of independence[6]
will revive with accumulated intensity.
The principles of the International are, however, too widely spread and too firmly rooted amongst the German working class to apprehend such a sad consummation. The voices of the French workmen have re-echoed from Germany. A mass meeting of workmen, held at Brunswick on July 16th, expressed its full concurrence with the Paris manifesto, spurned the idea of national antagonism to France, and wound up its resolutions with these words:
"We are enemies of all wars, but above all of dynastic wars.... With deep sorrow and grief we are forced to undergo a defensive war as an unavoidable evil; but we call, at the same time, upon the whole German working class to render the recurrence of such an immense social misfortune impossible by vindicating for the peoples themselves the power to decide on peace and war, and making them masters of their own destinies. " (6)
At Chemnitz, a meeting of delegates representing 50,000 Saxon workers adopted unanimously a resolution to this effect[7]:
"In the name of the German Democracy, and especially of the workmen forming the Democratic Socialist Party, we declare the present war to be exclusively dynastic... We are happy to grasp the fraternal hand stretched out to us by the workmen of France.... Mindful of the watchword of the International Working Men's Association: Proletarians of all countries, unite, we shall never forget that the workmen of all countries are our friends and the despots of all countries our enemies." (7)
The Berlin branch of the International has also replied to the Paris manifesto:
"We," they say, "join with heart and hand your protestation.... Solemnly we promise that neither the sound of the trumpet, nor the roar of the cannon, neither victory nor defeat shall divert us from our common work for the union of the children of toil(8) of all countries. " (9)
Be it so! In the background of this suicidal strife looms the dark figure of Russia. It is an ominous sign that the signal for the present war should have been given at the moment when the Moscovite Government had just finished its strategical lines of railway and was already massing troops in the direction of the Pruth. Whatever sympathy the Germans may justly claim in a war of defence against Bonapartist aggression, they would forfeit at once by allowing the Prussian Government to call for, or accept, the help of the Cossacks. Let them remember that, after their war of independence against the first Napoleon, Germany lay for generations prostrate at the feet of the Czar.
The English working class stretch the hand of fellowship to the French and German working people. They feel deeply convinced that whatever turn the impending horrid war may take, the alliance of the working classes of all countries will ultimately kill war. The very fact that while official France and Germany are rushing into a fratricidal feud, the workmen of France and Germany send each other messages of peace and goodwill[3]; this great fact, unparalleled in the history of the past, opens the vista of a brighter future. It proves that in contrast to old society, with its economical miseries and its political delirium, a new society is springing up, whose International rule will be Peace, because its national ruler will be everywhere the same—Labour] The Pio-neer of that new society is the International Working Men's Association.[13]
* * *
The General Council:
Lessner, Fred, hintern, W. Legreulier Maurice Zevy Milner, George Mottershead, Thomas Murray, Charles
Applegarth, Robert Boon, Martin J. Bradnick, Fred. Stepney, Cowell Hales, John Hales, William Harris, George Odger, George Shepherd, Joseph Parnell, James Stoll Pfänder Schmutz Rühl Townshend, W.
Corresponding Secretaries:
Eugène Dupont, for France Karl Marx, for Germany A. Serraillier, for Belgium, Holland and Spain Hermann Jung, for Switzerland Giovanni Bora, for Italy Anton Zabicki, for Poland James Cohen, for Denmark /. G. Eccarius, for United States
Benjamin Lucraft, Chairman
John Weston, Treasurer /. George Eccarius, General Secretary
Office: 256, High Holborn, W.C.,
July 23rd, 1870
Approved at the meeting of the General Council on July 26, 1870
Published as a leaflet in English in July 1870, as well as in the form of leaflets and in periodicals in German, French and Russian in August-September 1870
Endnotes
[1] The first Address (The General Council of the International Workingmen's Association on the War ) was written by Marx between July 19 and 23, 1870. On July 19, 1870, when the Franco-Prussian war broke out, the General Council instructed Marx to draft an address on the war, of which Marx informed Engels in his letter of July 20 (see present edition, Vol. 44). The Address was adopted by the Standing Committee of the General Council on July 23, and then unanimously approved at the Council meeting on July 26, 1870. It was first published in English, in the London Pall Mall Gazette, No. 1702, July 28, 1870, and a few days later it appeared as a leaflet in 1,000 copies. The Address was reprinted, in full or in part, by a number of British provincial newspapers. As the first edition of the Address was quickly sold out, on August 2, 1870, the General Council resolved to have additional 1,000 copies printed. In September that year, the first Address was published in English again, together with the General Council's second Address on the Franco-Prussian war. In this edition, Marx corrected the misprints that had occurred in the first edition of the First Address. On August 9, the General Council appointed a commission to have the first Address translated into German and French and then distributed. The commission included Marx, Jung, Serraillier and Eccarius. The first German translation of the Address, made by Wilhelm Liebknecht, appeared in Der Volksstaat (Leipzig), No. 63, August 7, 1870. Marx edited it heavily and made a new translation of more than half the text. The new German translation of the Address was published in Der Vorbote (Geneva), No. 8, August 1870, and as a leaflet. Then it appeared in the Arbeiter Union (New York), August 12; Die Tagwacht (Zurich), No. 26, August 13; the Volkswille (Vienna), No. 26, August 13, and the Proletarier (Augsburg), No. 56, August 21. By the twentieth anniversary of the Paris Commune in 1891, Engels had the General Council's first and second addresses published in the book K. Marx, Der Bürgerkrieg in Frankreich, 3rd German edition, Berlin, 1891, Vorwärts Publishing House. The translation of the two addresses for this edition was made by Louise Kautsky and edited by Engels. The French translation of the Address appeared in L'Égalité (Geneva), No. 28, August 6, 1870; L'Internationale (Brussels), No. 82, August 7, 1870, and Le Mirabeau (Verviers), No. 55, August 7, 1870. The Address was also published as a leaflet in the French translation made by the General Council's commission. The first Russian translation of the first Address was published in Narodnoye Dyelo (People's Cause) (Geneva), No. 6-7, August-September 1870. In this volume, the first Address is reproduced from the first edition of the English leaflet, checked against its second edition and the text of the German 1870 authorised edition and that of 1891. The most important textual differences are marked by footnotes.
[2] In May 1870, Napoleon Ill's government held a plebiscite in an attempt to strengthen the tottering regime of the Second Empire. The issues put to the vote were formulated in such a way that disapproval of the policy pursued by the Second Empire could not be expressed without opposing democratic reforms at the same time. Despite this demagogic manoeuvre, the plebiscite showed the growing opposition: 1.5 million voted against the government, 1.9 million abstained. During the preparations for the plebiscite, the government organised a broad campaign of repressions against the working class movement, scaring the middle-class sections with the threat of a revolution. On April 24, 1870, the Paris Federation of the International and the Federal Chamber of Workers' Trades Associations in Paris issued a manifesto exposing the Bonapartist plebiscite manoeuvre and called on the workers to abstain from voting. On the eve of the plebiscite many members of the Paris Federation were arrested on a charge faked by the police of plotting to assassinate Napoleon III (see present edition, Vol. 43, Engels' letter to Marx of May 8, 1870). The government used this charge for organising a broad campaign of persecution and harassment of the International's members in various French towns. In this connection, the General Council,at its meeting on May 3, 1870, adopted the Address "Concerning the Persecution of the Members of the French Sections", written by Marx (see present edition, Vol. 21), which exposed the Bonapartist police's libellous charges. At the third trial of the Paris Federation members, held from June 22 to July 5, 1870, the false character of these charges was fully disclosed. Nevertheless, a number of members of the International in France were sentenced to imprisonment merely for affiliation to the International Working Men's Association. Persecution of the International in France caused mass protests by the working class. pp. 3, 273
[4] A reference to the Society of December 10 (called so after Louis Bonaparte, the Society's patron, who, on December 10, 1848, was elected President of the French Republic)—a secret Bonapartist Society, founded in 1848, mainly of declassed elements, political adventurists, militarists, etc. Though the Society was formally dissolved in November 1850, its members continued to conduct their Bonapartist propaganda and were instrumental in effecting the coup d'état of December 2, 1851 (see Note 3). A detailed description of this Society can be found in Marx's work The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (see present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 148-51). A chauvinist demonstration in support of Louis Bonaparte's predatory plans took place on July 14, 1870.
[5] A reference to Bismarck's policy during the preparations for and the unleashing of the Austro-Prussian war of 1866. Bismarck used the contradictions between Austria and France to secure Napoleon Ill's neutrality in this war. The war ended in a victory for Prussia and led to the formation of the North German Confederation (see Note 9), under the supremacy of militarist Prussia. This was a major step towards the unification of Germany under the auspices of the Prussian monarchy. The decisive battle of the Austro-Prussian war was fought on July 3, 1866, not far from the village of Sadowa, at the town of Königgrätz (Hradec Krâlové). The Austrian troops suffered a major defeat. On the course of the Austro-Prussian war, see Engels' series of articles "Notes on the War in Germany" (present edition, Vol. 20).
[6] This refers to the war waged by the German people against Napoleon I's rule in 1813-14.
[7] The workers' meetings in Brunswick and Chemnitz on July 16 and 17, 1870 respectively, were organised by the leaders of the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party in protest against the predatory policy of the ruling classes.
[13] The Zouaves (from the name of an Algerian tribe)—French light infantry first formed in 1830 as colonial troops. They were originally composed of Algerians and French colonists, but later of Frenchmen only, while Algerians were formed into special regiments of riflemen (see Turcos below). Three Zouave regiments of the MacMahon corps took part in the war of 1870-71. Turcos—French light infantry formed in the early 1840s of native inhabitants of Algeria, except the officers and partly non-commissioned officers.
[3] A reference to the coup d'état of December 2, 1851, which gave birth to the Second Empire.