Marx: The dispute has its origin in the formation of the Alliance of Socialist Democracy in Geneva, founded by Bakunin and others. He reads the two communications from the General Council to the Alliance of 1868 and March 1869,(1) in the second of which the dissolution of the Alliance and the communication on the number of its sections and their numerical strength are laid down as conditions for their admission into the International. These conditions were never met, the Alliance was never really dissolved; it has always maintained a sort of organisation. The organ of the Geneva sections, L'Egalité, 11 December 1869,(2)
blamed the General Council for failing to do its duty by not replying to its articles,(3) whereupon the General Council replied that it was not its duty to join in newspaper polemics, but that it was prepared to answer requests or complaints made by the Romance Federal Council, and this circular was communicated to all the sections(4); every one of them approved the conduct of the General Council. The Swiss Council disowned L'Egalité, with whose editorial board it had broken off; the editorial board was changed, and subsequently the organ of the Alliance adherents was the Progrès and later the Solidarité. Then came the Congress of Locle where the two parties, the Romance Federation of Geneva and that of the mountains (the Alliance), were openly divided.[257]
The General Council left things as they were, only forbidding the new council to set itself up as a Romance council alongside the other. Guillaume, who had preached abstention from all politics, contrary to our Statutes,(5) the moment the war broke out published a proclamation demanding in the name of the International the formation of an army to come to the aid of France,(6) which is even more contrary to our Statutes.
Recorded by F. Engels Printed according to the manuscript First published, in Russian, in the book The London Conference of the First International, Translated from the French
Endnotes
[256] This speech was made by Marx on September 18, 1871 at the sitting of the commission elected by the London Conference to consider the question of the Bakuninists' splitting activities in the International's sections of Romance Switzerland. Bakunin's followers used several Swiss newspapers to attack the General Council and propagate Bakunin's ideas. At the Congress in La Chaux-de-Fonds, held in April 1870, the Bakuninists won an insignificant majority. The representatives of the Geneva sections refused to comply with the decisions of the Congress. The General Council repudiated the attempts by the Bakuninist Council to take over the powers of a central, leading body of the International in Switzerland. As a result of the sharp criticism of the Bakuninists' activities by Marx and Engels, who were supported by a majority of the International's sections, the leaders of the Alliance did not venture to come out against the General Council openly and, some weeks before the London Conference, they declared the Alliance dissolved, but wanted to keep it secretly. Marx and Engels considered the unmasking of the Bakuninists' activities and ideas, which introduced disorganisation into the working-class movement, to be an important task of the London Conference. The Conference commission expressed its agreement with Marx's conclusions and exposed the attempts on the part of the Bakuninist Robin to justify the Alliance's activities in Switzerland. The question of the Alliance was subsequently discussed at the Conference which, on September 21, approved the report made by Marx on behalf of the commission and unanimously passed the resolutions moved by him (see this volume, pp. 419-22, 429-31). pp. 411, 556
[257] There is a slip of the pen in the manuscript: the reference is actually to the Congress of the Romance Federation of the International in La Chaux-de-Fonds on April 4-6, 1870 (see Note 256). Locle, mentioned in the manuscript, was a centre of Bakuninists' activity.