1) In order to avoid any misunderstanding the resolution of the Basle Congress(1) shall be strictly observed, whereby the central councils in the various countries where the Association has regular organisations shall call themselves Federal Councils or Committees of their respective countries, and the local sections or committees shall call themselves sections or committees of their respective areas.
2) Conference instructs the General Council to publish a new edition of the Rules, with authentic translations into French and German printed opposite the English text.(2) All translations into other languages must be approved by the General Council prior to publication.
3) At the suggestion of the General Council, Conference recommends the formation of women's sections among female workers. It is understood that this in no way affects the existence of mixed sections including both sexes.
4) Conference invites the General Council to enforce Clause 5 of the Rules(3) ordering general statistical surveys of the working class, and the resolutions of the Geneva Congress to the same effect.(4) Working men's societies or branches which refuse to provide the information requested shall be reported to the General Council, which shall give a ruling on them.
5) All the delegates appointed by the General Council to special missions shall be entitled to be present and to be heard at all meetings of the federal councils, district or local committees, and local branches, without, however, having a vote.
6) After the closure of Conference no branch shall be considered by the General Council and the Federal Councils to belong to the Association until it has paid to the General Council its contribution of 10c. per member for the current year.
Recorded on September 19 or 20, 1871 Printed according to the manu-
Berlin, 1978 Translated from the French
Endnotes
[258] -phis document contains the preliminary text of the resolutions on organisational and tactical questions moved by Marx on behalf of the General Council and adopted at its meeting on September 12, 1871. The Conference unanimously adopted these resolutions on September 18 and 19, 1871. The text was discussed at the General Council's meeting on October 16, 1871 and finally edited by Marx. The text that is published in this volume was written by Engels in French, and does not fully coincide with the official edition of the Resolutions of the Conference of Delegates of the International Working Men's Association 1871 (see this volume, Assembled at London from 17th to 23rd September pp. 423-31).
[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