16. F. Engels. To the Editors of II Proletario Italiano
16. F. Engels. To the Editors of II Proletario Italiano[51]
Citizens,
In your issue No. 39 you publish an announcement by Turin workers which contains the following:
"We hereby publicly announce that the decision of the Grand Council in London to subordinate socialism to politics was communicated to us by the editors of the Proletario immediately after it was made and that the decision was not of an official nature since it was withdrawn by the Grand Council in view of the fact that many European associations would have rejected it outright, as would we."
This assertion obliges the General Council to declare:
1) that it never took any decision to subordinate socialism to politics,
2) that it therefore could not have withdrawn such a decision, 3) that no European or American association could reject such a decision, or has indeed rejected any other decision of the General Council.
The position of the General Council as regards the political action of the proletariat is sufficiently well defined. It is defined:
1) By the General Rules, in which the fourth paragraph of the preamble runs: "That the economical emancipation of the working classes is the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means."(1)
2) By the text of the Inaugural Address of the Association (1864), this official and essential commentary on the Rules, which says:
"The lords of land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defence and perpetuation of their economical monopolies. So far from promoting, they will continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labour... To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes."[3]
3) By the resolution of the Congress of Lausanne (1867) to the effect that: "The social emancipation of the workmen is inseparable from their political emancipation."a
4) By Resolution IX of the London Conference (September 1871) which, in agreement with the above, reminds the members of the International that in the struggle of the working classes their economical movement and their political action are indissolubly united.b
The Council has always followed the line of conduct thus prescribed and will do so in future. It therefore declares the above communication made by persons unknown to the editors of the Proletario to be false and slanderous.
By order and in the name of the General Council
Secretary for Italy,
F. E.
P. S. I have just received La Révolution Sociale from Geneva which says that a small group in the Jura has rejected the decisions of the London Conference.[32] The General Council has received no official communication as yet. As soon as it does, it will take the necessary measures.
November 29, 1871
1 ranslated rrom the Italian
Endnotes
[51] Since the late 1850s, the nine-hour working day had become a major demand of the English workers. In May 1871, a big strike of the building and engineer-ing workers headed by the Nine Hours' League, started in Newcastle. Burnett, the Chairman of the League, requested the General Council of the International to help resist the importation of strike breakers. The General Council sent its two members, Georg Eccarius and James Cohn, to the Continent to explain the importance of the struggle in Newcastle. Thus the importation was checked. In October the strike in Newcastle ended with victory for the workers; a 54-hour working week was introduced.
[3] Jules Gottraux, a Swiss-born subject of Great Britain and a member of the International, was detained by the French police on the French-Swiss frontier on September 30, 1866, when he was returning to London from Switzerland. The police confiscated letters, printed matter, and other material entrusted to him by the International's leaders in Geneva for delivery to the General Council. The seized documents included the preliminary report on the work of the Geneva Congress which had been drawn up by Council member Joseph Card and published in French in Geneva as a pamphlet. (Later, this gave rise to rumours that the French authorities had confiscated the Congress minutes, which in fact had bv that time been brought to London by Hermann Jung.) The General Council decided to lodge a complaint about this wanton act and to use the fact publicly to expose the regime of the Second Empire. At the beginning of December, the Council addressed the British Foreign Secretary, requesting him to make a corresponding démarche to the French government, which forced the French authorities to return, on December 21, the materials taken from Gottraux.
[32] A reference to the congress of the Bakuninist Jura Federation in Sonvillier on November 12, 1871 which adopted the "Circulaire à toutes les fédérations de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs". The Sonvillier circular countered the decisions of the London Conference of the International with the anarchist dogmas on political indifferentism and complete autonomy of sections; it also calumniated the General Council of the International. The Bakuninists suggested that all federations should demand an immediate congress to revise the General Rules of the International and to condemn the General Council's actions.