28. K. Marx and F. Engels. Fictitious Splits in the International. Private Circular from the General Council of the International Working Men's Association
VI 11
transaction of business, such as a treasurer, a general secretary, corresponding secretaries for the different countries, etc.
6. The General Council shall form an international agency between the different national and local groups of the Association, so that the working men in one country be constantly informed of the movements of their class in every other country: that an inquiry into the social state of the different countries of Europe be made simultaneously, and under a common direction[3]; that the questions of general interest mooted in one society be ventilated by all; and that when immediate practical steps should be needed — as, for instance, in case of international quarrels — the action of the associated societies be simultaneous and uniform. Whenever it seems opportune, the General Council shall take the initiative of proposals to be laid before the different national or local societies. To facilitate the communications, the General Council shall publish periodical reports.
7. Since the success of the working men's movement in each country cannot be secured but by the power of union and combination, while, on the other hand, the usefulness of the International General Council must greatly depend on the circumstance whether it has to deal with a few national centres of working men's associations, or with a great number of small and disconnected local societies; the members of the International Association shall use their utmost efforts to combine the disconnected working men's societies of their respective countries into national bodies, represented by central national organs. It is self-understood, however, that the appliance of this rule will depend upon the peculiar laws of each country, and that, apart from legal obstacles, no independent local society shall be precluded from directly corresponding with the General Council.
8. Every section has the right to appoint its own secretary corresponding with the General Council.
9. Everybody who acknowledges and defends the principles of the International Working Men's Association is eligible to become a member. Every branch is responsible for the integrity of the members it admits.
10. Each member of the International Association, on removing his domicile from one country to another, will receive the fraternal support of the Associated Working Men.
11. While united in a perpetual bond of fraternal co-operation, the working men's societies joining the International Association will preserve their existent organizations intact.
12. The present rules may be revised by each Congress, provided that two-thirds of the delegates present are in favour of such revision.
13. Everything not provided for in the present rules will be supplied by special regulations, subject to the revision of every Congress.
A D M I N I S T R A T I V E R E G U L A T I O N S , REVISED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE RESOLUTIONS PASSED BY THE CONGRESSES (1866 TO 1869), AND BY THE LONDON CONFERENCE (1871)
/
The General Congress
1. Every member of the International Working Men's Association has the right to vote at elections for, and is eligible as, a delegate to the General Congress.
2. Every branch, whatever the number of its members, may send a delegate to the Congress.
3. Each delegate has but one vote in the Congress. 4. The expenses of the delegates are to be defrayed by the branches and groups which appoint them.
5. If a branch be unable to send a delegate, it may unite with other neighbouring branches for the appointment of one.
6. Every branch or group consisting of more than 500 members may send an additional delegate for every additional 500 members.
7. Only the delegates of such societies, sections, or groups as form parts of the International, and shall have paid their contributions to the General Council, will in future be allowed to take their seats and to vote at Congresses. Nevertheless, for such countries where the regular establishment of the International may have been prevented by law, delegates of trades' unions and working men's co-operative societies will be allowed to participate in Congress debates on questions of principle, but not to discuss, or to vote on, administrative matters.
8. The sittings of the Congress will be twofold — administrative sittings, which will be private, and public sittings, reserved for the discussion of, and the vote upon, the general questions of the Congress programme.
9. The Congress programme, consisting of questions placed on the order of the day by the preceding Congress, questions added by the General Council, and questions submitted to the acceptance of that Council by the different sections, groups, or their committees, shall be drawn up by the General Council.
Every section, group, or committee which intends to propose, for the discussion of the impending Congress, a question not proposed by the previous Congress, shall give notice thereof to the General Council before the 31st of March.
10. The General Council is charged with the organization of each Congress, and shall, in due time, through the medium of the Federal Councils or Committees, bring the Congress programme to the cognizance of the branches.
11. The Congress will appoint as many committees as there shall be questions submitted to it. Each delegate shall designate the committee upon which he may prefer to sit. Each Committee shall read the memorials presented by the different sections and groups on the special question referred to it. It shall elaborate them into one single report, which alone is to be read at the public sittings. It shall moreover decide which of the above memorials shall be annexed to the official report of the Congress transactions.
12. In its public sittings, the Congress will, in the first instance, occupy itself with the questions placed on the order of the day by the General Council, the remaining questions to be discussed afterwards.
13. All resolutions on questions of principle shall be voted upon by division (appel nominal).
14. Two months[3] at latest before the meeting of the annual Congress, every branch or federation of branches shall transmit to the General Council a detailed report of its proceedings and development during the current year. The General Council shall elaborate these elements into one single report, which alone is to be read before Congress.
/ / The General Council
1. The designation of General Council is reserved for the Central Council of the International Working Men's Association.
The Central Councils of the various countries, where the International is regularly organized, shall designate themselves as Federal Councils, or Federal Committees, with the names of the respective countries attached.
2. The General Council is bound to execute the Congress Resolutions.
3. As often as its means may permit, the General Council shall publish a bulletin or report embracing everything which may be of interest to the International Working Men's Association.
For this purpose it shall collect all the documents to be transmitted by the Federal Councils or Committees of the different countries and such others as it may be able to procure by other means.
The bulletin, drawn up in several languages, shall be sent gratuitously to the Federal Councils or Committees, which are to forward one copy to each of their branches.
In case the General Council should be unable to publish such bulletins, it shall every three months send a written communication to the different Federal Councils or Committees, to be published in the newspapers of their respective countries, and especially in the International organs.
4. Every new branch or society intending to join the International, is bound immediately to announce its adhesion to the General Council.
5. The General Council has the right to admit or to refuse the affiliation of any new branch or group, subject to appeal to the next Congress.
Nevertheless, wherever there exist Federal Councils or Committees, the General Council is bound to consult them before admitting or rejecting the affiliation of a new branch or society within their jurisdiction; without prejudice, however, to its right of provisional decision.
6. The General Council has also the right of suspending, till the meeting of next Congress, any branch of the International.
7. In case of differences arising between societies or branches of the same national group, or between groups of different nationalities, the General Council shall have the right of deciding such differences, subject to appeal to the next Congress, whose decision shall be final.
8. All delegates appointed by the General Council to distinct missions shall have the right to attend, and be heard at, all meetings of Federal Councils or Committees, district and local Committees, and local branches, without, however, being entitled to vote thereat.
9. English, French, and German editions of the General Rules and Regulations are to be reprinted from the official texts published by the General Council.
All versions of the General Rules and Regulations in other languages shall, before publication, be submitted to the General Council for approval.
Ill
Contributions to Be Paid to the General Council
1. An annual contribution of One Penny[3] per member shall be levied from all branches and affiliated societies for the use of the General Council. This contribution is intended to defray the expenses of the General Council, such as the remuneration of its General Secretary, costs of correspondence, publications, preparatory work for Congresses, etc. etc.
2. The General Council shall cause to be printed uniform adhesive stamps representing the value of one penny each, to be annually supplied, in the numbers wanted, to the Federal Councils or Committees.
3. These stamps are to be affixed to a special sheet of the livret or to a copy of the Rules which every member of the Association is held to possess.b
4. On the 1st of March of each year, the Federal Councils or Committees of the different countries0 shall forward to the General Council the amounts of the stamps disposed of, and return the unsold stamps remaining on hand.
5. These stamps, representing the value of the individual contributions, shall bear the date of the current year.
IV
Federal Councils or Committees
1. The expenses of the Federal Councils or Committees shall be defrayed by their respective branches.
2. The Federal Councils or Committees shall send one report at least every month to the General Council.
3. The Federal Councils or Committees shall transmit to the General Council every three months a report on the administration and financial state of their respective branches.
4. Any Federation may refuse to admit or may exclude from its midst societies or branches. It is, however, not empowered to deprive them of their International character, but it may propose their suspension to the General Council.
V
Local Societies, Branches, and Groups
1. Every branch is at liberty to make rules and bye-laws for its local administration, adapted to local circumstances and the laws of its country. But these rules and bye-laws must not contain anything contrary to the General Rules and Regulations.
2. All local branches, groups, and their committees are henceforth to designate and constitute themselves simply and exclusively as branches, groups, and committees of the International Working Men's Association, with the names of their respective localities attached.
3. Consequently, no branches or groups will henceforth be allowed to designate themselves by sectarian names,— such as Positivists, Mutualists, Collectivists, Communists, etc., or to form separatist bodies, under the name of sections of propaganda, etc., pretending to accomplish special missions distinct from the common purposes of the Association.
4. Art. 2 of this division does not apply to affiliated Trades' Unions.
5. All sections, branches, and working men's societies affiliated to the International are invited to abolish the office of President of their respective branch or society.
6. The formation of female branches amongst the working class is recommended. It is, however, understood that this resolution does not at all intend to interfere with the existence, or formation of branches composed of both sexes.
7. Wherever attacks against the International are published, the nearest branch or committee is held to send at once a copy of such publication to the General Council.
8. The addresses of the offices of all International Committees and of the General Council are to be published every three months in all the organs of the Association.
VI
General Statistics of Labour
1. The General Council is to enforce Article 6 of the Rules[3]
relating to general statistics of the working class, and the Resolutions of the Geneva Congress, 1866, on the same subject.
2. Every local branch is bound to appoint a special Committee of Statistics, so as to be always ready, within the limits of its means, to answer any question which may be put to it by the Federal Council or Committee of its country or by the General Council.
It is recommended to all branches to remunerate the secretaries of the Committees of Statistics, considering the general benefit the working class will derive from their labour.
3. On the 1st of August of each year the Federal Councils or Committees will transmit the materials collected in their respective countries to the General Council, which, in its turn, is to elaborate them into a general report, to be laid before the Congresses or Conferences annually held in the month of September.15
4. Trades' Unions and International branches refusing to give the information required, shall be reported to the General Council, which will take action thereupon.
5. The Resolutions of the Geneva Congress, 1866, alluded to in Article 1 of this division are the following.2
One great International combination of efforts will be a statistical inquiry into the situation of the working classes of all civilized countries'" to be instituted by the working classes themselves. To act with any success, the materials to be acted upon must be known. By initiating so great a work, the working men will prove their ability to take their own fate into their own hands.
The Congress therefore proposes that in each locality where branches of our Association exist, the work be immediately commenced, and evidence collected on the different points specified in the subjoined scheme of inquiry; the Congress invites the working men of Europe and the United States of America to co-operate in gathering the elements of the statistics of the working class; reports and evidence to be forwarded to the General Council. The General Council shall elaborate them into a report, adding the evidence as an appendix. This report, together with its appendix, shall be laid before the next annual Congress, and after having received its sanction, be printed at the expense of the Association.
General scheme of inquiry, which may of course be modified by each locality. 1. Industry, name of. 2. Age and sex of the employed. 3. Number of the employed. 4. Salaries and wages; (a) apprentices; (b) wages by the day or piece work; scale paid by middle men. Weekly, yearly average. 5. (a) Hours of work in factories, (b) The hours of work with small employers and in home work,[3] if the business be carried on in those different modes, (c) Nightwork and daywork. 6. Meal-times and treatment. 7. Sort of workshop and work; overcrowding, defective ventilation, want of sunlight, use of gaslight, cleanliness, etc. 8. Effect of employment upon the physical condition. 9. Moral condition. Education. 10. State of trade: whether season trade, or more or less uniformly distributed over the year, whether greatly fluctuat-ing, whether exposed to foreign competition — whether destined principally for home or foreign consumption, &c.b
APPENDIX
The Conference held at London from 17th to 23rd September, 1871, has charged the General Council to issue a new, authentic and revised edition, in English, French, and German, of the "General Rules and Regulations of the International Working Men's Association"; for the following reasons: — I. General Rules
The Geneva Congress (1866) adopted, with a few additions, the Provisional Rules of the Association, published at London in November, 1864. It also decided (see "Congrès ouvrier de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs, tenu à Genève du 3 au 8 Septbre., 1866", Genève, 1866, p. 27, note), that the General Council should publish the official and obligatory text of the Rules as well as of the Regulations voted by the Congress.[3] The General Council was prevented from executing this order by the seizure, on the part of the Bonapartist Government, of the minutes of the Geneva Congress on their transit through France.[3] When at last, through the intercession of Lord Stanley, then British Foreign Secretary, the minutes were recovered, a French edition had already been issued at Geneva, and the text of the Rules and Regulations contained in it was at once reproduced in all French-speaking countries. This text was faulty in many respects.
1. The Paris edition of the London Provisional Rules had been accepted as a true translation; but the Paris Committee to which this translation is due, had not only introduced most important alterations[4] in the preamble of the Rules which, on the interpella-tion of the General Council, were represented as changes unavoidable under the existing political state of France. From an insufficient acquaintance with the English language, it had also misinterpreted some of the articles of the Rules.
2. The Geneva Congress having to give a final character to the Provisional Rules, the Committee appointed for this purpose simply struck out all passages in which anything of a provisional nature was alluded to, without noticing that several of these passages contained most important matter of no provisional character whatever. In the English edition published after the Lausanne Congress (1867) the same omissions are repeated.
77. Administrative Regulations
The Administrative Regulations hitherto published conjointly with the Rules, are but those voted by the Geneva Congress (1866). It thus became necessary to codify the further regulations voted by subsequent Congresses and by the late London Conference.
The following publications have been made use of for the present revised edition: —
"Address and Provisional Rules of the International Working Men's Association", &c. London. 1864.
"Rules of the International Working Men's Association". London. 1867.
"Congrès ouvrier de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs, tenu à Genève du 3 au 8 Septbre., 1866". Genève, 1866.(1)
"Procès-verbaux du Congrès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs, réuni à Lausanne, du 2 au 8 Septbre., 1867". Chaux-de-Fonds. 1867.
"Troisième Congrès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs (Brussels Congress)—Compte-rendu officiel". Bruxelles. 1868.
"The International Working Men's Association. Resolutions of the Congress of Geneva, 1866, and the Congress of Brussels, 1868". London. 1869.
"Compte-rendu du 4me Congrès International, tenu à Bale en Septbre., 1869". Bruxelles. 1869.
"Report of the Fourth Annual Congress of the International Working Men's Association, held at Basel, 1869". Published by the General Council. London. 1869.
"Quatrième Congrès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs, tenu à Bâle, 1869. Rapport du délégué des Sections de la Fabrique à Genève". Genève. 1869.
"Resolutions of the Conference of Delegates of the International Working Men's Association, assembled at London, 1871". London. 1871.
For the Basel Congress, the German report of the Congress proceedings, published in fly-sheets at Basel, and the notes taken during the Congress by the General Secretary,(2) have also been consulted.
How these various sources have been made use of for the purposes of the present revised edition will appear from the following statement.(3) GENERAL RULES
Preamble.—After the words, "For these reasons", there have been restored the words, "the International Working Men's Association has been founded". See Provisional Rules, p. 13.a
The passage, "They hold it the duty of a man", &c, has been omitted, because there exist two equally authentic versions of it, irreconcilable with each other. The true meaning of it is, besides, already contained in the passage immediately preceding, and in that immediately following: "No rights without duties", &c.[5]
Art. 3 is restored from Art. 3 of Provisional Rules. Art. 4.— Part of Art. 3 and the whole of Art. 4 of Rules, London, 1867.
Art. 5.— Introductory part of Art. 3, Rules, 1867. The words "a president" have been omitted, in agreement with Administrative Resolution I. of Basel Congress.[6]
Art. 6.—Art. 5, Rules, 1867. The words "Co-operating Associations" have been changed into "national and local groups of the Association", because the expression, in some translations, has been misinterpreted as meaning co-operative societies.[6]
Art. 7.—Art. 6, Rules, 1867. Art. 8.—Art. 10, Rules, 1867. Art. 10.—Art. 8, Rules, 1867. Art. 12 forms Art. 13 of the Administrative Regulations in "Rules, 1867".c
Art. 13.—Art. 12, Rules, 1867. Art. 7, Rules, 1867, has been omitted, because its insertion was contrary to a resolution of the Lausanne Congress. See "Procès-verbaux du Congrès de Lausanne", p. 36.d
ADMINISTRATIVE REGULATIONS
1. The General Congress
Art. 1.—Art. 11 of Regulations voted by Geneva Congress ("Congrès de Genève", Genève, 1866, p. 26, [27,] &c); Art. 10, Rules, &c, 1867, which is incomplete.
Art. 2.—Art. 9, Congrès de Genève; Art. 6, Rules, &c, 1867. Art. 3.—Art. 13, Congrès de Genève; Art. 11, Rules, &c, 1867. Art. 4.—Art. 10, Congrès de Genève; Art. 9, Rules, &c, 1867. Art. 5.—Art. 9, Congrès de Genève; Art. 7, Rules, &c, 1867. Art. 6.—Art. 12, Congrès de Genève; Art. 8, Rules, &c, 1867. Art. 7.—Basel Administrative Regulations, VIII. Art. 8.—For this article the Guide pratique pour le Congrès de l'Internationale (Compte-rendu du Congrès de Bale, Bruxelles,
1869) has been completed by the other materials on the Basel Congress, quoted above.
Art. 9.—First part as for Art. 8. Second part, Resolution of Lausanne Congress (Procès-verbaux, p. 74, 1).
Art. 10.—Art. 16, Congrès de Genève; Art. lb, Rules, &c, 1867. Art. 11.—Guide Pratique, Basel Congress, Art. 3 and 11. Art. 12.—Guide Pratique, &c, Art. 10. Art. 13.—Guide Pratique, &c, Art. 7. Art. 14.—Guide Pratique, &c, Art. 4.
II. The General Council
Art. 1.—London Conference, 1871, II. 1. Art. 2.—Congrès de Genève, Art. 1; Rules, &c, 1867, Art. 1. Art. 3.—The two first Alineas, Art. 2 and Art. la; Congrès de Genève, and Rules, &c, 1867. Third Alinea, Art. 3, Congrès de Genève. Last Alinea, Lausanne Congress, Procès-verbaux, p. 37, Art. 2.
Arts. 4 to 7.—Basel Administrative Resolutions, IV. to VII. Art. 8.—London Conference, III. Art. 9.—Resolution of London Conference, sittings of 18th and 22nd September.
III. Contributions to Be Paid to the General Council
Art. 1.— First Alinea, Lausanne Congress, Procès-verbaux, p. 37, 3; and Art. IX., Basel Administrative Resolutions. Second Alinea, Art. 4, Congrès de Genève, and Rules, 1867.
Arts. 2 to 6.—London Conference, IV., 1 to 5.
IV. Federal Councib or Committees
Art.l.—Art. 6, Congrès de Genève, and Rules, 1867. Art. 2.—Art. 5, ditto.
Art. 3.—Brussels Congress, "Compte-rendu Officiel", p. 50, Appendice, Séances Administratives, Resolution N» 3.
Art. 4.—Art. VI., Basel Administrative Resolutions.
V. Local Societies, Branches, and Groups
Art. 1.—Art. 14, Congrès de Genève; Art. 12, Rules, &c, 1867. Arts. 2 to 4.—London Conference, II., 2 to 4. Art. 5.—Art. I., Basel Administrative Resolutions. Art. 6.—London Conference, V. Art. 7.—Art. II., Basel Administrative Resolutions. Art. 8.—Art. III., ditto.
VI. General Statistics of Labour
Arts. 1 to 4.—London Conference, VI., 1 to 4. Art. 5.—Resolution of Geneva Congress (London edition of Geneva and Brussels Congress Resolutions, p. 4).
By order, and in the name of the London Conference, 1871,
The General Council
R. Applegarth, M. J. Boon, Fred. Bradnick, G. H. Buttery, V. Delahaye, Eugene Dupont (on mission), Wm. Hales, G. Harris, Hurliman, Jules Johannard, Harriet Law, Fred. Lessner, Lochner, Ch. Longuet, C. Martin, Zévy Maurice, Henry Mayo, George Milner, Ch. Murray, Pfänder, John Roach, Riihl, Sadler, Cowell Stepney, Alfred Taylor, W. Townshend, E. Vaillant, John Weston.[3]
Corresponding Secretaries
Leo Frankel, for Austria and Hungary; A. Herman, Belgium; T. Mottershead, Denmark; A. Serraillier, France; Karl Marx, Germany and Russia; Charles Rochat, Holland; /. P. McDonnell, Ireland; Fred. Engels, Italy and Spain; Walery Wrdblewski, Poland;
Hermann Jung, Switzerland; /. G. Eccarius, United States; Le Moussu, for French Branches of United States.
Charles Longuet, Chairman Hermann Jung, Treasurer John Hales, General Secretary
256, High Holborn, W.C., London, 24th October, 1871
Drawn up in October 1871
28. K. Marx and F. Engels. Fictitious Splits in the International. Private Circular from the General Council of the International Working Men's Association
Until now the General Council has completely refrained from any interference in the International's internal conflicts and has never replied publicly to the overt attacks launched against it during more than two years by some members of the Association.
But if the persistent efforts of certain meddlers to deliberately maintain confusion between the International and a society[3] which has been hostile to it since its origin allowed the General Council to maintain this reserve, the support which European reaction finds in the scandals provoked by that society at a time when the International is undergoing the most serious crisis since its foundation obliges it to present a historical review of all these intrigues.
I
After the fall of the Paris Commune, the General Council's first act was to publish its Address on The Civil War in Franceh in which it came out in support of all the Commune's acts which, at the moment, served the bourgeoisie, the press and the governments of Europe as an excuse to heap the most vile slander on the vanquished Parisians. A part of the working class still failed to realise that their cause was lost. The Council came to understand
a International Alliance of Socialist Democracy.— Ed. b K. Marx, The Civil War in France.—Ed.
5* the fact, among other things, by the resignation of two of its members, Citizens Odger and Lucraft, who repudiated all support of the Address. It may be said that the unity of views among the working class regarding the Paris events dates from the publication of the Address in all the civilised countries.
On the other hand, the International found a very powerful means of propaganda in the bourgeois press and particularly in the leading English newspapers, which the Address forced fo engage in the polemic kept going by the General Council's replies.[49]
The arrival in London of numerous refugees from the Commune made it necessary for the General Council to constitute itself as a Relief Committee and for more than eight months perform this function, which lay quite outside its regular duties.[50]
It goes without saying that the vanquished and exiles from the Commune had hothing to hope for from the bourgeoisie. As for the working class, the appeals for aid came at a difficult moment. Switzerland and Belgium had already received their contingent of refugees whom they had either to support or send on to London. The funds collected in Germany, Austria and Spain were sent to Switzerland. In England, the big fight for the nine-hour working day, the decisive battle of which was fought at Newcastle,[51] had exhausted both the workers' individual contributions and the funds set up by the Trades Unions, which could be used, incidentally, according to the rules, only for labour conflicts. Meanwhile, by tireless work and active correspondence, the Council succeeded in raising, bit by bit, a certain amount of money, which it distributed weekly. The American workers responded more generously to its appeal. It is unfortunate that the Council could not avail itself of the millions which the ter-rified bourgeoisie believed the International to have amassed in its safes!
After May 1871, some of the Commune's refugees were asked to join the Council,[52] in which, as a result of the war, the French side was no longer represented. Among the new members were some old Internationals and a minority composed of men known for their revolutionary energy whose election was an act of homage to the Paris Commune.
Along with all these preoccupations, the Council had to prepare for the Conference of Delegates that it had just called.[53]
The violent measures taken by the Bonapartist government against the International had prevented the holding of the Congress at Paris, which had been provided for by a resolution of - / ? /
LES
PRÉTENDUES SCISSIONS
DANS
L'INTERNATIONALE
CIRCULAIRE PRIVÉE
DU
C O N S E I L G É I V É R A
DE
L ASSOCIATION IHTIUATIONALB DIS TBAVAILLBUBS
GENÈVE
IMPRIMERIE COOPÉRATIVE, RUE DU CONSEIL-GÉNÉRAL; 8
1872
Title page of Marx's and Engels' pamphlet Fictitious Splits in the International
the Basle Congress. Using the right conferred upon it by Article 4 of the Rules,(1) the General Council, in its circular of July 12, 1870, convened the Congress at Mainz.[54] In letters addressed at the same time to the various federations, it proposed that the General Council should transfer its seat from England to another country and asked that the delegates be provided with imperative mandates to that effect. The federations unanimously insisted that it should remain in London.[55] The Franco-Prussian war, which broke out a few days later, made holding of any congress impossible. It was then that the federations which we consulted authorised us to fix the date of the next Congress depending on the course of events.
As soon as the political situation permitted, the General Council called a private Conference, acting on the precedents of the 1865 Conference[56] and the private administrative meetings of each Congress. A public Congress was impossible and could only have resulted in the continental delegates being denounced at a moment when European reaction was celebrating its orgies; when Jules Favre was demanding from all governments, even the British, the extradition of refugees as common criminals; when Dufaure was proposing to the Rural Assembly a law banning the International,[57] a hypocritical counterfeit of which was later presented by Malou to the Belgians; when, in Switzerland, a Commune refugee(2) was put under preventative arrest while awaiting the federal government's decision on the extradition order; when hunting down members of the International was the ostensible basis for an alliance between Beust and Bismarck, whose anti-International clause Victor Emmanuel was quick to adopt; when the Spanish Government, putting itself entirely at the disposal of the butchers of Versailles, was forcing the Madrid Federal Council to seek refuge in Portugal[58]; at a time, lastly, when the International's prime duty was to strengthen its organisation and to accept the gauntlet thrown down by the governments.
All sections in regular contact with the General Council were invited in good time to the Conference, which, even though it was not to be a public meeting, nevertheless faced serious difficulties. In view of the internal situation France was, of course, unable to elect any delegates. In Italy, the only organised section at the time was that of Naples; but just as it was about to nominate a delegate it was broken up by armed force. In Austria and Hungary, the most active members were imprisoned. In Germany, some of the more well-known members were persecuted for the crime of high treason, others landed in gaol, and the party's funds were spent on aid to their families.[59] The Americans, though they sent the Conference a detailed Memorandum on the situation of the International there, employed the delegation's money for maintaining the refugees.[60] All federations, in fact, recognised the necessity of substituting the private Conference for a public Congress.
After meeting in London from September 17 to 23, 1871, the Conference authorised the General Council to publish its resolutions; to codify the Administrative Regulations and publish them with the General Rules, as reviewed and corrected, in three languages; to carry out the resolution to replace membership cards with stamps; to reorganise the International in England[61]; and, lastly, to provide the necessary money for these various purposes.
Following the publication of the Conference proceedings, the reactionary press of Paris and Moscow, of London and New York, denounced the resolution on working-class policy[62] as containing such dangerous designs— The Times accused it of "a cold and calculating judgment[3]—that it was necessary to outlaw the International with all possible speed. On the other hand, the resolution that dealt a blow at the fraudulent sectarian sections[63] gave the international police a long-awaited excuse to start a noisy campaign ostensibly for the unrestricted autonomy of the workers whom it professed to protect against the despicable despotism of the General Council and the Conference. The working class felt itself so "heavily oppressed", indeed, that the General Council received from Europe, America, Australia and even the East Indies, reports regarding the admission of new members and the formation of new sections.
II
The denunciations in the bourgeois press, like the lamentations of the international police, found a sympathetic echo even in our Association. Some intrigues, directed ostensibly against the General Council but in reality against the Association, were hatched in its midst. At the bottom of these intrigues was the inevitable International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, fathered by the Russian Mikhail Bakunin. On his return from Siberia, the latter began to write in Herzen's Kolokol preaching the ideas of Pan-Slavism and racial war,[3] conceived out of his long experience. Later, during his stay in Switzerland, he was nominated to the steering Committee of the League of Peace and Freedom founded in opposition to the International. When this bourgeois society's affairs went from bad to worse, its president, Mr. G. Vogt, acting on Bakunin's advice, proposed to the International's Congress which met at Brussels in September 1868 to conclude an alliance with the League. The Congress unanimously proposed two alternatives: either the League should follow the same goal as the International, in which case it would have no reason for existing; or else its goal should be different, in which case an alliance would be impossible. At the League's Congress held in Berne a few days after, Bakunin made an about-face. He proposed a makeshift programme whose scientific value may be judged by this single phrase: "economic and social equalisation of classes".[64] Backed by an insignificant minority, he broke with the League in order to join the International, determined to replace the International's General Rules by his makeshift programme, which had been rejected by the League, and to replace the General Council by his personal dictatorship. To this end, he created a special instrument, the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, intended to become an International within the International.
Bakunin found the necessary elements for the formation of this society in the relationships he had formed during his stay in Italy, and in a small group of Russian emigrants, serving him as emissaries and recruiting officers among members of the International in Switzerland, France and Spain. Yet it was only after repeated refusals of the Belgian and Paris Federal Councils to recognise the Alliance that he decided to submit for the General Council's approval his new society's rules, which were nothing but a faithful reproduction of the "misunderstood" Berne programme. The Council replied by the following circular dated December 22, 1868[65]:
The General Council to the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy
Just about a month ago a certain number of citizens formed in Geneva the Central Initiative Committee of a new international society named The International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, stating it was their "special mission to study political and philosophical questions on the basis of the grand principle of equality, etc.".
The programme and rules published by this Initiative Committee were communicated to the General Council of the International Working Men's Association only on December 15, 1868. According to these documents, the said Alliance is "absorbed entirely in the International", at the same time as it is established entirely outside the Association. Besides the General Council of the International, elected successively at the Geneva, Lausanne and Brussels congresses, there is to be, in line with the rules drawn up by the Initiative Committee, another General Council in Geneva, which is self-appointed. Besides the local groups of the International, there are to be local groups of the Alliance, which through their national bureaus, operating independently of the national bureaus of the International, "will ask the Central Bureau of the Alliance to admit them into the International"', the Alliance Central Committee thereby takes upon itself the right of admittance to the International. Lastly, the General Congress of the International Working Men's Association will have its counterpart in the General Congress of the Alliance, for, as the rules of the Initiative Committee state, at the annual working men's congress the delegation of the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, as a branch of the International Working Men's Association, "will hold its meetings in a separate building".
Considering, that the existence of a second international body operating within and outside the International Working Men's Association would be the surest means of its disorganisation;
that every other group of individuals, anywhere, would have the right to imitate the Geneva initiative group, and, under more or less plausible excuses, to bring into the International Working Men's Association other international associations with other special missions;
that the International Working Men's Association would thereby soon become a plaything of any meddlers of whatever nationality or party;
that the Rules of the International Working Men's Association furthermore admit only local and national branches into its membership (see Article I and Article VI of the Rules)(1);
that sections of the International Working Men's Association are forbidden to adopt rules or administrative regulations contrary to the General Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Working Men's Association (see Article XII of the Administrative Regulations);
that the Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Working Men's Association can be revised by the General Congress only, provided two-thirds of the delegates present vote in favour of such a revision (see Article XIII of the Administrative Regulations);
that a decision on this question is already contained in the resolutions against the League of Peace, unanimously passed at the General Congress in Brussels;
that in these resolutions the Congress declared that there was no justification for the existence of the League of Peace since, according to its recent declarations, its aim and principles were identical with those of the International Working Men's Association;
that a number of members of the initiative group of the Alliance, as delegates to the Brussels Congress, had voted for these resolutions;
The General Council of the International Working Men's Association unanimously resolved at its meeting of December 22, 1868, that:
1) All articles of the rules of the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, defining its relations with the International Working Men's Association, are declared null and void;
2) The International Alliance of Socialist Democracy may not be admitted as a branch of the International Working Men's Association.
G. Odger, Chairman of the meeting R. Shaw, General Secretary
London, December 22, 1868
A few months later, the Alliance again appealed to the General Council and asked whether, yes or no, it accepted its principles. If yes, the Alliance was ready to dissolve itself into the International's sections. It received a reply in the following circular of March 9,
1869 " :
The General Council to the Central Committee
of the International Alliance
of Socialist Democracy
According to Article I of our Rules, the Association admits all working men's societies aiming at the same end, viz., the mutual protection, progress and complete emancipation of the working class.
The sections of the working class in the various countries finding themselves in different conditions of development, it follows necessarily that their theoretical opinions, which reflect the real movement, should also differ.
The community of action, however, established by the International Working Men's Association, the exchange of ideas facilitated by the public organs of the different national sections, and, lastly, the direct debates at the General Congresses, are sure gradually to engender a common theoretical programme.
Consequently, it is not the function of the General Council to subject the programme of the Alliance to a critical examination. We have not to inquire whether, yes or no, it is an adequate expression of the proletarian movement. All we have to establish is whether it may contain anything contrary to the general tendency of our Association, that is, the complete emancipation of the working class. There is one sentence in your programme which fails in this respect. Article 2 reads:
"It" (Alliance) "seeks, above all, the political, economic, and social equalisation of classes."
The equalisation of classes, literally interpreted, means harmony between Capital and Labour so persistently preached by the bourgeois socialists. It is not the logically impossible equalisation of classes, but on the contrary the abolition of classes, this true secret of the proletarian movement, which forms the great aim of the International Working Men's Association.
Considering, however, the context, in which the phrase equalisation of classes occurs, it seems to be a mere slip of the pen. The General Council feels confident that you will be anxious to remove from your programme a phrase which may give rise to such dangerous misunderstandings.(2) The principles of our Association permit every section freely to shape its own theoretical programme, except in cases when the general policy of our Association is contradicted.
There exists, therefore, no obstacle to the transformation of the sections of the Alliance into sections of the International Working Men's Association.
The dissolution of the Alliance, and the entrance of its sections into the International once settled, it would, according to our Regulations, become necessary to inform the Council of the seat and the numerical strength of each new section.
Meeting of the General Council of March 9, 1869
Having accepted these conditions, the Alliance was admitted to the International by the General Council, misled by certain signatures affixed to Bakunin's programme and supposing the Alliance was recognised by the Romance Federal Committee in Geneva which, on the contrary, had always refused to have any dealings with it. Thus, it had achieved its immediate goal: to be represented at the Basle Congress. Despite the dishonest means employed by his supporters, means used on this and solely on this occasion, in an International Congress, Bakunin was deceived in his expectation of seeing the Congress transfer the seat of the General Council to Geneva and give an official sanction to the old Saint-Simonian rubbish, to the immediate abolition of hereditary rights which he had made the practical point of departure of socialism. This was the signal for the open and incessant war which the Alliance waged not only against the General Council but also against all International sections which refused to adopt this sectarian clique's programme and particularly the doctrine of total abstention from politics.
Even before the Basle Congress, when Nechayev came to Geneva, Bakunin got together with him and founded, in Russia, a secret society among students. Always hiding his true identity under the name of various "revolutionary committees", he sought autocratic powers based on all the tricks and mystifications of the time of Cagliostro. The main means of propaganda used by this society consisted in compromising innocent people in the eyes of the Russian police by sending them communications from Geneva in yellow envelopes stamped in Russian on the outside "Secret Revolutionary Committee". The published accounts of the Nechayev trial[67] bear witness to the infamous abuse of the International's name.(3)
The Alliance commenced at this time a public polemic directed against the General Council, first in the Locle Progrès, then in the Geneva Egalité, the official newspaper of the Romance Federation, onto which several members of the Alliance had wiggled their way following Bakunin. The General Council, which had scorned the attacks published in the Progrès, Bakunin's personal organ, could not ignore those from the Egalité, which it was bound to believe were approved by the Romance Federal Committee. It therefore published the circular of January 1, 1870(4) which said:
"We read in the Égalité of December 11, 1869:
"'It is certain that the General Council is neglecting extremely important matters. We remind it of its obligations under Article 1 of the Regulations: The General Council is commissioned to carry the resolutions of the Congress into effect, etc. 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. ...'
"The General Council does not know of any article, either in the Rules, or the Regulations, which would oblige it to enter into correspondence or into polemic with the Egalité or to provide 'replies to questions' from newspapers. The Federal Committee of Geneva alone represents the branches of Romance Switzerland vis-à-vis the General Council. When the Romance Federal Committee 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 Committee has no right either to abdicate its functions in favour of the Egalité and Progrès, or to let these newspapers usurp its functions. Generally speaking, the General Council's administrative correspondence with national and local committees cannot be published without greatly prejudicing the Association's general interests. Consequently, if the other organs of the International were to follow the example of the Progrès and the Egalité, the General Council would be faced with the alternative of either discrediting itself publicly by its silence or violating its obligations by replying publicly. The Egalité joins the Progrès in inviting the Travail (Paris paper) to denounce, on its part, the General Council. That is almost a League of Public Welfare.[68]"
Meanwhile, before having read this circular, the Romance Federal Committee had already expelled supporters of the Alliance from the editorial board of the Egalité.
The January 1, 1870 circular, like those of December 22, 1868 and March 9, 1869, was approved by all International sections.
It goes without saying that none of the conditions accepted by the Alliance have ever been fulfilled. Its sham sections have remained a mystery to the General Council. Bakunin sought to retain under his personal direction the few groups scattered in Spain and Italy and the Naples section which he had detached from the International. In the other Italian towns he corresponded with small cliques composed not of workers but of lawyers, journalists and other bourgeois doctrinaires. At Barcelona some of his friends maintained his influence. In some towns in the South of France the Alliance made an effort to found separatist sections under the direction of Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc, of Lyons, about whom we shall have more to say later. In a word, the international society within the International continued to operate.
The big blow — the attempt to take over the leadership of Romance Switzerland — was to have been executed by the Alliance at the Chaux-de-Fonds Congress, opened on April 4, 1870.
The battle began over the right to admit the Alliance delegates, which was contested by the delegates of the Geneva Federation and the Chaux-de-Fonds sections.
Although, on their own calculation, the Alliance supporters represented no more than a fifth of the Federation members, they succeeded, thanks to repetition of the Basle manoeuvres, to procure a fictitious majority of one or two votes, a majority which, in the words of their own organ (see the Solidarité of May 7, 1870),(5) represented no more than fifteen sections, while in Geneva alone there were thirty! On this vote, the Romance Congress split into two groups which continued their meetings independently. The Alliance supporters, considering themselves the legal representatives of the whole of the Federation, transferred the Romance Federal Committee's seat to La Chaux-de-Fonds and founded at Neuchâtel their official organ, the Solidarité, edited by Citizen Guillaume. This young writer had the special job of decrying the Geneva "factory workers",[69] those odious "bourgeois", of waging war on the Egalité, the Romance Federation newspaper, and of preaching total abstention from politics. The authors of the most important articles on this theme were Bastelica in Marseilles, and Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc in Lyons, the two big pillars of the Alliance.
On their return, the Geneva delegates convened their sections in a general assembly which, despite opposition from Bakunin and his friends, approved their actions at the Chaux-de-Fonds Congress. A little later, Bakunin and the more active of his accomplices were expelled from the old Romance Federation.
Hardly had the Romance Congress closed when the new Chaux-de-Fonds Committee called for the intervention of the General Council in a letter signed by F. Robert, secretary, and by Henri Chevalley, president, who was denounced two months later as a thief by the Committee's organ the Solidarité of July 9.(6) After having examined the case of both sides, the General Council decided on June 28, 1870 to keep the Geneva Federal Committee in its old functions and invite the new Chaux-de-Fonds Federal Committee to take a local name.(7) In the face of this decision which foiled its plans, the Chaux-de-Fonds Committee denounced the General Council's authoritarianism, forgetting that it had been the first to ask for its intervention. The trouble that the persistent attempts of the Chaux-de-Fonds Committee to usurp the name of the Romance Federal Committee caused the Swiss Federation obliged the General Council to suspend all official relations with the former.
Louis Bonaparte had just surrendered his army at Sedan. From all sides arose protests from International members against the war's continuation. In its address of September 9, the General Council, denouncing Prussia's plans of conquest, indicated the danger of her triumph for the proletarian cause and warned the German workers that they would themselves be the first victims.(8)
In England, the General Council organised MEETINGS which condemned the pro-Prussian tendencies of the court. In Germany, the International workers organised demonstrations demanding recognition of the Republic and "an honourable peace for France"....
Meanwhile, his bellicose nature gave the hot-headed Guillaume (of Neuchâtel) the brilliant idea of publishing an anonymous manifesto as a supplement and under cover of the official newspaper Solidarité, calling for the formation of a Swiss volunteer corps to fight the Prussians, something which he had always been prevented from doing doubtlessly by his abstentionist convictions.[70]
Then came the Lyons uprising. Bakunin rushed there and, supported by Albert Richard, Gaspard Blanc and Bastelica, installed himself on September 28 in the Town Hall, where he refrained from posting a guard, however, lest it would be viewed as a political act. He was driven out in shame by several National Guards at the moment when, after a difficult accouchement, his decree on the abolition of the State had just seen the light of day.
In October 1870, the General Council, in the absence of its French members, co-opted Citizen Paul Robin, a refugee from Brest, one of the best-known supporters of the Alliance, and, what is more, the instigator of several attacks in the Egalité against the General Council where, since that moment, he acted constantly as official correspondent of the Chaux-de-Fonds Committee. On March 14, 1871, he suggested the calling of a private Conference of the International to sift out the Swiss trouble. Foreseeing that important events were in the making in Paris, the Council flatly refused. Robin returned to the question on several occasions and even suggested that the Council take a definite decision on the conflict. On July 25, the General Council decided that this affair would be one of the questions for the Conference due to be convened in September 1871.
On August 10, the Alliance, hardly eager to see its activities looked into by a Conference, declared itself dissolved as from the 6th of August.[72] But on September 15, it reappeared and requested admission to the Council under the name of the Atheist Socialist Section, According to Administrative Resolution No. V of the Basle Congress,3 the Council could not admit it without consulting the Geneva Federal Committee, which was exhausted after its two years of struggle against the sectarian sections. Moreover, the Council had already told the English Christian workers' societies (YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION) that the International did not recognise theological sections.
On August 6, the date of the dissolution of the Alliance, the Chaux-de-Fonds Federal Committee renewed its request to enter into official relations with the Council and said that it would continue to ignore the June 28 resolution and to regard itself, in relation to Geneva, as the Romance Federal Committee, and "that it was up to the General Congress to judge this affair". On September 4, the same Committee challenged the Conference's competence, even though it had been the first to call for its convocation. The Conference could have replied by questioning the competence of the Paris Federal Committee which the Chaux-de-Fonds Committee had requested before the siege of Paris to deliberate on the Swiss conflict.[73] But it confined itself to the General Council^ decision of June 28, 1870 (see the motives expounded in the Egalité of Geneva, October 21, 1871[74]).
III
The presence in Switzerland of some of the outlawed French who had found refuge there put some life back into the Alliance.
The Geneva members of the International did all they could for the emigrants. They came to their aid right from the beginning, initiated a wide campaign and prevented the Swiss authorities from serving an extradition order on the refugees as demanded by the Versailles government. Several risked the grave danger by going to France to help the refugees to gain the frontier. Imagine the surprise of the Geneva workers when they saw several of the ringleaders such as B. Malon* immediately come to an understanding with the Alliance people and with the help of N. Zhukovsky, ex-Secretary of the Alliance, try to found at Geneva, outside of the Romance Federation, the new "Section of Propaganda and Revolutionary Socialist Action".[75] In the first article of its rules it
* Do the friends of B. Malon, who have been advertising him in a stereotyped way for the last three months as the founder of the International, who have called his book [La troisième défaite du prolétariat français] the only independent work on the Commune, know the attitude taken by this assistant of the Mayor of Batignolles on the eve of the February elections? At that time, B. Malon, who did not yet foresee the Commune and saw nothing more than the success of his election to the Assembly, plotted to get himself put on the list of the four committees as a member of the International. To these ends he insolently denied the existence of the Paris Federal Council and submitted to the committees the list of a section founded by himself at Batignolles as coming from the entire Association.— Later, on March 19, he insulted in a public document the leaders of the great Revolution accomplished on the eve.— Today, this anarchist from top to toe prints or has printed what he was saying a year ago to the four committees: I am the International! B. Malon has hit on a way of parodying Louis XIV and Perron the chocolate manufacturer at one and the same time. It was Perron who declared that his chocolate was the only ... edible chocolate!
"pledges allegiance to the General Rules of the International Working Men's Association, while reserving for itself the complete freedom of action and initiative to which it is entitled as a logical consequence of the principle of autonomy and federation recognised by the Rules and Congresses of the Association".
In other words, it reserves for itself full freedom to continue the work of the Alliance.
In a letter from Malon, of October 20, 1871, this new section for the third time asked the General Council for admission into the International. Conforming to Resolution V of the Basle Congress, the Council consulted the Geneva Federal Committee which vigorously protested against the Council recognising this new "seedbed of intrigues and dissentions". The Council acted, in fact, in a rather "authoritarian" manner so as not to bind the whole Federation to the will of B. Malon and N. Zhukovsky, the Alliance's ex-Secretary.
The Solidarité having gone out of business, the new Alliance supporters founded the Révolution Sociale under the supreme management of Madame André Léo who had just said at the Lausanne Peace Congress that
"Raoul Rigault and Ferré were the two sinister figures of the Commune who, up till then" (up till the execution of the hostages), "had not stopped calling for bloody measures, albeit always in vain".(1)
From its very first issue, the newspaper hastened to put itself on the same level as the Figaro, Gaulois, Paris-Journal and other disreputable sheets, reproducing the mud they were throwing at the General Council. It thought the moment opportune to fan the flames of national hatred, even within the International. It called the General Council a German committee led by a Bismarckian brain.(2)
After having definitely established that certain General Council members could not boast of being "Gaub first and foremost" the
Révolution Sociale could find nothing better than to take up the second slogan put in circulation by the European police and to denounce the Council's authoritarianism.
What, then, were the facts on which this childish rubbish rested? The General Council had let the Alliance die a natural death and, in accord with the Geneva Federal Committee, had prevented it from being resurrected. Moreover, it had suggested to the Chaux-de-Fonds Committee to take a name which would permit it to live in peace with the great majority of International members in Romance Switzerland.[76]
Apart from these "authoritarian" acts, what use did the General Council make, between October 1869 and October 1871, of the fairly extensive powers that the Basle Congress had conferred upon it?
1) On February 8, 1870, the Paris "Society of Positivist Proletarians" applied to the General Council for admission. The Council replied that the principles of the positivists, the part of the society's special rules concerning capital, were in flagrant contradiction with the preamble of the General Rules; that the society had therefore to drop them and join the International not as "positivists" but as "proletarians", while remaining free to reconcile their theoretical ideas with the Association's general principles. Realising the justness of this decision, the section joined the International.
2) At Lyons, there was a split between the 1865 section and a recently-formed section in which, amidst honest workers, the Alliance was represented by Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc. As had been done in similar cases, the judgment of a court of arbitration, formed in Switzerland, was turned down. On February 15, 1870, the recently-formed section, besides requesting the General Council to resolve the conflict by virtue of Resolution VII of the Basle Congress, sent it a ready-made resolution excluding and branding the members of the 1865 section, which was to be signed and sent back by return mail. The Council condemned this unprecedented procedure and demanded that the evidence be produced. In reply to the same request, the 1865 section said that the accusatory documents against Albert Richard, which had been submitted to the court of arbitration, had been seized by Bakunin, who refused to give them up. Consequently, it could not completely satisfy the desires of the General Council. The Council's decision on the affair, dated March 8, met with no ob-jection from either side.[77]
3) The French branch in London, which had admitted people of a more than dubious character, had been gradually transformed into a sleeping partners concern run by Mr. Félix Pyat. He used it to organise damaging demonstrations calling for the assassination of Louis Bonaparte, etc., and to spread his absurd manifestos in France under cover of the International. The General Council confined itself to declaring in the Association's organs that Mr. Pyat was not a member of the International and it could not be responsible for his actions.(3) The French branch then declared that it no longer recognised either the General Council or the Congresses; it plastered the walls of London with bills proclaiming that with the exception of itself the International was an anti-revolutionary society. The arrest of French members of the International on the eve of the plebiscite, on the pretext of a conspiracy, plotted in reality by the police and to which Pyat's manifestos gave an air of credibility, forced the General Council to publish in the Marseillaise and Réveil its resolution of May 10, 1870,(4) declaring that the so-called French branch had not belonged to the International for over two years, and that its agitation was the work of police agents.[78] The need for this
démarche was proved by the declaration of the Paris Federal Committee, published in the same newspapers, and by that of the Paris members of the International during their trial, both declarations referring to the Council's resolution. The French branch disappeared at the outbreak of the war, but like the Alliance in Switzerland, it was to reappear in London with new allies and under other names.
During the last days of the Conference, a "French Section of 1871", about 35 members strong, was formed in London among the Commune refugees. The first "authoritarian" act of the General Council was to publicly denounce the secretary of this section, Gustave Durand, as a French police spy.(5) The documents in our possession prove the intention of the police to assist Durand, firstly, to attend the Conference and then to secure for him membership in the General Council. Since the rules of the new section directed its members not to "accept any delegation to the General Council other than that of their section", Citizens Theisz and Bastelica withdrew from the Council.
On October 17, the section delegated to the Council two of its members, holding imperative mandates; one was none other than Mr. Chautard, ex-member of the artillery committee. The Council refused to admit them prior to an examination of the rules of the "1871 section".* Suffice it to recall here the principal points of the debate to which these rules gave rise. Article 2 states:
"In order to be admitted as member of the section, a person must justify his means of existence, present guarantees of morality, etc."
In its resolution of October 17, 187l,a the Council proposed deleting the words "justify his means of existence".
"In dubious cases," said the Council, "a section may well take information about means of existence as 'guarantee of morality', while in other cases, like those of the refugees, workers on strike, etc., absence of means of existence may well be a guarantee of morality. But to ask candidates to justify their means of existence as a general condition to be admitted to the International, would be a bourgeois innovation contrary to the spirit and letter of the General Rules." The section replied:
"The General Rules make the sections responsible for the morality of their members and, as a consequence, recognise the right of sections to demand the guarantees they think necessary."
To this the General Council replied, November 7b: "On this argument, a section of the International founded by TEETOTALLERS (société de tempérance) could include in its own rules this type of article: To be admitted as member of the section, a person must swear to abstain from all alcoholic drinks. In a word, the most absurd and most incongruous conditions of admittance into the International could be imposed by sections' rules, always on the pretext that they intend, in this way, to be assured of the morality of their members... 'The means of existence of strikers,' adds the French Section of 1871, 'consist of the strike fund.' This might be answered by saying, first, that this fund is often fictitious... Moreover, official English questionnaires have proved that the majority of English workers ... is forced — by strikes or unemployment, by insufficient wages or terms of payment, as well as many other causes — to resort incessantly to pawnshops or to borrowing. These are means of existence about which one cannot demand information without interfering in an unqualified manner in a person's private life. There are thus two alternatives: either the section is only to seek guarantees of morality through means of existence, in which case the General Council's proposal serves the purpose... Or the section, in Article 2 of its rules, intentionally says that the members have to provide information as to their means of existence as a condition of admission, over and above the guarantees of morality, in which case the Council affirms that it is a bourgeois innovation, contrary to the letter and spirit of the General Rules."
Article 11 of their rules states:
"One or several delegates shall be sent to the General Council."
The Council asked for this article to be deleted "because the International's General Rules do not recognise any right of the sections to send delegates to the General Council". "The General Rules," it added, "recognise only two ways of election for General Council members: either their election by the Congress, or their co-option by the General Council..."
It is quite true that the different sections existing in London had been invited to send delegates to the General Council which, so as not to violate the General Rules, has always proceeded in the following manner: it has first determined the number of delegates to be sent by each section, reserving itself the right to accept or refuse them depending on whether it considered them able to fulfil the general functions assigned to them. These delegates became members of the General Council not by virtue of their nomination by their sections, but by virtue of the right that the Rules accord the Council to co-opt new members. Having operated up to the decision taken by the last Conference both as the International Association's General Council and as the Central Council for England, the London Council thought it expedient to admit, besides the members that it co-opted directly, also members nominated initially by their respective sections. It would be a serious mistake to identify the General Council's electoral procedure with that of the Paris Federal Council which was not even a national Council nominated by a national Congress like, for example, the Brussels Federal Council or that of Madrid. The Paris Federal Council was only a delegation of the Paris sections... The General Council's electoral procedure is defined in the General Rules ... and its members would not accept any other imperative mandate than that of the Rules and General Regulations... If we take into consideration the article that precedes it, Article 11 means nothing else but a complete change of the General Council's composition, turning it, contrary to Article 3 of the General Rules, into a delegation of the London sections, in which the influence of local groups would be substituted for that of the whole International Working Men's Association. Lastly, the General Council, whose first duty is to carry out the Congress resolutions (see Article 1 of the Geneva Congress's Administrative Regulations), said that it "considers that the ideas expressed by the 'French Section of 1871' about a radical change to be made in the articles of the General Rules concerning the constitution of the General Council have no bearing on the question..."
Moreover, the Council declared that it would admit two delegates from the section on the same conditions as those of the other London sections.
The "1871 section", far from being satisfied with this reply, published on December 14 a "declaration"3 signed by all its members, including the new secretary who was shortly expelled as a scoundrel from the refugee society. According to this declaration, the General Council, by refusing to usurp the legislative functions, was accused of "a gross distortion of the social idea".
Here are some samples of the good faith displayed in the drawing up of this document.
The London Conference approved the conduct of the German workers during the war.[79] It was apparent that this resolution, proposed by a Swiss delegate,b seconded by a Belgian delegate0
and approved unanimously, only referred to the German members of the International who paid and are still paying for their anti-chauvinist behaviour during the war by imprisonment. Furthermore, in order to avoid any possible misinterpretation, the Secretary of the General Council for France had just explained the true sense of the resolution in a letter published by the journals Qui Vive!,6 Constitution, Radical, Emancipation, Europe*etc. Nonetheless, eight days later, on November 20, 1871, fifteen members of the French Section of 1871 inserted in Qui Vive! a "protest" full of abuse against the German workers and denouncing the Conference resolution as irrefutable proof of the General Council's "pan-Germanic idea". On the other hand, the entire feudal, liberal and police press of Germany seized avidly upon this incident to demonstrate to the German workers how their international dreams had come to naught. In the end the November 20 protest was endorsed by the entire 1871 section in its December 14 declaration.
To show "the dangerous slope of authoritarianism down which the General Council was slipping" the declaration cited "the publication by the very same General Council of an official edition of the General Rules as revised by it".
One glance at the new edition of the Rules is enough to see that each new article has, in the appendix, reference to the original sources establishing its authenticity(6)! As for the words "official edition", the first Congress of the International decided that "the official and obligatory text of the Rules and Regulations would be published by the General Council" (see Congrès ouvrier de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs, tenu à Genève du 3 au 8 septembre 1866, page 27, note).
Naturally enough, the 1871 section was in continuous contact with the dissidents of Geneva and Neuchâtel. One Chalain, a member who had shown more energy in attacking the General Council than he had ever shown in defending the Commune, was unexpectedly rehabilitated by B. Malon, who quite recently levelled very grave charges against him in a letter to a Council member. The French Section of 1871, however, had scarcely launched its declaration when civil war exploded in its ranks. First Theisz, Avrial and Camélinat withdrew. Thereafter the section broke up into several small groups, one of which was led by Mr. Pierre Vesinier, expelled from the General Council for his slander against Varlin and others, and then cast out of the International by the Belgian Commission appointed by the Brussels Congress of 1868. Another of these groups was founded by B. Landeck who had been relieved by the sudden flight of police prefect Piétri, on September 4, of his obligation,
"scrupulously fulfilled, not to engage any more in political affairs, nor in the International in France!" (see Troisième procès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs de Paris, 1870, p. 4).
On the other hand, the mass of French refugees in London have formed a section which is in complete harmony with the General Council.
IV
The men of the Alliance, hidden behind the Neuchâtel Federal Committee and determined to make another effort on a vaster scale to disorganise the International, convened a Congress of their sections at Sonvillier on November 12, 1871.— Back in July two letters from maître Guillaume to his friend Robin had threatened the General Council with the same kind of campaign if it did not agree to recognise them to be in the right "vis-à-vis the Geneva bandits".
The Sonvillier Congress was composed of sixteen delegates claiming to represent nine sections in all, including the new "Section of Propaganda and Revolutionary Socialist Action" of Geneva.
The Sixteen made their début by publishing the anarchist decree declaring the Romance Federation dissolved, and the latter hastened to restore to the Alliance members their "autonomy" by driving them out of all sections. However, the Council has to recognise that a stroke of good sense brought them to accept the name of the Jura Federation that the London Conference had given them.
The Congress of Sixteen then proceeded to "reorganise the International" by attacking the Conference and the General Council in a circular to all federations of the International Working Men's Association.
The authors of the circular accuse the General Council first of all of having called in 1871 a Conference instead of a Congress. The preceding explanations show that these attacks were made directly against the International as a whole, which had unanimously agreed to convene a Conference at which, incidentally, the Alliance was properly represented by Citizens Robin and Bastelica.
The General Council has had its delegates at every Congress; at the Basle Congress, for example, it had six. The Sixteen claim that
"the majority of the Conference was fraudulently assured in advance by the admission of six General Council delegates with deciding vote".
In actual fact, among the General Council delegates at the Conference, the French refugees were none other than the representatives of the Paris Commune, while its English and Swiss members could only take part in the sessions on rare occasions, as is attested to by the Minutes which will be submitted before the next Congress. One Council delegate had a mandate from a national federation.(1) According to a letter addressed to the Conference, the mandate of another was withheld because of the news of his death in the papers.*(2) That left one delegate. Thus, the Belgians alone outnumbered the Council by 6 to 1.
The international police, who in the person of Gustave Durand were kept out, complained bitterly about the violation of the General Rules by the convening of a "secret" conference. They were not conversant enough with our General Regulations to know that the administrative sittings of the Congresses have to be in private.
Their complaints, nonetheless, found a sympathetic echo with the Sonvillier Sixteen who cried out:
"And on top of it all, a decision of this Conference declares that the General Council will itself fix the time and place of the next Congress or of the Conference to replace it; thus, we are threatened with the suppression of the General Congresses, these great public sessions of the International."
The Sixteen refused to see that this decision had no other purpose but to show to the various governments that, despite all the repressive measures, the International was firmly resolved to hold its general meetings one way or another.
At the general assembly of the Geneva sections, held on December 2, 1871, which gave a bad reception to Citizens Malon and Lefrançais, the latter put forward a proposal confirming the decrees passed by the Sonvillier Sixteen and censuring the General Council, as well as disavowing the Conference.[80]—The Conference had resolved that "the Conference resolutions not intended for publicity will be communicated to the Federal Councils of the various countries by the corresponding secretaries of the General Council". This resolution, which was in complete conformity with the General Rules and Regulations, was fraudulently revised by B. Malon and his friends to read as follows:
"Some Conference resolutions shaU be communicated only to the Federal Councils and to the corresponding secretaries."
They further accused the General Council of having "violated the principle of sincerity" in refusing to hand over to the police, by means of "publicity", the resolutions which were aimed exclusively at reorganising the International in the countries where it is proscribed.
Citizens Malon and Lefrançais complain further that "the Conference had aimed a blow at freedom of thought and its expression ... in conferring upon the General Council the right to denounce and disavow any publicity organ of the sections and federations that discussed either the principles on which the Association rests, or the respective interests of the sections and federations, or finally the general interests of the Association as a whole (see the
Egalité of October 21)".
What, then, had the Egalité of October 21 published? It had published a resolution in which the Conference "gives warning that henceforth the General Council will be bound to publicly denounce and disavow all newspapers calling themselves organs of the International which, following the example of the Progrès and the Solidarité, should discuss in their columns, before the middle-class public, questions exclusively reserved for the local or Federal Committees and the General Council, or for the private and administrative sittings of the Federal or General Congresses".3
To appreciate properly the sour-sweet lamentation of B. Malon we must bear in mind that this resolution puts an end once and for all to the attempts of some journalists who wished to substitute themselves for the responsible committees of the International and to play therein the role that the journalists' Bohemia is playing in the bourgeois world. As a result of one such attempt the Geneva Federal Committee had seen some members of the Alliance edit the Égalité, the official organ of the Romance Federation, in a manner completely hostile to the latter.
Incidentally, the General Council had no need of the London Conference to "publicly denounce and disavow" the improper use of the press, for the Basle Congress had decided (Resolution II) that:
"All newspapers containing attacks on the Association must be immediately sent by the sections to the General Council."0
"It is evident," says the Romance Federal Committee in its December 20, 1871 declaration (Égalité, December 24) "that this article was adopted not in order that the General Council might keep in its files newspapers which attack the Association, but to enable it to reply, and to nullify in case of need, the pernicious effect of slander and malevolent denigrations. It is also evident that this article refers in general to all newspapers, and that if we do not want to leave the attacks of the bourgeois papers without retaliation, it is all the more necessary to disavow, through our main representative body, i.e., the General Council, those newspapers whose attacks against us are made under cover of the name of our Association."
Let us note, in passing, that The Times, that Leviathan of the capitalist press, the Progrès (of Lyons), a publication of the liberal bourgeoisie, and the Journal de Genève, an ultra-reactionary paper, have brought the same charges against the Conference and used virtually the same terms as Citizens Malon and Lefrançais.
After having challenged the convocation of the Conference and, later, its composition and its allegedly secret character, the Sixteen's circular challenged even the Conference resolutions.
Stating first that the Basle Congress had surrendered its rights
"having authorised the General Council to grant or refuse admission to, or to suspend, the sections of the International",
it accuses the Conference, farther on, of the following sin:
"This Conference has ... taken resolutions ... which tend to turn the International, which is a free federation of autonomous sections, into a hierarchical and authoritarian organisation of disciplined sections placed entirely under the control of a General Council which may, at will, refuse their admission or suspend their activity!!"
Still farther on, the circular once more takes up the question of the Basle Congress which had allegedly "distorted the nature of the General Council's functions".
The contradictions contained in the circular of the Sixteen may be summed up as follows: the 1871 Conference is responsible for the resolutions of the 1869 Basle Congress, and the General Council is guilty of having observed the Rules which require it to carry out Congress resolutions.
Actually, however, the real reason for all these attacks against the Conference is of a more profound nature. In the first place, it thwarted, by its resolutions, the intrigues of the Alliance men in Switzerland. In the second place, the promoters of the Alliance had, in Italy, Spain and part of Switzerland and Belgium, created and upheld with amazing persistence a calculated confusion between Bakunin's makeshift programme and the programme of the International Working Men's Association.
The Conference drew attention to this deliberate misunderstanding in its two resolutions on proletarian policy and sectarian sections. The motivation of the first resolution, which makes short work of the political abstention preached by Bakunin's programme, is given fully in its recitals, which are based on the General Rules, the Lausanne Congress resolution and other precedents.(3) We now pass on to the sectarian sections: The first phase of the proletariat's struggle against the bourgeoisie is marked by a sectarian movement. That is logical at a time when the proletariat has not yet developed sufficiently to act as a class. Certain thinkers criticise social antagonisms and suggest fantastic solutions thereof, which the mass of workers is left to accept, preach and put into practice. The sects formed by these initiators are abstentionist by their very nature, i.e., alien to all real action, politics, strikes, coalitions, or, in a word, to any united movement. The mass of the proletariat always remains indifferent or even hostile to their propaganda. The Paris and Lyons workers did not want the Saint-Simonians, the Fourierists, the Icarians,[81]
any more than the Chartists and the English trades unionists
"That the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association (1864) states: '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';
"That the Congress of Lausanne (1867) has passed this resolution: 'The social emancipation of the workmen is inseparable from their political emancipation';
"That the declaration of the General Council relative to the pretended plot of the French Internationals on the eve of the plebiscite (1870) says: 'Certainly by the tenor of our Rules, all our branches in England, on the Continent, and in America have the special mission not only to serve as centres for the militant organisation of the working class, but also to support, in their respective countries, every political movement tending towards the accomplishment of our ultimate end — the economical emancipation of the working class';
"That inaccurate translations of the original Rules have given rise to false interpretations which have been harmful to the development and action of the International Working Men's Association;
"In presence of an unbridled reaction which violently crushes every effort at emancipation on the part of the working men, and pretends to maintain by brute force the distinction of classes and the political domination of the propertied classes resulting from it;
"Considering, besides, "That against this collective power of the propertied classes the working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes;
"That this constitution of the working class into a political party is indispensable in order to ensure the triumph of the Social Revolution and its ultimate end — the abolition of classes;
wanted the Owenists. These sects act as levers of the movement in the beginning, but become an obstruction as soon as the movement outgrows them; after which they become reactionary. Witness the sects in France and England, and lately the Lassalleans in Germany who, after having hindered the proletariat's organisation for several years, ended by becoming simple instruments of the police. To sum up, we have here the infancy of the proletarian movement, just as astrology and alchemy are the infancy of science. If the International were to be founded it was necessary that the proletariat would go through this phase.
Contrary to the sectarian organisations with their vagaries and rivalries, the International is a genuine and militant organisation of the proletarian class of all countries united in their common struggle against the capitalists and the landowners, against their class power organised in the state. The International's Rules, therefore, speak of only simple "working men's societies", all following the same goal and accepting the same programme, which presents a general outline of the proletarian movement, while leaving its theoretical elaboration to be guided by the needs of the practical struggle and the exchange of ideas in the sections, unrestrictedly admitting all shades of socialist convictions in their organs and Congresses.
Just as in every new historical phase old mistakes reappear momentarily only to disappear forthwith, so within the International there followed a resurrection of sectarian sections, though in a less obvious form.
The Alliance, while considering the resurrection of the sects a great step forward, is in itself conclusive proof that their time is over: for, if initially they contained elements of progress, the programme of the Alliance, in tow of a "Mohammed without the Koran", is nothing but a heap of pompously worded ideas long since dead and capable only of frightening bourgeois idiots or serving as evidence to be used by the Bonapartist or other prosecutors against members of the International.(4)
The Conference, at which all shades of socialism were represented, unanimously acclaimed the resolution against sectarian sections, fully convinced that this resolution, bringing the International back to its true ground, would mark a new stage of its development. The Alliance supporters, whom this resolution dealt a fatal blow, construed it only as the General Council's victory over the International, through which, as their circular pointed out, the General Council assured "the domination of the special programme" of some of its members, "their personal doctrine", "the orthodox doctrine", "the official theory, and the sole permissible within the Association". Incidentally, this was not the fault of those few members, but the necessary consequence, "the corrupt-ing effect", of the fact that they were members of the General Council, for
"it is absolutely impossible for a person who has power" (!) "over his fellows to remain a moral person. The General Council is becoming a hotbed of intrigue".
According to the opinion of the Sixteen, the General Rules of the International should be censured for the grave mistake of authorising the General Council to co-opt new members. Thus authorised, they claim,
"the Council could, whenever it saw fit, co-opt a group numerous enough to completely change the nature of its majority and its tendencies".
They seem to think that the mere fact of belonging to the General Council is sufficient to destroy not only a person's morality, but also his common sense. How else can we suppose that a majority will transform itself into a minority by voluntary co-options?
At any rate, the Sixteen themselves do not appear to be very sure of all this, for they complain further on that the General Council has been
"composed for five years running of the same persons, continually re-elected",
and immediately afterwards they repeat:
"most of them are not regular mandatories, not having been elected by a Congress".
The fact is that the body of the General Council is constantly changing, though some of the founding members remain, as in the Belgian, Romance, etc., Federal Councils.
The General Council must fulfil three essential conditions, if it is to carry out its mandate. In the first place, it must have a numerically adequate membership to carry on its diverse functions; secondly, a membership of "working men belonging to the different nations represented in the International Association"; and, lastly, workers must be the predominant element therein. Since the exigencies of the worker's job incessantly cause changes in the membership of the General Council, how can it fulfil all these indispensable conditions without the right of co-option? The Council nonetheless considers a more precise definition of this right necessary, as it indicated at the recent Conference.
The re-election of the General Council's original membership, at successive Congresses, at which England was definitely under-represented, would seem to prove that it has done its duty within the limits of the means at its disposal. The Sixteen, on the contrary, view this only as a proof of the "blind confidence of the Congresses" carried at Basle to the point of
"a sort of voluntary abdication in favour of the General Council".
In their opinion, the Council's "normal role" should be "that of a simple correspondence and statistical bureau". They justify this definition by adducing several articles extracted from an incorrect translation of the Rules.
Contrary to the rules of all bourgeois societies, the International's General Rules touch only lightly on its administrative organisation. They leave its development to practice, and its régularisation to future Congresses. Nevertheless, inasmuch as only the unity and joint action of the sections of the various countries could give them a genuinely international character, the Rules pay more attention to the General Council than to the other bodies of the organisation.
Article 5 of the original Rules(5) states:
"The General Council shall form an international agency between the different" national and local groups,
and proceeds to give some examples of the manner in which it is to function. Among these examples is a request to the Council to see that
"when immediate practical steps should be needed, as, for instance, in case of international quarrels, the action of the associated societies be simultaneous and uniform".
The article continues:
"Whenever it seems opportune, the General Council shall take the initiative of proposals to be laid before the different national or local societies."
In addition, the Rules define the Council's role in convening and arranging Congresses, and charge it with the preparation of certain reports to be submitted thereto. In the original Rules so little distinction is made between the spontaneous action of various groups and unity of action of the Association as a whole, that Article 6 states:
"Since the success of the working men's movement in each country cannot be secured but by the power of union and combination, while, on the other hand, the activity of the General Council will be more effective ... the members of the International Association shall use their utmost efforts to combine the disconnected working men's societies of their respective countries into national bodies, represented by central organs."
The first administrative resolution of the Geneva Congress (Article I) says:
"The General Council is commissioned to carry the resolutions of the Congress into effect."*
This resolution legalised the position that the General Council has held ever since its origin: that of the Association's executive delegation. It would be difficult to carry out orders without enjoying moral "authority" in the absence of any other "freely recognised authority". The Geneva Congress at the same time charged the General Council with publishing "the official and obligatory text of the Rules".
The same Congress resolved (Administrative Resolution of Geneva, Article 14):
"Every section has the right to draw up its own rules and regulations adapted to local conditions and to the laws of its own country, but they must not contain anything contrary to the General Rules and Regulations" [p. 27].
Let us note, first of all, that there is not the least allusion either to any special declarations of principles, or to any special tasks which this or that section should set itself apart from the common goal pursued by all the groups of the International. The issue simply concerns the right of sections to adapt the General Rules and Regulations "to local conditions and to the laws of their country".
In the second place, who is to establish whether or not the local rules conform to the General Rules? Evidently, if there would be no "authority" charged with this function, the resolution would be null and void. Not only could police or hostile sections be formed, but also the intrusion of declassed sectarians and bourgeois philanthropists into the Association could warp its character and, by force of numbers at Congresses, crush the workers.
Since their origin, the national and local federations have exercised in their respective countries the right to admit or reject new sections, according to whether or not their rules conformed to the General Rules. The exercise of the same function by the General Council is provided for in Article 6 of the General Rules, which allows local independent societies, i.e., societies formed outside the federal body in the country concerned, the right to establish direct contacts with the General Council. The Alliance did not hesitate to exercise this right in order to fulfil the conditions set for the admission of delegates to the Basle Congress.
Article 6 of the Rules deals further with legal obstacles to the formation of national federations in certain countries where, consequently, the General Council is asked to function as a Federal Council (see Procès-verbaux du Congrès, etc., de Lausanne, 1867, p. 13(6)).
Since the fall of the Commune, these legal obstacles have been multiplying in the various countries, making action by the General Council therein, designed to keep doubtful elements out of the Association, more necessary than ever. Thus, for instance, the French committees recendy demanded the General Council's intervention to rid themselves of informers, and why, in another great country,(7) members of the International requested it not to recognise any section which has not been formed by its direct mandatary or by themselves. Their request was motivated by the necessity of ridding themselves of agents-provocateurs, whose burning zeal manifested itself in the rapid formation of sections of unparalleled radicalism. On the other hand, the so-called anti-authoritarian sections do not hesitate to appeal to the Council the moment a conflict arises in the midst, nor even to ask it to deal severely with their adversaries, as in the case of the Lyons conflict. More recently, since the Conference, the Turin Working Men's Federation decided to declare itself a section of the International. As the result of the split that followed, the minority formed a society called "Emancipation of the Proletarian".[83] It joined the International and began by passing a resolution in favour of the Jura people. Its newspaper, II Proletario, is filled with outbursts against all authoritarianism. When sending in the society's subscriptions, the secretary(8) warned the General Council that the old federation would probably also send its subscriptions. Then he continues:
"As you will have read in the Proletario, the Emancipation of the Proletarian society... has declared ... its rejection of all solidarity with the bourgeoisie, who, under the mask of workers, are organising the Working Men's Federation",
and begs the Council to
"communicate this resolution to all sections and to refuse the 10 centimes in subscriptions in the event of their being sent".(9)
Like all the International's groups, the General Council is required to carry on propaganda. This it has accomplished through its manifestos and its agents, who laid the basis for the first organisations of the International in North America, in Germany and in many French towns.
Another function of the General Council is to aid strikers and organise their support by the entire International (see General Council reports to the various Congresses). The following fact, inter alia, indicates the importance of its intervention in the strike movement. The Resistance Society of the English Foundrymen is in itself an international Trades Union with branches in other countries, notably in the United States. Nonetheless, during a strike of American foundrymen, the latter found it necessary to invoke the intercession of the General Council to prevent English foundrymen being brought into America.[84]
The growth of the International obliged the General Council and all Federal Councils to assume the role of arbiter.
The Brussels Congress resolved that:
"The Federal Councils shall transmit to the General Council every three months a report on the administration and financial state of their respective branches" (Administrative Resolution No. 3(10)).
Lastly, the Basle Congress, which provokes the bilious wrath of the Sixteen, occupied itself solely with regulating the administrative relations engendered by the Association's continuing development. If it extended unduly the limits of the General Council's powers, whose fault was it if not that of Bakunin, Schwitzguébel, F. Robert, Guillaume and other delegates of the Alliance, who were so anxious to achieve just that? Or will they accuse themselves of "blind confidence" in the London General Council? Here are two resolutions of the Basle Congress:
"No. IV. Each new section or society which is formed and wishes to be part of the International, must immediately announce its adhesion to the General Council",
and "No. V. The General Council has the right to admit or reject the affiliation of any new society or group, subject to appeal at the next Congress."
As for local independent societies formed outside the federal body, these articles only confirm the practice observed since the International's origin, the maintaining of which is a matter of life or death for the Association. But extending this practice and applying it indiscriminately to every section or society in the process of formation is going too far. These articles do authorise the General Council to intervene in the internal affairs of the federations; but they have never been applied in this sense by the General Council. It defies the Sixteen to cite a single case where it has intervened in the affairs of new sections desirous of affiliating themselves with existing groups or federations.
The resolutions cited above refer to sections in the process of formation, while the resolutions given below refer to sections already recognised:
"VI. The General Council has equally the right to suspend until the next Congress any section of the International."
"VII. When conflicts arise between the societies or branches of a national group, or between groups of different nationalities, the General Council shall have the right to decide the conflict, subject to appeal at the next Congress which will decide definitely."3
These two articles are necessary for extreme cases, although up to the present the General Council has never had recourse to them. The review presented above shows that the Council has never suspended any section and, in cases of conflict, has only acted as arbiter at the request of the two parties.
We arrive, at last, at a function imposed on the General Council by the needs of the struggle. However shocking this may be for supporters of the Alliance, it is the very persistence of the attacks to which the General Council is subjected by all the enemies of the proletarian movement that has placed it in the vanguard of the defenders of the International Working Men's Association.
V
Having dealt with the International such as it is, the Sixteen proceed to tell us what it should be.
Firstly, the General Council should be nominally a simple correspondence and statistical bureau. Once it has been relieved of its administrative functions, its correspondence would be concerned only with reproducing the information already published in the Association's newspapers. The correspondence bureau would thus become needless. As for statistics, that function is possible only if a strong organisation, and especially, as the original Rules expressly say, a common direction are provided. Since all that smacks very much of "authoritarianism", however, there might perhaps be a bureau, but certainly no statistics. In a word, the General Council would disappear. The Federal Councils, the local committees and other "authoritarian" centres would go by the same token. Only the autonomous sections would remain.
What, one may ask, will be the purpose of these "autonomous sections", freely federated and happily rid of all superior bodies, "even of the superior body elected and constituted by the workers"?
Here it becomes necessary to supplement the circular by the report of the Jura Federal Committee submitted to the Congress of the Sixteen.
"In order to make the working class the real representative of humanity's new interests", its organisation must be "guided by the idea that will triumph. Ta evolve this idea from the needs of our epoch, from mankind's vital aspirations, by a consistent study of the phenomena of social life, to then carry this idea to our workers' organisations,—such should be our aim, etc." Lastly, there must be created "amidst our working population a real revolutionary socialist school".
Thus, the autonomous workers' sections are in a trice converted into schools, of which these gentlemen of the Alliance will be the masters. They evolve the idea by "consistent studies" which leave no trace behind. They then " carry this idea to our workers' organisations". To them, the working class is so much raw material, a chaos into which they must breathe their Holy Spirit before it acquires a shape.
All of which is but a paraphrase of the old Alliance programme[85] beginning with these words:
"The socialist minority of the League of Peace and Freedom, having broken away from this League", proposes to found "a new Alliance of Socialist Democracy ... adopting as its special mission the study of political and philosophical questions..."
This is the idea that is being " evolved" therefrom!
"Such an enterprise ... would provide sincere socialist democrats of Europe and America with the means of being understood and of affirming their ideas!' (1)
That is how, on its own admission, the minority of a bourgeois society slipped into the International shortly before the Basle Congress with the exclusive aim of utilising it as a means for posing before the working masses as a hierarchy of a secret science that may be expounded in four phrases and whose culminating point is "the economic and social equality of the classes".
Apart from this "theoretical mission", the new organisation proposed for the International also has its practical aspect.
"The future society," says the circular of the Sixteen, "should be nothing but a universalisation of the organisation which the International will establish for itself. We must therefore try to bring this organisation as close as possible to our ideal."
"How could one expect an egalitarian and free society to grow out of an authoritarian organisation? That is impossible. The International, embryo of the future human society, must henceforth be the faithful image of our principles of liberty and federation."
In other words, just as the medieval convents presented an image of celestial life, so the International must be the image of the New Jerusalem, whose "embryo" the Alliance bears in its womb. The Paris Communards would not have failed if they had understood that the Commune was "the embryo of the future human society" and had cast away all discipline and all arms, that is, the things which must disappear when there are no more wars!
Bakunin, however, the better to establish that despite their "consistent studies" the Sixteen did not hatch this pretty project of disorganisation and disarmament in the International when it was fighting for its existence, has just published the original text of that project in his report on the International's organisation (see Almanack du Peuple pour 1872, Geneva).(2)
VI
Now turn to the report presented by the Jura Committee at the Congress of the Sixteen.
"A perusal of the report," says their official organ, Revolution Sociale (November 16), "will give the exact measure of the devotion and practical intelligence that we can expect from the Jura Federation members. " (3)
It begins by attributing to "these terrible events"—the Franco-Prussian war and the Civil War in France — a "somewhat demoralising" influence ... "on the situation within the International's sections".
If, in fact, the Franco-Prussian war could not but lead to the disorganisation of the sections because it drew great numbers of workers into the two armies, it is no less true that the fall of the empire and Bismarck's open proclamation of a war of conquest provoked in Germany and England a violent struggle between the bourgeoisie, which sided with the Prussians, and the proletariat, which more than ever demonstrated its international sentiments. This alone should have been sufficient for the International to have gained ground in both countries. In America, the same fact produced a split in the vast German proletarian émigré group; the internationalist party definitely dissociating itself from the chauvinist party.
On the other hand, the advent of the Paris Commune gave an unprecedented boost to the expansion of the International and to a vigorous support of its principles by sections of all nationalities, except the Jura sections, whose report continues thus: "The beginning of the gigantic struggle ... has caused people to think... Some go away to hide their weakness... For many this situation" (within their ranks) "is a sign of decrepitude", but "on the contrary ... this situation is capable of transforming the International completely" according to their own pattern. This modest wish will be understood after a deeper examination of so propitious a situation.
Leaving aside the dissolved Alliance, replaced since by the Malon section, the Committee had to report on the situation in twenty sections. Among them, seven simply turned their backs on the Alliance; this is what the report has to say about it:
"The section of box-makers and that of engravers and guillocheurs of Bienne have never replied to any of the communications that we sent them.
"The sections of Neuchâtel craftsmen, i.e., joiners, box-makers, engravers and guillocheurs, have made no reply to letters from the Federal Committee.
"We have not been able to obtain any news of the Val-de-Ruz section. " The section of engravers and guillocheurs of Lode has given no reply to letters from the Federal Committee."
That is what is described as free intercourse between the autonomous sections and their Federal Committee. Another section, that
"of engravers and guillocheurs of the Courtelary district after three years of stub-born perseverance ... at the present time ... is forming a resistance society"
independent of the International, which does not in the least deter them from sending two delegates to the Congress of the Sixteen. Next come four completely defunct sections:
"The central section of Bienne has currently been dissolved; one of its devoted members wrote to us recently, however, saying that all hope of seeing the rebirth of the International at Bienne is not lost.
"The Saint-Blaise section has been dissolved. "The Catébat section, after a brilliant existence, has had to yield to the intrigues woven by the masters" (!) "of this district in order to dissolve this valiant" (!) "section.
"Lastly, the Corgémont section also has fallen victim of intrigues on the part of the employers."
The central section of Courtelary district follows, which
"took the wise step of suspending its activity",
which did not deter it from sending two delegates to the Congress of the Sixteen.
Now we come to four sections whose existence is more than problematical.
evidently for the sole purpose of sending two delegates to the Congress of the Sixteen.
"The Chaux-de-Fonds section of socialist propaganda is in a critical situation... Its position, far from getting better, tends rather to deteriorate."
Next come two sections, the study-circles of Saint-Imier and of Sonvillier, which are only mentioned in passing, without so much as a word about their circumstances.
There remains the model section, which, to judge by its name of central section, is nothing but the residue of other defunct sections.
"The central section of Moutier is certainly the one that has suffered least... Its Committee has been in constant contact with the Federal Committee... No sections have yet been founded..."
That is easily explained:
"The activity of the Moutier section was especially facilitated by the excellent attitude of a working population ... with a traditional life style; we would like to see the working class of this district make itself still more independent of political elements."
One can see, in fact, that this report
"gives the exact measure of the devotion and practical intelligence that we can expect from the Jura Federation members".
They might have rounded it off by adding that the workers of La Chaux-de-Fonds, the original seat of their committee, have always refused to have anything to do with them. Just recently, at the general assembly of January 18, 1872, they replied to the circular of the Sixteen by a unanimous vote confirming the London Conference resolutions, as also the Romance Congress resolution of May 1871:
"To exclude forever from the International Bakunin, Guillaume and their supporters."
Is it necessary to say anything more about the gallantry of this sham Sonvillier Congress which, in its own words, "caused war, open war within the International"?
Certainly these men, who make more noise than their stature warrants, have had an incontestable success. The whole of the liberal and police press has openly taken their side; they have been backed in their personal slander of the General Council and the insipid attacks aimed against the International by ostensible reformers in many lands:—by the bourgeois republicans in England, whose intrigues were exposed by the General Council; by the dogmatic free-thinkers in Italy, who, under the banner of Stefanoni, have just formed a "Universal Society of Rationalists", with obligatory seat [headquarters] in Rome, an "authoritarian" and "hierarchical" organisation, monasteries for atheist monks and nuns, whose rules provide for a marble bust in the Congress hall for every bourgeois who donates ten thousand francs[86]; and, lastly, by the Bismarck socialists in Germany, who, apart from their police mouthpiece, the Neuer Social-Demokrat, played the role of "white shirts"[8] for the Prusso-German empire.
The Sonvillier conclave requests all sections of the International, in a pathetic appeal, to insist on the urgency of an immediate Congress "to curb the consistent encroachments of the London Council", according to Citizens Malon and Lefrançais, but actually to replace the International with the Alliance. This appeal received such an encouraging response that they immediately set about falsifying a resolution voted at the last Belgian Congress. Their official organ (Révolution Sociale, January 4, 1872) writes as follows:
"Lastly, which is even more important, the Belgian sections met at the Congress of Brussels on December 24 and 25 and voted unanimously for a resolution identical with that of the Sonvillier Congress, on the urgency of convening a General Congress."
It is important to note that the Belgian Congress voted the very opposite. It charged the Belgian Congress, which was not due to meet until the following June, to draft new General Rules for submission to the next Congress of the International.[88]
In accordance with the will of the vast majority of members of the International, the General Council is to convene the annual Congress only in September 1872.
VII
Some weeks after the Conference, Messrs. Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc, the most influential and most ardent members of the Alliance, arrived in London. They came to recruit, among the French refugees, aides willing to work for the restoration of the Empire, which, according to them, was the only way to rid themselves of Thiers and to avoid being left destitute. The General Council warned all concerned, including the Brussels Federal Council, of their Bonapartist plots.
In January 1872, they dropped their mask by publishing a pamphlet entitled L'Empire et la France nouvelle. Appel du peuple et de la jeunesse à la conscience française, by Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc. Brussels, 1872.
With the modesty characteristic of the charlatans of the Alliance, they declaim the following humbug:
"We who have built up the great army of the French proletariat ... we, the most influential leaders of the International in France,* ... happily, we have not been shot, and we are here to flaunt in their face (to wit: ambitious parliamentarians, smug republicans, sham democrats of all sorts) the banner under which we are fighting, and despite the slander, threats, and all manner of attacks that await us, to hurl at an amazed Europe the cry that comes from the very heart of our conscience and that will soon resound in the hearts of all Frenchmen: 'Long live the EmperorV
"Napoleon III, disgraced and scorned, must be splendidly reinstated";
and Messrs. Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc, paid out of the secret funds of Invasion III, are specially charged with this restoration.
Incidentally, they confess:
"It is the normal evolution of our ideas that has made us imperialists."
Here is a confession that should give pleasure to their co-religionists of the Alliance. As in the heyday of the Solidarité, A. Richard and G. Blanc mouth again the old clichés regarding "abstention from politics" which, on the principle of their "normal evolution", can become a reality only under the most absolute despotism, with the workers abstaining from any meddling in politics, much like the prisoner abstaining from a walk in the sun.
* Under the heading "Au Pilori!", L'Égalité (of Geneva), February 15, 1872, had this to say:
"The day has not yet come to describe the story of the defeat of the movement for the Commune in the South of France; but what we can announce today, we, most of whom witnessed the deplorable defeat of the Lyons insurrection on April 30,[89] is that one of the reasons for the insurrection's failure was the cowardice, the treachery and the thievery of G. Blanc, who intruded everywhere carrying out the orders of A. Richard, who kept in the shade.
"By their carefully prepared manoeuvres these rascals intentionally compromised many of those who took part in the preparatory work of the insurrectionary Committees.
"Further, these traitors managed to discredit the International at Lyons to such an extent that by the time of the Paris Revolution the International was regarded by the Lyons workers with the greatest distrust. Hence the total absence of organisation, hence the failure of the insurrection, a failure which was bound to result in the fall of the Commune which was left to rely on its own isolated forces! It is only since this bloody lesson that our propaganda has been able to rally the Lyons workers around the flag of the International.
"Albert Richard was the pet and prophet of Bakunin and company."
"The time of the revolutionaries," they say, "is over ... communism is restricted to Germany and England, especially Germany. That, moreover, is where it had been developed in earnest for a long time, to be subsequently spread throughout the International, and this disturbing expansion of German influence in the Association has in no small degree contributed to retarding its development, or rather, to giving it a new course in the sections of central and southern France, whom no German has ever supplied with a slogan."
Perhaps this is the voice of the great hierophant,(1) who has taken upon himself, ever since the Alliance's foundation, in his capacity as a Russian, the special task of representing the Latin races? Or do we have here the "true missionaries" of the Révolution Sociale (November 2, 1871) denouncing
"the backward march which the German and Bismarckian minds endeavour to foist upon the International"?
Fortunately, however, the true tradition has survived, and Messrs. Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc have not been shot! Thus, their own "contribution" consists in "setting a new course" for the International in central and southern France to follow, by an effort to found Bonapartist sections, ipso facto basically "autonomous".
As for the constitution of the proletariat as a political party, as recommended by the London Conference,
" after the restoration of the Empire, we"—Richard and Blanc—"shall quickly deal not only with the socialist theories but also with any attempts to implement them through revolutionary organisation of the masses".
Briefly, exploiting the great "autonomy principle of the sections" which "constitutes the real strength of the International ... especially in the Latin countries (Révolution Sociale, January 4)",
these gentlemen base their hopes on anarchy within the International.
Anarchy, then, is the great war-horse of their master Bakunin, who has taken nothing from the socialist systems except a set of labels. All socialists see anarchy as the following programme: once the aim of the proletarian movement, i.e., abolition of classes, is attained, the power of the State, which serves to keep the great majority of producers in bondage to a very small exploiter minority, disappears, and the functions of government become simple administrative functions. The Alliance reverses the whole process. It proclaims anarchy in proletarian ranks as the most infallible means of breaking the powerful concentration of social and political forces in the hands of the exploiters. Under this pretext, it asks the International, at a time when the old world is seeking a way of crushing it, to replace its organisation with anarchy. The international police want nothing better for per-petuating the Thiers republic, while cloaking it in a royal mantle.(2)
General Council:
R. Applegarth, Antoine Arnaud, M. J. Boon, F. Bradnick, G. H. Buttery, F. Cournet, Delahaye, Eugene Dupont, W. Haies, Hurliman, Jules Johannard, Harriet Law, F. Lessner, Lochner, Mar-guerittes, Constant Martin, Zévy Maurice, Henry Mayo, George Milner, Charles Murray, Pfänder, Vitale Regis, J. Rozwadowski, John Roach, Rühl, G. Ranvier, Sadler, Cowell Stepney, Alf. Taylor, W. Townshend, Ed. Vaillant, John Weston, F. J. Yarrow.
Corresponding Secretaries:
Karl Marx, Germany and Russia; Led Frankel, Austria and Hungary; A. Herman, Belgium; Th. Mottershead, Denmark; /. G. Eccarius, United States; Le Moussu, French sections in the United States; Aug. Serraillier, France; Charles Rochat, Holland; /. P. MacDonnell, Ireland; Fred. Engels, Italy and Spain; Walery Wroblewski, Poland; H. Jung, Switzerland.
Charles Longuet, Chairman of the meeting Hermann Jung, Treasurer John Hales, General Secretary
33, Rathbone Place, W. London, March 5, 1872
Endnotes
[4] The French edition of the Provisional Rules, issued by the Administration of the Paris Section (Henri Louis Tolain, Ernest Edouard Fribourg, Charles Mathieu Limousin) at the end of 1864-beginning of 1865, interpreted some principles of the Rules in a Proudhonist spirit and distorted them in translation.
[5] When Marx edited the General Rules of 1871 he deleted the following sentence: "They hold it the duty of a man to claim the rights of a man and a citizen, not only for himself, but for every man, who does his duty", previously included on the insistence of the other members of the Sub-Committee (see Marx's letter to Engels of November 4, 1864, present edition, Vol. 42, pp. 16-18).
[49] In reply to the slanders heaped on the International by the bourgeois press after the publication of the General Council's address The Civil War in France, Marx and Engels sent to The Times, The Standard, The Daily News and other English newspapers a number of statements and letters on behalf of the General Council in defence of the Paris Commune, explaining the stand taken by the International (see present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 364-68, 370-71).
[50] In June 1871, on Marx's initiative, the General Council began to raise funds and distributed them among the Communards who had fled from France to England to escape persecution by the Versailles government; it also helped to find jobs for many of them. In July, the General Council formed a special Relief Committee which included Marx, Engels, Jung and others. In September 1871 the Communards themselves formed a Committee to provide direct aid for the refugees, but the General Council and its individual members (Marx, Engels, Dupont, Jung and Stepney among them) continued to collect money and find jobs for them.
[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.
[52] After the defeat of the Paris Commune, a number of its leaders who had emigrated to England were coopted into the General Council of the International: Antoine Arnaud, André Bastelica, Frédéric Cournet, Pierre Louis Delahaye, Leo Frankel, Margueritte, Constant Martin, Benjamin Le Moussu, Gabriel Ran vier, Vitale Regis, Charles Rochat, Joséf Rozwadowski, Albert Félix Theisz, Edouard Vaillant, Walery Wroblewski.
[53] On Engels' motion, the General Council resolved to convene a closed conference of the International in London. Since that time Marx and Engels had done a great deal of organisational and theoretical work to prepare it: they oudined its programme and drafted resolutions, which had been previously discussed at the General Council meetings.
[54] The General Council's decision to hold the next congress in Mainz instead of Paris was taken on May 17, 1870. On July 12, acting on Marx's proposal, the General Council approved the draft programme of the Mainz Congress (see present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 143-44).
[55] At the General Council meeting of June 28, 1870 Marx proposed that all sections of the Association should discuss the question of moving the seat of the General Council so as to avoid creating privileged conditions for workers of one particular country. The proposition had been discussed at several meetings of the Council and then adopted; on July 14, 1870 Marx wrote "Confidential Communication to All Sections" (see present edition, Vol. 21, p. 142). The sections, however, opposed the transfer of the Council's seat, considering London the most suitable place for the leading body of the International Working Men's Association.
[56] On September 25-29, 1865, a preliminary conference was held in London in lieu of a scheduled congress in Brussels. The General Council's decision to postpone the congress and convene the conference was taken at Marx's insistence, who held that local organisations of the International were yet not strong enough either ideologically or organisationally.
[57] On May 26, 1871, Jules Favre, Foreign Minister of France, sent a circular dispatch to French diplomatic representatives abroad, which ordered them to press European governments for arrest and extradition of the Commune refugees as common criminals. Minister of Justice Dufaure tabled a law, drafted by a specially appointed commission of the National Assembly, under which affiliation with the International was punishable by imprisonment. The law was passed on March 14, 1872.
[58] On June 7, 1871, Bismarck sent a message to Schweinitz, German Ambassador to Vienna, recommending that he and the Austrian government co-ordinate action against the workers' organisations. On June 17, Bismarck sent Beust, the Chancellor of Austria-Hungary, a memorandum on the measures taken in Germany and France against the International. Emperor of Germany William I and Emperor of Austria Francis Joseph met in Gastein in August 1871 and in September in Salzburg for a special discussion of measures to be taken against the International. The Italian government joined the general anti-International campaign: in August 1871, it banned the Naples section and began persecuting members of the International, Theodor Cuno in particular (see this volume, pp. 151-52). The Spanish government, too, adopted repressive measures against the workers' organisations and the sections of the International in the spring and summer of 1871; this forced Francisco Mora, Tomas Morago and Anselmo Lorenzo, members of the Spanish Federal Council, to emigrate temporarily to Lisbon.
[59] In Austria-Hungary Oberwinder, Andreas Scheu, Most and Papst, active members of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party, were arrested and brought to trial for high treason in July 1870; some workers' societies were likewise persecuted. On September 9, 1870, Wilhelm Bracke, Leonhard Bornhorst, Samuel Spier and other members of the Brunswick Committee of the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party were arrested and brought to trial for the publication, on September 5, of a manifesto against the militarist plans of the Prussian government (see Note 26). In the latter half of December 1870, Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel were arrested for their opposition to the predatory war; they were charged with conspiring to commit treason and, in March 1872, sentenced to a two-year term of imprisonment in the fortress.
[60] On August 12, 1871, the Central Committee of the North American Federation of the International Working Men's Association decided against sending its delegates to the London Conference and to spend the money at its disposal on the assistance to the Commune refugees. A special commission was appointed to draw up the report for the Conference. A memorandum describing the conditions of the workers in the USA and difficulties in the work of the Committee itself was unanimously adopted by the Central Committee on August 20; it was then sent to the General Council. Marx briefly reported on it at the sitting of the Conference on September 22, 1871.
[61] The London Conference, on Marx's proposal, instructed the General Council to form a Federal Council (Committee) for England (see Note 12). The London Federal Council was founded on October 25, 1871. It consisted of representatives of the London sections and trade unions affiliated with the International. After a number of local sections joined the Federation in March 1872, it began to function as the British Federal Council. From the very beginning, a group of reformists, headed by John Hales, were among its leaders. The reformists sought to oppose the British Council to the General Council and did not recognise its internationalist stand; they also refused to recognise the decisions of the Hague Congress. Some members of the British Council (Samuel Vickery, William Harrison Riley, George Milner, Friedrich Lessner among them) came out against the reformists and actively supported Marx and Engels. In early December 1872, a split occurred in the Federal Council; the part of it that still supported the decisions of the Hague Congress constituted the British Federal Council. Marx and Engels actively assisted it in its organisational work. The reformists failed in their attempts to lead the British Federation of the International.
[62] This refers to Resolution IX of the London Conference of 1871—"Political Action of the Working Class"—which stressed the necessity to organise a workers' political party as an indispensable condition for the victory of the socialist revolution and the attainment of its ultimate aim: a classless society (see this volume, pp. 105-06).
[63] This refers to Resolution II of the London Conference of 1871—"Designations of National Councils, etc."—which barred various sectarian, conspiratorial and such like groups from the International (see present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 423-24).
[64] On the League of Peace and Freedom and the resolution moved by Bakunin at its congress in Berne in September 1868 see Note 38.
[65] Johann Philipp Becker, a member of the Provisional Committee of the Alliance, sent the Alliance's Programme and the Rules to the General Council on November 29, 1868. Both these documents were read out at its meeting on December 15. On that day Marx forwarded them to Engels asking for his comments. On December 18 Engels complied with this request and on December 22 Marx's draft reply with Engels' remarks taken into account, was read out by Hermann Jung at the General Council meeting and adopted, with slight changes, as a circular letter. The circular letter was sent out as a confidential communication; it was first published by Marx and Engels in the Fictitious Splits in the International.
[67] On the Nechayev trial see Note 10.
[6 8] The League of Public Welfare (Ligue (universelle) du bien public)—an association of bourgeois pacifists of various social strata and political convictions. It was founded in 1863 by the French journalist Edmond Potonié and later merged with the League of Peace and Freedom (see Note 38).
[69] "Factory workers", i.e. those who worked for La Fabrique, the production of watches and jewellery in Geneva and its environs carried on in large and small manufactory-type workshops; also home-workers in these trades.
[70] This refers to the Manifeste aux Sections de l'Internationale written by the Bakuninists James Guillaume and Gaspard Blanc and published in Neuchâtel as a supplement to the newspaper La Solidarité, No. 22, September 5, 1870.
[72] In a letter of August 10, 1871. to Hermann Jung, Corresponding Secretary for Switzerland, Nikolai Zhukovsky, Secretary of the Bakuninist section in Geneva named "The Alliance of Socialist Democracy. Central Section", sent the resolution of August 6 on the voluntary dissolution of the section.
[73] In April 1870, Paul Robin, a follower of Bakunin, proposed to the Paris Federal Council that it should recognise the Federal Committee formed by the anarchists at a congress in La Chaux-de-Fonds as the Romance Federal Committee and announce in La Marseillaise that its supporters were only bona fide members of the International. The Paris Council refused to examine the matter as coming within the competence of the General Council.
[74] This refers to Resolution XVII of the London Conference of 1871—"Split in the French-Speaking Part of Switzerland" (Vol. 22, pp. 430-31). It was published in abridged form in^ the separate edition of the resolutions of the Conference and in full in L'Egalité, No. 20, October 21, 1871 (see present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 419-22).
[75] The Section of Propaganda and Revolutionary Socialist Action was founded in Geneva on September 6, 1871 in place of the Geneva section, Alliance of Socialist Democracy, dissolved in August. It was organised by its former members, Nikolai Zhukovsky, Charles Perron and others and some French refugees, Jules Guesde and Benoît Malon in particular. On September 8, October 4 and 20, 1871, the section applied to the General Council with the request to be admitted into the International; the General Council refused to comply because it had received a negative opinion on the matter from the Romance Federal Committee in Geneva.
[76] On June 28, 1870, the General Council adopted the resolution moved by Marx to let the Romance Federal Council keep its name and suggested that the Chaux-de-Fonds Council should adopt another name. The London Conference confirmed the resolution of June 28, 1870, and recommended that the Jura sections should join the Romance Federation and, in case this was impossible, should be called the Jura Federation.
[77] The conflict between the members of the old Lyons Section (Adrien Schettel among them), close to the French Republicans, and the group headed by the Bakuninist Albert Richard was discussed by the General Council on March 8, 1870. The Council adopted Marx's report on this question which declared all the accusations of the parties in the conflict to be without the least foundation and based on a mode of procedure aimed at exciting personal animosities and producing divisions in the ranks of the International Working Men's Association (see present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 108-09). The General Council decision, signed by the Corresponding Secretary for France, Eugène Dupont, was published in L'Internationale, No. 63, March 27, 1870.
[78] The public meeting to celebrate the anniversary of the June 1848 insurrection of the Paris workers was held on June 29, 1868 in London. Félix Pyat, described in certain newspapers as a leader of the International, made a speech in which he called for terrorist acts against Napoleon III. At its meeting of July 7 the General Council resolved, on Marx's proposal, to disavow Pyat's behaviour (see present edition, Vol. 21, p. 7). When the resolution appeared in the press, a split took place in the London French Section, of which Pyat was a member. Eugène Dupont, Hermann Jung, Paul Lafargue and other proletarian members withdrew from it. A group of petty-bourgeois French refugees, headed by Pyat, lost ties with the International but retained its name and repeatedly supported anti-proletarian elements in opposition to Marx's line in the General Council. The question of official dissociation from this group was raised in the General Council more than once. In the spring of 1870 when a third trial against members of the International, charged with a conspiracy to assassinate Napoleon III, was in preparation in France, this dissociation became all the more necessary since the incriminatory material included documents of the so-called French Section in London, in which the International was identified with a secret republican society, headed by Pyat. This prompted Marx to draw up a résolution to the effect that the International had nothing to do with that group, and it was adopted by the General Council on May 10, 1870.
[79] The reference is to Resolution 2 in the section "Special Votes of the Conference" which declared that the German working men had done their internationalist duty during the Franco-German war of 1870-71 (see present edition, Vol. 22, p. 428).
[80] At a meeting of the Geneva sections of December 2, 1871, Benoît Malon, Gustave Lefrançais and François Charles Ostyn proposed a resolution directed against the General Council and the London Conference decisions and based on the French translation of the International's Rules that had been distorted in a Proudhonist spirit. The meeting, however, rejected the proposal and adopted a resolution approving the decisions of the London Conference and expressing solidarity with the General Council. The draft of Malon's anarchist resolution was published in La Révolution Sociale, No. 7, December 7, 1871.
[81] The Icarians were the followers of Etienne Cabet, champion of peaceful Utopian communism and the author of Voyage en Icarie, which gave a fantastic picture of a future communist society.
[83] The Working Men's Federation was founded in Turin in the autumn of 1871 and was influenced by the Mazzinists. In December 1871, the proletarian elements split away from the Federation and formed the Emancipation of the Proletarian Society, later admitted to the International as a section; up to February 1872, it was headed by a secret police agent, Carlo Terzaghi. p. Ill
[84] This refers to the International Foundrymen's Union which, as its leader William Sylvis wrote in a letter read out at the General Council meeting of July 9, 1867, had spent a lot of money in 1866-67 in support of the strikers. The Union was founded in 1859 and took final shape in 1863 under the leadership of Sylvis, who became its president. The Union amalgamated the local foundrymen's associations on a national scale, had its organisations in British Columbia and Canada and led strikes. It did much to strengthen other US trade unions.
[85] The quotations below are taken from the Programme of the Alliance of Socialist Democracy drawn up by Bakunin and published as a leaflet in Geneva in 1868 in French and German. The full text of the Programme is given by Marx and Engels in "The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men's Association" (see this volume, pp. 577-78).
[86] On Luigi Stefanoni's attempts to undermine the International's influence on the Italian workers by establishing the "Universal Society of Rationalists" see Note 43. Marx's and Engels' articles in the Italian press (see this volume, pp. 74-75 and 160-63) helped to frustrate his attempts to subject the Italian working-class movement to bourgeois influence.
[8] The Federal Chamber of Working Men's Societies—an association of trade unions and other workers' societies in Paris — was formed on the International's initiative in 1869. The Chamber organised aid for workers on strike and maintained close ties with the International.
[88] The Congress of the Belgian Federation of the International Working Men's Association, held in Brussels on December 24 and 25, 1871, when discussing the Sonvillier circular, did not support the Swiss anarchists' demand for the immediate convocation of a general congress of the International, though it did instruct the Belgian Federal Council to draft new General Rules for the Association. True to its anarchist spirit, this draft abolished the General Council. At the Hague Congress of the International (September 1872) the Belgian delegates together with the anarchist minority voted against the decisions of the General Council on the changes in the Rules and Administrative Regulations, aimed at strengthening the Association organisationally and widening the powers of its leading body.
[89] The workers' insurrection in Lyons on April 30, 1871, in support of the Paris Commune, was suppressed by the army and police on May 1. It was preceded by the unsuccessful attempt by the workers of Lyons on March 22-25 to overthrow the local administration of the Versailles government and establish a local Commune. Both insurrections failed largely because the anarchists, who claimed leadership, fell victim to spontaneity, denied the role of the revolutionary leaders and adopted wrong tactics.
[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.
[6] Marx has in mind the resolution of the Basle Congress of 1869 which approved the decision of the General Council of September 24, 1867 to abolish the post of President of the General Council.