46. F. Engels. Announcement of the General Council on the Convocation and the Agenda of the Congress at The Hague
46. F. Engels. Announcement of the General Council on the Convocation and the Agenda of the Congress at The Hague[130]
1. Considering the resolution of the Basel Congress fixing the seat of the next Congress at Paris, also the resolution of the General Council dated July 12th, 1870, by which, it being then impossible to hold a Congress at Paris, and conformably with Art. 4 of the General Rules, the Congress was convoked to meet at Mayence.
Considering further that up to this day the government persecutions[3] directed against the International in France, as well as in Germany, render impossible the meeting of a Congress either in Paris or in Mayence.
Conformably with Art. 4 of the General Rulesb which confers upon the General Council the rights of changing, in case of need, the place of meeting of the Congress, the General Council convokes the next Congress of the I.W.M.A. for Monday, September 2nd, at The Hague, Holland.
2. Considering that the questions contained in the programme of the Congress which was to be held at Mayence on the 5th September 1870c do not correspond with the present wants of the International, these wants having been profoundly affected by the great historic events which have taken place since then.
That numerous sections and federations belonging to various countries have proposed that the next Congress should occupy itself with the revision of the General Rules and Regulations.
a The manuscript has "prosecutions".— Ed. b See this volume, p. 4.— Ed. c Cf. K. Marx, "Programme for the Mainz Congress of the International".— Ed.
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That the persecutions to which the International finds itself exposed at this moment in almost all European countries, impose upon it the duty of strengthening its organization:
The General Council, while reserving to itself the faculty of drawing up hereafter a more extensive programme, to be completed by the propositions of the sections and federations, places on the order of the day, as the most important questions to be discussed by the Congress of The Hague, the revision of the General Rules and Regulations.
Endnotes
[130] i3° At its meeting of June 11, 1872, the General Council, on Marx's proposal, resolved to convene the next congress in Holland on September 2, 1872; the main question on the agenda was to be that of strengthening the International organisationally (revision of the General Rules and Administrative Regulations). At its next meeting, on June 18, the General Council decided to hold the congress at The Hague and appointed a special Committee (Engels, Edouard Vaillant and J. Patrick MacDonnell) to prepare an official announcement on the coming congress. It was written by Engels and, apart from The International Herald, was published in Der Volksstaat, No. 53, July 3, Die Tagwacht, No. 27, July 6, L'Internationale, No. 182, July 7, L'Égalité No. 14, July 7, La Emancipacion, No. 57, July 13, Le Mirabeau, No. 156, July 14, La Liberté, No. 28, July 14, Bulletin de la Fédération jurassienne, No. 13 (Supplement), July 15, O Pensamento Social, No. 18, July, La Plebe, No. 88, August 3, 1872. Engels' rough manuscript in French and English is extant.
[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.
[1] The original text of the Rules of the International Working Men's Association was written by Marx in English in October 1864 and approved by the Central Council (see present edition, Vol. 20, pp. 14-16). In 1867, an English text of the Rules and Administrative Regulations was printed in London, with the changes introduced at the Geneva and Lausanne congresses (ibid., pp. 441-46). The next congresses — in Brussels (1868) and Basle (1869)—adopted a number of resolutions which were additions to the Rules. However, the texts of the Rules then in circulation did not contain these additions and amendments and this led to inaccurate translations in a number of countries. The London Conference adopted the resolution, moved by Marx, on a new and authentic edition of the Rules and Administrative Regulations in English, German and French, and decided that in future all translations into other languages should be approved by the General Council. On Engels' proposition, a special meeting of the General Council of October 7, 1871 appointed a commission to prepare the new edition of the General Rules and resolutions of the conference. It included Karl Marx, Hermann Jung and Auguste Serraillier. On October 24, the General Council approved the work done on the new edition of the Rules. The text of the Rules and Administrative Regulations was revised in accordance with the resolutions of all congresses and the London (1871) Conference of the International, the clauses which had become invalid being excluded. An "Appendix", which substantiated in detail all amendments and additions, was written anew. At the General Council meeting of October 31 Engels reported that the Rules and Administrative Regulations were almost ready for the press but that it was impossible to print them in three languages simultaneously as was decided at the conference. In view of that he proposed to publish them in each language separately. Marx and Engels directly supervised the translation of the Rules and Regulations into German and French. The London Conference of the International was held from September 17 to 23, 1871. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 and reaction in Europe, which intensified after the fall of the Paris Commune, frustrated the convocation of the regular congress in 1871. But the need to define the tasks of the working-class movement, to draw general conclusions from the experience of the Commune and the struggle against the sectarian elements, especially the Bakuninists, demanded collective decisions. Under those conditions, the General Council, headed by Marx and Engels, considered it 23* expedient, having received the agreement of the majority of federations to hold a closed conference of the International's delegates. The most important decision of the London Conference was formulated in Resolution IX, "Political Action of the Working Class", which declared the need to found, in each country, an independent proletarian party whose aim would be the conquest of political power by the working class. Other Conference decisions covered a wide range of tactical and organisational issues: the combination of various forms of proletarian struggle, legal and illegal, peaceful and non-peaceful; the alliance of the working class and the peasantry; the organisation of trade unions under the leadership of the International; the struggle against sectarianism and conspiracies, etc.