RESOLUTIONS  OF  THE  GENERAL  COUNCIL
ADOPTED  AT  ITS MEETING
ON  NOVEMBER  7, 1871
I. PRELIMINARY REMARKS
The General Council 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 which it ought to discuss.
With regard to the insulting references to the General
Council made by that section, these will be judged for
what they are worth by the councils and federal committees of the various countries.
The Council merely wishes to note:
That three years have not yet elapsed since the Basle
Congress (which met on September 6-11,  1869), as the
above-mentioned section deliberately asserts;
That in 1870, on the eve of the Franco-Prussian war,
the Council addressed a general circular to all the federations, including the Paris Federal Council, proposing that
the seat of the General Council be transferred from
London290;

That the replies received were unanimously in favour
of retaining the present seat of the Council and of prolonging its term of office;
That in 1871, as soon as the situation permitted, the
General Council summoned a Conference of Delegates,
this being the only action possible in the given circumstances;
That at this Conference*  delegates from the Continent
gave voice to the misgivings in their respective countries
that the co-option of too large a number of French refugees
would destroy the international character of the General
Council;
That the Conference (see its “Resolutions, etc.” XV)
“leaves it to the discretion of the General Council to fix,
according to events, the day and place of meeting of the
next Congress or Conference which might replace it”.291
With regard to the said section’s claim to exclusive
representation of “the French revolutionary element”,
because its members include ex-presidents of Paris workers’ societies, the Council remarks:
The fact that this or that person has in the past been
president of a workers’ society may well be taken into
account by the General Council, but does not in itself
constitute the “right” to a seat on the Council or to represent the “revolutionary element” on that body. If this were
so, the Council would be obliged to grant membership to
M. Gustave Durand, former President of the Paris Jewellers’ Society and secretary of the French section in London. Moreover, members of the General Council are bound
to represent the principles of the International Working
Men’s Association, rather than the opinions and interests
of this or that corporation.

II. OBJECTIONS PRESENTED BY THE FRENCH SECTION
OF 1871 AT THE GENERAL COUNCIL MEETING
OF OCTOBER 31 TO THE RESOLUTIONS OF OCTOBER 17*
1) With respect to the following passage from Article 2
of the section’s rules:
“In order to be admitted as member of the section, a person must
provide information as to his means of sustenance, present guarantees of morality, etc.”
the section remarks:
“The General Rules make the sections responsible for the morality
of their members, and, as a consequence, recognise the right of sections to demand guarantees at their own discretion."
On this argument, a section of the International founded
by teetotallers could include in its rules this type of
article: “To be admitted as member of the section, a person must swear to abstain from all alcoholic drinks.” In
short, it would be always possible for individual sections
to impose in their local rules the most absurd and incongruous conditions of admittance into the International,
under the pretext that they “think it necessary in this
way” to discharge their responsibility for the integrity of
their members.
In its Resolution I of October 17, the General Council
stated that there may be “cases in which the absence of
any means of sustenance may well be a guarantee of
morality”. It is of the opinion that the section repeated
this point unnecessarily when it said that “refugees” are
“above suspicion by virtue of the eloquent proof of their
poverty”.
As to the phrase that strikers’ “means of sustenance”

consist of “the strike fund” this might be answered by
saying, first, that this “fund” is often fictitious.*
Moreover, official English inquiries have shown that
the majority of English workers who, generally speaking,
enjoy better conditions than their brothers on the Continent, are forced as a result of strikes and unemployment,
or because of insufficient wages or terms of payment and
many other causes, to resort incessantly to pawnshops or to
borrowing money, that is, to “means of sustenance” about
which one cannot demand information without interfering
in an unqualified manner in a person’s private life.
There are two alternatives.
Either the section sees “means of sustenance” purely
as “guarantees of morality”,** in which case the General
Council’s proposal that “to be admitted as member of the
section a person must provide guarantees of morality”
serves the purpose since it assumes (see Resolution I of
October 17) that “in dubious cases the section may well
take information about means of sustenance as guarantee
of morality”,292
Or in Article 2 of its rules the section deliberately refers
to the furnishing of information about “means of sustenance” as a condition for admission, over and above the
“guarantees of morality” which it is empowered to
require, in which case the General Council affirms that “it
is a bourgeois innovation contrary to the letter spirit and
of the General Rules”.
2) With respect to the General Council’s rejection of the
following clause of Article 11 of the section’s rules:
“One or several delegates shall be sent to the General Council”

the section states:
“We are not unaware ... that the wording of the General Rules
confers on it” (the General Council) “the right to accept or reject
delegates.”
This is a patent demonstration of the fact that*  the
section is not familiar with the essence of the General
Rules.
In actual fact, the General Rules, which recognise only
two ways of election to the General Council, namely, election by the Congress or co-option by the Council itself,
nowhere state that the Council has the right to accept or
reject delegates from the sections or groups.
The admission of delegates proposed by the London
sections has always been a purely administrative measure
on the part of the General Council, which in this case
only made use of its power of co-option (see Resolution II,
Clause 2, of the General Council of October 17).
The exceptional circumstances which led the General
Council to have recourse to co-option of this kind were
explained at sufficient length in its resolution of October 17.
In the same resolutions (II, 3) the Council declared that
it would admit delegates from the French Section of 1871
on the same conditions as those from the London sections.
It cannot, however, be expected to give serious consideration to a demand that would grant this section a privileged
position contrary to the General Rules.
Ry the inclusion of the following paragraph in Article 11
of its rules: “One or several delegates shall be sent to the
General Council,” the French Section of 1871 is claiming
the right to send delegates to the General Council allegedly
basing itself on the General Rules. It acted as though fully
convinced that it possessed this imaginary right, and even

before the section had been recognised by the General
Council (see Article VI of the Administrative Resolutions
of the Basle Congress293), it did not hesitate to send “by
right” to the General Council meeting of October 17 two
delegates, armed with “imperative mandates” in the name
of the 20 full members of the section. Finally, in its latest
communication it again insists on “the duty and right to
send delegates to the General Council”.
The section attempts to justify its claims by seeking
a precedent in the position of Citizen Herman on the
General Council. It pretends to be unaware of the fact that
Citizen Herman was co-opted into the General Council at
the recommendation of the Belgian Congress, and in no way
represents the Liege section.*
3) With respect to the General Council’s refusal to
recognise the following passage in the section’s rules:
“Each member of the section should not accept any delegation
to the General Council other than that of his section,”
the section states:
“In response to this, we shall limit ourselves to the observation
that our rules pertain to our section alone; our agreements are of
no concern or relevance to anyone but ourselves, and this claim in
no way contradicts the General Rules which include no provision on
this subject.”
It is difficult to comprehend how the Rules which
include no provision on the right of delegation to the
General Council, should suddenly specify the conditions
of this delegation. On the other hand, it is not so difficult
to see that the section’s own rules do not apply outside
its field of competence. Nevertheless, it cannot be admitted
that the specific rules of any section “are of no concern
or relevance to anyone but that section alone”.294 For were

the General Council to approve Article 11 of the rules of
the French Section of 1871, for example, it would be
obliged to insert it into the rules of all the other sections,
and this article, once it began to apply generally, would
completely nullify the right of co-option conferred on the
Council by the General Rules.295
For these reasons:
I) The General Council reaffirms in their entirety its
resolutions of October 17, 187 1 296;
II) In the event of these resolutions not being accepted
by the section before the Council’s meeting on November 21, the corresponding secretaries should bring the
following documents to the notice of the Federal Councils
or Committees of the respective countries or, where these
do not exist, to the notice of the local groups: the rules
of the French Section of 1871, the mandate of that section’s delegates presented to the General Council at its
meeting on October 17, the General Council’s resolutions
of October 17, the reply of the French Section of 1871
presented to the General Council at its meeting on October 31, and the Council’s final resolutions of November 7.
London, November 7, 1871
In the name and by order
of the General Council297