MARX TO FRIEDRICH BOLTE*” 

{London,}] 23 November 1871 

Friend Bolte, 

I received your letter yesterday together with Sorge’s report. ** 

1. First of all, as to the attitude of the General Council towards 
the New York Federal Council, I trust that my letters already sent 
to Sorge (and a letter to Speyer, which I authorised him to 
communicate to Sorge confidentially)* will have disposed of the 
highly erroneous viewpoint of the German Section which you 
represent.*** 

In the United States, as in every other country where the 
International first has to be established, the General Council 
originally had to authorise separate individuals and appoint them as 
its official correspondents. But from the moment the New York 
Committee had gained some stability, these correspondents were 
dropped one after the other, although they could not be removed all 
at once. 

For some time past the official correspondence with formerly 
appointed authorised representatives has been confined to Ec- 
carius’ correspondence with Jessup, and I see from your own 
letter that you have no complaint at all to make regarding the 
latter. 

Except for Eccarius, however, no one was to carry on official 
correspondence with the United States but myself and Dupont as 
correspondent (at the time) for the French sections, and whatever 
correspondence he conducted was confined to the latter. 

With the exception of yourself and Sorge, I have not carried on 
any official correspondence at all. My correspondence with Sigfrid 
Meyer is private correspondence, of which he has never published the 
slightest detail, and which by its very nature could in no way be 
troublesome or harmful to the New York Committee. 

There is no doubt, on the other hand, that George Harris and 
perhaps Boon—two English members of the General Council— 
are carrying on private correspondence with Internationals in New 
York, etc. Both of them belong to the sect of the late Bronterre 

a See this volume, pp. 236, 241-42 and 244. 

O’Brien, and are full of follies and crorcners, such as CURRENCY 
quackery, false emancipation of women, and the like.** They are 
thus sy nature allies of Section 12 in New York and its kindred 
souls.**” 

The General Council has no right to forbid its members to 
conduct private correspondence. But if it could be proved to us: 
either that this private correspondence pretends to be official, or 
that it counteracts the activity of the General Council—whether 
used for publication or to drag the New York Committee through 
the mire—the necessary measures would be taken to prevent such 
mischief. 

These O’Brienites, in spite of their follies, constitute an often 
necessary counterweight to TRADES UNIONISTS in the Counc. They are 
more revolutionary, firmer on the LAND QUESTION, less NATIONALISTIC, 
and not susceptible to bourgeois bribery in one form or another. 
Otherwise they would have been kicked out long ago. 

2. I was greatly astonished to see that German Section No. 1 
suspects the General Council of a preference for bourgeois 
philanthropists, sectarians, or amateur groups. 

The position is quite the contrary. 

The International was founded in order to replace the socialist 
or semi-socialist sects by a real organisation of the working class 
for struggle. The original Rules and the Inaugural Address* show 
this at a glance. On the other hand, the International could not 
have asserted itself if the course of history had not already 
smashed sectarianism. The development of socialist sectarianism 
and that of the real labour movement always stand in indirect 
proportion to each other. So long as the sects are justified 
(historically), the working class is not yet ripe for an independent 
historical movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity all 
sects are essentially reactionary. For all that, what history exhibits 
everywhere was repeated in the history of the International. What 
is antiquated tries to reconstitute and assert itself within the newly 
acquired form. 

And the history of the International was a continual struggle of the 
General Council against the sects and attempts by amateurs to 
assert themselves within the International itself against the real 
movement of the working class. This struggle was conducted at 
the Congresses, but far more in the private dealings of the General 
Council with the individual sections. 

a K. Marx, ‘Provisional Rules of the Association’ and ‘Inaugural Address of the 
Working Men’s International Association’. 

{ 
Cmca Sas 
ay, ie Scere he 

A page from Marx’s letter to Friedrich Bolte of 23 November 1871 

As the Proudhonists (Mutualists) were co-founders of the 
Association in Paris, they naturally held the reirts there for the 
first few years. Later, of course, collectivist, positivist, etc., groups 
were formed there in opposition to them. 

In Germany—the Lassalle clique. I myself corresponded with 
the notorious Schweitzer for two years and irrefutably proved to 
him that Lassalle’s organisation is purely a sectarian organisation 
and, as such, hostile to the organisation of the real workers’ 
movement aimed at by the International. He had his ‘reasons’ for 
not understanding. 

At the end of 1868 the Russian, Bakunin, joined the Internation- 
al with the aim of forming inside it a second International under 
the name of Alliance de la démocratie socialiste,° with himself as 
leader. He—a man devoid of all theoretical knowledge—claimed 
that this separate body was to represent the scientific propaganda of 
the International, and that this propaganda was to become the 
special function of this second International within the Internatio- 
nal. 

His programme was a mishmash superficially scraped together 
from left and right—equality of classes (!), abolition of the right 
of inheritance as the starting point of the social movement 
(Saint-Simonist nonsense), atheism as a dogma dictated to the 
members, etc., and, as the main dogma, (Proudhonist) abstention 
from the political movement. 

This children’s primer found favour (and still has a certain 
hold) in Italy and Spain, where the real conditions for the 
workers’ movement are as yet little developed, and among a few 
vain, ambitious, and empty doctrinaires in Romance Switzerland 
and Belgium. 

For Mr Bakunin the doctrine (the rubbish he has scraped 
together from Proudhon, St. Simon, etc.) was and is a secondary 
matter — merely a means to his personal self-assertion. Though a 
nonentity theoretically, he is in his element as an intriguer. 

For years the General Council had to fight against this 
conspiracy (which was supported up to a certain point by the 
French Proudhonists, especially in Southern France). At last, by 
means of Conference resolutions 1, 2 and 3, IX, XVI, and XVII, it 
delivered its long-prepared blow.*” 

Obviously the General Council does not support in America 
what it combats in Europe. Resolutions 1, 2 and 3 and IX now give 
the New York Committee the legal weapons with which to put an 
end to all sectarianism and amateurish groups, and, if necessary, 
to expel them. 

10* 

3. The New York Committee would do well to express its full 
agreement with the Conference decisions in an official letter to the 
General Council. 

Bakunin, personally threatened, moreover, by Resolution XIV 
(publication of the Nechayev trial in the Egalité)," which will bring 
to light his infamous doings in Russia, is making every possible 
effort to get protests started against the Conference among the 
remnants of his following. 

For this purpose he has got into contact with the riff-raff among 
the French refugees in Geneva and London (a numerically weak 
component, anyway). The slogan issued is that the General 
Council is dominated by Pan-Germanism (or Bismarckism). This 
refers to the unpardonable fact that I am by birth a German and 
actually do exercise a decisive intellectual influence upon the 
General Council. (N. B. The German element in the Counct is 
two-thirds weaker numerically than the English, and also weaker 
than the French. The crime therefore consists in the fact that the 
English and French elements are dominated by the German 
element theoretically (!) and find this domination, i. e. German 
science, very useful and even indispensable.) 

In Geneva, under the patronage of the bourgeoise, Madame 
André Léo (who at the Lausanne Congress was so shameless as to 
denounce Ferré to his Versailles executioners*’’), they have 
published a paper, La Révolution sociale, which polemicises against 
us in almost literally the same words as the Journal de Genéve, the 
most reactionary paper in Europe. 

In London they tried to establish a French Section,” of whose 
activities you will find an example in No. 42 of Qui Vive!l, which 
I enclose. (Ditto the issue containing the letter from our 
French secretary, Serraillier.)°°’ This Section, consisting of 20 
people (including many mouchards’), has not been recognised 
by the General Council, but another, a much larger section, 
has. 

In fact, despite the intrigues of this bunch of scoundrels, we are 
carrying on great propaganda in France—and in Russia, where 
they know what value to place on Bakunin, gand where my book on 
capital is just being published in Russian.” 

The secretary of the first-mentioned French Section (the one 
not recognised by us and now in the process of complete 

a K, Marx and F. Engels, ‘Resolutions of the Conference of Delegates of the 
International Working Men’s Association Assembled at London from 17th to 23rd 
September 1871’. XIV: Instruction to Citizen Outine. - > police spies 

dissolution) was the same Durand whom we expelled from the 
Association as a mouchard.**' 

The Bakuninist abstentionists from politics, Blanc* and Albert 
Richard of Lyons, are now paid Bonapartist agents. The evidence is 
in our hands. Bousquet (of the same clique in Geneva), the 
correspondent in Béziers (Southern France), has been denounced 
to us by the section there as a police officer! *” 

4. With regard to the resolutions of the Conference, let me say 
that the whole edition was in my hands, and that I sent them first 
to New York (Sorge) as the most distant point.*” 

If reports on the Conference—half true and half false— 
appeared in the press before that, the blame rests on a delegate to 
the Conference,” against whom the General Council has instituted an 
inquiry. 

5. As for the Washington Section, it applied first to the Gene- 
ral Council in order to maintain contact with it as an indepen- 
dent section’? If the affair is now settled, it is useless to return 
to it. 

With regard to sections the following general remarks ap- 
ply: 

(a) According to Art. 7 of the Rules, sections that wish to be 
independent can apply directly to the General Council for 
admission (*‘no independent local society shall be precluded from 
directly corresponding with the General Council’ *). II: Arts 4 and 
5 of the Regulations: *‘Every new branch or society’* (this refers 
to *‘independent local societies’) ‘intending to join the Interna- 
tional is bound immediately to announce its adhesion to the 
General] Council!’* (II: Art. 4) and *‘The General Council has the 
right to admit or to refuse the affiliation of any new branch etc.’ * 
(II: Art. 5). 

(b) According to Art. 5 of the Regulations,” however, the 
General Councit has to consult the Frpera: Councus or CommirtreEs 
beforehand regarding admission, etc., and 

(c) according to the decision of the Conference (see V: Art. 3 of 
the Regulations), no section will be admitted any more from the 
outset that takes a sectarian name, etc., or (V: Art. 2) does not 
constitute itself simply as a Section of the International Working 
Men’s Association. 

Kindly communicate this letter to the German Section you 

a Gaspard Blanc - > J. G. Eccarius - © See this volume, p. 381. - d K. Marx, General 
Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Working Men’s Association. - © in 
Section I 

represent, and make use of its contents for action but not for 
publication. 
Salut et fraternité, 

Karl Marx 

Capital has not been published in English or French as yet. A 
French edition was being worked on but was discontinued as a 
result of the events.'*’ 

Eccarius has been appointed, at my request, secretary for all 
sections in the Unritep States (with the exception of the French, for 
which Le Moussu is secretary). Nevertheless I shall be glad to 
answer any private questions that you or Sorge may address to me. 
Engels has sent the Irish Republic article on the International to 
Italy for publication there. 

In future, issues of The Eastern Post containing reports on the 
General Council’s meetings will be sent to New York regularly, 
addressed to Sorge. 

N.B. ad political MOVEMENT: The Political MOVEMENT of the working 
class naturally has as its final object the conquest of ro.rticat power for 
this class, and this requires, of course, a PREVIOUS ORGANISATION Of the 
working class developed up to a certain point, which arises from the 
economic struggles themselves. 

But on the other hand, every movement in which the working 
class comes out as a class against the ruling classes and tries to 
coerce them by PRESSURE FROM WITHOUT iS a POLITICAL MOVEMENT. For 
instance, the attempt in a particular factory, or even in a particular 
trade, to force a shorter working day out of the individual 
capitalists by srrikes, etc., is a purely economic movement. The 
movement to force through an eight-hour law, etc., however, is a 
political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic 
movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political 
movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object 
of achieving its interests in a general form, in a form possessing 
general, socially binding force. Though these movements presup- 
pose a certain degree of Previous organisation, they are in turn 
equally a means of developing this organisation. 

Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced in its 
organisation to undertake a decisive campaign against the collec- 
tive power, i.e. the political power, of the ruling classes, it must at 
any rate be trained for this by continual agitation against, and a 
hostile attitude towards, the policies of the ruling classes. Otherwise 

a as to 

it remains a plaything in their hands, as the September revolution 
in France showed, and as is also proved to a certain degree by the 
game that Messrs Gladstone et Co. still succeed in playing in 
England up to the present time.