Al Consejo Federal de la Region Española de la Asociacion Internacional de Trabajadores

Citizens,

It is with great pleasure that the General Council has received your letter of 14 December. Your previous letter, dated 30 July, had also reached us; it was handed to Citizen Serraillier, Secretary for Spain, with instructions to forward our reply to you. But Citizen Serraillier, a short time afterwards, went to France to fight for the Republic, and since he has been shut up in Paris we […]. If therefore you have not received a reply to your letter of 30 July, which is still in his hands, it is owing to these circumstances.

Now, the General Council, at its sitting of the 7th inst., has charged the undersigned F. E., ad interim, with the correspondence with Spain, and has handed over to him your latest letter.

In the meantime we have regularly received the Spanish workers’ newspapers – *La Federación* of Barcelona, *La Solidaridad* of Madrid (up to December 1870), *El Obrero* of Palma (up to its suspension) and recently (only the first number) of *La Revolucion Social* of Palma. These newspapers have kept us informed of what is happening in Spain in relation to the working-class movement; we have seen with great satisfaction that the ideas of the social revolution are increasingly becoming the common property of the working class of your country.

No doubt, the vain declamations of the old political parties, as you say, have attracted far too much popular attention and have thereby formed a great obstacle to our propaganda.

This has happened in every country in the first years of the proletarian movement. In France, England, Germany, the socialists have been, and still are, obliged to combat the influence and action of the old political parties, whether aristocratic or bourgeois, monarchist or even republican. Experience has everywhere shown that the best means of emancipating the workers from the domination of the old parties has been to found in each country a proletarian party, with a policy of its own, a policy which is clearly distinct from that of the other parties, and which must express the conditions of the emancipation of the working class. The details of this policy may vary according to the particular circumstances of each country; but since the fundamental relations of labour to capital are everywhere the same, and the fact of the political domination of the propertied classes over the exploited classes exists everywhere, the principles and the aim of proletarian policy will be identical, at least in all Western countries. The propertied classes, landed aristocrats and bourgeois, hold the working people in bondage not only by the power of their wealth, by the simple exploitation of labour by capital, but also by the force of the State, by the army, the bureaucracy, the courts. It would be to abandon one of the most powerful means of action, and especially of organisation and propaganda, to renounce fighting our adversaries on the political terrain. Universal suffrage gives us an excellent means of action. In Germany, the workers, strongly organised as a political party, have succeeded in sending six deputies to the so-called national representation; and the opposition that our friends Bebel and Liebknecht have been able to make there against the war of conquest has just acted more powerfully in the interest of our international propaganda than years of propaganda through the press and meetings would have done. At this moment, in France as well, workers’ representatives have just been elected, and will loudly proclaim our principles in the National Assembly. At the next elections, the same will happen in England.

We learn with pleasure that you are willing to remit to us the subscriptions of the branches of your country; we shall receive them with gratitude. Please remit them to us by a draft on some London banker, to the order of John Weston, our treasurer, and by registered letter addressed to the undersigned either at 256, High Holborn, London (headquarters of our Council), or at his residence, 122, Regent’s Park Road.

We also await with great interest the statistics of your federation which you promise to send us.

As for the Congress of the International, it will be useless to think of it as long as the present war lasts. But if, as appears likely, peace is soon restored, the Council will immediately deal with this important question and will take into consideration your friendly invitation to convoke it in Barcelona.

We have as yet no sections in Portugal; it might be easier for you than for us to open relations with the workers of that country. If this is the case, please write to us again on this subject. Similarly, we believe that it will be better, for the beginning at least, if you open relations with the typographers of Buenos Aires, subject to informing us later of the results obtained. Meanwhile you would do us an agreeable and useful service to the cause, if you would send us a copy of the “Anales de la Sociedad Tipográfica de B. A.” so that we may take cognizance of it.

For the rest, the international movement continues to march despite all obstacles. In England, the central councils of trades (Trades’ Councils) of Birmingham and Manchester have just directly affiliated to our Association, and through them, the workers of the two most important manufacturing towns of the country. In Germany, we are at present undergoing the same persecution on the part of the governments as Louis Bonaparte made us undergo in France a year ago. Our German friends, of whom more than fifty are in prison, are literally suffering for the international cause; they have been arrested and prosecuted because they opposed with all their strength the policy of conquest and because they demanded that the German people fraternize with the French people. In Austria also many of our friends have been imprisoned, but the movement marches nonetheless. In France, our sections have everywhere been the soul and the force of the republican resistance to the invasion; they have seized local power in the great towns of the Midi; and if Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Toulouse have displayed an energy unknown elsewhere, it has been thanks to the efforts of the Internationals. In Belgium, we are strongly organised, our Belgian sections have just celebrated their sixth regional Congress. In Switzerland, the differences which had arisen among our sections some time ago appear to be on the way to being smoothed out. From America, we have received the adhesion of new French, German and Czech (of Bohemia) sections, and for the rest we continue in fraternal relations with the great organisation of American workers, the Labour League.

In the hope of soon receiving your further communications, we offer you our fraternal salute.

For the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association,
F. E.