TO THE SPANISH FEDERAL COUNCIL
OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING MEN’S
ASSOCIATION
London, February 13, 1871
Citizens,
It is with a great deal of pleasure that the General Council
received your letter of December 14. Your preceding letter
dated July 30 also reached us; it was passed on to Citizen
Serraillier, Secretary for Spain, with instructions to let you
have our reply. But just after that Citizen Serraillier went
to France to fight for the Republic and soon found himself
locked up in Paris. So, if you haven’t received any reply
to your letter of July 30, which is still in his hands, it is
due to these circumstances. At present, the General Council,
at its meeting of the 7th of this month, has charged the
undersigned F. E. with corresponding with Spain for the
time being and has passed your last letter on to him.
We have regularly received copies of the Spanish workers’ papers: the Barcelona Federation, the Madrid Solida-
ridad (up to December 1870), the Palma El Obrero (until
its suspension), and recently (only the first No.) the Palma
Revolution social.366 These papers have kept us in touch
with events in Spain in regard to the workers’ movement;
we have seen much to our satisfaction that the ideas of
the social revolution are becoming more and more the
common property of the working class in your country.

480 APPENDIX
Without doubt, the empty declamations of the old political parties, as you say, have attracted too much popular
attention and have therefore formed a big obstacle to our
propaganda. That was the case everywhere in the first years
of the proletarian movement. In France, in England and
in Germany, Socialists have been and still are obliged to
combat the influence and actions of the old political parties,
be they aristocratic or bourgeois, monarchist or even
republican. Experience has everywhere proved that the
best means of liberating the workers from this domination
of the old parties is to found in each country a proletarian
party with its own policy, a policy clearly distinguished
from that of other parties, since it has to express the conditions of emancipation of the working class. The details
of this policy may vary according to the particular circumstances in each country; but since the fundamental
relations of labour and capital are everywhere the same,
and the political domination of the propertied classes over
the exploited classes exists everywhere, the principles and
the aim of the proletarian policy will be identical, at least
in the Western countries. The propertied classes, the landed
aristocrats and the bourgeoisie, enslave the working people
not only by the power of their riches, by the mere exploitation of labour by capital, but also by the force of the State,
by the army, the bureaucracy and the courts. It would
mean abandoning one of the most powerful means of
action, and especially of organisation and propaganda, if
we were to renounce fighting our adversaries on political
ground. 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
put up there against the war of conquest has recently acted
more strongly in the interests of our international propaganda than years of propaganda by the press and meet

APPENDIX 481
ings have ever done. At this moment in France, too, workers’ representatives have just been elected and will loudly
proclaim our principles to the National Assembly. At the
next elections, the same thing will find place in England.
We are glad to hear that you are willing to hand over to
us contributions from the different branches in your
country; we shall be honoured to receive them. Be so kind
as to send them by cheque to any banker in London, to
the account of John Weston, our treasurer, and by registered letter addressed to the undersigned either at 256,
High Holborn, London (office of our Council) or at my
house, 122, Regent’s Park Road.
We also await with much interest the statistics of your
Federation which you promised to send us.
As for the International’s Congress, it would be useless
to even think of it as long as the present war is on. But if,
as would seem likely, peace is soon to be re-established,
the Council will immediately tackle this important question
and take into consideration your kind invitation to convene it at Barcelona.
We have not yet any sections in Portugal; it would
perhaps be easier for you than us to open up relations with
workers of that country. If that is so, please write to us
again on the subject. We also think it would be better, at
least for the beginning, for you to open up relations with
the print workers of Buenos Aires so as to let us know
later the obtained results. In the meantime you would be
doing us a good service useful to the cause by sending us
an issue of Anales de la Sociedad tipografica de Buenos
Aires?^ for us to get familiar with it.
For the rest, the international movement continues to
progress despite all obstacles. In England, the Trades’
Councils of Birmingham and Manchester have just affiliated
directly to our Association, and, through them, the workers
of the two most important manufacturing cities in this
country. In Germany, we are at the moment under the same

482 APPENDIX
persecution from the governments that Louis Bonaparte
subjected us to in France a year ago. Our German friends,
of whom more than fifty are in prison, are literally suffering for the international cause; they were arrested and
persecuted because they opposed with all their force
the policy of conquest and called upon the German people
to fraternise with the French. In Austria, too, many of our
friends have been imprisoned, but the movement is nonetheless making headway. In France, our sections were
everywhere the life and soul of the resistance to the invasion, they have secured local power in the big towns of the
South, and if Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux and Toulouse
have shown an energy unknown elsewhere it was thanks
to the efforts of members of the International. In Belgium,
we have a strong organisation; our Belgian sections have
just celebrated their Sixth Begional Congress. In Switzerland, the differences that have arisen among our sections
some time ago seem to be smoothing themselves out. From
America, we have received the adherence of new French,
German and Czech (from Bohemia) sections, and for the
rest, we remain in fraternal relations with the big organisation of American workers, the Labour Union.368
In the hope of receiving more news from you soon, we
send you our fraternal greetings.
For the General Council of the International
Working Men’s Association,
F. E.