International Working Men ’s Association,
256, High Holborn, London,
December 6, 1871
TO  THE  EDITOR  OF  LA ROMA DEL POPOLO
Dear Sir,
I count on you having the honesty to publish the enclosed
declaration. If we are going to fight, let’s fight honestly.
Yours most respectfully,
F. ENGELS
General Council Secretary for Italy
International Working Men ’s Association,
TO  THE  EDITORS  OF  LA ROMA DEL POPOLO
In number 38 of La Roma del Popolo Citizen Giuseppe
Mazzini publishes the first of a series of articles entitled
“Documents about the International”. Mazzini notifies the
public:
“I ... have gathered from all the sources I was able to refer to
all its resolutions, all the spoken and written declarations of its influential members.”

And these are the documents he intends publishing. He
begins by giving two samples.
1) “The abstention” (from political action) “went so far that
some of the French founders [of the International] promised Louis
Napoleon that they would renounce all political action provided he
grant the workers I don’t know what sum of material aid.”
We defy Citizen Mazzini to prove this assertion which
we regard as false.
2) “In a speech at the Berne Congress of the League of Peace
and Freedom in 1868, Bakunin said: ‘I want the equalisation of individuals and classes: without this an idea of justice is impossible and
peace will not be established. The worker must no longer be deceived
with lengthy speeches. He must be told what he ought to want, if he
doesn’t know himself. I’m a collectivist, not a communist, and if
I demand the abolition of inheritance rights, I do so to arrive at social
equality more quickly’.”
Whether Citizen Bakunin pronounced these words or not
is quite immaterial for us. What is important for the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association to establish is:
a) that these words, as Mazzini himself asserts, were
spoken at a congress not of the International but of the
bourgeois League of Peace and Freedom;
b) that the International congress, which met at Brussels
in September 1868, disavowed this same congress of the
League of Peace and Freedom by a special vote307;
c) that when Citizen Bakunin pronounced these words,
he was not even a member of the International;
d) that the General Council has always opposed the
repeated attempts to substitute for the broad, comprehensive programme of the International Working Men’s
Association (which has made membership open to
Bakunin’s followers) Bakunin’s narrow and sectarian programme, the adoption of which would automatically entail
the exclusion of the vast majority of members of the International;

e) that the International can therefore in no way accept
responsibility for the acts and declarations of Citizen
Bakunin.
As for the other documents about the International, which
Citizen Mazzini intends to publish shortly, the General
Council hereby declares that it is only responsible for its
official documents.
By order and in the name of the General Council
of the International Working Men’s Association,
Secretary for Italy,
FREDERICK  ENGELS
December 12, 1871, and La Roma
del Popolo No. 43, December 21, 1871