The International Workingmen's Association, 1872

Fictitious Splits in the International

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

Footnotes

Until now, the General Council has completely refrained from any
interference in the International's internal squabbles and has never replied
publicly to the overt attacks launched against it during more than two years by
some members of the Associations.

But if the persistent efforts of certain meddlers to deliberately maintain
confusion between the International and a society [the International Alliance
of Socialist Democracy] which has been hostile to it since its inception
allowed the General Council to maintain this reserve, the support which
European reaction finds in the scandals provoked by that society at a time when
the International is undergoing the most serious trial since its foundation
obliges it to present a historical review of all these intrigues.

I.

After the fall of the Paris Commune, the General Council's first
act was to publish its Address on the Civil War in France, in which it came out
in support of all the Commune's acts which, at the moment, served the
bourgeoisie, the press, and all the governments of Europe as an excuse to heap
the most vile slander on the vanquished Parisians. Within the working class
itself, some still failed to realize that their cause was lost. The Council
came to understand the fact, among other things, by the resignation of two of
its members, Citizens Odger and Lucraft, who repudiated all support of the
Address. It may be said that the unity of views among the working class
regarding the Paris events dates from the publication of the Address in all the
civilized countries.

On the other hand, the International found a very powerful means of
propaganda in the bourgeois press and particularly in the leading English
newspapers, which the Address forced to engage in a polemic kept going by the
General Council's replies.

The arrival in London of numerous refugees from the Commune made it
necessary for the General Council to constitute itself as a relief committee
and function as such for more than eight months, besides carrying on its
regular duties. It goes without saying that the vanquished and exiles from the
Commune had nothing to hope for from the bourgeoisie. As for the working class,
the appeals for aid came at a difficult moment. Switzerland and Belgium had
already received their contingent of refugees whom they had either to support
or send on to London. The funds collected in Germany, Austria, and Spain were
sent to Switzerland. In England, the big fight for the nine-hour working day,
the decisive battle of which was fought at Newcastle, had exhausted both the
workers' individual contributions and the funds set up by the trade unions,
which could be used, incidentally, according to the rules, only for labor
conflicts. Meanwhile, by working diligently and sending out letters, the
Council managed to accumulate, bit by bit, the money which it distributed
weekly. The American workers responded more generously to its appeal. It is
unfortunate that the Council could not avail itself of the millions which the
terrified bourgeoisie believed the International to have amassed in its
safes!

After May 1871, some of the Commune’s refugees were asked to join the
Council, in which, as a result of the war, the French side was no longer
represented. Among these new members were some old Internationalists and a
minority composed of men known for their revolutionary energy whose election
was an act of homage to the Paris Commune.

Along with these preoccupations, the Council had to prepare for the
Conference of Delegates that it had just called.

The violent measures taken by the Bonapartist government against the
International had prevented the holding of the Congress at Paris, which had
been provided for by a resolution of the Basel Congress. Using the right
conferred upon it by Article 4 of the Rules, the General Council, in its
circular of July 12, 1870, convened the Congress at Mainz. In letters addressed
at the same time to the various federations, it proposed that the General
Council should transfer its seat from England to another country and asked that
delegates be provided with definite mandates to that effect. The federations
unanimously insisted that it should remain in London. The Franco-Prussian War,
which began a few days latter, made it necessary to abandon any plans for
convening the Congress. It was then that the federations which we consulted
authorized us to fix the date of the next Congress as may be dictated by the
political situation.

As soon as the political situation permitted, the General Council called a
private Conference, acting on the precedents of the 1865 Conference and the
private administrative meetings of each Congress. A public Congress was
impossible and could only have resulted in the continental delegates being
denounced at a moment when European reaction was celebrating its orgies; when
Jules Favre was demanding from all governments, even the British, the
extradition of refugees as common criminals; when Dufaure was proposing to the
Rural Assembly a law banning the International, a hypocritical counterfeit of
which was later presented by Malou to the Belgians; when in Switzerland a
Commune refugee was put under preventive arrest while awaiting the federal
government's decision on the extradition order; when hunting down members of
the International was the ostensible basis for an alliance between Beust and
Bismarck, whose anti-International clause Victor Emmanuel was quite eager to
adopt; when the Spanish Government, putting itself entirely at the disposal of
the butchers of Versailles, was forcing the Madrid Federal Council to seek
refuge in Portugal; at a time, lastly, when the International's prime duty was
to strengthen its organization and to accept the gauntlet thrown down by the
governments.

All sections in regular contact with the General Council were invited in
good time to the Conference, which, even though it was not to be a public
meeting, nevertheless faced serious difficulties. In view of the internal
situation, France was, of course, unable to elect any delegates. In Italy, the
only organized section at the time was that of Naples; but just as it was about
to nominate a delegate it was broken up by the army. In Austria and Hungary,
the most active members were imprisoned. In Germany, some of the more
well-known members were prosecuted for the crime of high treason, others landed
in jail, and the party's funds were spent on aid to their families. The
Americans, though they sent the Conference a detailed memorandum on the
situation of the International there, employed the delegation's money for
maintaining the refugees. All federations, in fact, recognized the necessity of
substituting the private Conference for a public Congress.

After meeting in London from September 17 to 23, 1871, the Conference
authorized the General Council to publish its resolutions; to codify the
Administrative Regulations and publish them with the General Rules, as reviewed
and corrected, in three languages; to carry out the resolution to replace
membership cards with stamps; to reorganize the International in England; and,
lastly, to provide the necessary money for these various purposes.

Following the publication of the Conference proceedings, the reactionary
press of Paris and Moscow, of London and New York, denounced the resolution on
working-class policy as containing such dangerous designs — the
Times accused it &ldquo;of coolly calculated
audacity&rdquo;— that it would outlaw the International with all
possible speed. On the other hand, the resolution that dealt a blow at the
fraudulent sectarian sections gave the international police a long-awaited
excuse to start a noisy campaign ostensibly for the unrestricted autonomy of
the workers whom it professed to protect against the despicable despotism of
the General Council and the Conference. The working class felt itself so
&ldquo;heavily oppressed&rdquo;, indeed, that the General Council
received from Europe, America, Australia, and even the East Indies reports
about the admission of new members and the formation of new sections.

II.

The denunciations in the bourgeois press, like the lamentations
of the international police, found a sympathetic echo even in our Association.
Some intrigues, directed ostensibly against the General Council but in reality
against the Association, were hatched in its midst. At the bottom of these
intrigues was the inevitable International Alliance of Socialist Democracy,
fathered by the Russian Michael Bakunin. On his return from Siberia, the latter
began to write in Herzen's Kolokol, preaching the idea of Pan-Slavism
and racial war, conceived out of his long experience. Later, during his stay in
Switzerland, he was nominated to head the steering committee of the League of
Peace and Freedom, founded in opposition to the International. When this
bourgeois society's affairs went from bad to worse, its president, Mr. G. Vogt,
acting on Bakunin's advice, proposed to the International's Congress which met
at Brussels in September 1868, that it make an alliance with the League. The
Congress unanimously proposed two alternatives: either the League should follow
the same goal as the International, in which case it would have no reason for
existing; or else its goal should be different, in which case an alliance would
be impossible. At the League's congress, held in Bern a few days later, Bakunin
made an about-face. He proposed a makeshift program whose scientific value may
be judged by this single phrase: &ldquo;economic and social equalization of
classes&rdquo;. Backed by an insignificant minority, he broke with the
League in order to join the International, determined to replace the
International's General Rules by the makeshift program, which had been rejected
by the League, and to replace the General Council by his personal dictatorship.
To this end, he created a special instrument, the International Alliance of
Socialist Democracy, intended to become an International within the
International.

Bakunin found the necessary elements for the formation of this society in
the relationships he had formed during his stay in Italy, and in a small group
of Russian emigrants, serving him as emissaries and recruiting officers among
members of the International in Switzerland, France, and Spain. Yet it was only
after repeated refusals of the Belgian and Paris federal councils to recognize
the Alliance that he decided to submit for the General Council's approval his
new society's rules, which were nothing but a faithful reproduction of the
&ldquo;misunderstood&ldquo; Bern program. The Council replied with the
following circular dated December 22, 1868.

The International Working Men's Association and

Bakunin's International Alliance of Socialist Democracy

approved by IWMA General Council December 22,
1868

[written in French]

Just about a month ago, a certain
number of citizens formed in Geneva the Central Initiating Committee of a new
international society named the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy,
stating that it was their &ldquospecial mission to study political and
philosophical questions on the basis of the grand principles of... equality,
etc." the program and rules printed by this Initiating Committee were only
communicated to the General Council of the International Working Men's
Association at its meeting on December 15. According to these documents, the
said International Alliance is &ldquoestablished entirely within the...
International Working Men's Association", at the same time as it is established
entirely outside of the Association.

Besides the General Council of the
International Association, elected at the Geneva, Lausanne, and Brussels
workingmen's congresses, there is to be, in line with the initiating rules,
another Central Council in Geneva, which is self-appointed. Besides the local
groups of the International Association, there are to be local groups of the
International Alliance, which &ldquothrough their... national bureaus",
operating outside the national bureaus of the International Association,
&ldquowill ask the Central Bureau of the Alliance to admit them into the
International Working Men’s Association"; the Alliance Central Committee
thereby takes upon itself the right of admittance to the International
Association. Lastly, the General Congress of the International Association will
have its parallel in the General Congress of the International Alliance, for,
as the initiating rules say, &ldquoAt the annual Working Men's Congress,
the delegation of the Alliance of Socialist Democracy, as a branch of the
International Working Men's Association, will hold public meetings in a
separate building."

Considering,

That the presence of a second
international body operating within and outside the International Working Men's
Association will be the most infallible means of its disorganization;

That every other group of
individuals, anywhere at all, will have the right to imitate the Geneva
initiating group and, under more or less plausible excuses, to bring into the
International Working Men's Association other international associations with
other "special missions";

That the International Working Men's
Association will thereby soon become a plaything for intriguers of every race
and nationality;

That the Rules of the International
Working Men's Association anyway admit only local and national branches into
the Association (see Article 1 and Article 6 of the Rules);

That sections of the International
Association are forbidden to give themselves rules or administrative
regulations contrary to the General Rules and Administrative Regulations of the
International Association (see Article 12 of the Administrative
Regulations);

That the Rules and Administrative
Regulations of the International Association can only be revised by the General
Congress in the event of two-thirds of the delegates present voting in favor of
such a revision (see Article 13 of the Administrative Regulations).

The General Council of the
International Working Men's Association unanimously agreed at its meeting of
December 22, 1868, that:

1. All
articles of the Rules of the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy,
defining its relations with the International Working Men's Association, are
declared null and void;

2.The
International Alliance of Socialist Democracy may not be admitted as a branch
of the International Working Men's Association;

3.These
resolutions be published in all countries where the International Working Men's
Association exists.

G. Odger, Chairman of the
meeting

R. Shaw, General Secretary

By order of the General Council

of the International Working Men's Association

A few months later, the Alliance again appealed to the General
Council and asked whether, yes or no, it accepted its
principles. If yes, the Alliance was ready to dissolve itself into the
International's sections. It received a reply in the following circular of
March 9, 1869.

Letter of the General Council to The Alliance of Socialist Democracy

March 9, 1869

[written in French and English

issued to all International section]

Citizens:

According to Article I of its
Statutes, the International Working Men's Association admits "all working men's
societies aiming at the same end, viz., the protection, advancement, and
complete emancipation of the working classes".

Since the various sections of
workingmen in the same country, and the working classes in different countries,
are placed under different circumstances and have attained to different degrees
of development, it seems almost necessary that the theoretical notions which
reflect the real movement should also diverge.

The community of action, however,
called into life by the the International Working Men's Association, the
exchange of ideas facilitated by the public organs of different national
section, and the direct debates at the General Congresses are sure by and by to
engender a common theoretical program.

Consequently, it belongs not to the
function of the General Council to subject the program of the Alliance to a
critical examination. We have not to inquire whether, yes or no, it be a true
scientific expression of the working-class movement. All we have to ask is
whether its general tendency does not run against the general tendency of the
International Working Men's Association, viz., the complete emancipation of the
working class?

One phrase in your program lies open
to this objection. It occurs [in] Article 2:

"Elle (l'Alliance) veut vant tout
l'egalisation politique, economique, et sociale des classes."

["The Alliance wants above all
political, economic, and social equalization... of classes."]

The "egalisation des classes",
literally interpreted, comes to the "harmony of capital and labor" ("l'harmonie
du capital et du travail") so persistently preached by the bourgeois
socialists. It is not the logically impossible "equalization of classes", but
the historically necessary, superseding "abolition of classes" (abolition des
classes), this true secret of the proletarian movement, which forms the great
aim of the International Working Men's Association.

Considering, however, the context in
which that phrase "egalisation des classes" occurs, it seems to be a mere slip
of the pen, and the General Council feels confident that you will be anxious to
remove from your program an expression which offers such a dangerous
misunderstanding.

It suits the principles of the
International Working Men's Association to let every section freely shape its
own theoretical program, except the single case of an infringement upon its
general tendency. There exists, therefore, no obstacle to the transformation of
the sections of the Alliance into sections of the International Working Men's
Association.

The dissolution of the Alliance and
the entrance of its sections into the International Working Men's Association
once settled, it would, according to our Regulations, become necessary to
inform the General Council of the residence and the numerical strength of each
new section.

Having accepted these conditions, the Alliance was admitted to
the International by the General Council, misled by certain signatures affixed
to Bakunin's program, and supposing it recognized by the Romance Federal
Committee in Geneva, which on the contrary had always refused to have any
dealings with it. Thus it had achieved its immediate goal: to be represented at
the Basel Congress. Despite the dishonest means employed by his supporters,
means used solely on this occassion in an International Congress, Bakunin was
deceived in his expectation of seeing the Congress transfer the seat of the
General Council to Geneva and give an official sanction to the old St. Simon
rubbish, the immediate abolition of hereditary rights which he had made the
practical point of departure of socialism. This was the signal for the open and
incessant war which the Alliance waged not only against the General Council,
but also against all International sections that refused to adopt this
sectarian clique's program and particularly the doctrine of total abstention
from politics.

Even before the Basel Congress, when Nechayev came to Geneva, Bakunin got
together with him and founded, in Russia, a secret society among students.
Always hiding his true identity under the name of various "revolutionary
committees", he sought autocratic powers based on all the tricks and
mystifications of the time of Cagliostro. The main means of propaganda used by
this society consisted in compromising innocent people in the eyes of the
Russian police by sending them communications from Geneva in yellow envelopes
stamped in Russian on the outside "secret revolutionary committee". The
published accounts of the Nechayev trial bear witness to the infamous abuse of
the International's name.

The Alliance commenced at this time a public polemic directed against the
General Council, first in the Locle Progres, then in the Geneva
Egalite, the official newspaper of the romance Federation, where
several members of the Alliance had followed Bakunin. The General Council,
which had scorned the attacks published in Progres, Bakunin's personal
organ, could not ignore those from Egalite, which it was bound to
believe were approved by the romance Federal Committee. It, therefore,
pubblished the circular of January 1, 1870.

“We read in the
Egalite of December 11, 1869:

‘It is certain that the
General Council is neglecting extremely important matters. We remind it of its
obligations under Article I of the Regulations: The General Council is
commissioned to carry the resolutions of the Congress into effect,
etc. We could put enough questions ot the General Council for its replies to
make up quite a long report. They will come later... Meanwhile, etc. ...'

“The General Council does not
know of any article, either in the Rules, or the Regulations, which would
oblige it to enter into correspondence or into polemic with the
Egalite or to provide 'replies to questions' from newspapers. The
Federal Committee of Geneva alone represents the branches of Romance
Switzerland via-a-vis the General Council. When the Romance Federal Committee
addresses requests of reprimands to us through the only legitmiate channel,
that is to say through its secretary, the General Council will always be ready
to reply. But the Romance Federal Committee has no right either to abdicate its
functions in favour of the Egalite and Progres, or to let
these newspapers usurp its functions. Generally speaking, the General Council's
administrative correspondence with national and local committees cannot be
published without greatly prejudicing the Association's general interests.
Consequently, if the other organs of the International were to follow the
example of the Progres and the Egalite, the General Council
would be faced with the alternative of either discrediting itself publicly by
its silence or violating its obligations by replying publicly. The
Egalite joins the Progres in inviting the
Travail (Paris paper) to denounce, on its part, the General Council.
That is almost a League of Public Welfare.”

Meanwhile, before having read this circular, the Romance Federal
Committee had already expelled supporters of the Alliance from the editorial
board of L'Egalite.

The January 1, 1870, circular, like those of December 22, 1868, and March 9,
1869, was approved by all International societies.

It goes without saying that none of the conditions accepted by the Alliance
have ever been fulfilled. Its sham sections have remained a mystery to the
General Council. Bakunin sought to retain under his personal direction the few
groups scattered in Spain and Italy and the Naples section which he had
detached from the International. In the other Italian towns, he corresponded
with small cliques composed not of workers but of lawyers, journalists, and
other bourgeois doctrinaires. At Barcelona, some of his friends maintained his
influence. In some towns in the South of France, the Alliance made an effort to
found separatist sections under the direction of Albert Richard and Gaspard
Blanc, of Lyon, about whom we shall have more to say later. In a word, the
International within the International continued to operate.

The big blow — the attempt to take over the leadership of French
Switzerland — was to have been executed by the Alliance at the
Chaux-de-Fonds Congress, opened on April 4, 1870.

The battle began over the right to admit the Alliance delegates, which was
contested by the delegates of the Geneva Federation and the Chaux-de-Fonds
sections.

Although, on their own calculation, the Alliance supporters represented no
more than a fifth of the Federation members, they succeeded, thanks to
repetition of the Basel maneuvers, in procuring a fictitious majority of one or
two votes, a majority which, in the words of their own organ (see
Solidarite of May 7, 1870), represented no more than 15
sections, while in Geneva alone there were 30! On this vote, the
French-Switzerland Congress split into two groups which continued their
meetings independently. The Alliance supporters, considering themselves the
legal representatives of the whole of the Federation, transferred the Federal
Committee's seat to Chaux-de-Fonds and founded at Neuchatel their official
organ, Solidarite, edited by Citizen Guillaume. This young writer had
the special job of decrying the Geneva “factory workers”, those
odious “bourgeois”, of waging war of L'Egalite, the
Federation newspaper, and of preaching total abstention from politics. The
authors of the most important articles on this theme were Bastelica in
Marseilles and Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc in Lyon, the two big pillars of
the Alliance.

On their return, the Geneva delegates convened their sections in a general
assembly which, despite opposition from Bakunin and his friends, approved their
actions at the Chaux-de-Fonds Congress. A little later, Bakunin and the more
active of his accomplices were expelled from the old Romance Federation.

Hardly had the Congress closed when the new Chaux-de-Fonds Committee called
for the intervention of the General Council in a latter signed by F. Robert,
secretary, and by Henri Chevalley, president, who was denounced two months
later as a thief by the Committee's organ, Solidarite, on July 9.
After examining the case of both sides, the General Council decided on June 28,
1870, to keep the Geneva Federal Committee in its old functions and invite the
new Chaux-de-Fonds Federal Committee to take a local name. In the face of this
decision which foiled its plans, the Chaux-de-Fonds Committee denounced the
General Council's authoritarianism, forgetting that it had been the
first to ask for its intervention. The trouble that the persistent attempts of
the Chaux-de-Fonds Committee to usurp the name of the Romance Federal Committee
caused the Swiss Federation, obliged the General Council to suspend all
official relations with the former.

Louis Bonaparte had just surrendered his army at Sedan. From all sides arose
protests from International members against the war’s continuation. In
its address of September 9, the General Council, denouncing Prussia’s
plans of conquest, indicated the danger of her triumph for the proletarian
cause and warned the German workers that they would themselves be the first
victims. In England, the General Council organized meetings which condemned the
pro-Prussian tendencies of the court. In Germany, the International workers
organized demonstrations demanding recognition of the Republic and “an
honorable peace for France”....

Meanwhile, his bellicose nature gave the hotheaded Guillaume (of Neuchatel)
the brilliant idea of publishing an anonymous manifesto as a
supplement, and under cover, of the official newspaper Solidarite,
calling for the formation of a Swiss volunteer corps to fight the Prussians,
something which he had doubtless always been prevented from doing by his
abstentionist convictions.

Then came the Lyon uprising. Bakunin rushed there and, supported by Albert
Richard, Gaspard Blanc, and Bastelica, installed himself on September 28 in the
town hall — where he refrained from posting a guard, however,
lest it be viewed as a political act. He was driven out in shame by some of the
National Guard at the moment when, after a difficult accouchement, his decree
on the abolition of the state had just seen the light of day.

In October 1870, the General Council, in the absence of its French members,
coopted Citizen Paul Robin, a refugee from Brest, one of the best-known
supporters of the Alliance, and, what is more, the instigator of several
attacks on the General Council in L’Egalite, where, since that
moment, he has acted constantly as official correspondent of the Chaux-de-Fonds
Committee. On March 14, 1871, he suggested the calling of a private Conference
of the International to sift out the Swiss trouble. Foreseeing that important
events were in the making in Paris, the Council flatly refused. Robin returned
to the question on several occassions and even suggested that the Council take
a definite decision on the conflict. On July 25, the General Council decided
that this affair would be one of the questions for the Conference due to be
convened in September 1871.

On August 10, the Alliance, hardly eager to see its activities looked into
by a Conference, declared itself dissolved as from August 6. But, on September
15, it reappeared and requested admission to the Council under the name of the
Atheist Socialist Section. According to Administrative Resolution No. V. of the
Basel Congress, the Council could not admit it without consulting the Geneva
Federal Committee, which was exhausted after its two years of struggle against
the sectarian sections. Moreover, the Council had already told the Young
Men’s Christian Association that the International did not recognize
theological sections.

On August 6, the date of the dissolution of the Alliance, the Chaux-de-Fonds
Federal Committee renewed its request to enter into official relations with the
Council and said that it would continue to ignore the June 28 resignation and
to regard itself, in relation to Geneva, as the Romance Federal Committee, and
that it was “up to the General Congress to judge this affair”. On
September 4, the same Committee challenged the Conference’s competence,
even though it had been the first to call for its convocation. The Conference
could have replied by questioning the competence of the Paris Federal
Committee, which the Chaux-de-Fonds Committee had, before the siege of Paris,
asked to deliberate on the Swiss conflict. But it confined itself to the
General Council decision of June 28, 1870 (see the reasons given in
L'Egalite of Geneva, October 21, 1871).

III.

The presence, in Switzerland, of some of the outlawed French who
had found refuge there put some life back into the Alliance.

The Geneva members of the International did all they could for the
emigrants. They came to their aid right from the beginning, initiated a wide
campaign, and prevented the Swiss authorities from serving an extradition order
on the refugees as demanded by the Versailles government. Several risked grave
danger by going to France to help the refugees reach the frontier. Imagine the
surprise of the Geneva workers when they saw several of the ringleaders, such
as B. Malon [1], immediately come to an
understanding with the Alliance people and with the help of N. Zhukovsky,
ex-secretary of the Alliance, try to found at Geneva, outside the Romance
Federation, the new “Socialist Revolutionary Propaganda and Action
Section”. In the first article of its rules, it “pledges allegiance
to the General Rules of the International Working Men's Association, while
reserving for itself the complete freedom of action and initiative to which it
is entitled as a logical consequence of the principle of autonomy and
federation recognized by the Rules and Congresses of the Association.”

In other words, it reserves for itself full freedom to continue the work of
the Alliance.

In a letter from Malon of October 20, 1871, this new section for the third
time asked the General Council for admission to the International. Confirming
to Resolution V of the Basel Congress, the Council consulted the Geneva Federal
Committee, which vigorously protested against the Council's recognizing this
new “seedbed of intrigues and dissentions”. The Council acted, in
fact, in a rather “authoritarian” manner, so as not to bind the
whole Federation to the will of B. Malon and N. Zhukovsky, the Alliance's
ex-secretary.

Solidarite having gone out of business, the new Alliance supporters
founded the Revolution Sociale under the supreme management of Madame
Andre Leo, who had just said at the Lausanne Peace Congress that Raoul Rigault
and Ferre were the two sinister figures of the Commune who, up till then (up
till the execution of the hostages), had not stopped calling for bloody
measures, albeit in vain.

From its very first issue, the newspaper hastened to put itself on the same
level as Figaro, Gaulois, Paris-Journal, and other
disreputable sheets which have been throwing mud at the General Council. It
thought the moment opportune to fan the flames of national hatred, even within
the International. It called the General Council a German Committee led by a
Bismarckian brain. [2]

After having definitely established that certain General Council members
could not boast of being “Gauls first and foremost”, the
Revolution Sociale could find nothing better than to take up the
second slogan put in circulation by the European police and to denounce the
Council's “authoritarianism”.

What, then, were the facts on which this childish rubbish rested? The
General Council had let the Alliance die a natural death and, in agreement with
the Geneva Federal Committee, had prevented it from being resurrected.
Moreover, it had suggested to the Chaux-de-Fonds Committee that it take a name
which would permit it to live in peace with the great majority of International
members in French Switzerland.

Apart from these “authoritarian” acts, what use did the General
Council make, between October 1869 and October 1871 of the fairly extensive
powers that the Basel Congress had conferred upon it?

1. On February 8, 1870, the Paris
“Society of Positivist Proletarians” applied to the General Council
for admission. The Council replied that the principles of the Positivists, the
part of the society’s special rules concerning capital, were in flagrant
contradiction with the preamble of the General Rules; that the society had,
therefore, to drop them and join the International not as
“Positivists” but as “proletarians”, while remaining
free to reconcile their theoretical ideas with the Association's general
principles. Realizing the justness of this decision, the section joined the
International.

2. At Lyon, there was a split between
the 1865 Section and a recently-formed section in which, amid honest workers,
the Alliance was represented by Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc. As had been
done in similar cases, the judgment of a court of arbitration, formed in
Switzerland, was turned down. On February 15, 1870, the recently formed
section, besides asking the General Council to resolve the conflict by virtue
of Resolution VII of the Basel Congress, sent it a ready-made resolution
excluding and branding the members of the 1865 Section, which was to be signed
and sent back by return mail. The Council condemned this unprecedented
procedure and demanded that the necessary documents be produced. In reply to
the same request, the 1865 Section said that the accusatory documents against
Albert Richard, which had been submitted to the court of arbitration, were in
Bakunin's possession and that he refused to give them up. Consequently, it
could not completely satisfy the desires of the General Council. The Council's
decision on the affair, dated March 8, met with no objection from either
side.

3. The French section in London, which
had admitted people of a more than dubious character, had been gradually
transformed into a concern virtually controlled by Mr. Felix Pyat. He used it
to organize damaging demonstrations calling for the assassination of Louis
Bonaparte, etc., and to spread his absurd manifestos in France under cover of
the International. The General Council confined itself to declaring, in the
Association’s organs, that Mr. Pyat was not a member of the International
and it could not be responsible for his actions. The French branch then
declared that it no longer recognized either the General Council or the
Congresses; it plastered the walls of London with handbills proclaiming that,
with the exception of itself, the International was an anti-revolutionary
society. The arrest of French members of the International on the eve of the
plebiscite, on the pretext of a conspiracy — plotted in reality by the
police and to which Pyat’s manifestos gave an air of credibility —
forced the General Council to publish in La Marseillaise and
Reveil its resolution of May 10, 1870, declaring that the so-called
French branch had not belonged to the International for over two years, and
that its agitation was the work of police agents. The need for this
demarche was proved by the declaration of the Paris Federal Committee,
published in the same newspapers, and by that of the Paris members of the
International during their trial, both declarations referring to the
Council’s resolution. The French branch disappeared at the outbreak of
the war, but, like the Alliance in Switzerland, it was to reappear in London
with new allies and under other names.

During the last days of the Conference, a French section of 1871, about 35
members strong, was formed in London among the Commune refugees. The first
“authoritarian” act of the General Council was to publicly denounce
the secretary of this section, Gustave Durand, as a French police spy. The
documents in our possession prove the intention of the police first to assist
Durand to attend the Conference and then to secure for him membership in the
General Council. Since the rules of the new section directed its members not to
accept any delegation to the General Council other than from its section,
Citizen Theisz and Bastelica withdrew from the Council.

On October 17, the section delegated to the Council two of its members,
holding imperative mandates; one was none other than Mr. Chautard, ex-member of
the artillery committee. The Council refused to admit them prior to an
examination of the rules of the 1871 Section. [3]
Suffice it to recall here the principal point of the debate to which these
rules gave rise. Article 2 states:

“To be admitted as member of the section, a person must
provide information as to his means of sustenance, present guarantees of
morality, etc.”

In its resolution of October 17, 1871, the Council proposed
deleting the words “provide information as to his means of
sustenance”.

“In dubious cases,” said the Council, “a
section may well take information about means of sustenance as a
‘guarantee of morality’, while in other cases, like those of
refugees, workers on strike, etc., absence of means of sustenance may well be a
guarantee of morality. But to ask candidates to provide information as to their
means of sustenance as a general condition to be admitted to the International
would be a bourgeois innovation contrary to the spirit and letter of the
General Rules.”

The section replied:

“The General Rules make the sections responsible for
the morality of their members and, as a consequence, recognize their right to
demand such guarantees as they deem necessary.”

To this, the General Council replied, November 7:

“On this argument, a section of the International
founded by teetotalers could include in its own rules this type of
article: To be admitted as a member of the section, a person must swear to
abstain from all alcoholic drinks. In other words, the most absurd and most
incongruous conditions of admittance into the International could be imposed by
sections’ rules, always on the pretext that they intend, in this way, to
be assured of the morality of their members....

‘The means of sustenance of strikers’, adds the
French Section of 1871, ‘consist of the strike fund’. This might be
answered by saying, first, that this ‘fund’ is often
fictitious....

Moreover, official English questionnaires have proved that
the majority of English workers... are forced — by strikes or
unemployment, by insufficient wages or terms of payment, as well as many other
causes — to resort incessantly to pawnshops or to borrowing money. These
are means of sustenance about which one cannot demand information without
interfering in an unqualified manner in a person's private life. There are thus
two alternatives:

— either the section is only to seek guarantees of
morality through means of sustenance, in which case the General Council's
proposal serves the purpose....

— Or the section, in Article 2 of its rules,
intentionally says that the members have to provide information as to their
means of sustenance as a condition of admission, over and above the guarantees
of morality, in which case the Council affirms that it is a bourgeois
innovation contrary to the spirit and letter of the General Rules.”

Article 11 of their rules states:

“One or several delegates shall be sent to the General
Council.”

The Council asked for this article to be deleted

“because the International’s General Rules do not
recognize any right of the sections to send delegates to the General
Council.’

“The General Rules,” it added, “recognize
only two ways of election for General Council members: either their election by
the Congress, or their co-option by the General Council....”

It is quite true that the different sections in London had been
invited to send delegates to the General Council, which, so as not to violate
the General Rules, has always proceeded in the following manner: It has first
determined the number of delegates to be sent by each section, reserving itself
the right to accept or refuse them depending on whether it considered them able
to fulfill the general functions assigned to them. These delegates became
members of the General Council not by virtue that the Rules accord the Council
to co-opt new members. Having operated up to the decision taken by the last
Conference both as the International Association's General Council and as the
Central Council for England, the London Council thought it expedient to admit,
besides the members that it co-opted directly, also members nominated initially
by their respective sections. It would be a serious mistake to identify the
General Council’s electoral procedure with the of the Paris Federal
Council, which was not even a national Council nominated by a national Congress
like, for example, the Brussels Federal Council or that of Madrid. The Paris
Federal Council was only a delegation of the Paris sections.... The General
Council’s electoral procedure if defined in the General Rules... and its
member would not know how to accept any other imperative mandate than that of
the Rules and General Regulations.... If we take into consideration the article
that precedes it, Article 11 means nothing else but a complete change of the
General Council’s composition, turning it, contrary to Article 3 of the
General Rules, into a delegation of the London sections, in which the influence
of local groups would be substituted for that of the whole International
Working Men's Association. Lastly, the General Council, whose first duty is to
carry out the Congress resolutions (see Article 1 of the Geneva Congress’
Administrative Regulations), said that it

“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....”

Moreover, the Council declared that it would admit two delegates
from the section on the same conditions as those of the other London
sections.

The 1871 Section, far form being satisfied with this reply, published on
December 14 a “declaration’ signed by all its members, including
the new secretary, who was shortly expelled as a scoundrel from the refugee
society. According to this declaration, the General Council, by refusing to
usurp the legislative functions, was accused of “a gross distortion of
the social idea”.

Here are some sample of the good faith displayed in the drawing up of this
document:

The London Conference approved the conduct of the German workers during the
[Franco-Prussian] war. It was apparent that this resolution, proposed by a
Swiss delegate [Outine], seconded by a Belgian delegate, and approved
unanimously, referred only to the German members of the International, who paid
and are still paying for their anti-chauvinist behavior during the war by
imprisonment. Furthermore, in order to avoid any possible misinterpretation,
the Secretary of the General Council for France [Serraillier] had just
explained the true sense of the resolution in a letter published by the
journals Qui Vive!, Constitution, Radical,
Emancipation, Europe, etc. Nonetheless, eight days later, on
November 23, 1871, 15 members of the ‘French Section of 1871’
inserted in Qui Vive! a “protest” full of abuse against
the German workers and denouncing the Conference resolution as irrefutable
proof of the General Council’s “pan-Germanic idea”. On the
other hand, the entire feudal, liberal, and police press of Germany seized
avidly upon this incident to demonstrate to the German workers how their
international dreams had come to naught. In the end, the November 29 protest
was endorsed by the entire 1871 Section in its December 14 declaration.

To show “the dangerous slope of authoritarianism down
which the General Council [was] slipping”, the declaration cited
“the publication by the very same General Council of an official edition
of the General Rules as revised by it.”

One glance at the new edition of the Rules is enough to see that
each new article has, in the appendix, reference to the original sources
establishing its authenticity! As for the words “official edition”,
the 1st Congress of the International decided that “the official and
obligatory text of the Rules and Regulation” would be published by the
General Council (see “Working Congress of the International Working Men's
Association held at Geneva from September 3 to 8, 1866”, page 27,
note).

Naturally enough, the 1871 Section was in continuous contact with the
dissident of Geneva and Neuchatel. One Chalain, a member who has shown more
energy in attacking the General Council than he had ever shown in defending the
Commune, was unexpectedly rehabilitated by B. Malon, who had earlier leveled
very grave charges against him in a letter in to a Council member. The French
Section of 1871, however, had scarcely launched its declaration when civil war
exploded in its ranks. First Theisz, Avrial, and Camelinat withdrew.
Thereafter, the section broke up into several small groups, one of which was
led by Mr. Pierre Vesinier, expelled by the General Council for his slander
against Varlin and others, and then expelled for the International by the
Belgian Commission appoint by the Brussels Congress of 1868. Another of these
groups was founded by B. Landeck, who had been relieved by the sudden flight of
police prefect Pierri, on September 4, of his obligation, “scrupulously
fulfilled, not to engage any more in political affairs, nor in the
International in France” (see Third Trial of the International Working
Men’s Association in Paris, 1870”, p.4).

On the other hand, the mass of French refugees in London have formed a
section which is in complete harmony with the General Council.

IV.

The men of the Alliance, hidden behind the Neuchatel Federal
Committee and determined to make another effort on a vaster scale to
disorganize the International, convened a Congress of their sections at
Sonvillier on November 12, 1871. Back in July, two letters from maitre
Guillaume to his friend Robin had threatened the General Council with an
identical campaign if it did not agree to recognize them to be in the right
"vis-a-vis the Geneva bandits".

The Sonvillier Congress was composed of 16 delegates claiming to represent
nine section in all, including the new "Socialist Revolutionary Propaganda and
Action Section" in Geneva.

The Sixteen made their debut by publishing the anarchist decree declaring
the Romance Federation dissolved, and the latter retaliated by restoring to the
Alliance members their “autonomy” by driving them out of all
sections. However, the Council had to recognize that a stroke of good sense
brought them to accept the same Jura Federation, which the London Conference
had given them.

The Congress of Sixteen then proceeded to “reorganize” the
International by attacking the Conference and the General Council in a
“Circular to All Federations of the International Working Men's
Association”.

Those responsible for the circular accused the General Council primarily of
having called a Conference instead of a Congress in 1871. The preceding
explanations show that these attacks were made directly against the
International as a whole, which had unanimously agreed to convene a Conference,
at which, incidentally, the Alliance was conveniently represented by Citizens
Robin and Bastelica.

The General Council has had its delegates at every Congress; at the Basel
Congress, for example, it had six. The Sixteen claim that “the majority
of the Conference was fraudulently assured in advance by the admission of six
General Council delegates with a deciding vote”.

In actual fact, among the General Council delegates at the Conference, the
French refugees were none other than the representatives of the Paris Commune,
while its English and Swiss members could take part in the sessions only on
rare occassions, as is attested to by the minutes, which will be submitted
before the next Congress. One Council delegate had a mandate from a national
federation. According to a letter addressed to the Conference, the mandate of
another [Marx] was withheld because of the news of his death in the papers.
That left one delegate. Thus, the Belgians alone outnumbered the Council by
6-to-1.

The international police, who in the person of Gustave Durand were kept out,
complained bitterly about the violation of the General Rules by the convening
of a “secret” conference. They were not conversant enough with our
General Regulations to know that the administrative sittings of the Congress
have to be in private.

Their complaints, nonetheless, found a sympathetic echo with the Sonvillier
Sixteen, who cried out:

“And on top of it all, a decision of this Conference
declares that the General Council will itself fix the time and place of the
next Congress or of the Conference to replace it; thus we are threatened with
the suppression of the General Congresses, these great public sessions of the
International.”

The Sixteen refused to see that this decision was affirmed
before the various governments only to show that, despite all the repressive
measures, the International was firmly resolved to hold its general meetings
one way or another.

At the general assembly of the Geneva sections, held on December 2, 1871,
which gave a bad reception to Citizens Malon and Lefrancais, the latter put
forward a proposal confirming the decrees passed by the Sonvillier Sixteen and
censuring the General Council, as well as disavowing the Conference. The
Conference had resolved that

“the Conference resolutions which are not due to be
published shall be communicated to the federal councils of the various
countries by the corresponding secretaries of the General Council.”

This resolution, which was in complete conformity with the
General Rules and Regulations, was fraudulently revised by B. Malon and his
friends to read as follows:

“Some Conference resolutions shall be communicated only
to the federal councils and to the corresponding secretaries.”

They further accused the General Council of having
“violated the principle of sincerity” in refusing to hand over to
the police, by means of “publicity”, the resolutions which were
aimed exclusively at reorganizing the International in the countries were it is
proscribed.

Citizens Malon and Lefrancais complain further that

“the Conference aimed a blow at freedom of thought and
its expression... in conferring upon the General Council the right to denounce
and disavow any publicity organ of the sections or federations that discussed
either the principles on which the Association rests, or the respective
interests of the sections and federations, or finally the general interests of
the Association as a whole (see L'Egalite of October 21)”

What, then had L'Egalite of October 21 published? It
had published a resolution in which the Conference

“gives warning that henceforth the General Council will
be bound to publicly denounce and disavow all newspapers calling themselves
organs of the International which, following the precedents of Progres
and Solidarite, discuss in their columns, before the middle-class
public, questions exclusively reserved for the local or federal committees and
the General Council, or for the private and administrative sittings of the
Federal or General Congresses.”

To appreciate properly the spiteful lamentations of B. Malon, we
must bear in mind that this resolution puts an end, once and for all, to the
the attempts of some journalists who wished to substitute themselves for the
main committees of the International and to play therein the role that the
journalists’ bohemia is playing in the bourgeois world. As a result of
one such attempt, the Geneva Federal Committee had seen some members of the
Alliance edit L'Egalite, the official organ of the Romance Federation,
in a manner completely hostile to the latter.

Incidentally, the general Council had no need of the London Conference to
“publicly denounce and disavow” the improper use of the press, for
the Basel Congress had decided (Resolution II) that:

“All newspapers countenancing attacks on the
Association must be immediately sent by the sections to the General
Council.”

“It is evident,” says the Romance Federal
Committee in its December 20, 1871, declaration (L'Egalite, December
24), “that this article was adopted not in order that the General Council
might keep in its files newspapers which attack the Association, but to enable
it to reply, and to nullify in case of need, the pernicious effect of slander
and malevolent denigrations. It is also evident that this article refers in
general to all newspapers, and that if we do not want to leave the attacks of
the bourgeois papers without retaliation, it is all the more necessary to
disavow, through our main representative body — i.e., the General Council
— those newspapers whose attacks against us are made under cover of the
name of our Association.”

Let us not in passing that the Times, that Leviathan of
the capitalist press, Progres (of Lyon), a publication of the liberal
bourgeoisie, and the Journal de Geneve, an ultra-reactionary paper,
have brought the same charges against the Conference and used virtually the
same terms as Citizens Malon and Lefrancais.

After having challenged the convocation of the Conference and, later, its
composition and its allegedly secret character, the Sixteen’s circular
challenged the Conference resolutions.

Stating first that the Basel Congress had surrendered its rights
“having authorized the General Council to grant or refuse admission to,
or to suspend, the sections of the International,” it accuses the
Conference, farther on, of the following sin:

“This Conference has... taken resolutions... which tend
to turn the International, which is a free federation of autonomous sections,
into a hierarchical and authoritarian organization of disciplined sections
placed entirely under the control of a General Council which may, at will,
refuse their admission or suspend their activity”!

Still farther on, the circular once more takes up the question
of the Basel Congress having allegedly “distorted the nature of the
General Council's functions”.

The contradictions contained in the circular of the Sixteen may be summed up
as follows: the 1871 Conference is responsible for the resolutions of the 1869
Basel Congress, and the General Council is guilty of having observed the Rules
which require it to carry out Congress resolutions.

Actually, however, the real reason for all these attacks against the
Conference is of a more profound nature. In the first place, it thwarted, by
its resolutions, the intrigues of the Alliance men in Switzerland. In the
second place, the promoters of the Alliance had, in Italy, Spain, and part of
Switzerland and Belgium, created and upheld with amazing persistence a
calculated confusion between the program of the International Working
Men’s Association and Bakunin’s makeshift program.

The Conference drew attention to this deliberate misunderstanding in its two
resolutions on proletarian policy and sectarian sections. The motivation of the
first resolution, which makes short work of the political abstention preached
by Bakunin’s program, is given fully in its recitals, which are based on
the General Rules, the Lausanne Congress resolution, and other precedents.

*

We now pass on to the sectarian sections:

The first phase of the proletariat’s struggle against the bourgeoisie
is marked by a sectarian movement. That is logical at a time when the
proletariat has not yet developed sufficiently to act as a class. Certain
thinkers criticize social antagonisms and suggest fantastic solutions thereof,
which the mass of workers is left to accept, preach, and put into practice. The
sects formed by these initiators are abstentionist by their very nature —
i.e., alien to all real action, politics, strikes, coalitions, or, in a word,
to any united movement. The mass of the proletariat always remains indifferent
or even hostile to their propaganda. The Paris and Lyon workers did not want
the St.-Simonists, the Fourierists, the Icarians, any more than the Chartists
and the English trade unionists wanted the Owenites. These sects act as levers
of the movement in the beginning, but become an obstruction as soon as the
movement outgrows them; after which they became reactionary. Witness the sects
in France and England, and lately the Lassalleans in Germany, who after having
hindered the proletariat’s organization for several years ended up
becoming simple instruments of the police. To sum up, we have here the infancy
of the proletarian movement, just as astrology and alchemy are the infancy of
science. If the International were to be founded, it was necessary that the
proletariat go through this phase.

Contrary to the sectarian organization, with their vagaries and rivalries,
the International is a genuine and militant organization of the proletarian
class of all countries, united in their common struggle against the capitalists
and the landowners, against their class power organized in the state. The
International’s Rules, therefore, speak of only simple
“workers’ societies”, all aiming for the same goal and
accepting the same program, which presents a general outline of the proletarian
movement, while having its theoretical elaboration to be guided by the needs of
the practical struggle and the exchange of ideas in the sections,
unrestrictedly admitting all shades of socialist convictions in their organs
and Congresses.

Just as in every new historical phase old mistakes reappear momentarily only
to disappear forthwith, so within the International there followed a
resurrection of sectarian sections, though in a less obvious form.

The Alliance, which considers the resurrection of the sects a great step
forward, is in itself conclusive proof that their time is over: for if
initially they contained elements of progress, the program of the Alliance, in
the tow of a “Mohammed without the Koran”, is nothing but a heap of
pompously worded ideas long since dead and capable only of frightening
bourgeois idiots or serving as evidence to be used by the Bonapartist or other
prosecutors against members of the International. [5]

The Conference, at which all shades of socialism were represented,
unanimously acclaimed the resolution against sectarian sections, fully
convinced that this resolution, stressing once again the International's true
character, would mark a new stage of its development. The Alliance supporters,
whom this resolution dealt a fatal blow, construed it only as the General
Council's victory over the International, through which, as their circular
pointed out, the General Council assured “the domination of the special
program” of some of its members, “their personal doctrine”,
“the orthodox doctrine”, “the official theory, and only one
permissible within the Association”. Incidently, this was not the fault
of those few members, but the necessary consequence, “the corrupting
effect”, of the fact that they were members of the General Council, for
“it is absolutely impossible for a person who has power” (!)
“over his fellows to remain a moral person. The General Council is
becoming a hotbed of intrigue”.

According to the opinion of the Sixteen, the General Rules of the
International should be censured for the grave mistakes of authorizing the
General Council to co-opt new members. Thus authorized, they claim, “the
Council could, whenever it saw fit, co-opt a group numerous enough to
completely change the nature of its majority and its tendencies”.

They seem to think that the mere fact of belonging to the General Council is
sufficient to destroy not only a person's morality, but also his
common sense. How else can we suppose that a majority will transform itself
into a minority by voluntary co-options?

At any rate, the Sixteen themselves do not appear to be very sure of all
this, for they complain farther on that the General Council has been
“composed for five years running of the same persons, continually
reelected”, and immediately afterwards they repeat: “Most of them
are not regular mandatories, not having been elected by a Congress.”

The fact is that the body of the General Council is constantly changing,
though some of the founding members remain, as in the federal councils in
Belgium, French Switzerland, etc.

The General Council must fulfill three essential conditions if it is to
carry out its mandate. In the first place, it must have a numerically adequate
membership to carry on its diverse functions; second, a membership of
“workingmen belonging to the different nations represented in the
International Association”; and, lastly, laborers must be the
pre-dominant element therein. Since the exigencies of the worker’s job
incessantly cause changes in the membership of the General Council, how can it
fulfill all these indispensable conditions without the right of co-option? The
Council nonetheless considers a more precise definition of this right
necessary, as it indicated at the recent Conference.

The reelection of the General Council’s original membership, at
successive Congresses at which England was definitely under-represented, would
seem to prove that it has done its duty within the limits of the means at its
disposal. The Sixteen, on the contrary, view this only as a proof of the
“blind confidence of the Congresses”, carried at Basel to the point
of “a sort of voluntary abdication in favor of the General
Council”.

In their opinion, the Council’s “normal role” should be
“that of a simple correspondence and statistical bureau”. They
justify this definition by adducing several articles extracted from an
incorrect translation of the Rules.

Contrary to the rules of all bourgeois societies, the International’s
General Rules touch only lightly on its administrative organization. They leave
its development to practice, and its regularization to future Congresses.
Nevertheless, inasmuch as only the unity and joint action of the sections of
the various countries could give them a genuinely international character, the
Rules pay more attention to the Council than to the other bodies of the
organization.

Article 6 of the original Rules states: “The General Council shall
form an international agency between the different national and local
groups”, and proceeds to give some examples of the manner in which it is
to function. Among these examples is a request to the Council to see that
“when immediate practical steps should be needed — as, for
instance, in case of international quarrels — the action of the
associated societies be simultaneous and uniform.”

The article continues:

“Whenever it seems opportune, the General Council shall
take the initiative of proposals to be laid before the different national or
local societies.”

In addition, the Rules define the Council’s role in
convening and arranging Congresses, and charge it with the preparation of
certain reports to be submitted thereto. In the original Rules, so little
distinction is made between the independent action of various groups and unity
of action of the Association as a whole, that Article 6 states:

“Since the success of the workingmen's movement in each
country cannot be secured but by the power of union and combination, while, on
the other hand, the activity of the General Council will be more effective...
the members of the International Association shall use their utmost efforts to
combine the disconnected workingmen’s societies of their respective
countries into national bodies, represented by central national
organs.”

The first administrative resolution of the Geneva Congress
(Article I) says:

“The General Council is commissioned to carry the
resolution of the Congress into effect.”

This resolution legalized the position that the General Council
has held ever since its origin: that of the Association’s executive
delegation. It would be difficult to carry out orders without enjoying
moral “authority” in the absence of any other “freely
recognized authority”. The Geneva Congress at the same time charged the
General Council with publishing “the official and obligatory text of the
Rules”.

The same Congress resolved (Administrative Resolution of Geneva, Article
14):

“Every section has the right to draw up its own rules
and regulations adapted to local conditions and to the laws of its own country,
but they must not contain anything contrary to the General Rules and
Regulations.”

Let us note, first of all, that these is not the least allusion
either to any special declarations of principles or to any special tasks which
this or that section should set itself apart from the common goal pursued by
all the groups of the International. The issue simply concerns the right of
sections to adapt the General Rules and Regulations to local conditions and to
the laws of their country.

In the second place, who is to establish whether or not the particular rules
conform to the General Rules? Evidently, if there were no
“authority” charged with this function, the resolution would be
null and void. Not only could police and hostile sections be formed, but also
the intrusion of declassed sectarians and bourgeois philanthropists into the
Association could warp its character and, by force of numbers at Congresses,
crush the workers.

Since their origin, the national and local federations have exercised in
their respective countries the right to admit or reject new sections, according
to whether or not their rules conformed to the General Rules. The exercise of
the same function by the General Council is provided for in Article 6 of the
General Rules, which allows local independent societies — i.e., societies
formed outside the federal body in the country concerned — the right to
establish direct contacts with the General Council. The Alliance did not
hesitate to exercise this right in order to fulfill the conditions set for the
admission of delegates to the Basel Congress.

Article 6 of the Rules deals further with legal obstacles to the formation
of national federations in certain countries where, consequently, the General
Council is asked to function as a Federal Council (see Minutes of the Lausanne
Congress, etc., 1867, p.13).

Since the fall of the Commune, these legal obstacles have been multiplying
in the various countries, making action by the General Council therein,
designed to keep doubtful elements out of the Association, more necessary than
ever. That is why the French committees recently demanded the General
Council’s intervention to rid themselves of informers, and why in another
great country [Austria] members of the International requested it not to
recognize any section which had not been formed by its direct mandates or by
themselves. Their request was motivated by the necessity to rid themselves of
agents-provocateurs, whose burning zeal manifested itself in the rapid
formation of sections of unparalleled radicalism. On the other hand, the
so-called anti-authoritarian sections do not hesitate to appeal to the Council
the moment a conflict arises in their midst, or even to ask it to deal severely
with their adversaries, as in the case of the Lyons conflict. More recently,
since the Conference, the Turin “Workers' Federation” decided to
declare itself a section of the International. As the result of the split that
followed, the minority formed the Emancipation of the Proletariat Society. It
joined the International and began by passing a resolution in favor of the Jura
people. Its newspaper, Il Proletario, is filled with outbursts against
all authoritarianism. When sending in the society's subscriptions, the
secretary [Carlo Terzaghi] warned the General Council that the old federation
would probably also send its subscriptions.

Then he continues:

“As you will have read in Il Proletario, the
Emancipation of the Proletariat Society... has declared... its rejection of all
solidarity with the bourgeoisie who, under the mask of workers, are organizing
the Workers’ Federation,” and begs the Council to
“communicate this resolution to all sections and to refuse the 10
centimes in subscriptions in the event of their being sent.” [6]

Like all the International’s groups, the General Council
is required to carry on propaganda. This it has accomplished through its
manifestos and its agents, who laid the basis for the first organizations of
the International in North America, in Germany, and in many French towns.

Another function of the General Council is to aid strikers and organize
their support by the entire International (see General Council reports to the
various Congresses). The following fact, inter alia, indicates the
importance of its intervention in the strike movement. The Resistance Society
of the English Foundrymen is in itself an international trade union with
branches in other countries, notably in the United States. Nonetheless, during
a strike of American foundrymen, the latter found it necessary to invoke the
intercession of the General Council to prevent English foundrymen being brought
into America.

The growth of the International obliged the General Council and all federal
councils to assume the role of arbiter.

The Brussels Congress resolved that:

“The federal councils are obliged to send a report
every quarter to the General Council on their administration and financial
states” (Administrative Resolution No.3).

Lastly, the Basel Congress, which provokes the bilious wrath of
the Sixteen, occupied itself solely with regulating the administrative
relations engendered by the Association’s continuing development. If it
extended unduly the limits of the General Council’s powers, whose fault
was it if not that of Bakunin, Schwitzgeubel, F. Robert, Guillaume, and other
delegates of the Alliance, who were so anxious to achieve just that? Or will
they accuse themselves of “blind confidence” in the London General
Council?

Here are two resolutions of the Basel Congress:

“No.IV. Each new section or society which is formed and
wishes to be part of the International must immediately announce its adhesion
to the General Council,”

and

“No.V. The General Council has the right to admit or
reject the affiliation of any new society or group, subject to appeal at the
next Congress.”

As for the local independent societies formed outside the
federal body, these articles only confirm the practice observed since the
International’s origin, maintenance of which is a matter of life or death
for the Association. But extending this practice and applying it
indiscriminately to every section or society in the process of formation is
going too far. These articles do authorize the General Council to intervene in
the internal affairs of the federations; but they have never been applied in
this sense by the General Council. It defies the Sixteen to cite a single case
where it has intervened in the affairs of new sections desirous of affiliating
themselves with existing groups or federations.

The resolutions cited above refer to sections in the process of formation,
while the resolutions given below refer to sections already recognized:

“VI. The General Council has equally the right to
suspend until the next Congress any section of the International.”

“VII. When conflicts arise between the societies or
branches of a national group, or between groups of different nationalities, the
General Council shall have the right to decide the conflict, subject to appeal
at the next Congress, which will decide definitely.”

These two articles are necessary for extreme cases, although up
to the present the General Council has never had recourse to them. The review
presented above shows that the Council has never suspended any section, and in
cases of conflict has only acted as arbiter at the request of the two
parties.

We arrive, at last, at a function imposed on the General Council by the
needs of the struggle. However shocking this may be for supporters of the
Alliance, it is the very persistence of the attacks to which the General
Council is subjected by all the enemies of the proletarian movement that has
placed it in the vanguard of the defenders of the International Working
Men’s Association.

V.

Having dealt with the International, such as it is, the Sixteen
proceed to tell us what it should be.

First, the General Council should be nominally a simple correspondence and
statistical bureau. Once it has been relieved of its administrative functions,
its correspondence would be concerned only with reproducing the information
already published in the Association's newspapers. The correspondence bureau
would thus become needless. As for statistics, that function is possible only
if a strong organization, and especially, as the original Rules expressly say,
a common direction are provided. Since all that smacks very much of
“authoritarianism”, however, there might perhaps be a bureau, but
certainly no statistics. In a word, the General Council would disappear. The
federal councils, the local committees, and other “authoritarian”
centres, would go by the same token. Only the autonomous sections would
remain.

What, one may ask, will be the purpose of these “autonomous
sections”, freely federated and happily rid of all superior bodies,
“even of the superior body elected and constituted by the
workers”?

Here, it becomes necessary to supplement the circular by the report of the
Jura Federal Committee submitted to the Congress of the Sixteen:

“In order to make the working class the real
representative of humanity’s new interests,” its organization must
be “guided by the idea that will triumph. To evolve this idea from the
needs of our epoch, from mankind’s vital aspirations, by a consistent
study of the phenomena of social life, to then carry this idea to our
workers’ organizations — such should be our aim,” etc.
Lastly, there must be created “amid our working population a real
revolutionary socialist school.”

Thus, the autonomous workers’ sections are in a trice
converted into schools, of which these gentlemen of the Alliance will
be the masters. They “evolve” the idea by “consistent”
studies which leave no trace behind. They then “carry this idea to our
workers’ organizations”. To them, the working class is so much raw
material, a chaos into which they must breathe their Holy Spirit before it
acquires a shape.

All of which is but a paraphrase of the old Alliance program, which begins
with these words:

“The socialist minority of the League of Peace and
Freedom, having separated itself from the league,” proposes to found
“a new Alliance of Socialist Democracy... having a special mission to
study political and philosophical questions....”

This is the “idea” that is being
“evolved” therefrom:

“Such an enterprise... would provide sincere socialist
democrats of Europe and America with the means of being understood and of
affirming their ideas.” [7]

That is how, on its own admission, the minority of a bourgeois
society slipped into the International shortly before the Basel Congress with
the exclusive aim of utilizing it as a means for posing before the working
masses as a hierarchy of a secret science that may be expounded in hour phrases
and whose culminating point is “the economic and social equalization of
the classes.”

Apart from this “theoretical mission”, the new organization
proposed for the International also has its practical aspect.

“The future society,” says the circular of the
Sixteen, “should be nothing but a universalization of the organization
which the International will establish for itself. We must therefore take care
to bring this organization as near as possible to our ideal.... How could one
expect an egalitarian and free society to grow out of an authoritarian
organization? That is impossible. The International, embryo of the future human
society, must be, from now on, the faithful image of our principles of liberty
and federation.”

In other words, just as the mediaeval convents presented an
image of celestial life, so the International must be the image of the New
Jerusalem, whose embryo the Alliance bears in its womb. The Paris Communards
would not have failed if they had understood that the Commune was “the
embryo of the future human society” and had cast away all discipline and
all arms — that is, the things which must disappear when there are no
more wars!

Bakunin, however, the better to establish that, despite their
“consistent study”, the Sixteen did not hatch this pretty project
of disorganization and disarmament in the International when it was fighting
for its existence, has just published the original text of that project in his
report on the International's organization (see Almanach du Peuple pour
1872, Geneve).

VI.

Now, turn to the report presented by the Jura Committee at the
Congress of the Sixteen.

“A perusal of the report,” says their official
organ, Revolution Sociale (November 16), “will give the exact
measure of the devotion and practical intelligence that we can expect from the
Jura Federation members.”

It begins by attributing to “these terrible
events” — the Franco-Prussia War and the Civil War in France
— a “somewhat demoralizing influence... on the situation within the
International’s sections.”

If, in fact, the Franco-Prussian War could not but lead to the
disorganization of the sections because it drew great numbers of workers into
the two armies, it is no less true that the fall of the Empire and Bismarck's
open proclamation of a war of conquest provoked in Germany and England a
violent struggle between the bourgeoisie, which side with the Prussians, and
the proletariat, which more than ever demonstrated its international
sentiments. This alone should have been sufficient for the International to
have gained ground in both countries. In America, the same fact produced a
split between in the vast German proletarian emigre group, the internationalist
party definitely dissociating itself from the chauvinist party.

On the other hand, the advent of the Paris Commune gave an unprecedented
boost to the expansion of the International and to a vigorous support of its
principles by sections of all nationalities, except the Jura sections, whose
report continues thus:

“The beginning of the gigantic battle... has caused
people to think... some go away to hide their weakness.... For many, this
situation” (within their ranks) “is a sign of decrepitude,”
but “on the contrary... this situation is capable of transforming the
International completely,” according to their own pattern.

This modest wish will be understood more completely after a
deeper examination of so propitious a situation.

Leaving aside the dissolved Alliance, since replaced by the Malon section,
the Committee had to report on the situation in 20 sections. Among them, seven
simply turned their backs on the Alliance. This is what the report has to say
about it:

“The section of box makers and that of engravers and
designers of Bienne have never replied to any of the communications that we
sent them. The sections of Neuchatel craftsmen, i.e., joiners, box makers,
engravers, and designers, have made no reply to letters from the Federal
Committee. We have not been able to obtain any news of the Val-de-Ruz section.
The section of engravers and designers of Locle have given no reply to letters
from the Federal Committee.”

That is what is described as free intercourse between
autonomous sections and their Federal Committee.

Another section, that “of engravers and designers of the Courtelary
district, after three years of stubborn perseverance... at the present time...
is forming a resistance society” — independent of the
International, which does not in the least deter them from sending two
delegates to the Congress of the Sixteen.

Next come four completely defunct sections:

“The central section of Bienne has currently been
dissolved; one of its devoted members wrote to us recently, however, saying
that all hope of seeing the rebirth of the International at Bienne is not lost.
The Saint-Blaise section has been dissolved. The Catebat section, after a
brilliant existence, has had to yield to the intrigues woven by the
masters” (!) “of this district in order to dissolve this
valiant” (?) “section. Lastly, the Corgement section also has
fallen victim of intrigue on the part of the employers.”

The central section of the Courtelary district follows, which
“took the wise step of suspending its activity”; which did not
deter it from sending two delegates to the Congress of the Sixteen.

Now we come to four sections whose existence is more than problematical.

“The Grange section has been reduced to a small nucleus
of socialist workers.... Their local action is paralyzed by their numerically
modest membership. The central section of Neuchatel has suffered considerably
from the events, and would inevitably have disbanded except for the dedication
and activity of some of its members. The central section of Locle, hovering
between life and death for some months, ended up by being dissolved. It has
been reconstituted quite recently, however,” evidently for the sole
purpose of sending two delegates to the Congress of the Sixteen. “The
Chaux-de-Fonds section of socialist propaganda is in a critical situation....
Its position, far from getting better, tends rather to deteriorate.”

Next come two sections, the study circles of Saint-Imier and of
Sonvillier, which are mentioned only in passing, without so much as a word
about their circumstances.

There remains the model section, which, to judge by its name of central
section, is nothing but the residue of other defunct sections.

“The central section of Moutier is certainly the one
that has suffered least.... Its Committee has been in constant contact with the
Federal Committee... no sections have yet been founded....”

That is easily explained:

“The action of the Moutier section was particularly
favoured by the excellent attitude of a working population... given to their
traditional ways; we would like to see the working class of this district make
itself still more independent of political elements.”

One can see, in fact, that this report

“gives the exact measure of the devotion and practical
intelligence that we can expect from the Jura Federation members.”

They might have rounded it off by adding that the workers of
Chaux-de-Fonds, the original seat of their committee, have always refused to
have anything to do with them. Just recently, at the general assembly of
January 18, 1872, they replied to the circular of the Sixteen by a unanimous
vote confirming the London Conference resolutions and also the French
Switzerland Congress resolution of May 1871:

“To exclude forever from the International Bakunin,
Guillaume, and their supporters.”

Is it necessary to say anything more about the courage of this
sham Sonvillier Congress, which, in its own words, “caused war, open war,
within the International”?

Certainly these men, who make more noise than their stature warrants, have
had an incontestable success. The whole of the liberal and police press have
openly taken their side; they have been backed in their personal slander of the
General Council and the insipid attacks aimed against the International by
ostensible reformers in many lands: by the bourgeois republicans in England,
whose intrigues were exposed by the General Council; by the dogmatic
free-thinkers in Italy who, under the banner of Stefanoni, have just formed a
“Universal Rationalist Society” with permanent headquarters in
Rome, and “authoritarian” and “hierarchical”
organization of monasteries for atheist monks and nuns, whose rules provide for
a marble bust in the Congress hall for every bourgeois who donates 10,000
francs; and lastly by the Bismarck socialists in Germany who, apart from their
police mouthpiece, the Neuer Social-Demokrat, played the role of
“white shirts” for the Prusso-German Empire.

The Sonvillier conclave, in a pathetic appeal, requests all sections of the
International to insist on the urgency of an immediate Congress “to curb
the consistent encroachments of the London Council,” according to
Citizens Malon and Lefrancais, but actually to replace the International with
the Alliance. This appeal received such an encouraging response, that they
immediately set about falsifying a resolution voted at the last Belgian
Congress. Their official organ (Revolution Sociale, January 4, 1872)
writes as follows:

“Lastly, which is even more important, the Belgian
sections met at the Congress of Brussels on December 14 and 25 and voted
unanimously for a resolution identical with that of the Sonvillier Congress, on
the urgency of convening a General Congress.”

It is important to note that the Belgian congress voted the very
opposite. It charged the Belgian congress, which was not due to meet until the
following June, to draft new General Rule for submission to the next
Congress of the International.

In accordance with the will of the vast majority of members of the
International, the General Council is to convene the annual Congress only in
September 1872.

VII.

Some weeks after the Conference, Albert Richard and Gaspard
Blanc, the most influential and most ardent members of the Alliance, arrived in
London. They came to recruit, among the French refugees, aides willing to work
for the restoration of the Empire, which, according to them, was the only way
to rid themselves of Thiers and to avoid being left destitute. The General
Council warned all concerned, including the Brussels Federal Council, of their
Bonapartist plots.

In January 1872, they dropped their mask by publishing a pamphlet entitled
The Empire and the New France. Call of the People and the Youth to the
French Conscience, by Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc, Brussels, 1872.

With the modesty characteristic of the charlatans of the Alliance, they
declaim the following humbug:

“We who have built up the great army of the French
proletariat... we, the most influential leaders of the International in France
[8],... happily, we have not been shot, and we are
here to flaunt in their faces (to wit: ambitious parliamentarians, smug
republicans, sham democrats of all sorts) the banner under which we are
fighting, and despite the slander, threats, and all manner of attacks that
await us, to hurl at an amazed Europe the cry that comes from the very heart of
our conscience and that will soon resound in the hearts of all Frenchmen: ‘Long
Live the Emperor!’ Napoleon III, disgraced and scorned, must be splendidly
reinstated”; and Messrs. Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc, paid out of the
secret funds of Invasion III, are specially charged with this restoration.

Incidentally, they confess:

“It is the normal evolution of our ideas that made us
imperialists.”

Here is a confession that should give pleasure to their
co-religionists of the Alliance. As in the heyday of Solidarite, A.
Richard and G. Blanc mouth again the cliches about “abstention from politics”
which, on the principle of their “normal evolution”, can become a reality only
under the most absolute despotism, with the workers abstaining from any
meddling in politics, much like the prisoner abstaining from a walk in the
Sun.

“The time of the revolutionaries,” they say, “is over...
communism is restricted to Germany and England, especially Germany. That,
moreover, is where it had been developed in earnest for a long time to be
subsequently spread throughout the International, and this disturbing expansion
of German influence in the Association has in no small degree contributed to
retarding its development, or rather, to giving it a new course in the sections
of central and southern France, whom no German has ever supplied with a
slogan.”

Perhaps this is the voice of the great hierophant, who ever
since the Alliance's foundation has taken upon himself, in his capacity as a
Russian, the special task of representing the Latin races? Or do we have here
“the true missionaries” of the Revolution Sociale (November 2, 1871)
denouncing “the backward march which endeavors to foist German and Bismarckian
mentality on the International”?

Fortunately, however, the true tradition has survived, and Messrs. Albert
Richard and Gaspard Blanc have not been shot! Thus, their own “contribution”
consists in “setting a new course” for the International in central and
southern France to follow, by an effort to found Bonapartist sections, ipso
facto basically “autonomous”.

As for the constitution of the proletariat as a political party, as
recommended by the London Conference, “After the restoration of the Empire, we”
— Richard and Blanc — “shall quickly deal not only with the
Socialist theories but also with any attempts to implement them through
revolutionary organization of the masses.” Briefly, exploiting the great
“autonomy principle of the sections” which “constitute the real strength of the
International... especially in the Latin countries” (Revolution
Sociale, January 4), these gentlemen base their hopes on anarchy within
the International.

Anarchy, then, is the great war horse of their master Bakunin, who has taken
nothing from the socialist systems except a set of slogans. All socialists see
anarchy as the following program:

Once the aim of the proletarian movement —
i.e., abolition of classes — is attained, the power of the state, which
serves to keep the great majority of producers in bondage to a very small
exploiter minority, disappears, and the functions of government become simple
administrative functions.

The Alliance draws an entirely different picture.

It proclaims anarchy in proletarian ranks as the
most infallible means of breaking the powerful concentration of social and
political forces in the hands of the exploiters. Under this pretext, it asks
the International, at a time when the Old World is seeking a way of crushing
it, to replace its organization with anarchy.

The international police want nothing better for perpetuating
the Thiers republic, while cloaking it in a royal mantle.

Notes

1 B. MALON — Do
the friends of B. Malon, who have been advertising him in a stereotyped way for
the last three months as the founder of the International, who have called his
book the only independent work on the Commune, know the attitude taken by this
assistant to the Mayor of Batignolles on the eve of the February elections? At
that time, B. Malon, who did not yet foresee the Commune and saw nothing more
than the success of his election to the Assembly, plotted to get himself put on
the list of the four committees as a member of the International. To these
ends, he insolently denied the existence of the Paris Federal Council and
submitted to the committees the list of a section founded by himself at
Batignolles as coming from the entire Association. Later, on March 19, he
insulted in a public document the leaders of the great Revolution on the eve of
their consummating it. Today, this anarchist from top-to-toe prints, or has
printed, what he was saying a year ago to the four committees: I am the
International! B. Malon has hit on a way of parodying Louis XIV and Perron the
chocolate manufacturer at one and the same time. It was Perron who declared
that his chocolate was the only edible chocolate!

2 Here is the
national composition of the Council:

— 20 Englishmen, — 15 French, — 7 Germans
(of whom 5 are founding members of the International), — 2 Swiss, —
2 Hungarians, — 1 Pole, — 1 Belgian, — 1 Irishman, — 1
Dane, and — 1 Italian.

3 A little later,
this Chautard whom they had wanted to put on the General Council was expelled
from the section as an agent of Thiers’ police. He was accused by the same
people who had judged him worthy among all others of representing them on the
General Council.

4 The Conference
resolution on political action of the working class reads as follows:

“Considering the following passage of the Preamble to the
Rules:

‘The economical emancipation of
the working classes is the great end to which every political movement ought to
be subordinate as a means’;

“That the Inaugural Address of the International Working
Men’s Association (1864) states:

‘The lords of land and the lords
of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and
perpetuation of their economical monopolies. So far from promoting, they will
continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of
labor.... To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the
working classes’;

“That the Congress of Lausanne (1867) has passed this
resolution:

‘The social emancipation of the
workmen is inseparable from their political emancipation’;

“That the declaration of the General Council relative to the
pretended plot of the French Internationals on the eve of the plebiscite (1870)
says:

‘Certainly by the tenor of our
Statutes, all our branches in England, on the Continent, and in America, have
the special mission not only to serve as centres for the militant organization
of the working class, but also to support, in their respective countries, every
political movement tending toward the accomplishment of our ultimate end
— the economical emancipation of the working class.’;

“That false translations of the original Statutes have given
rise to various interpretations which were mischievous to the development and
action of the International Working Men’s Association;

“In presence of an unbridled reaction which violently crushed
every effort at emancipation on the part of the working men, and pretends to
maintain by brute force the distinction of classes and the political domination
of the propertied classes resulting from it;

“Considering that against this collective power of the
propertied classes the working class cannot act, as a class, except by
constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all
old parties formed by the propertied classes;

"That this constitution of the working class into a political
party is indispensable in order to ensure the triumph of the Social Revolution
and its ultimate end — the abolition of classes;

“That the combination of forces which the working class has
already effected by its economical struggles ought at the same time to serve as
a lever for its struggles against the political power of landlords and
capitalists —

“The Conference recalls to the members of the
International:

“That in the militant state of the working class, its
economical movement and its political action are indissolubly united.”

5 Recent police
publications on the International, including the Jules Favre circular to
foreign powers and the report of Sacaze, a deputy in the rural assembly, on the
Dufaure project, are full of quotations from the Alliance’s pompous manifestos.
The phraseology of these sectarians, whose radicalism is wholly restricted to
verbiage, is extremely useful for promoting the aims of the reactionaries.

6 At this time, these
were the apparent ideas of the Emancipation of the Proletariat
Society, as represented by its corresponding secretary, a friend of Bakunin.
Actually, however, this section‘s tendencies were quite different. After
expelling this double-dealing traitor for embezzlement and for his friendly
relations with the Turin police chief, the society set forth in explanation,
which cleared up all misunderstanding between it and the General Council.

7 The gentlemen of
the Alliance, who continue to reproach the General Council for calling a
private Conference at a time when the convocation of a Congress would have been
the height of treachery or folly — these absolute proponents of clamor
and publicity — organized within the International itself with the aim of
bringing its sections, unbeknown to them, under the sacerdotal direction of
Bakunin.

The General Council intends to demand at the next Congress an investigation
of this secret organization and its promoters in certain countries, such as
Spain, for example.

8 Under the heading
“To the Pillory!”, L‘Egalite (of Geneva), February 15, 1872, had this
to say:

“The day has not yet come to describe the story of the defeat
of the movement of the Commune in the South of France; but what we, most of
whom witnessed the deplorable defeat of the Lyons insurrection on April 30, can
announce today is that one of the reasons for the insurrection's failure was
the cowardice, the treachery, and the thievery of G. Blanc, who intruded
everywhere carrying out the orders of A. Richard, who kept in the shade.

“By their carefully prepared maneuvers, these rascals
intentionally compromised many of those who took part in the preparatory work
of the insurrectionary Committees.

“Further, these traitors managed to discredit the
International at Lyon to such an extent that by the time of the Paris
revolution the International was regarded by the Lyon workers with the greatest
distrust. Hence the total absence of organization, hence the failure of the
insurrection, a failure which was bound to result in the fall of the Commune,
which was left to rely on its own isolated forces! It is only since this bloody
lesson that our propaganda has been able to rally the Lyon workers around the
flag of the International.

“Albert Richard was the pet and prophet of Bakunin and
company.”