[FREDERICK ENGELS]
IMPERATIVE  MANDATES
AT THE  HAGUE  CONGRESS  66
The betrayals of their electors in recent times by many
deputies to parliament have caused the return to fashion of
the old imperative mandates of the Middle Ages which had
been abolished by the Revolution of 1789. We shall not
undertake here a discussion in principle of such mandates.
We shall only note that if all electors gave their delegates
imperative mandates concerning all points on the agenda,
meetings and discussions of the delegates would be superfluous. It would be sufficient to send the mandates to a central counting office which would count up the votes and announce the results. This would be much cheaper.
What is important for us is to show the most unusual
situation in which imperative mandates place their holders
at the Hague Congress—a situation which can serve as a good
lesson to the enthusiastic supporters of such mandates.
The delegates of the Spanish Federation, elected, as we
know, under pressure from the Federal Council, received
an imperative mandate to demand
“that the votes be counted according to the number of those represented by the delegates holding an imperative mandate; that the votes
of those represented by delegates not provided with an imperative mandate will not count until the sections or federations which they represent have discussed and voted on the questions debated at the'Congress.... In the event of the Congress persisting in the traditional system
of voting, our delegates will take part in the discussion, but will abstain from voting.”*
* The Jura Bulletin, which is known to be the official organ of the
Alliance leadership, published in its latest issue a short account of the
sittings of the Hague Congress, the authenticity of which can be judged

This mandate therefore demands that the Congress, before
dealing with anything else, should adopt the following decisions:
1. To change the articles of the Administrative Regulations dealing with the mode of voting.
2. To decree that delegates not holding an imperative
mandate should not have the right to vote.
3. To declare that these changes would apply immediately
to the present Congress.
It was immediately pointed out to the delegates of the
Spanish Federation that even if the Congress adopted their
requests Nos. 1 and 2, request No. 3 would be inadmissible.
The Hague Congress had been called on the basis of certain
of the Association’s organisational rules. It certainly had
the right to change them, but if it did change them, it
would by the very fact have destroyed the basis of its own
existence and would have placed itself in the absolute necessity to dissolve itself immediately, after convoking a new
congress, whose delegates would be elected on the basis of
the new organisational rules. To apply these new rules to
the present Congress would be to make them retroactive and
to violate every principle of justice. Consequently, whether
the Congress adopted proposals Nos. 1 and 2 or not, it
could by no means adopt proposal No. 3; and if the Spanish
delegates had received and accepted a mandate which was
in flagrant contradiction with itself, which placed them in
the impossibility to vote during the whole duration of the
Congress, whose fault was it?
The case was so clear that neither the minority, nor
even the delegates of our region, found words to contest it.
Consequently they remained present at the Congress without
voting, and this in the end so exasperated the Dutch that
one of them asked:
“Why  didn’t you stay at home if you hold a mandate which forbids you to vote and deprives the minority of four votes every time
a vote is taken?”
by the following, which we translate word for word: “The Spaniards,
seconded by the Belgians and the J urassians, demanded that the voting
should be not by individuals, but by federations? Did this demand appear in the mandate of the Spanish Federation?— Author's note.— See

But for a really Alliance mandate and an Alliance way
of using it, the Jura Federation had not its peer.
Here is the mandate of its delegates:
“The delegates of the Jura Federation are given an imperative
mandate to present to the Congress of The Hague the following principles as the basis of the organisation of the International.
“Any group of workers which adheres to the programme of the
International as it has been defined by the preamble to the General
Rules voted at the Geneva Congress, and which undertakes to observe
economic solidarity in respect of all the workers and groups of workers in the struggle against monopoly capital is a section of the International enjoying full rights.”
Here, indeed, the General Rules and Regulations are
abolished. If the preamble is allowed to remain, that is only
because, no conclusions being drawn from it, it simply has
no meaning.
“The federal principle being the basis of the organisation of the
International, the sections federate freely among themselves and the
federations federate freely among themselves with full autonomy, setting up according to their needs all the organs of correspondence, statistics bureaus etc., which they judge to be suitable.
“The J ura Federation sees as a consequence of the above-mentioned
principles the abolition of the General Council and the suppression of
all authority in the International.”
Thus the General Council, the federal councils, the local
councils, and various rules and regulations which possess
“authority” are to be abolished. Each one will act as he
thinks fit, “with full autonomy”.
“The Jura delegates must act in complete solidarity with the
Spanish, Italian and French delegates and all those who protest frankly
and broadly against the authoritarian principle. Consequently, refusal to admit a delegate of these federations must lead to the immediate
withdrawal of the Jura delegates. Similarly, if the Congress does not
accept the organisational bases of the International set forth above,
the delegates will have to withdraw in agreement with the delegates of
the anti-authoritarian federations.”
Let us now see what use the Jura delegates made of this imperative mandate. In the first place, there were no French
anti-authoritarian delegates at the Congress except one,
a madman,*  who did, in fact, “withdraw” very noisily many
times, but returned every time because he could never get

a single other anti-authoritarian delegate to follow him. The
mandate of Sauva of Section No. 2 of New York (antiauthoritarian) was annulled, but the Jurassians remained at
the Congress. That of the Section of Propaganda and Socialist Revolutionary Action of Geneva—a section which belonged directly to the Jura Federation—remained suspended
until the end of the Congress, and the Jurassians behaved
as though nothing had happened. The mandate of Section
No. 12 of New York which they themselves had encouraged
to resist the General Council, was annulled, and the Jurassians remained impassive. As for the mandate of the Italian
delegate*  who was present, they did not even dare to
present it.
But were the bases of organisation—or rather disorganisation—proposed by the Jurassians, adopted by the
Congress? Not at all; exactly the opposite: the Congress
decided to strengthen the organisation, that is, according
to them, the authority. Did they withdraw after this?
Nothing of the sort. They merely declared that they would
refrain from voting in future.
So that was the true way to use the imperative mandate.
The delegate complies with it if it suits him; if not, he
pleads unforeseen circumstances and, in the end, does as he
likes. After all, is it not a duty for the anti-authoritarians
to disregard the authority of imperative mandates just the
same as all other authority? The radically alliancist spirit so
well revealed in the imperative mandate of the Jurassians
was supplemented by the really anarchist manner in which
they ignored that mandate. Does it not follow from this that
these delegates are more initiated members of the Alliance
than their Spanish colleagues?
The Jura mandate gives occasion for still other reflections.
This mandate reveals the situation as a whole in the Alliance, where, despite all the talk about anarchy, autonomy,
free federation etc., there is in reality nothing but authority
and obedience. A few weeks before Schwitzguebel and Guillaume made out their own mandates, abolishing the General
Rules except for the preamble, their friends, delegates, not
belonging to the International, at the Rimini Conference,

drew up the rules of a self-styled Italian Federation, consisting of the preamble to the General Rules of the Association
and the regulations of the federation. Thus the organisation
set up at Rimini rejected the General Rules. It is obvious that
the gentlemen of the Alliance always in their actions obey
secret and uniform orders. It was these secret orders also,
no doubt, that the Barcelona Federation obeyed, when it
unexpectedly started preaching the disorganisation of the
International. The fact was that the strong organisation of
our Association in Spain was becoming a threat to the
secret leaders of the Alliance. This organisation gives the
working class too much strength and by the very fact raises
difficulties to the secret rule of the gentlemen of the Alliance,
who know perfectly well that fish are best caught in troubled
waters.
Destroy organisation, and the waters will be as troubled
as you can wish. Eliminate first of all the trade unions,
declare war on strikes, reduce working-class solidarity to
empty words and you will have complete freedom for your
high-sounding but empty doctrinaire talk. That is, if the
workers of our region allow you to destroy the result of their
four years of work, their organisation, which is, beyond
doubt, the best in the whole of the International.
► To return to the imperative mandates, we still have one
question to solve: Why do the Alliancists, declared enemies
of the principle of authority in any form, so obstinately
insist on the authority of imperative mandates? Because for
such a secret society as the one existing within the public
organisation of the International, there is nothing more
convenient than the imperative mandate. The mandates
of the Alliance members will all be identical, while the
mandates of the sections not influenced by the Alliance or
opposing it will be at variance with one another, so that very
often the absolute majority, and always the relative majority, will belong to the secret society; whereas at a congress
where there are no imperative mandates, the common sense
of the independent delegates will swiftly unite them in
a common party against the party of the secret society.
The imperative mandate is an extremely effective means of
domination, and that is why the Alliance, despite all its
anarchism, supports its authority.

Before ending we must say that for the Spanish Federal
Council, consisting of Alliancists, the most convenient form
of action was the creation of a collective imperative mandate,
a fact which was bound to lead to this mandate being the
mandate of the Federal Council, or, what is the same, an
Alliance mandate. All the Spanish federations which accepted the proposal of the Council contrary to the Regulations,
sent extraordinary subscriptions to Valencia to pay the
travelling expenses of the delegates, and together with
these subscriptions the results of the voting, and together
with the results of the voting—the imperative mandate of
their federation, in order to “unite all the mandates and create a collective imperative mandate". We readily admit that
given a loyal attitude and good will, the Federal Council
could have been entrusted with counting the votes of all
the local federations, but to join in one the different opinions
of all the local federations, the regional federations required
supreme intelligence or a miraculous crucible in which it
probably fused the various imperative mandates. And what
came out of this new sort of crucible? What was bound to
come out—the opinion of the Regional Council. We defy
all the Alliancists to point out to us a chemico-electoral
procedure which could produce another result.
The Spanish Federal Council, so anti-authoritarian, so
anarchistic etc., thus centralised subscriptions in its hands
so as to send delegates to The Hague; it conducted the elections of those delegates itself, and so skilfully that only
Alliancists were elected, and, to crown it all, it composed the
collective imperative mandate, which, it said, expressed the
will of the members of the International in Spain.
More respect cannot be paid to autonomy.
No. 69, October 13, 1872