The series of articles ‘““The Jura Federation and Mikhail 
Bakunin” published in the Volks-Tribtine, constrains me to a short 
rebuttal. 

Although the author* appears to take pains to treat his subject 
objectively and impartially, he in fact depicts it as the anarchist 
gentlemen depicted it themselves and wished it to be depicted. In 
particular he has at his disposal very extensive Bakuninist 
material; he utilises very little from the publications of the Geneva 
opposing party, and nothing at all from the publications of the 
London General Council. 

I extract the most obvious untruths from only one of the articles 
(X of November 12). 

It is incorrect that in 1871 the General Council summoned a 
“secret” conference to London”™’ of which 

“only the anarchist sections in Switzerland were not informed; they, however, 
learned of the plan’, etc. 

The conference was just as public and just as secret as any 
committee meeting of any Social-Democratic party; it was not 
broadcast to all and sundry in the newspapers and reporters were 
not invited to the meeting place. 

The Jura sections were in open rebellion against the General 
Council and outside all official relations with the same. On the 
other hand there sat on the General Council two Bakuninist 
anarchists and members of the Bakuninist secret society, elected on 
the proposal of “dictator” Marx: Robin and Bastelica. Robin in 
particular provided relations with the Jurassians, proposed on 

their behalf, back in March 1871, the same conference which they 
later disavowed, and also informed them that it had been 
summoned. Anything else is an anarchist lie. 

The conference 

“which was to assemble at Marx’s place ... was held ... in Marx’s house”. 

Stupid lie; it was held in the Blue Posts, an inn near 
Tottenham Court Road, right in the so-called French Quarter. 

The composition of the conference is also given wrongly, as is 
the point of difference on a paragraph, not of the Rules, but of 
their motivating introduction. In its French translation the first 
Paris (Proudhonist) local committee had falsified the relevant 
passage: ““The economical emancipation of the working classes is 
[...] the great end to which every political movement ought to be 
subordinate as a means” *—as: 

“the great goal, in the face of which every political movement must 
withdraw” 322 

While the papers of the Geneva Congress *” were confiscated by 
the Bonapartist police in transit through France, and only finally 
released after intervention by the English Foreign Office, the old 
Paris translation was immediately reprinted in Geneva, whereupon 
the later anarchists could claim that the Geneva Congress had so 
decided. This humbug was brought to an end, though to the great 
sorrow of the Bakuninists, by the publication in 1871 of an 
authentic English, French and German text of the Rules,” with 
which the General Council had been charged by the same Geneva 
Congress. Before me I have the copy of the Rules in which Marx 
entered the changes decided by the Geneva Congress; these are 
wholly confined to the articles of the Rules, and have no effect on 
the motivating introduction. 

Neither is it true that the London conference decided to place 

“the anarchist movement of the Jura under the command of the Geneva 
committee”’. 

And it is here that I begin to doubt the honourable intentions of 
the author. Either he can read, or he cannot. If he can read, he 
can only gather from the conference decisions: 1. that the Jura 
committee was deprived of the name Comité romand (which it had 
arrogated), and that this name was awarded to the old Geneva 
committee; 2. that the Jurassians were urged to get along with the 
Genevans; 3. if this was not possible, they should establish their 

own federation entitled Jura Federation.* The conference thus did 
nothing except to leave their own complete autonomy to the 
Genevans and the Jurassians. 

Enough. The author is, or acts like, an innocent child who 
believes to the word everything said by the poor, slandered 
anarchist lambs. Our reporter knows not a word of that which 
these gentlemen preferred to keep quiet, that is to say nothing 
about the background to the whole dispute. Behind the public 
“Alliance of Social Democracy” founded by Bakunin there hid a 
secret Alliance with the aim of putting into the hands of the 
anarchists control over the whole International.** This secret 
Alliance was very widespread in the Jura, in Italy and in Spain. 
The General Council received proof of this first from Spain, and 
later from Geneva the Rules and many other documents of this 
innocent plot against the European workers’ movement. It was 
these documents upon which the Hague Congress of 1872 
adjudicated, when it excluded Bakunin and Guillaume from the 
International.*2> And all this, and much more to correct the now 
warmed-up anarchist falsifications of history may be studied in the 
work commissioned by the Hague Congress: L’Alliance de la 
Démocratie Socialiste et V’Association Internationale des Travailleurs, 
London & Hamburg, 1873, German by Kokosky: Ein Komplott 
gegen die Internationale, Brunswick, Bracke, 1874.” 

London, November 15, 1892 
Frederick Engels 

Tribtine, No. 47, November 19, 1892 paper, checked with the rough