INTERNATIONAL Working Men’s ASSOCIATION, 
256, High Holborn, London.— W.C. 
December 6, 1871 


TO THE EDITOR OF LA ROMA DEL POPOLO 
Dear Sir, 
I count on you having the honesty to publish the enclosed 
declaration. If we are going to fight, let’s fight honestly. 


Yours most respectfully, 
F, Engels, 
General Council Secretary for Italy 


INTERNATIONAL Working Men's ASSOCIATION 


TO THE EDITORS OF LA ROMA DEL POPOLO 


In number 38 of La Roma del Popolo Citizen Giuseppe Mazzini 
publishes the first of a series of articles entitled “Documents about 
the International”.* Mazzini notifies the public: 


“I... have gathered from all the sources I was able to refer to all its resolutions, 
all the spoken and written declarations of its influential members.” 


And these are the documents he intends publishing. He begins 
by giving two samples. 


I. “The abstention” (from political action) “went so far that some of the French 
founders [of the International] promised Louis Napoleon that they would renounce 
all political action provided he grant the workers I don’t know what sum of 
material aid.” 


a Published on November 16, 1871; the next two articles of the series appeared in 
La Roma del Popolo, Nos. 39 and 41, November 23 .and December 7, 1871.— Ed. 


Declaration Concerning Mazzini’s Articles about the International 61 


We defy Citizen Mazzini to prove this assertion which we regard 
as calumnious. 

II. “In a speech at the Berne Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom in 
1868, Bakunin said: ‘I want the equalisation of individuals and classes: without this 
an idea of justice is impossible and peace will not be established. The worker must 


no longer be deceived with lengthy speeches. He must be told what he ought to want, 
if he doesn’t know himself. I’m a collectivist, not a communist, and if I demand the 


2°99 


abolition of inheritance rights, I do so to arrive at social equality more quickly’. 


Whether Citizen Bakunin pronounced these words or not is 
quite immaterial for us. What is important for the General Council 
of the International Working Men’s Association to establish is: 

1) that these words, as Mazzini himself asserts, were spoken at a 
congress not of the International but of the bourgeois League of 
Peace and Freedom; 

2) that the International congress, which met at Brussels in 
September 1868, disavowed this same congress of the League of 
Peace and Freedom by a special vote**; 

3) that when Citizen Bakunin pronounced these words, he was 
not even a member of the International; 

4) that the General Council has always opposed the repeated 
attempts to substitute for the broad programme of the Interna- 
tional Working Men’s Association (which has made membership 
open to Bakunin’s followers) Bakunin’s narrow and _ sectarian 
programme, the adoption of which would automatically entail the 
exclusion of the vast majority of members of the International; 

5) that the International can therefore in no way accept 
responsibility for the acts and declarations of Citizen Bakunin. 

As for the other documents about the International, which 
Citizen Mazzini intends to publish shortly, the General Council 
hereby declares that it is only responsible for its official 
documents. 


By order and in the name of the General Council of the 
International Working Men’s Association, 
Secretary for Italy, 
Frederick Engels