Sixteen’s circular challenged even the Conference resolutions. 
Stating first that the Basle Congress had surrendered its rights 

“having authorised 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 organisation 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 Basle Congress which had 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 Basle 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 Bakunin’s makeshift programme and the programme of the 
International Working Men’s Association. 

The Conference drew attention to this deliberate misunder- 
standing 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 programme, 
is given fully in its recitals, which are based on the General Rules, 
the Lausanne Congress resolution and other precedents.* 

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

“Considering the following passage of the original Rules: ‘The economical 
emancipation of the workmen is the great end to which every political movement 
ought to be subordinate as a means’, 

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 criticise 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 Lyons workers 
did not want the Saint-Simonians, the Fourierists, the Icarians,! 
any more than the Chartists and the English trades unionists 

“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 defence 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 labour... 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 Rules, all our branches in England, on the Continent, and in 
America have the special mission not only to serve as centres for the militant 
organisation of the working class, but also to support, in their respective countries, 
every political movement tending towards the accomplishment of our ultimate 
end—the economical emancipation of the working class’; 

“That imaccurate translations of the original Rules have given rise to false 
interpretations which have been harmful to the development and action of the 
International Working Men’s Association; 

“In presence of an unbridled reaction which violently crushes 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, besides, 

“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 strug- 
gles against the political power of its exploiters. 

“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.” 

Fictitious Splits in the International 107 

wanted the Owenists. 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 become reactionary. 
Witness the sects in France and England, and lately the Lassalleans 
in Germany who, after having hindered the proletariat’s organisa- 
tion for several years, ended by 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 would go through this phase. 

Contrary to the sectarian organisations with their vagaries and 
rivalries, the International is a genuine and militant organisation 
of the proletarian class of all countries united in their common 
struggle against the capitalists and the landowners, against their 
class power organised in the state. The International’s Rules, 
therefore, speak of only simple “working men’s societies”, all 
following the same goal and accepting the same programme, which 
presents a general outline of the proletarian movement, while 
leaving 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 Interna- 
tional there followed a resurrection of sectarian sections, though in 
a less obvious form. 

The Alliance, while considering 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 
programme of the Alliance, in 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.* 

The Conference, at which all shades of socialism were rep- 
resented, unanimously acclaimed the resolution against sectarian 
sections, fully convinced that this resolution, bringing the Interna- 

* Recent police publications on the International, including the Jules Favre 
circular to foreign powers and the report of Sacase, 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. 

tional back to its true ground, 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- 
me” of some of its members, “their personal doctrine”, “the 
orthodox doctrine”, “the official theory, and the sole permissible 
within the Association”. Incidentally, this was not the fault of 
those few members, but the necessary consequence, “the corrupt- 
ing 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 mistake of 
authorising the General Council to co-opt new members. Thus 
authorised, 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 further on that the General 
Council has been 

“composed for five years running of the same persons, continually re-elected”, 
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 Belgian, Romance, etc., Federal Councils. 

The General Council must fulfil 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 func- 
tions; secondly, a membership of ‘working men belonging to the 
_different nations represented in the International Association”’; 
and, lastly, workers must be the predominant element therein. 
Since the exigencies of the worker’s job incessantly cause changes 

Fictitious Splits in the International 109 

in the membership of the General Council, how can it fulfil 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 re-election 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 Basle to the point of 

“a sort of voluntary abdication in favour 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 Internation- 
al’s General Rules touch only lightly on its administrative 
organisation. They leave its development to practice, and _ its 
regularisation 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 General Council than to the other 
bodies of the organisation. 

Article 5 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 spontaneous action of various 

a Here and further on the authors quote from the Rules of the International 
Working Men’s Association (present edition, Vol. 20, p. 443).— Ed. 

6— 1006 

groups and unity of action of the Association as a whole, that 
Article 6 states: 

“Since the success of the working men’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 discon- 
nected working men’s societies of their respective countries into 
national bodies, represented by central organs.” 

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

“The General Council is commissioned to carry the resolutions of the Congress 
into effect.” 4 

This resolution legalised 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 
recognised 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” [p. 27). 

Let us note, first of all, that there 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 local 
rules conform to the General Rules? Evidently, if there would be 
no “authority” charged with this function, the resolution would be 
null and void. Not only could police or 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. 

4 Congres ouvrier de l’Association Internationale des Travailleurs, tenu a Genéve du 3 
au 8 septembre 1866, Geneva, 1866, p. 26.— Ed. 

Fictitious Splits in the International 111 

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 fulfil the conditions set 
for the admission of delegates to the Basle 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 Procés-verbaux du Congres, etc, de Lausanne, 
1867, p. 137). 

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. Thus, for instance, 
the French committees recently demanded the General Council’s 
intervention to rid themselves of informers, and why, in another 
great country,” members of the International requested it not 
to recognise any section which has not been formed by its direct 
mandatary or by themselves. Their request was motivated by the ne- 
cessity of ridding themselves of agents-provocateurs, whose burning 
zeal manifested itself in the rapid formation of sections of unparal- 
leled radicalism. On the other hand, the so-called anti-authoritar- 
ian sections do not hesitate to appeal to the Council the moment 
a conflict arises in the midst, nor even to ask it to deal severely 
with their adversaries, as in the case of the Lyons conflict. More re- 
cently, since the Conference, the Turin Working Men’s Federation 
decided to declare itself a section of the International. As the re- 
sult of the split that followed, the minority formed a society cal- 
led “Emancipation of the Proletarian”. It joined the Interna- 
tional and began by passing a resolution in favour of the Jura 
people. Its newspaper, I! Proletario, is filled with outbursts against 
all authoritarianism. When sending in the society’s subscriptions, 

a A slip of the pen. Article 6 of the General Rules was adopted at the 1866 
Geneva Congress of the International. See Congrés ouvrier de l’Association 
Internationale des Travailleurs, tenu a Genéve du 3 au 8 septembre 1866, Geneva, 1866, 
pp. 13-14.— Ed. 

b Austria.— Ed. 

6* 

the secretary* warned the General Council that the old federation 
would probably also send its subscriptions. Then he continues: 

‘As you will have read in the Proletario, the Emancipation of the Proletarian society ... 
has declared ... its rejection of all solidarity with the bourgeoisie, who, under the mask 
of workers, are organising the Working Men’s 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”.* 

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 organisations of the International in North America, in 
Germany and in many French towns. 

Another function of the General Council is to aid strikers and 
organise 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 Trades 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 shall transmit to the General Council every three months a 
report on the administration and financial state of their respective branches” 
(Administrative Resolution No. 35). 

Lastly, the Basle Congress, which provokes the bilious wrath of 
the Sixteen, occupied itself solely with regulating the administra- 

* At this time these were the apparent ideas of the Emancipation of the 
Proletarian society, 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 its explanations, which cleared up all 
misunderstanding between it and the General Council. 

4 Carlo Terzaghi.— Ed. 

b Troisiéme Congrés de l’Association Internationale des Travailleurs. Compte-rendu 
officiel, Brussels, September 1868. Supplement to the journal Le Peuple Belge, 
p. 50.— Ed. 

Fictitious Splits in the International 113 

tive relations engendered by the Association’s continuing develop- 

ment. If it extended unduly the limits of the General Council’s 

powers, whose fault was it if not that of Bakunin, Schwitzguébel, 

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 Basle 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 local independent societies formed outside the federal 
body, these articles only confirm the practice observed since the 
International’s origin, the maintaining 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 authorise 
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 recognised: 

“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.” 2 

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 

a Compte-rendu du IV¢ Congres international, tenu a Bale, en septembre 1869, Brussels, 
1869, p. 172.— Ed. 

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. 

Vv 

Having dealt with the International such as it is, the Sixteen 

roceed to tell us what it should be. 

Firstly, 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 con- 
cerned 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 organisation, 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 Coun- 
cils, 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 organisation 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’ organisations,—such should be our aim, etc.” Lastly, there must be 
created “amidst 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’ 
organisations”. 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. 

Fictitious Splits in the International 115 

All of which is but a paraphrase of the old Alliance program- 
me* beginning with these words: 

“The socialist minority of the League of Peace and Freedom, having broken 
away from this League”, proposes to found ‘“‘a new Alliance of Socialist Democracy 
... adopting as its special mission the study of 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.” * 

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

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

“The future society,” says the circular of the Sixteen, “should be nothing but a 
universalisation of the organisation which the International will establish for itself. 
We must therefore try to bring this organisation as close as possible to our ideal.” 

“How could one expect an egalitarian and free society to grow out of an 
authoritarian organisation? That is impossible. The International, embryo of the 
future human society, must henceforth be the faithful image of our principles of 
liberty and federation.” 

In other words, just as the medieval 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 studies” the Sixteen did not hatch this pretty project of 

* The gentlemen of the Alliance, who continue to reproach the General 
Council for calling a private Conference at a time when the convocation of an 
open Congress would be the height of treachery or folly, these absolute proponents of 
clamour and publicity organised within the International, in contempt of our Rules, 
a real secret society directed against 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 organisation and its promoters in certain countries, such as Spain, for 
example. 

disorganisation 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 organisation (see 
Almanach du Peuple pour 1872, Geneva).* 

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, Révolution Sociale 
(November 16), “will give the exact measure of the devotion and _ practical 

It begins by attributing to “these terrible events”—the Franco- 
Prussian war and the Civil War in France—a “somewhat 
demoralising” influence ... “on the situation within the Internation- 
al’s sections”. 

If, in fact, the Franco-Prussian war could not but lead to the 
disorganisation 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 sided 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 in the vast German proletarian émigré 
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 struggle ... 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 

aM. Bakounine, “L’Organisation de lInternationale”, Almanach du Peuple, 
1872.— Ed. 

b “Le Congrés de Sonvillier”, La Révolution Sociale, No. 4, November 16, 
1871.— Ed. 

Fictitious Splits in the International 117 

understood after a deeper examination of so propitious a 
situation. 

Leaving aside the dissolved Alliance, replaced since by the 
Malon section, the Committee had to report on the situation in 
twenty 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 guillocheurs 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 
guillocheurs, 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 guillocheurs of Locle has given no reply to letters from 
the Federal Committee.” 

That is what is described as free intercourse between the 
autonomous sections and their Federal Committee. 
Another section, that 

“of engravers and guillocheurs of the Courtelary district after three years of stub- 
born 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 1s not lost. 

“The Saint-Blaise section has been dissolved. 

“The Catébat 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 Corgémont section also has fallen victim of intrigues on the part of 
the employers.” 

The central section of Courtelary district follows, which 
“took the wise step of suspending its activity”, 

which did not deter it from sending two delegates to the Con- 
gress 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 paralysed by their numerically modest membership. 

“The central section of Neuchatel has suffered considerably from the events, and 
would have inevitably disbanded if it were not 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 only mentioned 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 activity of the Moutier section was especially facilitated by the excellent 
attitude of a working population ... with a traditional life style; 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 La 
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 circu- 
lar of the Sixteen by a unanimous vote confirming the London Con- 

ference resolutions, as also the Romance 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 gallantry 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 has 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 

Fictitious Splits in the International 119 

the dogmatic free-thinkers in Italy, who, under the banner of 
Stefanoni, have just formed a “Universal Society of Rationalists”, 
with obligatory seat [headquarters] in Rome, an “authoritarian” and 
“hierarchical” organisation, monasteries for atheist monks and 
nuns, whose rules provide for a marble bust in the Congress hall 
for every bourgeois who donates ten thousand francs**; and, 
lastly, by the Bismarck socialists in Germany, who, apart from 
their police mouthpiece, the Neuer Soctal-Demokrat, played the role 
of “white shirts” *’ for the Prusso-German empire. 

The Sonvillier conclave requests all sections of the International, 
in a pathetic appeal, to insist on the urgency of an immediate 
Congress “to curb the consistent encroachments of the London 
Council”, according to Citizens Malon and Lefrangais, 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 (Révolution Sociale, January 4, 1872) writes as 
follows: 

“Lastly, which is even more important, the Belgian sections met at the Congress 
of Brussels on December 24 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 Rules 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, Messrs. 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 L’Empire et la France nouvelle. Appel du 

peuple et de la jeunesse a la conscience frangaise, 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,* ... happily, we have not been 
shot, and we are here to flaunt in their face (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 has made us imperialists.” 

Here is a confession that should give pleasure to their 
co-religionists of the Alliance. As in the heyday of the Solidarité, 
A. Richard and G. Blanc mouth again the old clichés regarding 
“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. 

* Under the heading “Au Pilori!”, L’Egalité (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 
for the Commune in the South of France; but what we can announce today, we, 
most of whom witnessed the deplorable defeat of the Lyons insurrection on April 
30,89 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 manoeuvres these rascals intentionally compro- 
mised many of those who took part in the preparatory work of the insurrectionary 
Committees. 

“Further, these traitors managed to discredit the International at Lyons to such 
an extent that by the time of the Paris Revolution the International was regarded 
by the Lyons workers with the greatest distrust. Hence the total absence of 
organisation, 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 
Lyons workers around the flag of the International. 

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

Fictitious Splits in the International 121 

“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 has 
taken upon himself, ever since the Alliance’s foundation, in his 
capacity as a Russian, the special task of representing the Latin 
races? Or do we have here the “true missionaries” of the 
Révolution Sociale (November 2, 1871) denouncing 

“the backward march which the German and Bismarckian minds endeavour to 
foist upon 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 organisation of the masses”’. 

Briefly, exploiting the great “autonomy principle of the sections” which 
“constitutes the real strength of the International ... especially in the Latin 
countries (Révolution Sociale, January 4)”, 

these gentlemen base their hopes on anarchy within the Inter- 
national. 

Anarchy, then, is the great war-horse of their master Bakunin, 
who has taken nothing from the socialist systems except a set of 
labels. All socialists see anarchy as the following programme: once 
the aim of the proletarian movement, 1.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 reverses the whole 
process. It proclaims anarchy in proletarian ranks as the most 
infallible means of breaking the powerful concentration of social 

a Mikhail Bakunin.— Ed. 

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 organisation with 
anarchy. The international police want nothing better for per- 
petuating the Thiers republic, while cloaking it in a royal mantle.* 

General Council: 

R. Applegarth, Antoine -Arnaud, 
M. J. Boon, F. Bradnick, G. H. Buttery, 
F. Cournet, Delahaye, Eugene Dupont, 
W. Hales, Hurliman, Jules Johannard, 
Harriet Law, F. Lessner, Lochner, Mar- 
guerittes, Constant Martin, Zévy Maurice, 
Henry Mayo, George Milner, Charles 
Murray, Pfander, Vitale Regis, J. Roz- 
wadowski, John Roach, Ruhl, G. Ranvier, 
Sadler, Cowell Stepney, Alf. Taylor, 
W. Townshend, Ed. Vaillant, John Wes- 
ton, F. J. Yarrow. 

Corresponding Secretaries: 

Karl Marx, Germany and Russia; Led 
Frankel, Austria and Hungary; A. Her- 
man, Belgium; Th. Mottershead, Den- 
mark; J. G. Eccarius, United States; 
Le Moussu, French sections in the 
United States; Aug. Serraillier, France; 
Charles Rochat, Holland; J. P. MacDon- 
nell, Ireland; Fred. Engels, Italy and 
Spain; Walery Wroblewski, Poland; 
H. Jung, Switzerland. 

* In the report on the Dufaure law, Sacase, the Rural Assembly deputy, attacks 
above all the International’s “organisation”. He positively hates that organisation. 
After having verified “the mounting popularity of this formidable Association”, he 
goes on to say: “This Association rejects ... the shady practices of the sects that 
preceded it. Its organisation was created and modified quite openly. Because of the 
power of this organisation ... it has steadily extended its sphere of activity and 
influence. It is expanding throughout the world.” Then he gives a “short 
description of the organisation” and concludes: ‘Such is, in its wise unity ... the 
plan of this vast organisation. Its strength lies in its very conception. It also rests in 
its numerous adherents, who are linked by their common activities, and, lastly, in 
the invincible impulse which drives them to action.” 

Fictitious Splits in the International 123 

Charles Longuet, Chairman of the meeting 
Hermann Jung, Treasurer 
John Hales, General Secretary 

33, Rathbone Place, W. 
London, March 5, 1872