ENGELS TO CARLO TERZAGHI*”’ 

[First Version] 

[Draft] 
London [after 6 January 1872] 
122 Regent’s Park Road 

My dear Terzaghi, 

I received your letter of 4 December last year, and if I have not 
replied sooner, it was because I wanted to give you a precise 

a meeting of the General Council on 2 January 

answer about the matter which interests you most of all, namely 
the fund for the Proletario. I am now in a position to provide it. 

We have very little money, and the millions of the International 
exist solely in the terrified imagination of the bourgeoisie and of 
the police, who cannot understand how an association like ours 
has been able to achieve such an important position without 
having money amounting to millions at its disposal. If they had 
only seen the accounts submitted at the last Conference*! But 
never mind; let them go on believing it, it will do us no harm. It 
had already been decided, on receipt of your letter, to take out a 
number of shares in the Proletario, in the name of the General 
Council represented by me, but then the news reached us of the 
split which you had caused *™ and it was considered doubtful that 
the newspaper could go on being produced after it. Then there 
were the holidays, which meant that the meeting of the 26th did 
not take place, etc., etc. At last I can tell you that if you wish to 
continue the newspaper, and if there are solid grounds for hoping 
that this can be done, I am authorised to send you five pounds, 
i.e. roughly a hundred and sixty Italian lire, in return for which 
you can send me the corresponding amount of shares in my name. 
Write to me, then, by return of courier so that if, as I hope, the 
newspaper is to reappear, I can send you the money without 
delay. 

Tell me at the same time whether the addresses given in your 
last letter (C. Cferetti] Mirandola, E. P[escatori] Bologna) will be 
enough to write to them, with no other indication of street or 
number, because I would not like my letters to be written for any 
Mordecaian *” to read. 

You will probably have been sent a circular by the congress of 
the Jura Federation in Switzerland attacking the General Council 
and demanding the immediate convocation of a Congress.*”* The 
General Council will reply to these attacks, but in the meantime a 
reply has appeared in the Egalité in Geneva,*! which I sent you 
three days ago together with two English newspapers containing 
summaries of the meetings of the General Council.” These citizens, 
who first looked for an argument with us using the pretext of the 
Conference, now attack us because we are carrying out the 
resolutions of the Basle Congress, resolutions which have the force 
of law for us and which we are obliged to carry out.” They do not 

a the London Conference of 1871 - > The Eastern Post, Nos. 168 and 169, 16 and 23 
December 1871, carried reports on the General Council meetings of 12 and 19 
December. 

181. Engels to Terzaghi. After 6 January 1872 293 

want the authority of the General Council, not even if it were to be 
voluntarily consented to by all. I would really like to know how 
without this authority (as they call it) the Tolains, the Durands and 
the Nechayevs could have been dealt with according to their 
deserts and how, with that fine-sounding phrase about the 
autonomy of the sections, they expect to prevent the formation of 
sections of Mordecaians and traitors. Besides, what did these same 
men do at the Basle Congress? With Bakunin they were the most 
ardent advocates of these resolutions proposed not by the General 
Council, but by the delegates from Belgium! 

If, however, you want to have an idea of what they have done 
and can do for the International, read the official report of the 
Federal Committee to the congress of the Jura Federation in the 
Révolution sociale, Geneva, No. 5, 23 November 1871, and you will 
see to what a state of dissolution and impotence they have reduced 
in one year a federation which was well established before.*" 

It seems to me that the term ‘authority’ is much abused. I know 
of nothing more authoritarian than a revolution, and when one 
fights with bombs and rifle bullets against one’s enemies, this is an 
authoritarian act. If there had been a little more authority and 
centralisation in the Paris Commune, it would have triumphed 
over the bourgeois. After the victory we can organise ourselves as 
we like, but for the struggle it seems to me necessary to collect all 
our forces into a single band and direct them on the same point 
of attack. And when people tell me that this cannot be done 
without authority and centralisation, and that these are two things 
to be condemned outright, it seems to me that those who talk like 
this either do not know what a revolution is, or are revolutionaries 
in name only.* 

Write to me, therefore, about the matter without delay. 

Greetings and fraternity. 

Yours, 
F. Engels 

a Marginal note by Engels (in German): ‘This is not quite right.’