[Draft] {[London, 29 January 1872] 

My dear Terzaghi, 

I wrote to you on the 15th of this month* and I then received 
your letter dated the 15th inst.“? I communicated the contents of 

a See this volume, pp. 294-95. 

your letter to the General Council, where the great activity of the 
Turin workers was recognised with pleasure. 

So far the Workers’ Federation of Turin has not approached the 
General Council. If it did, the Council, after listening to both parties, 
would have to deliberate whether this federation could be 
provisionally admitted or not. I cannot promise you in advance 
that it will under no circumstances be admitted. For one thing, I 
am not the Council; then there is the Council’s position, as follows. 

It is true that the Basle Congress conferred upon the General 
Council the power to refuse admission, until the next Congress, to 
any new section *; but this power has never been put into practice 
except in cases of well-proven necessity, and only after hearing the 
defence of the section in question. How can we possibly commit the 
General Council in advance, before it has heard the other party? 
You can rest assured that in any case the Council will look after 
the interests of the International. 

As for Mr Beghelli, we cannot vote for the public declaration 
you request. Beghelli does not belong to the International and he 
is outside the Council’s jurisdiction, and even if this were not the 
case I do not think he is sufficiently important to be distinguished 
in this manner from other journalists hostile to the International. 

But I must tell you: we did not expect requests of this sort from 
you. You have supported the calling of a special congress ** whose 
sole aim is to accuse the General Council of authoritarianism, and 
to abolish the powers given to the General Council by the Basle 
Congress. And no sooner do you vote this support than you ask 
the General Council to perform acts ten times more authoritarian 
than any it has ever performed: you ask it to make use of these 
same powers which you have already condemned and refuse 
admission to a new section without even listening to what it has to 
say in its defence. What would your Jura friends say if we were to 
make ourselves guilty of such authoritarianism? You have certainly 
taken your decision on the basis of the Jura circular and you have, 
albeit indirectly, approved the lies and slanders it contains, without 
waiting for the reply of the General Council—you, a brand-new 
section, necessarily ignorant of the whole* matter. You had a right 
to do this, you are an autonomous section insofar as this auto- 
nomy is not limited by the laws of the International. But the Gene- 
ral Council is responsible for its actions and cannot allow itself 
such liberty. 

Perhaps you will now see for yourselves that such authoritarian 

4 Crossed out in the original: ‘previous history of the International’. 

powers were conferred upon the General Council not without 
reason, that they may have some use and that, instead of 
inaugurating your career as Internationalists by indirectly con- 
demning a General Council quite unknown to you, and with 
decisions which only tend to sow dissension at a time when 
universal government persecutions should be pushing all true 
Internationalists into the closest union—that instead of all this you 
would have done better to suspend your judgment until you are 
better informed. 

Thank you for the twenty franc contribution, which I have 
passed on to the treasurer; I am enclosing in return 200 stamps at 
10c. each. These stamps, affixed to a page of the General Rules 
which every member must possess, constitute proof of membership 
of the International.*”° 

To the Emancipation of the Proletarian Society 

International Section 

Turin