[Draft] 
London, 14[-15] January 1872 
256 High Holborn 

14 January 1872, to Terzaghi, Turin 

My dear Terzaghi, 

If I have not replied sooner to your letter of 4 December last 
year, it was because I wanted to give you a precise answer about 
the matter which interests you most of all, namely the money for 
the Proletario. 

You know that the millions of the International do not exist 
except in the terrified imagination of the bourgeoisie and of the 
governments, which cannot understand how an association like 
ours has been able to win such a great position without having 
millions at its disposal. If they had only seen the accounts 
submitted at the last Conference! 

We would have voted 150 frs for you in spite of our penury, but 
the Gazzettino Rosa arrived with the news, etc.*? This changed 
everything. If you had simply decided to send people to the future 
Congress, fine. But* what you had in mind was a Congress called 
for in a circular full of lies and false accusations against the 
General Council! And if you had only waited for the General 
Council’s reply to this circular! *° The Council could not but see in 
your resolution the proof that you had taken the side of the 
accusers, and without having waited for the Council’s defence,— 
and the authorisation to send you the money in question was 
withdrawn from me. In the meantime you have received the 
Egalité with the answer of the Romance Committee, which 
represents ten times as many Swiss workers as the Jurassians. But 
the writers’ malevolent intention is already apparent from the Jura 
circular.” First they look for an argument with us using the pretext 
of the Conference, and now they attack us because we are carrying 
out the resolutions of the Basle Congress, resolutions which we are 
obliged to carry out. They do not 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 

2 Except for the words ‘to the future Congress’ the preceding part of this paragraph is 
in German in the original. - > The two preceding sentences are in German in the 
original. 

dealt with according to their deserts and how, with that 
fine-sounding phrase about the autonomy of the sections, as it is 
explained in the circular, they expect to prevent the intrusion of 
Mordecaians and traitors. Certainly, no one disputes the autonomy 
of the sections, but one cannot have a federation unless some 
powers are ceded to the federal committees and, in the last 
instance, to the General Council. 

But do you know who the authors and advocates of these 
authoritarian resolutions were? The delegates of the General 
Council? Not at all. These authoritarian measures were put 
forward by the Belgian delegates, and the Schwitzguébels, the 
Guillaumes, the Bakunins were their most ardent advocates. That’s the 
truth of the matter. 

It seems to me that the phrases ‘authority’ and centralisation are 
much abused. I know of nothing more authoritarian than a 
revolution, and when one imposes one’s will on others with bombs 
and rifle bullets, as in every revolution,* it seems to me one 
performs an authoritarian act. It was the lack of centralisation and 
authority that cost the life of the Paris Commune. After the 
victory make what you like of authority, etc., but for the struggle 
we need to gather all our forces into a single band and 
concentrate them on the same point of attack. And when people 
speak to me about authority and centralisation as if they were two 
things to be condemned in all possible circumstances, it seems to 
me that those who talk like this either do not know what a 
revolution is, or are revolutionaries in name only. 

If you want to know what the authors of the circular have done 
in practice for the International, read their own official report on 
the state of the Jura Federation to the Congress (Révolution sociale, 
Geneva, 23 November 1871) and you will see to what a state of 
dissolution and impotence they have reduced a federation which 
was well established a year before. And these are people who want 
to reform the International! ° 

Greetings and fraternity. 

Yours, 
F. Engels