London, 24 January 1870 

Dear citizen De Paepe, 

I am writing to you with some difficulty, as my left arm is 
bandaged. At the end of last month, an abscess of the gland began 
to form near the armpit. I neglected the thing, and I am punished 
for my sin. Several days after I sent the letter to Brussels,°” the 

a See this volume, p. 409. - > immediately 

16* 

pain became intolerable and I fell into the hands of doctors. I 
underwent two operations, and I feel better, but I am still being 
treated and must stay at home. 

In the first place, I am writing this letter to ask you a personal 
favour. You probably know that a part of the English bourgeoisie 
has formed a sort of Lanp League” against the workers’ Lanp anp 
Lasovr Leacur.**! Their ostensible purpose is to transform English 
landed property into small-lot property, and to create a peasantry 
for the greater benefit of the people. Their real purpose is an attack 
against landed aristocracy. They want to throw land in free 
circulation in order to transfer it in this way from the hands of 
LANDLORDS Into those of capitalists. To this effect, they published a 
series of popular tracts under the title of Cobden Treaties, in which 
small-scale property is painted in rosy colours. Their great 
battle-horse is Belgium (principally the Flemings). It would appear 
that in that country the peasants live under paradisiacal conditions. 
They established contact with Mr Laveleye who provides them with 
facts for their rhetoric. In the meantime, as I treat of landed 
property in Volume Two of Capital,’ I believe it useful to go into 
some detail there on the structure of landed property in Belgium 
and of Belgian agriculture.*”? Will you have the goodness to send me 
the titles of the principal books which I must consult °°? 

My illness has naturally prevented me from attending the 
General Council* in the last weeks. Yesterday evening, the 
subcommittee (the executive committee) of which [ am a member 
visited me. Among other things, they communicated to me the 
content of a letter sent by Mr Hins to Stepney. As Stepney 
believed that I would be able to attend the session of the General 
Council (on 25 January), he did not communicate to me any 
extracts from that letter. I do not know any of it except from 
hearsay.*** 

In the first place, it is probably believed in Brussels that the 
catastrophe of Geneva, the change in the staff of L Egalité”* was 
produced by resolutions of the General Council.” That is an error. 
Jung was so busy with his work as watchmaker that he did not 
find the time to copy the resolutions and dispatch them to Geneva 
before 16 January. In the interval, he received two letters from 
H. Perret, secretary of the Romance Committee. The first letter, 
dated 4 January, is official. It is a communication of the Romance 
Committee to the General Council stating that some editors of 

« See this volume, p. 471. - > K. Marx, The General Council to the Federal Council of 
Romance Switzerland. 

LEgalité convened to wage a public campaign against the General 
Council and the Swiss Committees with which they were not in 
accord, but that they acted against the will of the Romance 
Committee. : 

The second letter, of a later date but arriving also before the 
resolutions of the General Council were dispatched by Jung, is a 
confidential letter sent by Perret to Jung. I am giving you literal 
extracts from it to put you in the picture. As the letter is private, I 
need not tell you that these extracts must not be communicated to 
the Belgian Committee or that the name of the writer must 
remain a secret.”? 

‘,.Bakunin has left Geneva. So much the better. Those kind of people bring 
discord among us. He was the head of the Alliance.257 These democrats are 
authoritarians, they do not want any opposition; such are Bakunin, Perron and 
Robin; these three were at the head of L’Fgalité. Bakunin, with his personal attacks, 
cost us 200 or 300 subscribers in Geneva. Robin is even more authoritarian, his 
ambition was to change everything here; he has not succeeded, we do not wish to allow 
ourselves to be dominated by these gentlemen who believe themselves to be 
indispensable. They attempted to bring pressure to bear on the Federal Committee, 
and that did not succeed; we do not want to engage in adventures with them or to 
bring discord in our sections. Please believe me that U'Alliance is dangerous for us, 
especially now. As for their plan in Geneva, I guessed it a long time ago: to let the men 
of U’Alliance move to the top of all the societies in order to dominate the Federation. If 
you knew their mode of action— denigrating at the sections the people who do not let 
themselves be dominated by them; they did everything to push my candidature out of 
the way in Basle, the same thing in Grosselin... You see the manoeuvre—sending to 
Basle no one but members of the [’Alliance, Heng, Brosset, Bakunin. That did not 
succeed at all. Besides, he? worked on the delegations at Lyons, at Naples; these 
methods are not ethical. They left for Basle before us to prepare their intrigues... 
Here is something that happened at the Congress,*” something I guessed about but 
had no certain proof of. Martinaud, delegate of the Neuchatel section, had a mandate 
signed by the brother of Guillaume,52’ a forged, false mandate — we have proof of that 
in our hands. The Neuchatel section was not yet definitively constituted, and the 
provisional committee wrote to us not to recognise either Guillaume or Martinaud. 
These are the morals of the apostles of l’Alliance, for Guillaume and some others from 
Locle are their friends. Besides, the creation of Progrés has lured away subscribers to 
L’Egalité, although our journal was founded by all and we must support it. 

‘The jast bit of news: the cut-throats of l’Alliance have just handed in their 
resignation from L’Egalité—Perron, Robin and some others, more or less capable 
ones. A little coup d’état d fa Bakunin and 4 la Robin. They wanted to force the hand of 
the Federal Committee, that it might dismiss from the staff a member who offered 
opposition and who condemned attacks made against various committees and the 
General Council, We do not wish to increase the authority of these gentlemen, we 
are going to have a quiet fight with them yet, but it seems that /’Alliance loses many 
of its members; it is diminishing—so much the better.’ 

« Mikhail Bakunin - > Pierre Waehry 

So much for the extracts from Perret’s letter. 

If Mr Hins has not yet communicated my letter (and_the 
resolutions of the General Council) to the Belgian Council,”!? it 
would be better to suppress entirely the paragraph about Bakunin. I have 
no copy of it, but I know that I wrote it in irritation brought on by 
physical suffering. Thus I do not doubt that Mr Hins justly 
blames me for the form of that paragraph. As to the substance 
and the facts, they are independent both from my bad manner of 
expression and the good opinion of Mr Hins about Bakunin. The 
fact is that l’Alliance, of which Bakunin is the creator and which 
has not been dissolved except nominally, is a danger to the 
International Association and an element of disorganisation. 

In the paragraph concerning Bakunin, I am told that Mr Hins 
again picks up the phrase ‘le bonhomme Richard’.* That is a sup oF 
THE PEN, Which [ regret all the more as Richard is one of the most 
active members of the Association. I used the phrase only to say 
that, in the correspondence cited here, he accepts with a great deal 
of simple-mindedness opinions which he never fathomed. Besides, 
when I wrote those words, Richard had just given a fresh proof of 
his thoughtlessness. He had sent to the Council a letter in which a 
judgement was expressed declaring certain persons belonging to a 
would-be schismatic Lyons branch to be infamous traitors expelled 
from the Association. We are asked to copy this judgement, to 
stamp and sign it, and to return it by post. And that without 
proof, without documents, without giving those condemned the 
right to defend themselves. 

I am also told that Mr Hins reproaches the English Report on 
the Basle Congress” for having suppressed everything related to 
the question of heritage. That is obviously a misunderstanding. On 
pages 26-29 we find the report of the General Council, the report 
of the committee appointed at Basle, and a summary of the 
discussion on this question. Moreover, the English Report on the 
transactions of the Congress was written by Eccarius. The Council 
appointed a commission to examine that report. Although I was 
appointed a member of this commission, I refused to take part in its 
work as J had not been present at the Congress and was thus not 
competent to judge the exactness of the report. My entire 
collaboration was restricted to purely stylistic improvements. 

Finally, if the resolutions passed by the General Council were 

2 that simpleton Richard - > Report of the Fourth Annual Congress of the International 
Working Men’s Association held at Basle, in Switzerland -« K. Marx, ‘Report of the 
General Council on the Right of Inheritance’. 

not good enough to satisfy Mr. Hins, they obviously satisfied the 
Romance Committee, for two weeks after their adoption it passed 
the resolution to free itself from the dictatorship of l’Alliance. 

Yours very truly, 
K. M.