London, 24 January 1872 

Dear Cuno, 

I have just received your letter via Becker* and see from it that 
the damned Mordecaians*” have intercepted my lengthy letter to 
you of 16 December. This is all the more annoying as it 
contained all the necessary information about the Bakuninist 
intrigues, and would have put you in possession of the relevant 
facts a whole month earlier. Moreover, as you are a foreigner, and 
so liable to deportation, I had requested you not to be too 
prominent in public agitation, so that you might stay where you 
are and retain your position, one which is now, unfortunately, 
quite ruined. 

a Johann Philipp Becker 

[Membership] cards have been abolished by the Conference 
resolution in favour of stamps and have now been replaced by the 
latter.“ The cards had been subject to much abuse over a long 
period, since everywhere a large number of blank cards had fallen 
into the hands of the police, who had made use of them for their 
own purposes. In a few days I shall send you the 100 stamps as a 
receipt for the 10 frs I have none in the house at present.— 
Nothing is known here of the old Captain with the wooden leg; he 
is not in touch with the General Council.*” 

I would gladly send you the Rules” if only I had them. They 
have been printed in French and English; a German version is due 
out any day, the Italian translation is lying in my desk ready for 
printing, but 1. we have no money to have them printed on our 
own account, and 2. in view of the general rebellion against the 
Conference and the General Council instigated by Bakunin among 
the Italians, it is highly questionable whether they would in fact 
recognise an edition revised by the General Council in accordance 
with the Conference resolutions. Before this is resolved it would in 
my view be pointless to print. In the meantime, various editions of 
the Rules have come out in Italian there, e.g. in Girgenti* (put out 
by the Eguaglianza), likewise in Ravenna (by the now defunct 
Romagnolo—Lodovico Nabruzzi in Ravenna could give you infor- 
mation about it), and also La Plebe of Lodi, Corso Palestro, has 
advertised some at 10c. It is true that all of these are badly and in 
part incorrectly translated and only contain the earliest Adminis- 
trative Regulations, but for the time being they will have to do. 

Becker tells me that he will write to you about the Bakuninist 
intrigues, but I do not want to rely on that, so here, in brief, are 
the essentials. Bakunin, who up to 1868 had intrigued against the 
International, joined it after he had suffered a fiasco at the Berne 
Peace Congress**' and at once began to conspire within it against 
the General Council. Bakunin has a singular theory, a potpourri 
of Proudhonism and communism, the chief point of which is first 
of all, that he does not regard capital, and hence the class 
antagonism between capitalists and wage workers which has arisen 
through the development of society, as the main evil to be 
abolished, but instead the state. While the great mass of the 
Social-Democratic workers hold our view that state power is 
nothing more than the organisation with which the ruling 
classes—landowners and capitalists—have provided themselves in 
order to protect their social privileges, Bakunin maintains that the 

4 Modern name: Agrigento. 

state has created capital, that the capitalist has his capital only by 
the grace of the state. And since the state is the chief evil, the state 
above all must be abolished; then capital will go to hell of itself. 
We, on the contrary, say: Abolish capital, the appropriation of all 
the means of production by the few, and the state will fall of itself. 
The difference is an essential one: the abolition of the state is 
nonsense without a social revolution beforehand; the abolition of 
capital is the social revolution and involves a change in the whole 
mode of production. However, since for Bakunin the state is the 
main evil, nothing must be done that can keep the state alive, i.e. 
any state, republic, monarchy, or whatever it may be. Hence, 
complete abstention from all politics. To commit a political action, 
especially to take part in an election, would be a betrayal of 
principle. The thing to do is to conduct propaganda, revile the 
state, organise, and when all the workers are won over, that is, the 
majority, to depose the authorities, abolish the state, and replace it 
by the organisation of the International. This great act, with which 
the millennium begins, is called social liquidation. 

All this sounds extremely radical and is so simple that it can be 
learned by heart in five minutes, and that is why this Bakuninist 
theory has also rapidly found favour in Italy and Spain among the 
young lawyers, doctors, and other doctrinaires. But the mass of 
the workers will never allow themselves to be persuaded that the 
public affairs of their country are not also their own affairs; they 
are by nature political and whoever tries to convince them that 
they should leave politics alone will in the end be left in the lurch 
by them. To preach that the workers should abstain from politics 
under all circumstances means driving them into the arms of the 
priests or the bourgeois republicans. 

Now as, according to Bakunin, the International was not formed 
for political struggle but in order that it might at once replace the 
old machinery of state when social liquidation occurs, it follows 
that it must come as near as possible to the Bakuninist ideal of 
future society. In this society there will above all be no authority, 
for authority=state=evil in the absolute. (How these people 
propose to operate a factory, run a railway, or steer a ship without 
one will that decides in the last resort, without unified direction, 
they do not, of course, tell us.) The authority of the majority over 
the minority also ceases. Every individual, every community, is 
autonomous, but how a society of even two people is possible 
unless each gives up some of his autonomy, Bakunin again keeps 
to himself. 

So the International must be organised according to this pattern 

as well. Each section is autonomous, and in each section each 
individual. To hell with the Basle resolutions,°” which conferred 
upon the General Council a pernicious authority demoralising 
even to itself! Even if this authority is voluntarily conferred, it 
must cease—precisely because it is authority. 

Here you have in brief the main points of the swindle. But who 
were the authors of the Basle resolutions? The same Mr Bakunin 
and Co.! 

When these gentlemen saw at the Basle Congress that their plan 
for transferring the General Council to Geneva, i.e. getting it in 
their hands, stood no chance of success, they adopted another 
course. They founded the Alliance de la démocratie sociale, an 
international society within the large International under the 
pretext which you now encounter in the Bakuninist Italian press, 
for example in the Proletario and the Gazzettino Rosa: the ardent 
Latin races require a more striking programme than the chilly, 
deliberate Northerners. This little plan failed owing to the 
resistance of the General Council, which naturally could not 
tolerate the existence of any separate international organisation 
within the International. Since then, the same plan has appeared 
in all manner of forms in connection with the efforts of Bakunin 
and his adherents to substitute Bakunin’s programme for the 
programme of the International. On the other hand, the 
reactionaries—beginning with Jules Favre and Bismarck and 
ending with Mazzini—have always come down hard upon the 
empty and vainglorious Bakuninist phrase-mongering when they 
have been at pains to attack the International. Hence the necessity 
of my declaration of 5 December against Mazzini and Bakunin, 
which was likewise printed in the Gazzettino Rosa.’ 

The core of the Bakunin conspiracy consists of a few dozen 
people in the Jura, who have scarcely 200 workers behind them; 
its vanguard in Italy consists of young lawyers, doctors, and 
journalists, who now come forward everywhere as the representa- 
tives of the Italian workers, with a few of the same breed in 
Barcelona and Madrid, and a few individuals here and there—in 
Lyons and Brussels. There are almost no workers among them; 
they have only one specimen here,” Robin.—The Conference 
(convened out of necessity, because a Congress had become 
impossible) *** provided them with a pretext; and since most of the 
French refugees in Switzerland sided with them—they (the 

a F. Engels, ‘Declaration Sent by the General Council to the Editors of Italian 
Newspapers Concerning Mazzini’s Articles about the International’. - > in London 

Proudhonists) had much in common with them, while personal 
motives also played a part—they launched the campaign. To be 
sure, a dissatisfied minority and unrecognised geniuses are to be 
found everywhere within the International—and they counted on 
them, not without reason. At the present time their fighting forces 
are: 

1. Bakunin himself—the Napoleon of this campaign. 

2. The 200 Jurassians and 40-50 members of the French section 
(refugees in Geneva). 

3. In Brussels, Hins, editor of the Liberté, who does not support 
them openly, however. 

4. Here, the remnants of the Section frangaise de 187 never 
recognised by us, which has already split into 3 mutually hostile 
parts; then about 20 Lassalleans of the type of Mr von Schweitzer, 
expelled from the German section (for proposing resignation en 
masse from the International),*° who, as defenders of extreme 
centralisation and strict organisation, fit marvellously into an 
alliance with the anarchists and autonomists. 

5. In Spain, a few personal friends and adherents of Bakunin, 
who have greatly influenced, at least theoretically, the workers, 
particularly in Barcelona. But, on the other hand, the Spaniards 
attach great importance to organisation, and its absence among the 
others is conspicuous to them. How much success Bakunin may 
expect here will be revealed only at the Spanish Congress in 
April,*” but as the workers will predominate at this congress, I 
have no fears about it. 

6. Lastly, in Italy, as far as I know, the Turin, Bologna, and 
Girgenti sections have voted for convening a Congress before it is 
due. 

The Bakuninist press asserts that 20 Italian sections have 
affiliated with them; I have no knowledge of them. In any event, 
the leadership is in the hands of Bakunin’s friends and adherents 
almost everywhere, and they are raising a terrific hubbub. But on 
closer examination it will most likely be found that they haven’t 
much of a following, since in the final analysis the overwhelming 
mass of Italian workers are still Mazzinists and will remain so as 
long as the International is identified there with abstention from 
politics. 

At any rate the situation in Italy is such that, for the present, 
the International there is dominated by Bakuninist intrigues. Nor 
does the General Council think of complaining about this; the 

38 
13 

a See this volume, p. 297. 

Italians have the right to make fools of themselves as much as they 
please, and the General Council will oppose this only in peaceable 
debates. They likewise have the right to express themselves in 
favour of a Congress in the Jurassian spirit, although it is 
extremely peculiar, to be sure, that sections that have just joined 
and can have no knowledge of anything should immediately take a 
definite stand on a question of this sort without even hearing both 
sides! I have already given the Turin people my opinion of this 
quite frankly,* and I shall do the same with other sections taking a 
similar stand. For every such statement of affiliation represents an 
indirect approval of the false accusations and lies against the 
General Council contained in the circular *”*; the General Council, 
incidentally, will soon issue its own circular” on this question. If 
you can prevent a similar declaration by the Milanese until this 
latter appears, you will be acting in complete accordance with our 
desires. 

The joke is that these same Turinese who have declared their 
support for the Jurassians and who therefore reproach us here 
with authoritarianism, are now suddenly demanding that the 
General Council should act in an authoritarian manner quite 
without precedent for it and take steps against their rival, the 
Federazione Operaia of Turin, and outlaw Beghelli of the 
Ficcanaso who is not even a member of the International, etc. 
And all this before we have even had a chance to listen to what 
the Federazione Operais might have to say on it! 

Last Monday * I sent you the Révolution Sociale with the Jura 
circular,” an issue of the Genevan Egalité (unfortunately I no 
longer have a single copy of the one containing the reply of the 
Genevan Comité Fédéral, which represents 20 times as many 
workers as the Jurassians), and a Volksstaat which will show you 
how people in Germany regard the matter.’ The Saxon provincial 
assembly — 120 delegates from 60 places—has declared itself 
unanimously in favour of the General Council.*’—The Belgian 
Congress (25-26 December") is calling for a revision of the Rules, 
but at the regular Congress (in September).“* From France 

@ See this volume, pp. 291-95. - K. Marx and F. Engels: Fictitious Splits in the 
International. - © See this volume, p. 313. - 4 22 January - Suen a toutes les 
fédérations...’, La Révolution Sociale, No. 8, 14 December 1871. - f ‘Réponse du 
Comité fédéral romand...’, L’Egalité, No. 24,24 December 1871. - 8 Presumably, Der 
Volksstaat, No. 3, 10 January 1872, containing Engels’ article “The Congress of 
Sonvillier and the International’ and a report headlined ‘Die Landesversammlung des 
Sachsischen Social-Demokraten’.—» The Congress took place on 24-25 December 
1871. 

statements supporting us come in every day. Here in England, of 
course, all these intrigues fall upon barren soil. And the General 
Council, of course, will not call an extraordinary Congress for the 
benefit of a few intriguing and vainglorious individuals. As long as 
these gentlemen stay within legal bounds, the General Council will 
gladly allow them freedom of action, and this coalition of the most 
motley elements will soon fall apart of itself. But as soon as they 
undertake anything contrary to the Rules or Congress resolutions, 
the General Council will do its duty. 

If one bears in mind what a time these people choose to embark 
on their conspiracy—precisely when the International is being 
hounded everywhere—it is impossible not to think that the 
gentlemen of the international Mordecai gang are involved in the 
affair. And this is actually the case. In Béziers the Genevan 
Bakuninists have as their correspondent the Commissaire central de 
police*! Two of the chief Bakuninists, Albert Richard from Lyons 
and Blanc,” were here and told a worker, Scholl from Lyons, with 
whom they got in touch, that the only way to overthrow Thiers 
was to put Bonaparte back on the throne, and that was why they 
were travelling about at the Bonapartists’ expense to carry on propa- 
ganda among the émigrés on behalf of a Bonapartist restoration! That 
is what these gentlemen cal] abstention from politics! In Berlin the 
Neuer Social-Demokrat, in Bismarck’s pocket, is singing the same 
tune. For the time being I shall leave as a moot point the extent to 
which the Russian police are involved in this affair, though 
Bakunin was embroiled up to his eyes in the Nechayev business 
(he denies this, to be sure, but we have authentic Russian reports 
here, and since Marx and I understand Russian, he cannot bluff 
us).”"° Nechayev is either a Russian agent-provocateur or, at any 
rate, has acted like one; moreover, there are all sorts of suspicious 
characters among Bakunin’s Russian friends. 

I am very sorry to hear that you have lost your job. I had 
expressly written to you saying that you should avoid anything 
that might have these consequences and that your presence in 
Milan was of much greater importance for the International than 
the minute effect that one can have by agitating in public; much 
could be done underground, etc. If I can be of any assistance with 
translations, etc., I shall do so with the greatest pleasure; just let 
me know from which languages and into which language you can 
translate and in what way I can help. 

So the police swine have also intercepted my photograph. I 

a Abel Bousquet - > Gaspard Blanc 

enclose another and ask for 2 of you, one of which will be used to 
induce Miss Marx to part with a picture of her father for you. 
(She is the only person who still has a few good ones in her 
possession.) 

I also ask you to take care with all persons connected with 
Bakunin. It is a characteristic of all sects that they stick together 
closely and carry on intrigues. Every one of your confidences—you 
may rest assured of this—will be conveyed to Bakunin at once. 
One of his main principles is the affirmation that keeping a 
promise and other such things are nothing but bourgeois 
prejudices, which a true revolutionary should always disregard in 
the interests of the cause. In Russia he speaks of this openly, in 
Western Europe it is a secret doctrine. 

Write to me very soon. It would be very good if we could manage 
to prevent the Milan branch from joining in the chorus of the 
other Italian sections. 

Salut et fraternité. 

Yours, 
F. Engels 

If you write to Miss Burns you need neither an inside envelope, 
nor to make any mention of my name whatever. I open everything 
myself.