London, 14 June 1873 

Dear Sorge, 

Work on the Alliance* has interrupted my correspondence. In 
addition the newspapers have only just started to arrive regularly 
again now that we have ordered them, and so it is only now that I 
can report properly again. 

First, to deal with the points raised in your letters. 

The ones from the General Council” are answered in the 
enclosure. 

14 May.—The business about the shortage of funds is as old as 
the International itself. ‘The Americans were the only ones to pay, 
and if it hadn’t been for you, we would have been unlikely to 
receive even that.— Postponing the Congress ” is absolutely out of 
the question; it would mean abandoning the field to the other side 
and anyway is not at all necessary, as you will see. 

23 May.—The people in Geneva I am supposed to be giving a 
kick do not even answer us. Even old Becker‘ does not reply to 
Marx. Outine is we know not where. We ourselves do not receive 
the Bulletin jurassien, and only see extracts quoted in the Liberté 
and the Internationale. 

27 May.—The statement on France™—very good!—has gone 
off in English to the British Federal Council and will go off today 
in French to the Plebe, the Spanish Federal Council and Portugal. 
By THE sve the Portuguese are complaining that they are not 
receiving anything at all from you and yet they are very, very 
important for us!—Serraillier has absolutely nothing to write 
about, since he does not have a single address in France any more; 
everyone has been caught. However, he will send in a little report 
on the trials”’ for your own report to the Congress—there were 
trials everywhere where there were sections, in Béziers, Lisieux, etc., 
etc.—Correspondence for the Arbeiter-Zeitung? Who is to do it? 
Marx and I are so overworked that Marx has been limited by his 
doctor to 4 hours work a day because of blood-congestion in the 

a K. Marx and F. Engels, The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International 
Working Men's Association. - > F. Engels, ‘To the General Council of the Inter- 
national Working Men’s Association’. - © Johann Philipp Becker 

head, so that I have to deal with everything together with Lafargue. 
Frankel works in his suor until 9 p.m. The others cannot 
write— The Hamburgers *? are numbskulls. I shall write and tell 
Liebknecht.—For Holland the German version of the statement 
will be adequate.—The Arbeiter-Zeitung should make more use of 
the Volksstaat. 

And now for some news, and this time it is no message of 
ill-tidings. 

1. The British Congress, held in Manchester on 1 and 2 June, 
was a success.’ 26 delegates.— Report from the Tory paper going 
off by book-post herewith; ditto 1 issue of the Brussels Inter- 
nationale. The Federal Council to remain in London, although the 
locals wanted it transferred to Nottingham. The Eastern Post, 
hitherto the organ of Jung and Hales, has written a satirical article 
on the Congress which nevertheless acknowledges it as the real 
representative of the English International, and since then I 
observe that they have stopped publishing reports on socus 
meetings in Hales’ house; they seem to have shut up shop. Up to 
now they had always alternated these reports with reports from all 
of their 2 sections: Stratford and Limehouse, and Limehouse and 
Stratford; but this no longer seems to work.— Mottershead turned 
up in Hyde Park on Whit Monday?’ for the Trades Union meeting, 
completely drunk as usual.—I have not received The International 
Herald for the past 2 weeks, so that too seems to have folded up. 
It’s no misfortune since there are the other publications of the 
English press. The new French section here (Dupont and 
Serraillier) have some chance of starting up a French paper here, 
though French assurances cannot be relied on very much. 

2. The Jurassians have carried out their decisive retreat.°” You 
will see from the Internationale that they have resolved to propose 
to their colleagues in the Alliance: not to send representatives to 
any congress ‘que le prétendu Conseil général pourrait étre tenté de 
convoquer,” but to hold a separate congress at a place in Switzerland 
to be determined by their federations. 

Translated that means: we cannot put in an appearance in 
Geneva, otherwise we shall be thrown out on our ears. So they will 
meet in some corner of the Jura; after the Olten Congress (see 
below) they cannot show their faces anywhere else in Switzer- 
land.— Other reasons are: 1. Bakunin’s old reluctance to appear in 
debates personally, 2. Guillaume’s and his own expulsion, which 
would raise the crucial issue from the very outset in a purely 

a 9 June - > which the so-called General Council might be tempted to convene 

personal form, added to which there is also the fact of Bakunin’s 
escroquerie* *"* which would immediately finish him off, and 3. the 
certainty that in reality they are in as bad a way as we are and that 
internal squabbles have exhausted and irritated their people too. 
At their great Jura congress only nine sections were represented! 
In Italy, for all their bluster, they cannot put a single newspaper 
on its feet, and in Spain, in the movement as it stands, their stock 
is=0. More, they have had to renege on their own policy of 
abstention at once, and sent 8 members (10 according to them) 
into the Cortes. 

3. In Rome a committee ‘of the International’ has been dis- 
banded. It was called Societa del Silenzio, clandestine society, oath 
of absolute obedience, the sacramental formula at the end of 
letters—the one proclaimed by Bakunin Jast year: Salute e 
liquidazione sociale, anarchia e collectivismo*>—in short, the secret 
Alliance with its whole bag of tricks. It comes just at the right 
time. 

4. Serraillier has had an exchange in the Liberté with the 
Blanquists about the French trials” in which the latter took a very 
impudent line, but were duly boxed around the ears for it. What 
really finished them off was that after the letters of authority of 
those with mandates had been annulled at The Hague and the 
General Council was alone empowered to issue new ones,” Cournet 
and Ranvier issued a new letter of authority to Heddeghem in 
their names—and while still at The Hague! 

5. Swiss workers’ congress at Olten e710 delegates, 5 Juras- 
sians, proposed decentralisation, defeated with all votes against 
their 5—they withdrew at once. But you will have known this long 
since from the Tagwacht‘ 

I hope that your arm and voice are now recovered and that 
your prospects for the Congress have also improved. Even if the 
Congress is not very brilliant, it is nevertheless necessary and with 
some effort will turn out well. Don’t forget that according to the 
Rules you must convoke it and prepare a programme 2 months in 
advance, ie. by I July. 

Alliance as good as finished—in French; a mammoth task in 
this tricky language—shall hit out and surprise even you. 

a swindling - > Greetings and social liquidation, anarchy and collectivism - 
¢ K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Resolutions of the General Congress Held at The Hague 
from the 2nd to the 7th September, 1872. VI. Powers Issued by the General 
Council, and by Federal Councils’.- 4 ‘Der Kongreß in Olten und die 
Gewerkschaftsbewegung der Schweiz’, Die Tagwacht, No. 23, 7 June 1873. 

Must catch the post. Cordial regards. 

Your 
F. E.