Account of Marx's Speech Against Odger

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Marx spoke against Odger, in connection with his shift to the position of bourgeois republicanism, open renunciation of the International’s principles and slanderous attacks on the General Council and the Paris Commune.

[FROM THE NEWSPAPER REPORT ON THE GENERAL COUNCIL MEETING OF AUGUST 1, 1871]

Citizen Marx said there was one other subject to which he wished to allude. It appeared that at a meeting of the Land and Labour League a Mr. Shipton—whom he did not know but who had the reputation of being Mr. Odger’s Lieutenant—had been criticising the address on the “Civil War in France” and had said that he (Dr Marx) had repudiated the Council. Such a remark only shewed Mr. Shipton’s ignorance and didn’t speak much for his perception even though he might be a dummy in the hands of Odger.—”Because he had avowed himself the author of the charges contained in the address, he had repudiated the Council”!—Why, that avowal was made by the sanction of the Council, so that men like Mr. Odger who were apologists for M. Thiers and Favre—should no longer have the power to say they did not know whether the charges were true or not that were made in the address. In the letter of avowal the men charged were distinctly challenged to indict him for libel so that the matter might be tested in a court of law, but it did not serve their purpose to do so, as they knew well what the result would be. Of course it was to be easily understood why Mr. Odger was not satisfied. He had exhibited an amount of ignorance in dealing with foreign politics that would not have been creditable to any ordinary reader of newspapers. He had said “The character of Jules Favre was irreproachable”: Why, it was well known that he had been all his life the bitter opponent of the French Working Class, and of all Labour movements, he was the principal instigator of the massacres of June—’48;—he was the author of the expedition to Rome in ‘49; he was the man who obtained the expulsion of Louis Blanc from France, and was one of the men who brought back Bonaparte; and yet Mr. Odger unblushingly stood up and said “Nothing could be said against the character of Jules Favre”. Why, if Mr. Odger, who claimed to have been one of the foremost men of the International, had attended to his duties as a member, he must have known, such a statement had no ground whatever to rest upon. It was either made with a knowledge that it was false, or it betrayed an inexcusable ignorance. Mr. Odger knew nothing of the International for the last five years, as he had never attended to the duties, the Office of President was abolished by the Congress, because it was found to be a sham. Mr. Odger was the first—and only President of the International: he never attended to his duties—the Council got on quite as well without—therefore the office was abolished.