Address of the General Council to the Italian Sections of the International Working Men's Association Concerning the Rimini Conference

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Author(s) First International
Frederick Engels
Written 23 August 1872


First published in part in La Plebe, No. 95, August 28, 1872 and in II Ladro, September 3, 1872; and in full in II Popolino, No. 20, September 29, 1872
Printed according to II Popolino checked with the rough copy of the letter
Translated from the Italian
Source : Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 23
Collection(s): La Plebe (newspaper)
Keywords : Italy

Engels sent this address of the General Council to the Italian sections of the International in Milan, Turin, Ferrara and Rome, which were officially recognised by the General Council and were in constant contact with it.

The editors of IL Popolino, the Turin Section’s weekly, published in April-October 1872, prefaced it with the following note: “In printing this letter, we inform the reader that we could not do so earlier since the editorial board of the Emancipazione del proletario, to whom it was addressed, had been imprisoned because of a strike; the interrupted contacts with them were only resumed recently.”

Engels’ rough copy of the letter in Italian bears the inscription: “Rome, Ferrara, Milan, Turin.”

The address was published in English for the first time in The General Council of the First International. 1871-1872. Minutes, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968.

33, Rathbone Place, London

August 23, 1872

We have received a resolution, dated Rimini, August 6, from the Conference of what claims to be the Italian Federation of the International Working Men’s Association, breaking all solidarity with the General Council in London and calling on its own authority an anti-authoritarian Congress[1] in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, to which all sections of the same opinion are invited to send delegates, instead of to The Hague, where the regular Congress of the International is to be held.

It should be pointed out that of the 21 sections whose delegates have signed this resolution, there is only one (Naples) which belongs to the International. None of the other 20 sections has ever fulfilled any of the conditions prescribed by our General Rules and Regulations for the admission of new sections. An Italian federation of the Working Men’s Association therefore does not exist. Those who want to found it, form their own international outside the great Working Men’s Association.

It will be the task of the Hague Congress to deliberate on these usurpations.

In the name and by order of the General Council

Secretary for Italy,

Frederick Engels[2]

  1. ↑ The rough copy of the letter has "a so-called anti-authoritarian Congress".— Ed.
  2. ↑ In IL Popolino the letter begins with the address: "To the Turin Sections"; there is the postscript after the signature: "N.B. The letter containing the 25 lire was not received."—Ed.
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