Concerning the Persecution of the Members of the French Sections. Declaration of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association

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In an attempt to strengthen its weakened position the government of Napoleon III scheduled a plebiscite for May 8, 1870. The questions were formulated in such a way that it was impossible to express disapproval of the Second Empire’s policy without simultaneously opposing all democratic reforms. The Paris Federation of the International and the Federal Chamber of Workers’ Societies of Paris issued a manifesto on April 24, 1870 (Manifeste antiplébiscitaire des Sections parisiennes fédérées de l’Internationale et de la Chambre fédérale des Sociétés ouvrières), which exposed this demagogic manoeuvre and called on the workers to abstain from voting.

On the eve of the plebiscite, members of the Paris Federation were arrested and charged with conspiring to assassinate Napoleon III. At the same time, persecution of members of the International began in Lyons, Rouen, Marseilles and other cities. The third trial of the members of the Paris Federation was held from June 22 to July 5, 1870. The attempted charge of complicity in the sham plot failed and the detainees were sentenced for being members of the International.

The declaration against the persecution of the members of the French sections written by Marx was approved by the General Council on May 3, 1870, and it was published in English as a leaflet and in the newspapers The Daily Telegraph, May 4, The Eastern Post, May 7 and The Penny Bee-Hive, No. 447, May 7, 1870 over the signature of General Council members. The French translation, made by Marx (see Marx’s letter to Engels of May 10, 1870), was published in La Marseillaise, No. 138, May 7; La Liberté, No. 150, May 8; L’Egalité, No. 20, May 14; L’Internationale, No. 70, May 15, and Le Mirabeau, No. 45, May 29, 1870. In German the declaration was printed in Der Volksstaat, No. 38, May 11; Der Vorbote, No. 5, May; Die Tagwacht, No. 14, May 21, 1870, and in other periodicals.

DECLARATION OF THE GENERAL COUNCIL

OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING MEN’S ASSOCIATION

On the occasion of the last pretended complot, the French Government has not only arrested many members of our Paris and Lyons sections, but insinuated by its organs that the International Working Men’s Association is an accomplice of that pretended complot.

According to the tenor of our Statutes, it is certainly the special mission of all our branches in England, on the Continent, and in the United States, to act not only as centres for the organisation of the working class, but also to aid, in their different countries, all political movements tending to the accomplishment of our ultimate end, viz., the economical emancipation of the working class. At the same time, these Statutes bind all the sections of our Association to act in open daylight. If our Statutes were not formal on that point, the very nature of an Association which identifies itself with the working classes, would exclude from it every form of secret society. If the working classes, who form the great bulk of all nations, who produce all their wealth, and in the name of whom even the usurping powers always pretend to rule, conspire, they conspire publicly, as the sun conspires against darkness, in the full consciousness that without their pale there exists no legitimate power.

If the other incidents of the complot denounced by the French Government are as false and unfounded as its insinuations against