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Special pages :
Declaration of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association Concerning Cochrane's Speech in the House of Commons
Author(s) | First International Karl Marx |
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Written | 13 April 1872 |
First published as a leaflet on April 17, 1872, and later on in some organs of the International
Reproduced from the leaflet
Source : Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 23
This declaration occasioned by Alexander Cochrane-Baillieâs slanderous speech in the House of Commons, was read out by Marx at the General Council meeting on April 16, 1872. By the Councilâs decision, it was published in the name of the International Working Menâs Association as a leaflet and also in the newspapers The Eastern Post, No. 186, April 20, The International Herald, No. 5, April 27 (the beginning was omitted), La Emancipacion, No. 49, May 18, O Pensamento Social, No. 14, May 1872. In the leaflet the text was preceded by the words: âAt a full meeting of the General Council of the above Association, held at the Council-room, 33, Rathbone-place, on Tuesday evening, citizen Longuet in the chair, the following declaration was unanimously adopted, in reply to the strictures in the late debate in the House of Commons.â
The performances of the Versailles Rural Assembly, and of the Spanish Cortes, with intent to extinguish the International, very properly aroused a noble spirit of emulation in the breasts of the representatives of the Upper Ten Thousand in the British House of Commons. Accordingly, on the 12th April, 1872, Mr. B. Cochrane, one of the most representative men, as far as Upper Class intellect is concerned, called the attention of the House to the sayings and doings of that formidable society. Being a man not much given to reading, he had qualified himself for his task by a journey of inspection to a few of the Continental headquarters of the International, undertaken last autumn, and had, on his return, hastened to secure, by a letter to The Times, a kind of provisional protection for his right of priority to this subject.[1] His speech in Parliament betrays, what in any other man would be considered a wilful and premeditated ignorance of what he is talking about. With one exception the many official publications of the International are unknown to him; in their stead, he quotes a jumble of passages from petty publications by private individuals in Switzerland, for which the International, as a body, is as much responsible as the British Cabinet is for the speech of Mr. Cochrane. According to that speech,
âthe great majority of those who joined the society in England, and their number was 180,000, was totally ignorant of the principles it was intended to carry out, which were carefully concealed from them while they were giving their subscriptionsâ.[2] Now, the principles intended to be carried out by the International, are laid down in the preamble to the General Rules, and Mr. Cochrane is in happy ignorance of the fact that no one can enter the Association without giving his express adhesion to them. Again,
âthe society, as originally constituted, was founded upon the principles of the Tradesâ Unions, and no political element was then introduced into itâ.
Not only does the preamble to the original General Rules contain a strong political element, but the political tendencies of the Association are very fully developed in the Inaugural Address, published in 1864, contemporaneously with these Rules.[3] Another wonderful discovery is this, that Bakounine was âchargedâ to reply, in the name of the International, to the attacks of Mazzini, which is simply an untruth. After giving a quotation from Bakounineâs pamphlet,[4] he continues:
âWe might smile at such bombastic nonsense, but when these papers emanated from Londonâ (from which they did not emanate) âwas it surprising that Foreign Governments should take alarm?â
And is it surprising that Mr. Cochrane should become their spokesman in England? Another charge is that the International had just started âa newspaperâ in London, which is another untruth. However, let Mr. Cochrane console himself, the International has plenty of organs of its own in Europe and America, and in almost all civilised languages.
But the gist of the whole speech is contained in the following:
âHe should be able to show that the Commune and the International Association were, in reality, one, and that the International Society locatedâ (?) âin London, had given orders to the Commune to burn Paris, and to murder the Archbishop of that City.â
And now for the proofs. Eugène Dupont, as chairman of the Brussels Congress of September, 1868, truly stated that the International aimed at a social revolution. And what is the secret link between this statement of Eugène Dupont in 1868 and the deeds of the Commune in 1871? That
âonly last week Eugène Dupont was arrested in Paris, to which he had gone secretly from this country. Now, this M. Eugène Dupont was a member of the Commune and also a member of the International Societyâ.
Unfortunately for this very conclusive mode of reasoning, A. Dupont, the member of the Commune, who has been arrested in Paris, was not a member of the International, and E. Dupont, the member of the International, was not a member of the Commune. The second proof is:
âBakounine said, at Geneva, July, 1869, when the Congress met under his presidency: â âThe International proclaims itself Atheistâ.â
Now there never took place an International Congress at Geneva, in July, 1869; Bakounine never presided at any International Congress, and was never charged to make declarations in its name. Third proof:âThe Volksstimme, the International organ at Vienna, wrote:
âFor us the red flag is the symbol of universal love, let our enemies beware, lest they turn it into the symbol of universal terror.â
The same paper, moreover, stated in so many words that the General Council in London was, in fact, the General Council of the International, that is to say, its central administrative delegation. Fourth proof: â In one of the French trials of the International, Tolain ridiculed the assertion of the public prosecutor, that
âit was sufficient for the president of the Internationalâ (who does not exist) âto raise his finger to command obedience over the whole surface of the globeâ.
The muddling brain of Mr. Cochrane turns Tolainâs denial into a confirmation. Fifth proof:âThe manifesto of the General Council on the Civil War in France,[5] from which Mr. Cochrane quotes the defence of the reprisals against the hostages, and of the use of fire, as measures of warfare, necessary under the circumstances. Now, as Mr. Cochrane approves of the massacres committed by the Versaillese, are we to infer that he had ordered them, although he is surely innocent of the murder of anything but game? Sixth proof:
âThere was a meeting held between the leaders of the International and the Commune before the burning of Paris.â
This is exactly as true as the report which a short time ago went the round of the Italian press to the effect that the General Council of the International had sent, on a tour of inspection to the Continent, its truly and well-beloved Alexander BaillieCochrane, who reported most satisfactorily on the flourishing state of the organisation, and stated that it counted seventeen millions of members. Final proof:
âIn the decree of the Commune which commanded the destruction of the Column of the Place VendĂ´me, the approval of the International is signified.â
Nothing of the kind is stated in that decree, although the Commune was, no doubt, fully aware that the whole International all over; the world would applaud this resolution.
Such then is the, according to The Times newspaper, irrefutable evidence for Cochraneâs statement that the Archbishop of Paris[6] was killed and Paris burnt by the direct order of the General Council of the International in London. Compare his incoherent rant to the report of M. Sacase, on the law against the International in Versailles,[7] and you will be able to realise the distance still existing between a French Rural and a British Dogberry.[8]
Of Mr. Cochraneâs fidus Achates, Mr. Eastwick, we should say with Dante: âLook at him and pass onâ,[9] were it not for his absurd assertion that the International is responsible for the Père DuchĂŞne of Vermersch, whom the learned Mr. Cochrane calls Vermuth.
If it is an unmixed pleasure to have an opponent like Mr. Cochrane, it is a grievous calamity to have to undergo the patronage, as far as it goes, of Mr. Fawcett. If he is bold enough to defend the International against forcible measures, which the British Government neither dare not care to take, he has at the same time that sense of duty and high moral courage which compel him to pass upon it his supreme professoral condemnation. Unfortunately the pretended doctrines of the International which he attacks, are but concoctions of his own poor brain.
âThe State,â he says, âwas to do this and that, and find money to carry out all their projects. The first article of the programme was that the State should buy up all the land, and all the instruments of production, and let them out at a fair and reasonable price to the people.â [10]
As to the buying up of the land by the State under certain circumstances and the letting of it out to the people at a fair and reasonable price, let Mr. Fawcett settle that with his theoretical teacher Mr. John Stuart Mill, and with his political Chief Mr. John Bright. The second article
âproposes that the State should regulate the hours of labourâ.
The historical learning of our Professor shines out brilliantly when he makes the International the author of the British Factory and Workshopsâ Acts, and his economical proficiency comes out to equal advantage in his appreciation of those acts. Third articleâ
âThat the State should provide gratuitous education.â
Such broad facts as the existence of gratuitous education in the United States and Switzerland, and their beneficial results, what are they compared to the gloomy vaticinations of Professor Fawcett? Fourth articleâ
âThat the State should lend capital to co-operative societies.â
There is here a slight mistake; Mr. Fawcett mixes up the demands put forth by Lassalle, who died before the foundation of the International, with the principles of the International. By the by, Lassalle invoked the precedent of the State loans, which, under the pretext of agricultural improvements, and by the instrumentality of Parliament, the British landed proprietors had so generously granted to themselves. Fifth articleâ
âas the coping-stone, it was proposed that the whole revenue of the country should be raised by a graduated tax upon propertyâ.
This is really too bad; to make the demands of Mr. Robert Gladstone and his Liverpool middle-class Financial Reformers the âcoping-stoneâ of the International!
This great political economist, Mr. Fawcett, whose claim to scientific fame rests entirely upon a vulgarisation, for the use of schoolboys, of Mr. John Stuart Millâs compendium of political economy,[11] confesses that âthe confident predictionsâ (for the freetraders) âof five and twenty years ago had been falsified by factsâ.
At the same time he is confident of his ability to allay the gtant proletarian movement of our days by repeating over and over again, in a still more diluted form, the very same stale phrases by which those false predictions of twenty-five years ago were propped up. His sham defence of the International, which is, in reality, an humble apology for his former pretended sympathies with the working classes, will, it is to be hoped, open the eyes of such English working men as are still taken in by the sentimentalism, under which Mr. Fawcett hitherto tried to hide his scientific nullity.
Now if Mr. B. Cochrane represents the political intellect, and Mr. Fawcett the economical science of the British House of Commons, how does this âpleasantest of all London Clubsâ compare with the American House of Representatives, which, on the 13th December, 1871, passed an act for the establishment of a Labour Statistics Office,[12] and declared that this act was passed at the express desire of the International Working Menâs Association, which the House recognised as one of the most important facts of the present age?
The General Council:
R. Applegarth, A. Arnaud, M. Barry,
M. J. Boon, F. Bradnick, G. H. Buttery,
F. Cournet, E. Delahaye, Eugène Dupont,
W. Hales, Hurliman, Jules Johannard,
C. Keen, Harriet Law, F. Lessner, Lochner,
C. Longuet, Marguerittes, C. Martin,
ZĂŠvy Maurice, H. Mayo, G. Milner,
Ch. Murray, Pfänder, J. Rozwadowski,
V. Regis, J. Roach, RĂźhl, G. Ranvier,
Sadler, Cowell Stepney, A. Taylor,
W. Townshend, E. Vaillant, J. Weston,
De Wolfers, F. J. Yarrow
Corresponding Secretaries:
Leo Frankel, for Austria and Hungary;
A. Herman, Belgium; T. Mottershead,
Denmark; A. Serraillier, France; Karl
Marx, Germany and Russia; C. Rochat,
Holland; J. P. McDonnell, Ireland;
F. Engels, Italy and Spain; Walery
Wroblewski, Poland; Hermann Jung,
Switzerland; /. G. Eccarius, United
States; Le Moussu, for French
Branches of United States; /. Hales,
General Secretary
- â A. B. Cochrane, "To the Editor of The Times", The Times, No. 27208, October 31, 1871, p. 6.â Ed.
- â Here and below Cochrane's speech in the House of Commons on April 12, 1872 is cited from The Times, No. 27350, April 13, 1872.â Ed.
- â The preamble to the Provisional Rules of the Association, containing the basic programmatic principles of the first international organisation of the working class, was incorporated unchanged in the General Rules approved by the Geneva Congress of 1866. The tasks of the proletariatâs political struggle were formulated in Paragraph 3, reading, in part, as follows: â...The economical emancipation of the working classes is therefore the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a meansâ (see present edition, Vol. 20, p. 14). The Inaugural Address of the Working Menâs International Association, drawn up simultaneously with the Provisional Rules, demonstrated the proposition that âto conquer political power has ... become the great duty of the working classesâ (ibid., p. 12). The International called upon the working class âto master themselves the mysteries of international politics; to watch the diplomatic acts of their respective Governments; to counteract them, if necessary, by all means in their powerâ (ibid., p. 13).
- â This refers to Bakunin's Risposta d'un Internationale a Giuseppe Mazzini, published in Milan in 1871.â Ed.
- â K. Marx, The Civil War in France.âEd.
- â a Georges Darboy.â Ed
- â On Sacase's report see Note 82.
- â Dogberryâa character in Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado about Nothing.â Ed:
- â Dante, The Divine Comedy, Hell, Canto III.â Ed
- â Here and below Fawcett's speech in the House of Commons on April 12, 1872 is cited from The Times, No. 27350, April 13, 1872.â Ed.
- â J. St. Mill, Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, Vols. 1, 2, London, 1848.â Ed.
- â The act for the establishment of a federal Labour Statistics Office was adopted by the House of Representatives of the US Congress but afterwards turned down by the Senate.