Letter to the Editors of the Berliner Volks-Tribune

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Engels wrote the statement for the Berliner Volks-Tribüne after it had started to publish a series of essays by Louis Héritier “Die Juraföderation und Michael Bakunin”. The essays vindicated the divisive activities of the Bakuninists and especially the anarchist Jura Federation formed after the split in the sections of the First International in Romance Switzerland (provoked by the Bakuninists at the congress in La Chaux-de-Fonds of April 4-6, 1870). On November 15, 1892, without waiting for the series to be concluded, Engels despatched his statement to Bebel in Berlin to be taken to the Berliner Volks-Tribüne. He requested Bebel to make sure that the statement appeared in the next issue of the paper, for, as he put it, “we must not allow this web of lies to pass unchallenged “ (see present edition, Vol. 50).

Engels’ statement was printed by the Berliner Volks-Tribüne on November 19, 1892, and on December 24, the paper featured Héritier’s reply, as well as his thirteenth essay. Héritier tried to justify himself, in the newspaper reply and in his personal letter to Engels of December 25. On January 20, 1893, Engels wrote him a letter, in which, using the information contained in Héritier’s thirteenth essay, he again resolutely opposed the distortion of the International’s history along Bakuninist lines (see present edition, Vol. 50).

The series of articles “The Jura Federation and Mikhail Bakunin” published in the Volks-Tribüne, constrains me to a short rebuttal.

Although the author appears to take pains to treat his subject objectively and impartially, he in fact depicts it as the anarchist gentlemen depicted it themselves and wished it to be depicted. In particular he has at his disposal very extensive Bakuninist material; he utilises very little from the publications of the Geneva opposing party, and nothing at all from the publications of the London General Council.

I extract the most obvious untruths from only one of the articles (X of November 12).

It is incorrect that in 1871 the General Council summoned a “secret” conference to London of which

“only the anarchist sections in Switzerland were not informed; they, however, learned of the plan”, etc.

The conference was just as public and just as secret as any committee meeting of any Social-Democratic party; it was not broadcast to all and sundry in the newspapers and reporters were not invited to the meeting place.

The Jura sections were in open rebellion against the General Council and outside all official relations with the same. On the other hand there sat on the General Council two Bakuninist anarchists and members of the Bakuninist secret society, elected on the proposal of “dictator “ Marx: Robin and Bastelica. Robin in particular provided relations with the Jurassians, proposed on their behalf, back in March 1871, the same conference which they later disavowed, and also informed them that it had been summoned. Anything else is an anarchist lie.

The conference

“which was to assemble at Marx’s place .. . was held .. . in Marx’s house”.

Stupid lie; it was held in the Blue Posts, an inn near Tottenham Court Road, right in the so-called French Quarter.

The composition of the conference is also given wrongly, as is the point of difference on a paragraph, not of the Rules, but of their motivating introduction. In its French translation the first Paris (Proudhonist ) local committee had falsified the relevant passage: “The economical emancipation of the working classes is [...] the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means” —as:

“the great goal, in the face of which every political movement must withdraw”.

While the papers of the Geneva Congress were confiscated by the Bonapartist police in transit through France, and only finally released after intervention by the English Foreign Office, the old Paris translation was immediately reprinted in Geneva, whereupon the later anarchists could claim that the Geneva Congress had so decided. This HUMBUG was brought to an end, though to the great sorrow of the Bakuninists, by the publication in 1871 of an authentic English, French and German text of the Rules, with which the General Council had been charged by the same Geneva Congress. Before me I have the copy of the Rules in which Marx entered the changes decided by the Geneva Congress; these are wholly confined to the articles of the Rules, and have no effect on the motivating introduction.

Neither is it true that the London conference decided to place

“the anarchist movement of the Jura under the command of the Geneva committee”.

And it is here that I begin to doubt the honourable intentions of the author. Either he can read, or he cannot. If he can read, he can only gather from the conference decisions: 1. that the Jura committee was deprived of the name Comité romand (which it had arrogated), and that this name was awarded to the old Geneva committee; 2. that the Jurassians were urged to get along with the Genevans; 3. if this was not possible, they should establish their own federation entitled Jura Federation. The conference thus did nothing except to leave their own complete autonomy to the Genevans and the Jurassians.

Enough. The author is, or acts like, an innocent child who believes to the word everything said by the poor, slandered anarchist lambs. Our reporter knows not a word of that which these gentlemen preferred to keep quiet, that is to say nothing about the background to the whole dispute. Behind the public “Alliance of Social Democracy “ founded by Bakunin there hid a secret Alliance with the aim of putting into the hands of the anarchists control over the whole International. This secret Alliance was very widespread in the Jura, in Italy and in Spain. The General Council received proof of this first from Spain, and later from Geneva the Rules and many other documents of this innocent plot against the European workers ‘ movement. It was these documents upon which the Hague Congress of 1872 adjudicated, when it excluded Bakunin and Guillaume from the International. And all this, and much more to correct the now warmed-up anarchist falsifications of history may be studied in the work commissioned by the Hague Congress: L’Alliance de la Démocratie Socialiste et l’Association Internationale des Travailleurs, London 8c Hamburg, 1873, German by Kokosky: Ein Komplott gegen die Internationale, Brunswick, Bracke, 1874.

London, November 15, 1892

Frederick Engels