Letter to the Spanish Federal Council of the International Working Men's Association, March 27, 1872

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Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 27 March 1872


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVI, Moscow, 1935
Printed according to the rough manuscript
Translated from the Spanish
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 23
Keywords : Letter, Spain

We have received your letter of March 15, and we thank you for the detailed report about the present state of our Association in Spain, a very satisfying state in the circumstances at the moment.[1] We will publish the most important elements of this report, we will send you a letter for the Saragossa Congress, and we will send you a telegram[2] later. The telegram will be in the name of the General and British Federal Councils. As for France, with the Dufaure law[3] against the International, there is no way to maintain a Federal Council, but we will write to Paris so that the “FerrĂ© Section”[4] sends you a letter for the Congress—there will be no signatures but you will receive it signed “FerrĂ© Section”, which will be in order. In Germany the recent trials have disorganised the Association for the moment, and as you will know Liebknecht and Bebel have been condemned to two years in prison, mainly because of involvement with the International[5]; sending a telegram from there would be impracticable at the moment; however we have sent your letter to Germany.

There is no problem about stamps. Ask for as many stamps as you think you will need, and send us the quotas or parts of the quotas received before the 1st July; then two or three weeks before the General Congress you can send us the rest with the stamps which you have not used. We have a large quantity and it will not matter if your delegates at the Congress return us a thousand or two.

Yesterday afternoon Jung the treasurer did not come to the Council. I have sent him the receipt to sign and when I have it back from him I shall send it with the letter for the Saragossa Congress.

We hope that you will submit the resolutions of the London Conference to the Regional Congress for their approval. These resolutions have so far been recognised by the German, Romance, German-Swiss (Zurich), English, Dutch and American federations and by the French and Irish sections.

  1. ↑ At its meeting of February 20, 1872, the General Council adopted Hermann Jung’s proposal to celebrate the anniversaries of the Paris Commune by mass meetings in London. To prepare the first meeting, a special committee was appointed which included Jung. J. Patrick MacDonnell, George Milner, Alfred Taylor and Martin James Boon. Marx was to be one of the chief organisers and Engels, on Jung’s request, was to draft resolutions. The meeting, however, did not take place because at the last moment the owner of the hall refused to let it. Nevertheless, the members of the International and the former Communards held a ceremonial meeting on March 18, 1872 to mark the first anniversary of the Paris Commune. The meeting, on the proposal of the Communards Albert FĂ©lix Theisz and ZĂ©phyrin CamĂ©linat and the General Council member Milner, adopted three resolutions which coincide word for word with the French manuscript in Jenny’s (Marx’s daughter) hand with Marx’s corrections. On the occasion of the second anniversary of the Paris Commune in March 1873, the British Federal Council of the International adopted a special declaration consisting of a collection of extracts from Marx’s The Civil War in France.
  2. ↑ See this volume, pp. 137-39.— Ed.
  3. ↑ On the Dufaure law see Note 57.
  4. ↑ The FerrĂ© Section, named after the Communard Theophil FerrĂ© who was shot by the Versaillists, was one of the first French sections of the International set up in Paris after the defeat of the Commune. The section took its final form in April 1872; its foundation was confirmed by the Sub-Committee of the General Council, on Marx's proposal, on July 27, 1872, after its Rules had been examined by the General Council standing committee for revising rules
  5. ↑ For the persecution of the members of the German workers' movement see notes 26 and 59.
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