Resolution of the General Council on The Bee-Hive

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By the General Council’s decision of November 22, 1864 The Bee-Hive was declared an official newspaper of the Association. This was announced in a supplement to the first edition of the Address and Provisional Rules of the Working Men’s International Association, London, 1864. However, closely connected with trade union leaders and representatives of the radical bourgeoisie, the newspaper virtually remained, as Marx wrote to Sigfrid Meyer on July 4, 1868, a narrow trade union organ far from voicing the views of the IWMA (see present edition, Vol. 43). The Bee-Hive frequently suppressed the General Council’s documents, mutilated them at will and sometimes did not publish the reports of the General Council meetings at all (see Marx’s letters to Engels of July 29, November 18, 1869, present edition, Vol. 43). It adopted a negative attitude to the Irish national liberation movement, justifying Gladstone’s policy ( The Bee-Hive, No. 420, October 30, 1869; see also Engels’ letter to Marx of November 1 ). Its policy was censured by members of the International in different countries.

The question of severing all connections with The Bee-Hive was raised by Marx at a meeting of the General Council on April 26, 1870 (see this volume, p. 444). Marx was supported by other members of the Council, who instructed him to draw up a declaration for publication. In a letter to Engels of April 28, 1870 (see present edition, Vol. 43), Marx wrote that he was to prepare a resolution for the next Tuesday, i. e. for the General Council meeting of May 3. Marx drew it up at the beginning of May and sent it to several newspapers (it was published in German in Der Volksstaat, No. 38, May 11, 1870 and in Der Vorbote, No. 5, May 1870, datelined “London, May 3”). On May 3 the General Council did not discuss the question. On May 10 Marx was not present at the General Council meeting. He moved the resolution on May 17 (its text in Marx’s handwriting is pasted into the Minute Book of the General Council). The General Council unanimously resolved to break with The Bee-Hive and to announce this resolution publicly to its different sections.

The resolution was published in French in L’Egalité, No. 22, May 28; L’Internationale, No. 72, May 29 and in Le Mirabeau, No. 46, June 5, 1870.

Considering,

1) that the different International sections of the Continent and the United States have been advised by the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association to subscribe to the Bee-Hive newspaper as the official organ of the General Council and the representative in the English press of the Working-Class movement;

2) that the Bee-Hive has not only erased from the official reports of the General Council such resolutions as might displease its patrons, but, by way of suppression, has systematically misrepresented the tenor of consecutive sittings of the General Council;

3) that mainly since its recent change of proprietorship, while still pretending to be the exclusive organ of the working class, the Bee-Hive has, in reality, become the organ of a capitalist fraction who want to keep the proletarian movement in their leading strings and use it as a means for the furtherance of their own class and party purposes;

The General Council of the International Working Men’s Association, in its sitting of the 26th of April 1870, has unanimously resolved to sever its connection with the Bee-Hive, and to publicly announce this resolution to its different sections in England, on the Continent, and in the United States.