III. The Alliance in Switzerland

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The Alliance, like Falstaff, found that “the better part of valour is discretion”.[1] Also, the “devil in the flesh” of the international brethren did not prevent them from deferring humbly in every way to the power of the existing States, while protesting vigorously against the institution of the abstract State; but he directed their attacks solely against the International. First, they wanted to dominate it. Having failed to do so, they tried to disorganise it. We shall now show their activities in the different countries.

The international brethren were merely a general staff in the reserve: they lacked an army. They considered the International created to that end. If they were to be allowed to take command of an army, they had to insinuate the public Alliance into the International. Fearing that the former might lose face if they applied to the General Council for admission, which would be tantamount to recognising its authority, they approached the Belgian and Paris Federal Councils several times and without success. These repeated refusals forced the Alliance to ask the General Council, on December 15, 1868, for affiliation.[2] They sent their statutes and their programme in which they openly announced their intentions (Documents, No. 2[3]). Although the Alliance declared itself “entirely absorbed by the International” it aspired to form a second international corps within the International. Alongside the International’s General Council, elected by the Congresses, there was to be the Alliance’s Central Committee, which would sit at Geneva and would be self-nominated; alongside the International’s local groups, there would be the Alliance’s local groups which, through the intermediary of their national bureaux, functioning outside the national bureaux of the International, “would apply to the Alliance’s Central Bureau for their admission into the International”. The Central Bureau of the Alliance was, then, appropriating the right of admittance to the International. Alongside the Congresses of the International, there were to be the Congresses of the Alliance, for “during the annual working men’s Congresses, the Alliance’s delegation” aspired to hold “its public sittings in separate premises”.

On December 22, the General Council (in a letter published in its circular: Fictitious Splits in the International, p. 7[4]) stating that these aspirations were in flagrant contradiction to the International’s rules, flatly rejected the affiliation of the Alliance. Several months later, the Alliance again applied to the General Council and demanded to know whether its principles were acceptable or not. In case of an affirmative answer, it declared itself prepared to dissolve and break up into simple sections of the International. On March 9, 1869, the General Council (see Fictitious Splits in the International, p. 8[5]) replied that for it to pronounce on the scientific value of the Alliance’s programme would be to exceed its functions, and that if “equalisation of classes” was replaced by “abolition of classes”, there would be no obstacle to converting the sections of the Alliance into sections of the International. It added:

“ The dissolution of the Alliance and the entrance of its sections into the International once settled, it would, according to our Regulations, become necessary to inform the Council of the seat and the numerical strength of each new section?’

On June 22, 1869, the Geneva section of the Alliance announced to the General Council as a fait accompli the dissolution of the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, all of whose sections had been invited “to transform themselves into the International sections”. After this explicit declaration, and misled by some signatures on the programme which gave the impression that the Alliance had been recognised by the Romance Federal Committee, the General Council admitted it. It should be added that not one of the conditions accepted had ever been fulfilled, far from it: the secret organisation hidden behind the public Alliance now went into full action. Behind the International’s Geneva section was the Central Bureau of the secret Alliance; behind the International’s sections of Naples, Barcelona, Lyons and Jura hid the secret sections of the Alliance. Relying on this free-masonry, whose existence was suspected neither by the mass of the International’s membership nor by their administrative centres, Bakunin hoped to win control of the International at the Basle Congress in September 1869. At this Congress, thanks to its dishonest methods, the secret Alliance found itself represented by at least ten delegates, including the famous Albert Richard and Bakunin himself. They had brought with them a number of blank mandates which could not be used owing to the lack of reliable people, although they were offered to the Basle members of the International. Even this numerical strength, however, was not enough to make Congress sanction the abolition of the right of inheritance, that relic of Saint-Simon which Bakunin wanted to use as the practical point of departure for socialism[6]; much less was it able to impose on the Congress his dream of transferring the General Council from London to Geneva.

Meanwhile, there was open war in Geneva between the Romance Federal Committee, almost unanimously supported by the Geneva members of the International, and the Alliance. The latter’s allies in this war were Le ProgrĂšs of Locle edited by James Guillaume, and L’EgalitĂ© of Geneva which, although an official organ of the Romance Federal Committee, was edited by a committee which mainly consisted of the Alliance members and attacked the Romance Federal Committee at every possible opportunity. Without losing sight of its great aim—the transfer of the seat of the General Council to Geneva—the editorial board of L’ÉgalitĂ© launched a campaign against the existing General Council and invited Le Travail of Paris to lend its support. In its circular of January 1, 1870, the General Council declared that it considered it unnecessary to enter into controversy with these newspapers.[7] Meanwhile, the Romance Federal Committee had already removed the Alliance members from the editorial board of L’ÉgalitĂ©.

At this stage, the sect had not yet donned its anti-authoritarian mask. Believing that it would be able to take over the General Council, it was the first, at the Basle Congress, to put forward and edit the administrative resolutions conceding to the latter the “authoritarian powers” which it was to attack so violently two years later. Nothing gives a clearer picture of its idea of the General Council’s authoritarian role than the following extract from Le Progrùs of Locle edited by James Guillaume (December 4, 1869)[8] concerning the conflict between the Social-Demokrat and Der Volksstaat[9]:

“It seems to us that it should be the duty of our Association’s General Council to intervene, to open an inquiry into what is happening in Germany, to decide between Schweitzer and Liebknecht, and thereby put a stop to the uncertainty into which we are thrown by this strange situation.”

Is it possible to believe that this is the same Guillaume who, in a circular from Sonvillier on November 12, 1871, reproached this same General Council, which had not been authoritarian enough previously, for having “wanted to introduce the principle of authority into the International”?[10]

Ever since they began to appear, the Alliance’s newspapers had not confined themselves to propagating its special programme, in which no one could have seen any harm; but they insisted on creating and interposing a premeditated confusion between its own programme and that of the International. This occurred wherever the Alliance was running, or collaborating with, a newspaper—in Spain, in Switzerland, in Italy; but it was in the Russian publications that the system reached perfection.

The sect struck a decisive blow during the Congress of the Romance Federation at La Chaux-de-Fonds (April 4, 1870). It was a matter of forcing the Geneva sections to recognise the public Alliance of Geneva as being part of the federation and of transferring the Federal Committee and its organ to a locality in Jura where the secret Alliance was in control.

When the Congress opened, two delegates from the “Alliance section” asked to be admitted. The Geneva delegates proposed the deferment of this matter until the end of the Congress and the immediate discussion of the programme as more important. They declared that their imperative mandate ordered them to resign rather than admit this section to their group

“in view of the intrigues and domineering tendencies of the Alliance people, and because to vote for the admission of the Alliance would be to vote for a split in the Romance Federation”.[11]

But the Alliance did not want to miss this opportunity. The proximity of the little Jura sections had enabled them to obtain a feeble fictitious majority, since Geneva and the big centres of the International were only very weakly represented. On the insistence of Guillaume and Schwitzguebel, the section was admitted by a majority contested by only one or two votes. The Geneva delegates received from all the sections, which were immediately consulted by telegraph, the order to withdraw from the Congress. With the International’s members at La Chaux-de-Fonds supporting the Genevans, the members of the Alliance had to leave the premises of the Congress, since they belonged to the local sections. Although, according to their own organ (see La SolidaritĂ© for May 7, 1870), they only represented fifteen sections, whereas Geneva alone had thirty, they usurped the name of the Romance Congress, nominated a new Romance Federal Committee, in which Chevalley and Cagnon[12] distinguished themselves, and promoted Guillaume’s La SolidaritĂ© to the rank of the Romance Federation’s organ. This young schoolmaster had the special mission of decrying “the factory workers”[13] of Geneva, those odious “bourgeois”, of making war on L’ÉgalitĂ©, the newspaper of the Romance Federation, and of preaching absolute abstention in political matters. The most notable articles on this latter subject were written by Bastelica at Marseilles, and by the two pillars of the Alliance at Lyons, Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc,[14] Incidentally, the short-lived and fictitious majority of the Congress at La Chaux-de-Fonds had acted in flagrant violation of the statutes of the Romance Federation which it claimed to represent; and it should be noted that the Alliance’s leaders had played an important part in compiling these statutes.[15] Under articles 53 and 55, any important decision by the Congress, to acquire force of law, had to be sanctioned by two-thirds of the federal sections. Now the sections of Geneva and La Chaux-deFonds alone, which had declared themselves opposed to the Alliance, constituted over two-thirds of the total number. At two big general meetings,[16] the International’s Geneva members, in spite of opposition from Bakunin and his friends, almost unanimously approved the conduct of their delegates who, to general applause, suggested to the Alliance that it should stay where it belonged and give up its ambitions of entering the Romance Federation; on this condition, reconciliation could be achieved. Later, some disillusioned members of the Alliance proposed its dissolution, but Bakunin and his acolytes opposed this with all their might. Nevertheless, the Alliance continued to insist on joining the Romance Federation, which was then forced to decide on the expulsion of Bakunin and the other ringleaders.

And so there were now two Romance Federal committees, one at Geneva, the other at La Chaux-de-Fonds. The vast majority of the sections remained loyal to the former, while the latter had a following of only fifteen sections, many of which, as we shall see later, ceased to exist one by one.

Hardly had the Romance Congress closed, when the new Committee at La Chaux-de-Fonds in a letter signed by F. Robert, secretary, and Henri Chevalley, chairman (see note above, p. 474), called for the intervention of the General Council. After examining the documents submitted by both sides, the General Council decided, on June 28, 1870, to let the Geneva Committee retain its old functions, and to invite the new Federal Committee of La Chaux-de-Fonds to adopt a local name.[17] Disappointed in its hopes by this decision, the Committee of La Chaux-de-Fonds denounced the General Council for authoritarianism, forgetting that it had been the first to ask for the latter’s intervention.[18] The trouble caused to the Swiss Federation by this persistence in trying to usurp the name of the Romance Federal Committee forced the General Council to suspend all official relations with the Committee of La Chaux-de-Fonds.

On September 4, 1870, the Republic was proclaimed in Paris. The Alliance felt that the hour had come to “unchain the revolutionary hydra in Switzerland” (Guillaume’s style). La SolidaritĂ© launched a manifesto[19] demanding the formation of Swiss volunteers to fight the Prussians. This manifesto, if we are to believe the pedagogue Guillaume, although “in no way anonymous”, was nevertheless “unsigned”. Unfortunately, all the Alliance’s belligerent fervour evaporated after the seizure of the newspaper and the manifesto. “But I,” exclaimed the seething Guillaume, who was burning to “risk his neck”, “I have remained at my post ... by the newspaper’s printing press” (Bulletin jurassien, June 15, 1872).[20]

The revolutionary movement in Lyons was just flaring up. Bakunin hastened to rejoin his lieutenant, Albert Richard, and his sergeants, Bastelica and Gaspard Blanc. On September 28, the day of his arrival, the people had occupied the Town Hall. Bakunin installed himself there. And then came the critical moment, moment anticipated for many years, when Bakunin could at last accomplish the most revolutionary act that the world had ever seen: he decreed the Abolition of the State. But the State, in the shape and form of two companies of bourgeois National Guards, made an entry through a door which had inadvertently been left unguarded, cleared the hall, and forced Bakunin to beat a hasty retreat to Geneva.

At the very moment when the belligerent Guillaume was defending the September Republic “at his post”, his faithful Achates, Robin, fled from this Republic and sought refuge in London. Although aware that he was one of the Alliance’s most fanatic supporters and, moreover, the author of the attacks launched against it in L’EgalitĂ©, and in spite of the reports from the Brest sections on Robin’s far from courageous conduct, the General Council accepted him owing to the absence of its French members. From that moment on, Robin never ceased to act as the officious correspondent of the Committee of La Chaux-de-Fonds. On March 14, 1871, he proposed convoking a private conference of the International to clear up the Swiss dispute. The Council, realising in advance that great events were brewing in Paris, flatly refused. Robin made several more attempts and even proposed that the Council should make a definite decision on the dispute. On July 25, the General Council decided that this matter should be one of the questions submitted to the Conference which was to be convoked in September 1871.

On August 10, the Alliance, little desirous of seeing its activities scrutinised by a conference, announced that it had been dissolved as from the sixth of that month. However, reinforced by a few French refugees, it soon reappeared under other names, such as the “Section of Socialist Atheists” and the “Section of Propaganda and Revolutionary Socialist Action”. In conformity with Resolution V of the Basle Congress and by agreement with the Romance Federal Committee, the General Council refused to recognise these sections, which were new hotbeds of intrigue.[21]

The London Conference (September 1871) confirmed the General Council’s decision of June 28, 1870 concerning the Jura dissidents.

La Solidarité had ceased to exist, and the new adherents of the Alliance founded La Révolution Sociale, one of whose contributors was Mme. André Léo. At the Congress of the League of Peace in Lausanne,[22] when Ferré was in prison waiting for the time when he would go to Satory, she had declared that

Raoul Rigault and FerrĂ© were the two sinister figures of the Commune who, until then” (the execution of the hostages)[23] “had not ceased to demand bloody measures, though always unsuccessfully”.[24]

From its first issue, this newspaper had striven to put itself on the same level as Le Figaro, Le Gaulois, and Le Paris-Journal and other filthy rags by republishing their scurrilous attacks on the General Council. It now considered the time ripe for fanning the flames of national hatred even within the International itself. According to it, the General Council was a German committee master-minded by a Bismarck.

With its three resolutions concerning the Swiss dispute, the political action of the working class, and the public disowning of Nechayev, the Conference had hit the Alliance hard. The first of these resolutions placed the blame directly on the pseudoRomance Committee at La Chaux-de-Fonds and approved the action of the General Council.[25] It advised the Jura sections to join the Romance Federation, and in the event of this union not proving possible, it decided that the sections representing the mountains should take the name of the Jura Federation. It was stated that if their committee continued its newspaper war in front of the bourgeois public, these papers would be disowned by the General Council.—The second resolution, on the political action of the working class,[26] nullified the confusion which Bakunin had wished to cause in the International by inserting into his programme the doctrine of absolute abstention in political matters.—The third resolution, on Nechayev,[27] was a direct threat to Bakunin. It will be seen later, when we discuss Russia, to what extent Bakunin was personally interested in hiding the nefarious deeds of the Alliance from Western Europe.

The Alliance rightly saw this as a declaration of war, and immediately went into action. The Jura sections which supported the pseudo-Romance committee met in Congress on November 12, 1871 at Sonvillier. There were sixteen delegates present who claimed to represent nine sections. In accordance with the report by the Federal Committee,[28] the Courtelary section, represented by two delegates, “had suspended its activities”; the central section of Locle “had ended by dissolving itself”, but had temporarily reconstituted itself in order to send two delegates to the Congress of sixteen; the section representing the engravers and guillocheurs of Courtelary (two delegates) “formed as a resistance society” outside the International; the propaganda section of La Chaux-de-Fonds (one delegate) “is in a critical situation, and its position, far from improving, tends rather to deteriorate”. The central section of Neuchñtel (two delegates, one of them Guillaume) “has suffered considerably, and would have inevitably fallen, but for the dedication of several members”. The two social study circles of Sonvillier and Saint-Imier (four delegates) in the district of Courtelary were formed, according to the report, due to the dissolution of the Courtelary central section; now, the few members of this district had themselves represented three times, and by six delegates! The Moutier section (one delegate) seemed only to consist of its Committee. And so of sixteen delegates, fourteen represented dead or moribund sections. But to gain some idea of the damage done to this federation by the preaching of anarchy, one must read this report a little further. Of twenty-two sections, only nine were represented at the Congress; seven had never replied to any of the Committee’s communications, and four were declared well and truly defunct. And this is the federation which believed itself called to shake the International to its very foundations!

The Congress of Sonvillier began, however, by submitting to the London Conference, which had imposed on it the name of the Jura Federation; but at the same time, as proof of anarchism, it declared that the whole of the Romance Federation was dissolved. (The latter restored autonomy to the Jurassians by driving them out of the sections.) The Congress then put out its bombastic circular with the principal aim of protesting against the legality of the Conference and of appealing to a general Congress which should be convoked as soon as possible.[29]

The circular accused the International of having deviated from its spirit, which was no less than “an immense protest against authority”. Until the Congress of Brussels, everything had been for the best in the best of all possible societies; but at Basle, the delegates lost their heads and, prey to “blind trust”, they “violated the spirit and the letter of the general statutes” in which the autonomy of each section and each group of sections had been so clearly proclaimed. Now the International had written the word authority on its banners, but the Jura Federation, that puppet of the Alliance, had written autonomy of the sections. We have already seen how the Alliance means to put this autonomy into practice.

The sins of the Basle Congress were exceeded even more by those of the London Conference, whose resolutions

“tend to turn the International, a free federation of autonomous sections, into an hierarchic and authoritarian organisation of disciplined sections placed entirely under the control of the General Council which can arbitrarily either refuse to admit them or suspend their work”.

The members of the Alliance who drew up this circular evidently forgot that their secret rules were only made to consolidate an “hierarchic and authoritarian organisation” dominated by permanent “Citizen B.”, and that instructions were being given in it to “discipline” the sections and place them not only “in the hands”, but under “the high hand”, of that same “citizen”.

If the sins of the Conference were mortal, then the sin of sins, the sin against the holy spirit, was committed by the General Council. There were “several individuals” in it who considered their

“mandate” (as Council members) “to be their own private property, and London seemed to them the immutable capital of our Association.... Some went so far ... as to make their particular programme, their personal tenets the predominant ones in the International ... as the only official theory acknowledged in the Association ... and in this way an orthodoxy gradually formed with its seat at London and the members of the General Council as its representatives.”

In short, they wanted to establish the unity of the International by “centralisation and dictatorship”.— In this same circular, the Alliance aspired to dominate the International “with its own particular programme”, declaring it to be “an immense protest against authority” and proclaiming that the emancipation of the workers by the workers themselves must be achieved “without any controlling authority, even though this authority has been elected and sanctioned by the workers”. We shall see that wherever the Alliance had any influence, it did exactly what it falsely accused the General Council of doing—it tried to impose its ridiculous travesty of a theory as “the only official theory acknowledged in the Association”.[30]—This only affected the Alliance’s public and open activities. As for its secret activities, “the spirit and the letter” of the secret statutes have already enlightened us concerning the degree of “orthodoxy”, of “personal doctrine”, of “centralisation” and of “dictatorship” which reigned in this “free federation of autonomous groups”. We fully realise that the Alliance wanted to prevent the working class from creating for itself a common leadership, since Bakunin’s providence had already foreseen this when setting up his Alliance as the general staff of the revolution.

Far from wanting to impose an orthodoxy on the International, the General Council had proposed at the London Conference that the sectarian names of certain sections should be abolished, and this proposition was accepted unanimously.[31]

Here is the General Council’s statement on sects in its private circular (Fictitious Splits, p. 24[32]).

“The first phase of the proletariat’s struggle against the bourgeoisie is marked by a sectarian movement. That is logical at a time when the proletariat has not yet developed sufficiently to act as a class. Certain thinkers criticise social antagonisms and suggest fantastic solutions thereof, which the mass of workers is left to accept, preach and put into practice. The sects formed by these initiators are abstentionist by their very nature, i.e., alien to all real action, politics, strikes, coalitions, or, in a word, to any united movement. The mass of the proletariat always remains indifferent or even hostile to their propaganda. The Paris and Lyons workers did not want the Saint-Simonians, the Fourierists, the Icarians, any more than the Chartists and the English trades unionists wanted the Owenists. These sects act as levers of the movement in the beginning, but become an obstruction as soon as the movement outgrows them; after which they become reactionary. Witness the sects in France and England, and lately the Lassalleans in Germany who, after having hindered the proletariat’s organisation for several years, ended by becoming simple instruments of the police. To sum up, we have here the infancy of the proletarian movement, just as astrology and alchemy are the infancy of science. If the International were to be founded it was necessary that the proletariat Would go through this phase.

“Contrary to the sectarian organisations with their vagaries and rivalries, the International is a genuine and militant organisation of the proletarian class of all countries united in their common struggle against the capitalists and the landowners, against their class power organised in the state. The International’s Rules, therefore, speak of only simple ‘working men’s societies’, all following the same goal and accepting the same programme, which presents a general outline of the proletarian movement, while leaving its theoretical elaboration to be guided by the needs of the practical struggle and the exchange of ideas in the sections, unrestrictedly admitting all shades of socialist convictions in their organs and Congresses.”

The Alliance did not want the International to be a militant society. The circular demanded that it should be the faithful image of the future society:

“We must therefore try to bring this organisation as close as possible to our ideal.... The International, embryo of the future human society, must henceforth be the faithful image of our principles of liberty and federation, and must reject any principle leading to authoritarianism, to dictatorship.”

If the Jura Federation had succeeded in its plan to transform the International into the faithful image of a society which did not yet exist, and to forbid it any means of concerted action, with the secret aim of subjecting it to the “authoritarianism and dictatorship” of the Alliance and its permanent dictator, “Citizen B.”, this would have gratified the desires of the European police, who wanted nothing more than to see the International forced to retreat.

To prove to their former colleagues of the League of Peace and to the radical bourgeoisie that the campaign which they had just launched was directed against the International and not against the bourgeoisie, the men of the Alliance sent their circular to all the radical newspapers. M. Gambetta’s La RĂ©publique française hastened to acknowledge their services with an article full of encouragement for the Jurassians and attacks on the London Conference.[33] The Bulletin jurassien, happy to have found this support in the bourgeois press, reproduced in extenso this article in its issue No.[34],a thus showing that the ultra-revolutionary members of the Alliance and the Gambettists of Versailles were united by an entente that was indeed cordiale. To spread more widely among the bourgeoisie the welcome tidings of an incipient split in the International, the Sonvillier circular was sold in the streets of several French cities, notably Montpellier, on market day. It is known that the sale of printed matter on the streets, in France, must be authorised by the police.*

This circular was distributed by the bale wherever the Alliance thought it could recruit friends and malcontents against the General Council. The result was almost negligible. The Spanish members of the Alliance declared themselves opposed to the convocation of the Congress as demanded by the circular and even had the audacity to send reprimands to the Pope.[35] In Italy, only one person, Terzaghi, declared himself in favour of the Congress for a while. In Belgium, where there were no known members of the Alliance, but where the International’s entire movement was floundering in a morass of bourgeois phrases about political abstention, autonomy, liberty, federation, and decentralisation and was stuck fast in its own petty parochial interests, the circular had some success. Although the Belgian Federal Council abstained from supporting the convocation of an extraordinary General Congress—which, incidentally, would have been absurd, since Belgium had been represented by six delegates at the Conference—it drew up draft general statutes which simply suppressed the General Council. When this proposition was discussed at the Belgian Congress, the delegate for Lodelinsart[36] observed that the best criterion, for the workers, was the mood of their employers. To judge solely by the joy which the idea of suppressing the General Council engendered among the employers, it could be claimed that it was impossible to

“commit a bigger blunder than to decree this suppression”.[37]

The proposition was consequently rejected.[38] In Switzerland, the Romance Federation protested vigorously,[39] but everywhere else the circular was merely received with the silence of contempt.

  • The Toulouse Trial. See La RĂ©forme (of Toulouse), March 18, 1873.[40]

The General Council replied to the Sonvillier Circular and to the Alliance’s continual manoeuvrings with a ‘ private circular: Fictitious Splits in the International dated March 5, 1872. A large part of this circular has been summarised above. The Hague Congress effectively dealt with these intrigues and with the intriguers themselves.

Indeed, these men who made a noise out of all proportion to their importance, met with indisputable success. The whole of the liberal and police press openly sided with them; in their personal defamation of the General Council and their impotent attacks on the International, they were backed by self-styled reformers from all countries: in England, by the bourgeois republicans whose intrigues were foiled by the General Council[41]; in Italy, by the dogmatic free-thinkers who, under Stefanoni’s banner, proposed to found a “universal society of rationalists”[42] with an obligatory seat at Rome, an “authoritarian” and “hierarchic” organisation, atheist monasteries and convents, etc., and whose statutes award a marble bust to be installed in the Congress hall for every bourgeois who donates ten thousand francs; finally, in Germany, by the Bismarckian socialists who, apart from their police newspaper, the Neuer Social-Demokrat, act as whiteshirts[43] for the Prusso-German Empire.

When La Revolution Sociale ceased publication, the Alliance used as its official press organ the Bulletin jurassien which, under the pretext of protecting the autonomous sections against the authoritarianism of the General Council and against the usurpations of the London Conference, was working to disorganise the International. Its issue of March 20, 1872 frankly averred that

“by International it does not mean this or that organisation embracing part of the proletariat today. Organisations are secondary and transitory.... The International is, to put it more generally, the feeling of solidarity among the exploited which dominates the modern world”.[44]

The International reduced to a pure “feeling of solidarity” will be even more platonic than Christian charity. To give proof of the honest methods applied by the Bulletin, we quote the following passage from a letter by Tokarzewicz, editor-in-chief of the Polish newspaper Wolnosc in Zurich:

“In the Bulletin jurassien No. 13, there is a programme of the Polish Socialist Society of Zurich which will publish its newspaper Wolnosc in a few days. We authorise you, three days after the receipt of this letter, to inform the International’s General Council that the programme is false.”[45]

The issue of this Bulletin for June 15 contains the answers from the Alliance members (Bakunin, Malon, Claris, Guillaume, etc.)[46] to the General Council’s private circular. Their answers do not answer any of the accusations which the General Council brought against the Alliance and its leaders. The pope,[47] at a loss for explanations, decided to close the debate by calling the circular “a pile of filth”.

“Moreover,” he declared, “I have always reserved the right to bring all my calumniators before a jury of honour, which the next Congress will doubtless not refuse me. And as soon as this jury OFFERS ME all the guarantees of an impartial and serious trial, I will be able to reveal to it, with all the necessary details, all the facts, both political and personal, without fearing the inconveniences and dangers of an indiscreet disclosure.”

Needless to say, Citizen B. risked his neck—as usual. He did not appear at The Hague.

The Congress was drawing near, and the Alliance knew that before it was held, a report was to be published on the Nechayev affair. Citizen Utin had been commissioned by the Conference to compile it. It was of vital importance that this report should not be published before the Congress, so that the members would not be fully informed about it. Citizen Utin went to Zurich to carry out his task. Hardly had he settled there, when he was the victim of an assassination attempt which we unhesitatingly ascribe to the Alliance. In Zurich, Utin had no enemies apart from a few Slavs of the Alliance under the “high hand” of Bakunin. Moreover, the organisation of ambushes and assassinations is one of the methods of struggle recognised and employed by this society; we shall see other examples in Spain and Russia. Eight persons who spoke a Slavonic language lay in wait for Utin in an isolated spot near a canal. When he drew near them, they attacked him from behind, hit him repeatedly on the head with large stones, inflicted a dangerous wound on one of his eyes, and would have killed him and thrown him into the canal after first beating him up, had it not been for the arrival of four German students.[48] On seeing them, the assassins fled. This attempt did not prevent Citizen Utin from finishing his work and sending it to the Congress.[49]

  1. ↑ W. Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I, Act 5, Scene 4.-Ed.
  2. ↑ The Alliance's address was dated November 29, 1868; on December 15 it was discussed in the General Council of the International.-Ed.
  3. ↑ See this volume, pp. 577-78.-Ed.
  4. ↑ Ibid., pp. 86-87.-Ed
  5. ↑ Ibid., pp. 88-89.-Ed.
  6. ↑ The Basle Congress of the International (September 6-11, 1869) became the scene of the first clash between the adherents of Marx's scientific socialism and the followers of Bakunin's anarchism over the abolition of the right of inheritance. With the discussion on this point Bakunin sought to distract the workers from solving urgent problems of the programme and tactics. Preparing for the Congress, Marx drew up a report of the General Council on the right of inheritance (see present edition, Vol. 21). It was read at the Congress by Johann Eccarius. The report branded as erroneous the attempts, originally made by the followers of Saint-Simon, to regard the right of inheritance not as a juridical consequence but as a cause of the existing economic organisation of society. The Congress took no decision on this point, since not a single proposal gained the necessary absolute majority of votes. However, Bakuninñ's well-prepared attempt to impose his ideas on the International failed.
  7. ↑ K. Marx, The General Council to the Federal Council of Romance Switzerland.-Ed
  8. ↑ "On sait que la presque totalitĂ©", Le ProgrĂšs, No. 25, December 4, 1869.— Ed.
  9. ↑ This refers to the struggle between the Lassalleans and the Eisenachers in Germany which intensified after the Basle Congress of the International. The Bakuninist press organs used this to accuse the General Council of allegedly holding aloof from settling the conflict. In October 1869, in a series of anonymous articles in Der Social-Demokrat, Johann Baptist Schweitzer, a Lassallean leader, heaped libels upon the leaders of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party (Eisenachers), in particular, upon Wilhelm Liebknecht. He alleged that they had rejected the socialist programme and the resolutions of the Basle Congress on the social property in land, for the benefit of the petty-bourgeois People's Party which opposed these decisions. Leonhard Bonhorst, member of the Brunswick Central Committee of the SocialDemocratic Workers' Party, used the columns of Der Volksstaat to refute Schweitzer (Nos. 8 and 9, October 27 and 30, 1869). The position of the General Council of the International in the conflict between the Eisenachers and the Lassalleans, Liebknecht and Schweitzer, was explained by Marx in the circular letter "The General Council to the Federal Council of Romance Switzerland" (see present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 90-91).
  10. ↑ Circulaire Ă  toutes les fĂ©dĂ©rations de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs, Sonvillier, le 12 novembre, 1871.—Ed.
  11. ↑ The declaration of Duplaix, Weyhermann, Perret and Utin, Geneva delegates, to the congress of the Romance Federation in La Chaux-de-Fonds, is quoted according to the report on the Alliance written by Utin for the Hague Congress on the instructions of the London Conference.
  12. ↑ Two months later, the organ of that same Committee, La SolidaritĂ© for July 9 warned that these two persons were thieves. They had in fact proved their anarchic revolutionism by robbing the Co-operative Association of Tailors at La Chaux-deFonds.
  13. ↑ See Note 69
  14. ↑ A. Bastelica, "Mon cher Guillaume...", La SolidaritĂ©, No. 5, May 7, 1870 and [A. Richard, G. Blanc], "La Commission fĂ©dĂ©rale", La SolidaritĂ©, Nos. 3 and 5, April 23 and May 7, 1870.— Ed.
  15. ↑ Statuts pour la FĂ©dĂ©ration des Sections Romandes adoptĂ©s par le CongrĂšs Romand, tenu Ă  GenĂšve au Cercle international des Quatre-Saisons, les 2, 3 et 4 janvier 1869, Geneva, pp. 15-16.— Ed
  16. ↑ Of April 9 and 10, 1870.— Ed
  17. ↑ K. Marx, General Council Resolution on the Federal Committee of Romance Switzerland.ñ€”Ed.
  18. ↑ [J. Guillaume,] "Le Conseil gĂ©nĂ©ral...", La SolidaritĂ©, No. 16, July 23, 1870.— Ed
  19. ↑ [J. Guillaume, G. Blanc,] "Manifeste aux sections de l'Internationale", La SolidaritĂ©, No. 22, supplement, September 5, 1870.— Ed.
  20. ↑ J. Guillaume, "Au ComitĂ© fĂ©dĂ©ral jurassien", Bulletin de la FĂ©dĂ©ration jurassienne..., No. 10/11, June 15, 1872.— Ed.
  21. ↑ On the Section of Propaganda and Revolutionary Socialist Action see Note 75. The resolution of the Basle Congress of 1869 on the order of admittance of new sections to the International Working Men's Association empowered the General Council to admit or refuse to admit new sections. Where federal councils existed, their opinion had to be taken into account when this question arose.
  22. ↑ On September 26, 1871.-Ed.
  23. ↑ In early April 1871, trying to prevent the execution of captured Communards by the Versailles counter-revolutionaries, the Paris Commune proclaimed persons guilty of dealings with Versailles to be hostages. On May 23 and 24, 1871, in reply to the atrocities committed by the Versailles troops after they had entered Paris, several hostages were shot by the Communards.
  24. ↑ A. LĂ©o, La guerre sociale. Discours prononcĂ© au CongrĂšs de la Paix Ă  Lausanne. NeuchĂątel 1871.— Ed.
  25. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, Resolutions of the London Conference."Split in the French-Speaking Part of Switzerland". See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 430.-Ed.
  26. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, Resolutions of the Conference of Delegates of the International Working Men's Association. Assembled at London from 17th to 23rd September 1871. See also this volume, pp. 105-06.-Ed.
  27. ↑ See this volume, p. 23.-Ed.
  28. ↑ Rapport du ComitĂ© Federal Romand. [Signed:] A. SchwitzguĂ©bel. La RĂ©volution Sociale, No. 5, November 23, 1871.— Ed.
  29. ↑ Circulaire Ă  toutes les fĂ©dĂ©rations de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs.— Ed.
  30. ↑ Mazzini, for example, held the entire International responsible for the grotesque inventions of pope Bakunin. The General Council felt itself obliged to declare publicly in the Italian newspapers that it “has always opposed the repeated attempts to substitute for the broad, comprehensive programme of the International Working Men’s Association (which has made membership open to Bakunin’s followers) Bakunin’s narrow and sectarian programme, the adoption of which would automatically entail the exclusion of the vast majority of members of the International”. Jules Favre’s circular, the report of the Rural Sacase on our Association, the reactionary discussions during the debates by the Spanish Cortùs on the International, and, finally, all the public attacks launched against it, are riddled with quotations of ultra-anarchist phrases that originated in the Bakuninist camp.
  31. ↑ Resolution II of the Conference, Art. 2: "All local branches, sections, groups and their committees are henceforth to designate and constitute themselves simply and exclusively as branches, sections, groups and committees of the International Working Men's Association, with the names of their respective localities attached." Art. 3: "Consequently, no branches, sections or groups will henceforth be allowed to designate themselves by sectarian names, such as Positivists, Mutualists, Collectivists, Communists, etc., or to form separatist bodies under the name of sections of propaganda, etc., pretending to accomplish special missions distinct from.
  32. ↑ See this volume, p. 106-07.-Ed.
  33. ↑ "Questions ouvriĂšres", La RĂ©publique française, No. 125, March 11, 1872.— Ed.
  34. ↑ "Les socialistes n'ayant plus d'organes...", Bulletin de la FĂ©dĂ©ration jurassienne..., No. 3, March 15, 1872, p. 3.— Ed.
  35. ↑ A reference to the letter from the Alliance member Charles Alerini to AndrĂ© Bastelica of November 14, 1871, sent by the Barcelona Section to all the sections of the International in Spain (see below, pp. 488-89). The Pope here means Bakunin. A copy of the letter was presented by Engels to the Hague Congress among other documents on the Alliance.
  36. ↑ Joseph Hubert.-Ed.
  37. ↑ "Congrùs Ouvrier Belge du 14 juillet", L'Internationale, No. 184, July 21, 1872.— Ed.
  38. ↑ The draft General Rules of the International drawn up in the anarchist spirit by representatives of the Belgian Federal Council (see Note 88), were discussed at the regular congress of the Belgian Federation on May 19 and 20, 1872, and at its extraordinary congress on July 14 of the same year in Brussels. At both congresses part of the delegates opposed the abolition of the General Council proposed in the draft. The extraordinary congress decided by a majority vote to retain the General Council, but with very limited powers. The draft Rules, adopted with this amendment, reflected on the whole the growing influence of anarchism within the Belgian Federation. In accordance with the draft, the Belgian delegates to the Hague Congress supported the Bakuninists and sided with them against the revolutionary proletarian wing of the International.
  39. ↑ The meeting of the International's sections held in Geneva on December 2, 1871, adopted a resolution censuring the decisions of the anarchist congress at Sonvillier. On December 20, 1871, the Federal Committee of Romance Switzerland adopted a special address, "RĂ©ponse du ComitĂ© fĂ©dĂ©ral romand Ă  la circulaire des 16 signataires, membres du CongrĂšs de Sonvilliers", which was published in L'EgalitĂ©, No. 24 of December 24, 1871. The editors of L'ÉgalitĂ© also published their own protest.
  40. ↑ On the Toulouse trial of members of the International see Note 307. The reference is to the report on a court session of March 17, published in La RĂ©forme, No. 669, March 18, 1873.
  41. ↑ K. Marx, Declaration of the General Council Concerning the Universal Federalist Council (see this volume, pp. 157-59).-Ed.
  42. ↑ See Note 43.
  43. ↑ See Note 87.
  44. ↑ "Le 18 mars", Bulletin de la Federation jurassienne..., No. 4, March 20, 1872.-Ed.
  45. ↑ This is a quotation from the letter written on August 2, 1872 by Josef Tokarzewicz, member of the Polish Section of the International in Zurich, to Walery Wröblewski, the General Council’s Corresponding Secretary for Poland. The translation of the letter into French made by Engels is extant. The Programme of the Socialist-Revolutionary Polish Society in Zurich was written by Bakunin and published on July 27, 1872 in the supplement to the Bulletin de la Federation jurassienne, No. 13. The Polish Social-Democratic Association, which appeared under the influence of the anarchist elements, first adopted this programme but later rejected it on the initiative of Tokarzewicz. The newspaper Wolnosc (Freedom) was not published.
  46. ↑ M. Bakunin, "Aux compagnons rĂ©dacteurs..."; B. Malon, "Je n'accorde pas..."; A. Claris, "La bonne foi..."; J. Guillaume, "Au ComitĂ© fĂ©dĂ©ral jurassien", Bulletin de la fĂ©dĂ©ration jurassienne..., No. 10/11, June 15, 1872.— Ed.
  47. ↑ M. Bakunin.-— Ed.
  48. ↑ This assault took place on June 18, 1872.-Ed.
  49. ↑ N. Outine, Au Vme Congrùs de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs à La Haye, manuscript (see English translation in The Hague Congress of the First International, September 2-7, 1872. Minutes and Documents, Moscow, 1976.— Ed.
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