IV. The Alliance in Spain

• • Introduction
  • II. The secret Alliance
  • III. The Alliance in Switzerland
  • IV. The Alliance in Spain
  • V. The Alliance in Italy
  • VI. The Alliance in France
  • VII. The Alliance after the Hague Congress
  • VIII. The Alliance in Russia
  • IX. Conclusion
  • X. Appendix
  • XI. Documents

Add another subpage

Read the help page for usage.

 

After the Congress of the League of Peace held at Berne in September 1868, Fanelli, one of the Alliance’s founders and a member of the Italian parliament, went to Madrid. He had been furnished with references by Bakunin for Garrido, deputy at Cortès, who put him in touch with republican circles, bourgeois and working-class alike. A short while after, in November of that year, Alliance membership cards were sent from Geneva to Morago, Cordova y Lopez (republican with ambitions of becoming a deputy and the editor of the Combate, a bourgeois newspaper), and to Rubau Donadeu (unsuccessful candidate for Barcelona, founder of a pseudo-socialist party). The knowledge of the arrival of these membership cards threw the young international section of Madrid into confusion. President Jalvo withdrew, not wanting to belong to an association which harboured a secret society composed of bourgeois and which allowed itself to be ruled by that society.

As early as the Basle Congress, the Spanish International had been represented by two Alliance members, Farga Pellicer and Sentiiïon, the latter being featured on the official list of delegates as “delegate for the Alliance”. After the Congress of the Spanish International in Barcelona (June 1870), the Alliance established itself at Palma, Valencia, Malaga and Cadiz. In 1871, sections were founded at Seville and Cordoba. At the beginning of 1871, Morago and Vifias, delegates of the Barcelona Alliance, suggested to members of the Federal Council (Francisco Mora, Angel Mora, Anselmo Lorenzo, Borrell, etc.) ... the foundation of an Alliance section in Madrid; but the latter objected, saying that the Alliance was a dangerous society if it was secret, and useless if it was public. For the second time, the mere mention of the name was enough to sow the seeds of discord in the heart of the Federal Council; Borrell even uttered these prophetic words:

"From now on, all trust between us is dead."

But when government persecution forced the members of the Federal Council to emigrate to Portugal, it was there that Morago succeeded in convincing them of the usefulness of this secret association, and it was there that the Alliance section of Madrid was founded at their initiative. At Lisbon, a few Portuguese, who were members of the International, were affiliated to the Alliance by Morago. Finding, however, that these newcomers did not offer him enough guarantees, he founded, without their knowledge, another Alliance group consisting of the worst elements among the bourgeois and the workers, recruited from the freemasons. This new group, which included an unfrocked curate named Bonança, attempted to organise the International by sections of ten members who, under its direction, were to help carry out the schemes of the Comte de Péniche, and whom this political intriguer managed to drag into a dangerous venture of which the sole aim was to put him in power. In view of the Alliance intrigues in Portugal and Spain, the Portuguese members of the International withdrew from this secret society and at the Hague Congress they pressed for its expulsion from the International as a public safety measure.

At the Conference of the Spanish International at Valencia (September 1871), the Alliance delegates, also delegates of the International as always, gave their secret society a complete organisation for the Iberian peninsula. The majority of them, believing that the Alliance programme was identical to that of the International, that this secret organisation existed everywhere, that it was almost a duty to join it, and that the Alliance was striving to develop and not dominate the International, decided that all the members of the Federal Council should be initiated. As soon as Morago, who until then had not dared to return to Spain, heard about this fact, he came to Madrid in all haste and accused Mora of “wanting to subordinate the Alliance to the International”, which was contrary to the Alliance’s intentions. And to give weight to this opinion, he let Mesa read, the following January, a letter from Bakunin in which the latter evolved a Machiavellian plan for domination over the working class. This plan was as follows:

“The Alliance must appear to exist within the International, but in reality at a certain distance from it, in order better to observe and control it. For this reason, members who belong to Councils and Committees of International sections must always be in the minority in the Alliance sections.” (Statement by José Mesa, dated September 1, 1872, addressed to the Hague Congress).

At a meeting of the Alliance, Morago accused Mesa of having betrayed Bakunin’s society by initiating all the members of the Federal Council, which gave them a majority in the Alliance section and established, in fact, the domination of the International over the Alliance. To avoid this domination, the secret instructions prescribed that only one or two Alliance members should infiltrate into the councils or committees of the International and control them under the direction and with the support of the Alliance section where all resolutions were passed which the International ought to adopt.— From that moment, Morago declared war on the Federal Council and, as in Portugal, founded a new Alliance section which remained unknown to those under suspicion. The initiates at various points in Spain backed him up and began to accuse the Federal Council of neglecting its duties to the Alliance, as is proved by a circular from the Valencia Alliance section (January 30, 1872) signed “Damon”, Montoro’s Alliance pseudonym.

When the Sonvillier circular arrived, the Spanish Alliance took care not to side with Jura. Even the mother section of Barcelona, in an official letter of November 14, 1871, treated pope Michael, whom it suspected of personal rivalry with Karl Marx,* very curtly and in an altogether heretic manner.

• Copies of this letter, addressed by Alerini “on behalf of the Barcelona group” of the Alliance to “my dear Bastelica and dear friends”, were sent to all the sections of the Spanish Alliance. Here are some extracts:

“The present General Council cannot last beyond next year’s Congress, and its baneful activities can only be temporary.... A public rupture, on the contrary, would deal our cause a blow from which it would only recover with difficulty, assuming it resisted. We cannot, then, encourage in any way your separatist tendencies... Some of us have wondered if, apart from the question of principle, there might not also be in it, or alongside it, personal problems —problems of rivalry, for instance, between our friend Michael and Karl Marx, between the members of the old A. and the General Council.. We have been distressed to see, in La Révolution Sociale, the attacks on the General Council and Karl Marx... When we know the opinion The Federal Council supported this letter, which shows how little influence the Swiss centre had in Spain at the time. But afterwards it was noticeable that grace had fallen on the recalcitrant hearts. At a meeting of the Madrid Federation of the International (January 7, 1872), at which the Sonvillier circular was discussed, the new group, headed by Morago, prevented the reading of the Romance Federation’s counter-circular and suppressed the discussion. On February 24, Rafar (Alliance pseudonym of Rafael Farga) wrote to the Alliance’s Madrid section:

“It is essential to kill the reactionary influences and authoritarian tendencies of the General Council.”

However, it was only at Palma in Majorca that the Alliance was able to achieve the public adherence of the International’s members to the Jura circular. It can be seen that ecclesiastical discipline was beginning to break the last attempts at resistance to the infallibility of the pope.

Faced with all this underground work, the Spanish Federal Council realised that it must get rid of the Alliance as soon as possible. The government persecutions furnished it with a pretext. In the event of the International’s dissolution, it proposed to form secret groups of “defenders of the International” into which the Alliance sections would imperceptibly merge. The introduction of numerous members was bound to change the character of the sections, and they would finally disappear with these groups on the day when the persecutions ceased. But the Alliance guessed at the hidden purpose of this plan and foiled it, although without this organisation, the International’s existence in Spain would have been in jeopardy if the government had carried out its threats. The Alliance, on the contrary, made the following proposal:

“If we are outlawed, it would be useful to give the International an external form which could be allowed by the government; the local councils would be like secret cells which, under the Alliance’s influence, would impose on the sections a wholly revolutionary direction.” (Circular of the Alliance’s Seville section, October 25, 1871.)

of our friends on the peninsula, who are influencing the local councils, then this might change our attitude towards a general decision, to which we shall conform in every respect, etc., etc.”

The old A. is the public Alliance nipped in the bud by the General Council. The copy of the letter from which we have taken these passages is in Alerini’s handwriting.

Cowardly in action, bold in words—such was the Alliance in Spain, as elsewhere.

The London Conference’s resolution on working-class politics forced the Alliance into open hostilities with the International and gave the Federal Council an opportunity to state its perfect agreement with the great majority of the International’s membership. Furthermore, it suggested the idea of forming a big working men’s party in Spain. To achieve this aim, the working class would first have to be completely isolated from all the bourgeois parties, especially the Republican party which recruited most of its voters and active supporters from the workers. The Federal Council advised abstention in all elections of deputies, whether monarchist or republican. To rid the people of all illusions about the pseudo-socialist phraseology of the Republicans, the editors of La Emancipation, who were also members of the Federal Council, sent a letter to the representatives of the Federalist Republican party, who were holding a congress in Madrid, in which they asked them for practical measures and called on them to state their attitude to the International’s programme. This meant delivering a serious blow to the Republican party. The Alliance undertook to soften it, since it was, on the contrary, in league with the Republicans. In Madrid, it founded a newspaper, El Condenado, which adopted as its programme the three cardinal virtues of the Alliance: Atheism, Anarchy, and Collectivism, but which preached to the workers that they should not demand a reduction in working hours. “Brother” Morago had a fellow contributor in Estévanez, one of the three members of the Republican party’s Directing Committee and lately governor of Madrid and Minister for War. At Malaga, Pino, a member of the Federal Commission of the pseudo-International, and, at Madrid, Felipe Martin, now the Alliance’s commercial traveller, were serving the Republican party as electoral agents. And in order to have its Fanelli in the Spanish Cortès, the Alliance proposed backing Morago’s candidature.

The Alliance already had two serious grudges against the Federal Council: 1) the latter had abstained on the Jura question;

2) it had also attempted to infringe its [the Alliance’s] inviolability. After the Council adopted a position over the Republican party which wrecked all the Alliance’s plans, the latter decided to destroy it. The letter to the Republican Congress was taken by the Alliance as a declaration of war. La Igualdad, the party’s most influential organ, violently attacked the editors of La Emancipacion and accused them of having sold themselves to Sagasta. The Condenado encouraged this disgraceful charge by maintaining a stubborn silence. The Alliance did more for the Republican party. As a result of this letter, it had the editors of La Emancipacion expelled from the International’s Madrid Federation, which it dominated.

In spite of government persecution, the Federal Council, during its six-month period of administration after the Conference of Valencia, had raised the number of local federations from 13 to 70; it had, in 100 other localities, prepared the setting up of local federations and had organised eight trades into national resistance societies; moreover, the great association of Catalan factory workers was being formed under its auspices. These services had given the members of the Council such moral influence that Bakunin felt it necessary to bring them back on to the path of truth with a long fatherly admonition sent to Mora, the Council’s general secretary, on April 5, 1872 (see Documents, No. 3). The Congress of Saragossa (April 4-11, 1872), despite the efforts of the Alliance, which was represented by at least twelve delegates, annulled the expulsion and renominated two of the expelled members for the new Federal Council, ignoring their repeated refusals to accept their candidatures.

During the Congress of Saragossa, as always, the Alliance was holding secret meetings on the side. The members of the Federal Council proposed dissolving the Alliance. To prevent the proposal being rejected, it was neatly circumvented. Two months later, on June 2, those same citizens, in their capacity as leaders of the Spanish Alliance and on behalf of its Madrid section, sent the other sections a circular in which they renewed their proposal, giving the following reason:

“The Alliance has deviated from the path which it should, in our opinion, have taken in this region; it has falsified the idea which brought it into being and, instead of being an integral part of our great Association, an active element which would have given impetus to the different organisations of the International by helping and encouraging them in their development, it has broken away completely from the rest of the Association and has become an organisation apart and, as it were, superior, with tendencies towards domination, introducing mistrust, discord and division among us.... At Saragossa, instead of bringing solutions and ideas, it has, on the contrary, only put impediments and obstacles in the way of the important work of the Congress.”

Of all the Spanish Alliance sections, only the one at Cadiz responded by announcing its dissolution. On the very next day, the Alliance again had the signatories of the June 2 circular expelled from the International’s Madrid Federation. It used as its pretext an article in La Emancipacion of June 1 which demanded an enquiry into

“the sources of the wealth acquired by ministers, generals, magistrates, public officials, mayors, etc. ... and by all those in politics who, without having exercised any public functions, have lived under the wing of the governments, lending them their support in the Cortès and hiding their iniquities under a mask of false opposition ... and whose property should have been confiscated as a first measure on the day after a revolution”.

The Alliance saw this as a direct attack on its friends in the Republican party and accused the editors of La Emancipacion of having betrayed the cause of the proletariat under the pretext that in demanding the confiscation of property stolen from the State, they implicitly recognised private property. Nothing demonstrates more clearly the reactionary spirit which was hidden under the Alliance’s revolutionary charlatanism and which it wanted to inject into the working class. Nothing proves more clearly the bad faith of the Alliance members than the expulsion, as defenders of private property, of the very men whom they had anathematised for their communist ideas.

This new expulsion was made in violation of the rules in force prescribing the formation of a jury of honour for which the accused could nominate two out of the seven jurors, against whose verdict he could appeal to the section’s general assembly. Instead of all this, the Alliance, in order to avoid any restriction of its autonomy, had the expulsion decreed at the same sitting at which it made the accusation. Out of the section’s total membership of 130, only 15 were present, and these were in league with one another. The expelled members appealed to the Federal Council.

This Council, thanks to the Alliance’s intrigues, had been transferred to Valencia. Of the two members of the old Federal Council who were re-elected at the Congress of Saragossa, Mora had not accepted and Lorenzo had tendered his resignation shortly afterwards. From that moment, the Federal Council belonged body arid soul to the Alliance. And so it responded to the appeal of the expelled members with a declaration of its incompetence, although Article 7 of the Spanish Federation’s rules imposed on it the duty of suspending, with the right of appeal to the next Congress, any local federation which violated the statutes. The expelled members then formed a “new federation” and demanded recognition from the Council which, in deference to the autonomy of the sections, formally refused. The New Madrid Federation then approached the General Council, which accepted it in conformity with Articles II, 7 and IV, 4 of the Administrative Regulations. The Hague General Congress approved this act and unanimously admitted the delegate from the New Madrid Federation.

The Alliance realised the full importance of this first rebellious move. It realised that, unless it were nipped in the bud, the Spanish International, so docile hitherto, would slip out of its hands’, and so it set in motion all the means at its disposal, honest and otherwise. It began with defamation. It announced in the newspapers and posted up in the section halls the names of the expelled members: Angel and Francisco Mora, José Mesa, Victor Pages, Iglesias, Saenz, Calleja, Pauly and Lafargue were dubbed traitors. Mora, who, to carry out his duties as general secretary, had given up his job and for long months had been maintained by his brother, since there were no funds out of which to pay him, was accused of having lived at the International’s expense. Mesa, who was editing a fashion magazine to earn his living and had just translated an article for an illustrated journal, was alleged to have sold himself to the bourgeoisie. Lafargue was charged with the mortal sin of having, by a gargantuan dinner, submitted to the temptations of St. Anthony the weak flesh of Martinez and Montoro, two members of the new Federal Council of the Alliance, as if they carried their consciences in their paunches. We are only mentioning here the public and published libels. These measures failing to yield the results desired, the next move was intimidation. In Valencia, Mora was lured into an ambush by members of the Federal Council who were waiting for him armed with clubs. He was rescued by the members of the local federation who knew the ways of these gentlemen and asserted that it was in the face of arguments equally striking that Lorenzo had tendered his resignation. At Madrid, a similar attempt was made shortly afterwards on Iglesias. The Alliance congregation of the Index marked out La Emancipation for the censure of the faithful. At Cadiz, to instil a salutary fear into the hearts of the sinful, it was stated that any person selling La Emancipation would be expelled from the International as a traitor. The Alliance’s anarchy takes the form of inquisitorial practice.

As was its custom, the Alliance tried to have all the representation of the Spanish International at the Hague Congress made up of its own members. To this end, the Federal Council passed round the sections a private circular whose existence was carefully kept secret from the New Madrid Federation. It proposed to send to the Congress a collective representation elected by the votes of all members of the International, and to raise a general contribution of 25 centimos per head to defray the expenses. Since the local federations had no time to arrive at an agreement on the candidatures, it was clear, as the facts proved, that the Alliance’s official candidates, delegated to the Congress at the International’s expense, would be elected. However, this circular fell into the hands of the New Madrid Federation and was forwarded to the General Council which, knowing that the Federal Council was subordinate to the Alliance, saw that the moment for action had arrived and sent a letter to the Spanish Federal Council, in which it was stated:

“Citizens,

“We hold proof that within the International, and particularly in Spain, there exists a secret society called the Alliance of Socialist Democracy. This society, whose centre is in Switzerland, considers it its special mission to guide our great Association in keeping with its own particular tendencies and lead it towards goals unknown to the vast majority of International members. Moreover, we know from the Seville Razon that at least three members of your Council belong to the Alliance...

“If the organisation and character of this society were already contrary to the spirit and the letter of our Rules, when it was still public, its secret existence within the International, in spite of its promise, represents no less than treason against our Association. The International knows but one type of members, all with equal rights and duties; the Alliance divides them into two classes, the initiated and the uninitiated, the latter doomed to be led by the former by means of an organisation of whose very existence they are unaware. The International demands that its adherents should acknowledge Truth, Justice and Morality as the basis of their conduct; the Alliance obliges its supporters to hide from the uninitiated members of the International the existence of the secret organisation, the motives and even the aim of their words and deeds.”

The General Council also asked them to provide certain material for the inquiry into the Alliance which it intended to present to the Hague Congress, and an explanation of how they reconciled their duties to the International with the presence in the heart of the Federal Council of at least three notorious members of the Alliance.

The Federal Council replied with an evasive letter in which, however, it recognised the Alliance’s existence.

Since the manoeuvres which we have been discussing seemed inadequate to guarantee the success of the election, the Alliance went so far in its newspapers as to nominate Farga, Alerini, Soriano, Marselau, Mendez and Morago as official candidates. The result of the voting was: Marselau—3,568; Morago—3,442; Mendez—2,850; Soriano—2,751. Of the other candidates, Lostau obtained 2,430 votes in four Catalan towns which were clearly not yet properly disciplined; Fusté scored 1,053 votes at Sans in Catalonia. None of the other candidates gained more than 250 votes. To ensure the election of Farga and Alerini, the Federal Council gave the city of Barcelona, where the Alliance predominated, the privilege of nominating its own delegates, who were, naturally, Alerini and Farga.—The same official circular stated that the four Catalan towns which had nominated Lostau and Fusté, thus rejecting the Alliance’s official candidates, paid 2,654 reales (663 frs. 50 c.) for the delegation’s expenses whereas the other Spanish cities, on which the Alliance had foisted its own candidates, since the workers were little accustomed to managing their own affairs, only paid a total of 2,799 reales (699 frs. 75 c). The New Madrid Federation had good reason to say that the money of the International’s members was being used to send the Alliance’s delegates to the Hague. Furthermore, the Alliance’s Federal Council did not pay in full the subscriptions due to the General Council.

All this was not enough for the Alliance. It had to have an Alliance imperative mandate for its delegates, and this is how it was wangled. Through its circular of July 7, the Federal Council demanded, and obtained, the authorisation to lump together in one collective mandate the imperative mandates issued by the local federations. This manoeuvre, worse than any Bonapartist plebiscite, allowed the Alliance to draw up for its delegation a mandate which it intended to impose on the Congress, while forbidding its own delegates to take part in the voting unless an immediate change was made in the manner of voting as prescribed to the International in its Administrative Regulations. That this was mere mystification is proved by the fact that the Spanish delegates at the Congress of Saint-Imier, despite their mandate, took part in the voting which was being carried out by federations, the manner so much praised by Castelar and practised by the League of Peace.*

• Sentinon, a doctor of medicine in Barcelona, a personal friend of Bakunin, and one of the founders of the Spanish Alliance, advised members of the International well before the Hague Congress not to pay their subscriptions to the General Council because it would use them to buy rifles. He tried to prevent the Spanish International from defending the cause of the defeated Commune. Imprisoned for a press offence, he launched a manifesto in which he courageously renounced the International, which was being persecuted at the time. Shunned for this by the whole of the working class in Barcelona, he nevertheless continued to be one of the Alliance’s secret leaders, for in a letter of August 14, 1871, three months after the collapse of the Commune, Montoro, a member of the Alliance, referred an Alliance correspondent to Sentinon who, he said, could recommend him and confirm his Alliance membership.

Vinas, a medical student, whom Sentinon, in a letter of January 26, 1872, recommended to Liebknecht as “the soul of the International in Barcelona”, left the International during the persecution so as not to compromise his family, although the police did not even bother to imprison him.

Farga Pellicer, another Alliance leader, was accused in the same letter from Sentinon of having absconded during the persecution, leaving the others to take the legal responsibility for his articles. The rabbit-like courage of the Alliance members boldly asserts, at all times and in all places, their anti-authoritarian autonomy. Their way of protesting against the authority of the bourgeois state is to take flight.

Soriano, another leader, and a professor of ... occult sciences, withdrew from the International at the height of the persecution. At the Congress of Saragossa, he opposed, with pathetic courage, the public holding of the Congress demanded by Lafargue and other delegates, because he considered it imprudent to provoke the anger of the authorities. Recently, under Amadeus, Soriano accepted a government post.