IX. Conclusion

• • 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

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While granting the fullest freedom to the movements and aspirations of the working class in various countries, the International had nevertheless succeeded in uniting it into a single whole and making the ruling classes and their governments feel for the first time the worldwide power of the proletariat. The ruling classes and the governments recognised this fact by concentrating their attacks on the executive body of our whole Association, the General Council. These attacks became increasingly intense after the fall of the Commune. And this was the moment that the Alliancists, on their part, chose to declare open war on the General Council! They claimed that its influence, a powerful weapon in the hands of the International, was but a weapon directed against the International itself. It had been won in a struggle not against the enemies of the proletariat but against the International. According to them, the General Council’s domineering tendencies had prevailed over the autonomy of the sections and the national federations. The only way of saving autonomy was to decapitate the International.

Indeed the men of the Alliance realised that if they did not seize this decisive moment, it would be all up with their plans for the secret direction of the proletarian movement of which Bakunin’s hundred international brethren had dreamed. Their invective wakened approving echoes in the police press of all countries.

Their resounding phrases about autonomy and free federation, in a word, war-cries against the General Council, were thus nothing but a manoeuvre to conceal their true purpose—to disorganise the International and by doing so subordinate it to the secret, hierarchic and autocratic rule of the Alliance.

Autonomy of the sections, free federation of the autonomous groups, anti-authoritarianism, anarchy — these were convenient phrases for a society of the “declassed” “with no prospects and no way out”, conspiring within the International to subject it to a secret dictatorship and impose upon it the programme of M. Bakunin!

Stripped of its melodramatic finery, this programme amounts to the following:

1. All the depravities in which the life of declassed persons ejected from the upper strata of society must inevitably become involved are proclaimed to be so many ultra-revolutionary virtues.

2. It is regarded as a matter of principle and necessity to debauch a small minority of carefully selected workers, who are enticed away from the masses by a mysterious initiation, by making them take part in the game of intrigues and deceit of the secret government, and by preaching to them that through giving free rein to their “evil passions” they can shake the old society to its foundations.

3. The chief means of propaganda is to attract young people by fantastic lies about the extent and power of the secret society, prophecies of the imminent revolution it has prepared and so on, and to compromise in government eyes the most progressive people from among the well-to-do classes with a view to exploiting them financially.

4. The economic and political struggle of the workers for their emancipation is replaced by the universal pan-destructive acts of heroes of the underworld—this latest incarnation of revolution. In a word, one must let loose the street hooligans suppressed by the workers themselves in “the revolutions on the Western classical model”, and thus place gratuitously at the disposal of the reactionaries a well-disciplined gang of agents provocateurs.

It is hard to say what predominates in the theoretical elucubrations and practical endeavours of the Alliance—clowning or infamy. Nevertheless, it has succeeded in provoking within the International a muffled conflict which for two years has hindered the actions of our Association and has culminated in the secession of some of the sections and federations. The resolutions adopted by the Hague Congress against the Alliance were therefore merely a matter of duty: the Congress could not allow the International, that great creation of the proletariat, to fall into nets spread by the riff-raff of the exploiting classes. As for those who wish to deprive the General Council of the prerogatives without which the International would be nothing but a confused, disjointed and, to use the language of the Alliance, "amorphous" mass, we cannot regard them otherwise than as traitors or dupes. London, July 21, 1873

The Commission: E. Dupont, F. Engels, Léo Frankel, C. Le Moussu, Karl Marx, Aug. Serraillier