XI. Documents

• • 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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1. THE SECRET STATUTES OF THE ALLIANCE

The copy of these statutes which is now in our possession is partly written in Bakunin’s hand. He gave copies not only to his initiates, but to many more people whom he hoped to seduce with the disclosure of his splendid programme. The vanity of the author proved stronger than the sinister furtiveness of the mystifier. * Romanov is the tsar’s surname. Pugachev was the leader of a great Cossack uprising under Catherine II. Pestel was the leader of the 1825 conspiracy against Nicholas I. He was hanged.

ORGANISATION OF THE ALLIANCE

OF THE INTERNATIONAL BRETHREN

THREE GRADES:

I. International brethren.

II. National brethren.

III. The half-secret, half-public organisation of the International Alliance of

Socialist Democracy.

I. RULES OF THE INTERNATIONAL BRETHREN

1. The International Brethren have no homeland other than the world Revolution, no foreign land and no enemy other than the Reaction.

2. They reject any policy of negotiation and concession, and regard as reactionary any political movement which does not have as its immediate and direct goal the triumph of their principles.

3. They are Brethren—they never attack one another, nor settle their differences in public or in front of the courts. Their only justice is a jury of arbitrators, elected from among the brethren by the two parties.

4. Each must be sacred to all the others, more sacred than a blood brother. Each brother shall be helped and protected by all the others to the limits of the possible.

5. Only he may become an international brother who has sincerely accepted all the programme in all its consequences, theoretical and practical, and who adds revolutionary passion to intelligence, energy, honesty and discretion, he who has the devil in his flesh. We impose neither duty nor sacrifice. But he who has this passion will do many things without even imagining that he is making sacrifices.

6. A brother must have neither business, interests, nor duties more serious and more sacred than the service of the revolution and of our secret Association, which must serve the revolution.

7. A brother always has the right to refuse to render the services demanded of him by the Central Committee or by his National Committee, but many successive refusals will lead to his being considered unconscientious or lazy, and he may be suspended by his National Committee and, on the representation of this latter, temporarily expelled by the Central Committee pending a final decision by the Constituent Committee.

8. No brother shall accept a public post except with the consent of the Committee to which he belongs.— None shall undertake public actions or appearances contrary or even foreign to the line of conduct determined by his Committee and without having consulted the latter. Every time that two or more brothers are together, they shall consult each other on all important public matters. 9. All the International Brethren know one another. No political secret must ever exist among them. None may take part in any secret society whatever without the positive consent of his Committee and, if necessary, should the latter so demand, without that of the Central Committee.—And he may take part only on condition that he reveals to them all the secrets that could interest them directly or indirectly.

10. The organisation of International Brethren is subdivided as follows: A. The General, or Constituent, Committee. B. The Central Committee. C. The National Committees.

A. The General Committee

This is an assembly of all or at least two-thirds of the International Brethren convoked regularly either at stipulated intervals, or in extraordinary assembly by a majority of the Central Committee. It is the supreme constituent and executive power of our entire organisation, whose programme, rules and organic statutes it can modify.

B. The Central Committee

Consists of: a) the Central Bureau, and b) the Central Supervisory Committee. The latter’s members are all the international brethren who, not belonging to the Bureau, are sufficiently near to be convoked at two days’ notice, and, naturally, all brethren who happen to be passing through. For the rest, they are guided in all their mutual relationships by the Rules of the Alliance of Socialist Democracy (see Articles 2-4).

C. The National Committees

Each National Committee shall consist of all the international brethren (irrespective of nationality) who are in or near the centre of the national organisation. Each National Committee is subdivided equally into: a) a National Executive Bureau, and b) a National Supervisory Committee. This latter will include all international brethren present who are not in the Bureau. The same relationships as in the Alliance of Socialist Democracy.

11. The admission of a new brother requires the unanimity of all members present (not less than three) of the National Committee and the confirmation by a two-thirds majority of the Central Committee. The Central Committee may admit a new member by the unanimous agreement of all its members.

12. Each National Committee is to meet at least once a week to control and activate the organisational, propaganda and administrative work of its Bureau.— It is the natural judge of the conduct of each member in everything affecting his revolutionary dignity or relations with society. Its verdicts must be presented to the Central Committee for confirmation. It will direct the activities and all the public appearances of all members. Either through its Bureau or through a brother designated by it, it must maintain regular correspondence with the Central Bureau, to which it must write at least once every fortnight.

13. The National Committee will organise a secret Association of the National Brethren in its country.

II. THE NATIONAL BRETHREN

14. The National Brethren must be organised in each country so that they can never deviate from the guidance of the general organisation of the International Brethren, and notably from that of the General Committee and of the Central Committee. Their programmes and their rules may only be finally put into operation after they have received the sanction of the Central Committee.

15. Each National Committee may, if it finds it useful, establish among them two categories: a) that of National Brethren who know one another all over the country, and b) that of Brethren who do not know one another except in small groups.— In no case will the National Brethren even suspect the existence of an international organisation.

16. The provincial centres, consisting entirely or partly of international brethren or national brethren of the first category, shall be established at all the principal points in the country, with the mission of promoting as thoroughly and as far as possible the secret organisation and the propaganda of its principles—not contenting themselves with acting in the cities, but also trying to propagate them in the villages and among the peasants.

17. The National Committees shall attempt to raise the necessary financial means as soon as possible, not only for the success of their own organisation, but also for the general needs of the whole Association. They will therefore send a part—half?—to the Central Bureau.

18. The National Bureaux must be very active, remembering that the principles, programmes and rules are of no worth unless the persons who have to put them into execution have the devil in their flesh.

SECRET ORGANISATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE

OF SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY

1. The Permanent Central Committee of the Alliance consists of all the members of the Permanent National Committees and of those of the Geneva Central Section. When together, all these members constitute the Secret General Assembly of the Alliance, which is the constituent and supreme power of the Alliance and which will meet at least once a year at the Working Men’s Congress as delegates of the Alliance’s different national groups; it may also be convoked at any time equally by the Central Bureau or by the Geneva Central Section.

2. The Geneva Central Section is the permanent delegation of the permanent Central Committee. It is composed of all the members of the Central Bureau and of all those of the Supervisory Committee, who must always be members of the permanent Central Committee.—The Central Section will be the Supreme Executive Council of the Alliance, within the limits of the Constitution and of the line of conduct which can only be laid down and modified by the General Assembly. It will decide on all questions of execution (not of constitution and general policy) by a simple majority of votes, and its resolutions thus adopted shall be binding on the Central Bureau, unless the Bureau, by a majority of its members, wishes to appeal to the General Assembly, which it must convoke in this case at three weeks’ notice.—To be regular, the General Assembly, when thus convoked, must be composed of two-thirds of all its members.

3. The Central Bureau, the executive power, will consist of 3 to 5 or even 7 members, who must always at the same time be members of the Permanent Central Committee Like one of the two parts which make up the Secret Central Section, the Central Bureau shall be a secret organisation. As such, it will receive its guidance from the Central Section and will pass on its communications, not to say its secret orders, to all the National Committees, from which it will receive secret reports at least once a month. As the Executive Directorate of the public Alliance, it shall be a public organisation. As such, it shall be on more or less private or public terms, according to country and circumstances, with all the National Bureaux, from which it shall also receive reports once a month. Its ostensible form of government will be that of a presidency in a federative republic. The Central Bureau, as the secret as well as public executive power of the Alliance, shall activate the society’s secret and public propaganda and shall promote its development in all countries by all possible means. It shall administer the part of the finances which, in accordance with Article 6 of the public regulations, are sent to it from all countries for general needs. It shall publish a newspaper and pamphlets, and shall send travelling agents to form Alliance groups in the countries where there are none. In all the measures which it adopts for the good of the Alliance, it shall moreover submit to the decisions of the majority of the Secret Central Section, to which, incidentally, all its members shall belong. As an organisation both secret and public, and since it must be composed entirely of members of the Permanent Central Committee, the Central Bureau must always be a direct representation of this Committee. The Provisional Central Bureau will now be presented to the Geneva initiating group as provisionally elected by all the founder members of the Alliance, of whom the majority, as former members of the Berne Congress, have returned to their countries after having delegating their powers to Citizen B. This Bureau will function until the first public General Assembly which, in accordance with Article 7 of the public Regulations, must meet as a branch of the International Working Men’s Association at the next Working Men’s Congress. It follows that members of the New Central Bureau must be nominated by this Assembly. But as it is urgent that the Central Bureau should always consist solely of members of the Permanent Central Committee, this latter, through the organ of its national committees, will take care to organise and direct all the local groups in such a way that they will delegate to this Assembly only members of the Permanent Central Committee, or, failing them, men absolutely devoted to the leadership of their respective national committees, so that the Permanent Central Committee should always have the upper hand in the entire organisation of the Alliance.

4. The Supervisory Committee shall exercise control over all the actions of the Central Bureau.—It shall consist of all the members of the Permanent Central Committee resident either in the place itself, or near the residence of the Central Bureau, and also all the members temporarily present or just passing through, with the exception of the members who make up the Bureau. At the request of two members of the Supervisory Committee, all the members of the latter must at three days’ notice meet with the members of the Central Bureau to constitute the Assembly of the Central Section of’the Supreme Executive Council, whose rights are defined in Article 2.

5. The National Committees will be formed of all the members of the Permanent Central Committee who belong to the same nation.—As soon as there are three members of the Permanent Central Committee who belong to the same nation, they will be invited by the Bureau and, if necessary, by the Central Section, to form the National Committee of their country. Each National Committee may create a new member of the Central Committee of its country, but not otherwise than by the unanimous agreement of all the members. As soon as a new member has been appointed by a National Committee, the latter shall immediately inform the Central Bureau, which shall register this new member and shall thereby confer on him all the rights of a member of the Permanent Central Committee.—The Geneva Central Section is likewise invested with the power to create new members by the unanimous agreement of all its members. Each National Committee has, as its special mission, the foundation and organisation of the public as well as secret national group of the Alliance in its country. It shall be the group’s supreme chief and administrator through its National Bureau, which it shall have the task of creating and forming entirely of Permanent Central Committee members. The national committees shall have the same relationship, rights and powers witfi regard to their respective Bureaux as the central section with regard to the Central Bureau.—The national committees, which shall be formed by combining their respective bureaux and supervisory committees, shall recognise no authority other than the Central Bureau, and shall serve as the sole intermediaries between this latter and all the local groups of their country for propaganda and administration, and likewise for the collecting and paying in of subscriptions. The national committees, through their respective bureaux, shall have the task of organising the Alliance in their countries so that it shall always be dominated and represented at the Congresses by members of the Permanent Central Committee.

As the national bureaux organise their local groups, they shall make it their concern to submit the regulations and programme to the central bureau for confirmation, without which the local groups cannot belong to the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy.

PROGRAMME

OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST ALLIANCE

1. The International Alliance has been founded to promote the organisation and acceleration of the World Revolution on the basis of the principles proclaimed in our programme.

2. In conformity with these principles, the goal of the revolution cannot be other than: a) The destruction of all ruling powers and all religious, monarchic, aristocratic and bourgeois authority in Europe. Consequently, the destruction of all existing states with all their political, juridical, bureaucratic and financial institutions, b) The reconstitution of a new society on the sole basis of freely associated labour, taking collective ownership, equality and justice as the starting point.

3. The Revolution as we conceive it, or rather as the force of circumstances today inevitably presents it, is essentially international or universal in character. In view of the menacing coalition of all the privileged interests and all the reactionary powers in Europe, which have at their disposal all the formidable means given them by a cleverly organised organisation, and in view of the profound schism which reigns everywhere today between the bourgeoisie and the workers, no national revolution will succeed if it does not extend at once to all the other nations, and it will never cross the frontiers of a country and adopt this universal character unless it carries within itself all the elements of this universality—that is to say, unless it is an openly socialist revolution, destructive of the state, and creative of liberty through equality and justice; for nothing henceforth shall be able to reunite, electrify, and arouse the great and only true power of the century—the workers—except the total emancipation of labour on the ruins of all the institutions which protect hereditary landownership and capital.

4. Since the impending Revolution can only be universal, the Alliance, or, not to mince words, the conspiracy which must prepare, organise and accelerate it, must also be universal.

5. The Alliance will pursue a double aim: a) It will endeavour to disseminate among the masses of all countries the right ideas on politics, social economy, and all philosophical questions. It will carry out active propaganda by means of newspapers, pamphlets and books, and also by founding public associations, b) It will seek to affiliate to itself all intelligent, energetic, discreet and well-disposed men who are sincerely devoted to our ideas, in order to form all over Europe, and as far as possible in America, an invisible network of dedicated revolutionaries who have become more powerful through this very Alliance.

PROGRAMME AND OBJECTIVES

OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION

OF THE INTERNATIONAL BRETHREN

1. The principles of this organisation are the same as those of the programme of the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy. They are even more explicitly defined, as regards women, the family from the point of view of religion and law, and the state, in the programme of the Russian Socialist Democracy.

The Central Bureau moreover reserves the right to present shortly a more comprehensive theoretical and practical exposition of these principles.

2. The association of international brethren aims for a universal revolution, simultaneously social, philosophical, economic and political, so that of the present order of things—based on private property, exploitation, domination and the principle of authority, whether religious, metaphysical, bourgeois-doctrinaire, or even Jacobin-revolutionary—not a stone shall remain standing, first in all Europe and then throughout the rest of the world. With the cry of peace for the workers, liberty for all the oppressed, and death to the rulers, exploiters and guardians of all kinds, we seek to destroy all states and all churches along with all their institutions and laws, religious, political, juridical, financial, police, university, economic and social, so that all these millions of poor human beings, deceived, enslaved, tormented and exploited, delivered from all their directors and benefactors, official and officious, collective and individual, may breathe at last with complete freedom.

3. Convinced that individual and social evil resides far less in individuals than in the organisation of things and in social position, we shall be humane as much from a sense of justice as from considerations of utility, and we shall destroy positions and things without pity in order to be able to spare human beings without any danger to the Revolution. We deny to society free will and the supposed right to punish. Justice itself, taken in the most humane and broadest sense, is but a negative and transitional idea, as it were. It poses social problems, but it does not think them over, merely indicating the only possible way to human liberation, namely, the humanisation of society through liberty in equality; the positive solution can only be given through the increasingly rational organisation of society. This solution, which is so desirable and is the ideal that we all have in common ... is the liberty, morality, intelligence and well-being of each through the solidarity of all—human fraternity.

Every human individual is the involuntary product of the natural and social environment in which he is born and develops, and which continues to exert an influence upon him. The three great causes of all human immorality are: inequality, political, economic and social; the ignorance which is its natural result; and their inevitable consequence—slavery.

Since the organisation of society is always and everywhere the sole cause of the crimes committed by men, it is hypocritical or obviously absurd on society’s part to punish criminals, when all punishment presumes culpability and the criminals are never culpable. The theory of culpability and punishment is a theological issue, that is to say, it is a combination of religious hypocrisy and the absurd.

The only right which can be allowed to society in its present state of transition is the natural right to assassinate the criminals, which it has itself produced, in the interests of its own protection, and not the right to judge and condemn them. This right will not even be one in the strictly accepted sense of the word; it will be rather a natural fact, distressing but unavoidable, a sign and product of the impotence and stupidity of the existing society; and the more society is able to avoid using it, the nearer it will be to its own actual liberation. All revolutionaries, all oppressed, all suffering victims of the existing organisation of society, whose hearts are naturally full of vengeance and hatred, would do well to remember that the kings, oppressors and exploiters of all kinds are as much to blame as the criminals who have emerged from the masses: they are malefactors, but they are not to blame, since they too are, like ordinary criminals, the involuntary products of the existing order of society. One should not be surprised if, at the first moment, the insurgent people kill a great many of them—this will be an inevitable calamity, perhaps, as futile as the damage caused by a tempest.

But this natural fact will be neither moral nor even useful. In this respect, history is full of lessons: the terrible guillotine of 1793, which could not be accused of idleness or tardiness, did not succeed in destroying the nobility in France. The aristocracy there was, if not completely destroyed, at least profoundly shaken, not by the guillotine, but by the confiscation and sale of its estates. And, in general, it may be said that political massacres have never killed parties; they have shown themselves above all impotent against the privileged classes, since power is rooted much less in men than in the positions which are given to the privileged by the organisation of things, that is to say, by the institution of the state and by its consequence and also by its natural basis, private property.

To carry out a radical revolution, one must therefore attack positions and things, one must destroy property and the state; then there will be no need to destroy men and to condemn oneself to the unfailing and inevitable reaction which has never failed and never will fail to produce the massacre of human beings in any society.

But in order to have the right to be humane to human beings without endangering the revolution, one must be ruthless with positions and things; it will be necessary to destroy everything, and, above all and before everything else, property and its inevitable corollary—the State. This is the whole secret of the revolution.

One should not be surprised at the Jacobins and the Blanquists who became socialists by necessity rather than by conviction, and for whom socialism is a means, not an end of the Revolution, since they want the dictatorship, that is to say, the centralisation of the state, and the state will lead them by a logical and inevitable necessity to the reconstitution of property—it is quite natural, we say, that, not wishing to carry out a radical revolution against things, they dream of a bloody revolution against men.—But this bloody revolution, founded on the construction of a powerfully centralised revolutionary state, would inevitably result, as we shall prove more fully later, in a military dictatorship under a new master. Consequently, the triumph of the Jacobins or the Blanquists would mean the death of the Revolution.

4. We are the natural enemies of those revolutionaries—future dictators, regulators and tutors of the revolution—who, even before the existing monarchic, aristocratic and bourgeois states have been destroyed, already dream of creating new revolutionary states as centralised as, and even more despotic than the existing states, and who have acquired so great a habit of order created from above and so great a horror of what seems to them like disorder, but is nothing other than the frank and natural expression of the people’s life, that even before a good and salutary disorder has been produced by the revolution, they already dream of putting an end to it and of muzzling it by the force of an authority which will have nothing of revolution but the name, but which will, in effect, be no more than a new reaction, since it will really be a new condemnation of the masses, governed by decrees, to obedience, stagnation and death, that is, to slavery and exploitation by a new quasi-revolutionary aristocracy.

5. We understand revolution to mean the unleashing of what today are called the evil passions and the destruction of what, in the same language, is called “public order”.

We do not fear anarchy, and we invoke it, convinced that from this anarchy, that is to say, from the complete manifestation of the people’s life unleashed, there must emerge liberty, equality, justice, a new order, and the very force of Revolution against Reaction. This new life—the people’s revolution—will doubtless not delay in organising itself, but will create its revolutionary organisation from bottom to top and from the circumference to the centre—in conformity with the principle of liberty, and not from top to bottom, nor from the centre to the circumference after the manner of all authority—for it matters little to us that this authority calls itself Church, Monarchy, constitutional State, bourgeois Republic, or even revolutionary dictatorship. We detest them and we reject them all alike as infallible sources of exploitation and despotism.

6. The revolution, as we understand it, must from the very first day destroy, radically and totally, the state and all the state’s institutions. The natural and necessary consequences of this destruction will be: a) the bankruptcy of the state; b) an end to the payment of private debts by the intervention of the state, leaving each debtor the right to pay if he wants; c) an end to the payment of all taxes and to the deduction of all contributions, direct or indirect; d) the dissolution of the army, the magistrature, the bureaucracy, the police and the clergy; e) the abolition of official justice, the withdrawal of everything which juridically called itself law, together with the exercise of those laws. Consequently, the abolition and auto-da-fé of all title-deeds, deeds of inheritance, purchase, gift, and all trials—in a word, of all juridical and civil red tape. Everywhere and in everything, revolutionary acts instead of the law created and guaranteed by the state; f) the confiscation of all productive capital and instruments of labour for the benefit of working men’s associations, which should collectively use them for production; g) the confiscation of all church and state property, and likewise of individually owned precious metals for the benefit of the Federative Alliance of all the working men’s associations, that is, the Alliance which will form the Commune.

In return for the confiscated goods, the Commune will give what is strictly necessary to all individuals thus deprived, who may later gain more by their own work if they are able and willing.— h) For the organisation of the Commune—a federation of permanently acting barricades and the functioning of a Council of the Revolutionary Commune by the delegation of one or two deputies from each barricade and one per street, or per block, these deputies being invested with imperative mandates and always responsible and revocable at any time. The Commune Council, thus organised, will be able to elect from its membership special executive committees for each branch of the revolutionary administration of the Commune, i) A declaration by the insurgent capital, once organised as a commune, that, having destroyed the authoritarian and tutelary state, which it was entitled to do since it had been the state’s slave like all the other localities, it renounces its right, or rather all claims, to direct or dictate to the provinces, k) An appeal to all provinces, communes, and associations, while allowing them all to follow the example set by the capital, first to reorganise themselves in a revolutionary way, and then to delegate to an agreed place of assembly their deputies, all likewise empowered with imperative mandates and responsible and revocable, to constitute a federation of associations, communes and provinces which have risen in the name of the same principles, and to organise a revolutionary force capable of triumphing over the reaction. The sending, not of official revolutionary commissars with shoulder sashes, but of revolutionary propagandists into all the provinces and communes—above all among the peasants, who can be turned into revolutionaries neither by principles nor by the decrees of some dictatorship, but only by revolutionary action itself, that is to say, by the consequences which will infallibly be produced in all the communes by the complete cessation of the official juridical life of the state. Abolition of the national state also in the sense that any foreign country, province, commune, association, or even isolated individual that rises in the name of the same principles, shall be received into the revolutionary federation without regard for existing state frontiers, although they belong to different political or national systems; and in the sense that any of one’s own provinces, communes, associations and individuals that side with the Reaction, shall be excluded from it. It is, then, by the very fact of the spreading and organisation of the revolution with a view to the mutual defence of the insurgent countries, that the universality of the revolution shall triumph, based on the abolition of frontiers and on the destruction of the states.

7. There can be no victorious political or national revolution henceforth unless the political revolution becomes a social revolution, and unless the national revolution, precisely because of its character, radically socialist and destructive of the state, becomes the universal revolution.

8. Since the revolution must be carried out everywhere by the people, and since the supreme direction of it must always remain with the people organised into a free federation of agricultural and industrial associations, the new and revolutionary state, organising itself from bottom to top by way of revolutionary delegation, and embracing all the countries that have risen in the name of the same principles without regard for the old frontiers and for differences in nationality, will have as its goal the administration of the public services and not the government of the peoples. It will constitute the new homeland, the Alliance of the Universal Revolution against the Alliance of all the reactionary forces.

9. This organisation excludes any idea of dictatorship and of tutelary ruling power. But for the very establishment of this revolutionary alliance and for the triumph of the revolution against the reaction, it is necessary that in the midst of popular anarchy which will constitute the very life and energy of the revolution, unity of revolutionary idea and action should find an organ. This organ must be the secret and world Association of the international brethren.

10. This association proceeds from the conviction that revolutions are never made either by individuals, or even by secret societies. They come about, as it were, of their own accord, produced by the force of things, by the course of events and facts. They are prepared over a long time deep in the instinctive consciousness of the popular masses, and then they flare up, often induced, apparently, by insignificant causes. All that a well-organised secret society can do is, first, to assist in the birth of the revolution by spreading among the masses ideas corresponding to their instincts, and to organise, not the army of the revolution—the army must always be the people—but a sort of revolutionary general staff composed of devoted, energetic, intelligent and above all sincere friends of the people, who are not ambitious or vain, and who are capable of serving as intermediaries between the revolutionary idea and the popular instincts.

11. The number of these individuals should not, therefore, be too large. For the international organisation in the whole of Europe, a hundred firmly and seriously united revolutionaries would be sufficient. Two or three hundred revolutionaries would be enough for the organisation of the biggest country.

2. PROGRAMME AND REGULATIONS OF THE PUBLIC ALLIANCE

The socialist minority of the League of Peace and Freedom having broken away from this league owing to the majority vote at the Berne Congress, which made a formal declaration opposing the fundamental principle of all the working men’s associations, namely, the economic and social equality of classes and individuals, has thereby adhered to the principles proclaimed by the Working Men’s Congresses held at Geneva, Lausanne and Brussels. Several members of this minority, who belong to different nations, have suggested to us that we organise a new International Alliance of Socialist Democracy wholly merged with the great International Working Men’s Association, but adopting as its special mission the study of political and philosophical questions on the same basis of this great principle of the universal and real equality of all human beings on earth.

Convinced, for our part, of the usefulness of such an enterprise, which will give the sincere socialist democrats of Europe and America a means of understanding one another and of affirming their ideas without any pressure from the false socialism which bourgeois democracy now finds it useful to flaunt, we have thought it our duty to take the joint initiative with these friends in forming this new organisation.

Consequently, we have set ourselves up as the central section of the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, and we are today publishing its Programme and Regulations.

PROGRAMME

OF THE INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE

OF SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY

1) The Alliance declares itself to be atheist; it strives for the abolition of cults, the substitution of science for faith and of human justice for divine justice.

2) It seeks, above all, the political, economic and social equalisation of classes and of individuals of both sexes, commencing with the abolition of the right of inheritance, so that in future the enjoyment of the benefits should be equal to the production of each, and so that, in conformity with the decision taken by the last Congress of workers at Brussels, the land and instruments of labour, like all other capital, by becoming the collective property of society as a whole, may not be used except by the workers, that is to say, by agricultural and industrial associations.

3) It requires all children of both sexes, from the day of their birth, to have equality of the means of development, that is to say, maintenance, education and training at all levels in science, industry and the arts, being convinced that this equality, at first purely economic and social, will eventually lead to the increasing natural equality of individuals by eliminating all the artificial inequalities which are historical products of social organisation as false as it is iniquitous.

4) As the enemy of all despotism, recognising no political form other than the republican, and rejecting outright all reactionary alliance, the Alliance also rejects all political action which does not have for its immediate and direct goal the triumph of the cause of the workers against Capital.

5) It recognises that all the political and authoritarian states now existing, as they are reduced more and more to the simple administrative functions of the public services in their respective countries, must disappear in the universal union of free Associations, agricultural and industrial alike.

6) Since the social question cannot find a definitive and practicable solution except on the basis of the international or universal solidarity of the workers of all countries, the Alliance rejects any policy founded on so-called patriotism and the rivalry of nations.

7) It wants the universal Association of all the local Associations through liberty.

REGULATIONS

1) The International Alliance of Socialist Democracy is constituted as a branch of the International Working Men’s Association, all of whose General Rules it accepts. 2) The founder-members of the Alliance provisionally organise a Central Bureau at Geneva.

3) The founder-members belonging to the same country constitute the National Bureau of that country.

4) The National Bureaux have the mission of establishing, in all localities, local groups of the Alliance of Socialist Democracy which, through the intermediary of their respective National Bureaux, will apply to the Central Bureau of the Alliance for admission to the International Working Men’s Association.

5) All the local groups will form their bureaux in accordance with the custom adopted by the local sections of the International Working Men’s Association.

6) All members of the Alliance undertake to pay a subscription of ten centimes per month, of which half shall be retained for its own needs by each national group, and the other half shall be remitted to the funds of the Central Bureau for its general needs. In countries where this sum is considered too high, the National Bureaux, in agreement with the Central Bureau, may reduce it.

7) During the annual Congress of Workers, the Delegation of the Alliance of Socialist Democracy, as a branch of the International Working Men’s Association, shall hold its public sessions in a separate place.

3. LETTER FROM BAKUNIN TO FRANCISCO MORA IN MADRID

(Written in French)

“April 5, 1872, Locarno,

“Dear Ally and Comrade,

“As our friends at Barcelona have invited me to write to you, I do so with all the more pleasure since I have learned that I also, like my friends, our allies of the Jura Federation, have become, in Spain as much as in other countries, the target for the calumnies of the London General Council. It is indeed a sad thing that in this time of terrible crisis, when the fate of the proletariat of all Europe is being decided for many decades to come, and when all the friends of the proletariat, of humanity and justice, should unite fraternally to make a front against the common enemy, the world of the privileged which has been organised into a state—it is very sad, I say, that men who have, moreover, rendered great services to the International in the past, should be impelled today by evil authoritarian passions, should lower themselves to falsification and the sowing of discord, instead of creating everywhere the free union which alone can create strength.

“To give you a fair idea of the line which we are taking, I have only one thing to tell you. Our programme is yours; it is the very one which you proclaimed at your Congress last year, and if you stay faithful to it, you are with us for the simple reason that we are with you. We detest the principle of dictatorship, governmentalism and authority, just as you detest them; we are convinced that all political power is an infallible source of depravity for those who govern, and a cause of servitude for those who are governed.—The state signifies domination, and human nature is so made that all domination becomes exploitation. As enemies of the state in all its manifestations anyway, we certainly do not wish to tolerate it within the International. We regard the London Conference and the resolutions which it passed as an ambitious intrigue and a coup d’état, and that is why we have protested, and shall continue protesting to the end. I am not touching on personal questions, alas! they will take up too much time at the next world Congress, if this Congress takes place, which I strongly doubt myself; for if things continue to proceed as they are doing, there will soon no longer be a single point on the continent of Europe where the delegates of the proletariat will be able to assemble in order to debate in freedom. All eyes are now fixed on Spain, and on the outcome of your Congress. What will come of it? This letter will reach you, if it reaches you at all, after this Congress. Will it find you at the height of revolution or at the height of reaction? All our friends in Italy, France and Switzerland are waiting for news from your country with unbearable anxiety.

“You doubtless know that the International and our dear Alliance have progressed enormously in Italy of late. The people, in the country as much as in the towns, are now in an entirely revolutionary situation, that is to say, they are economically desperate; the masses are beginning to organise themselves in a most serious manner and their interests are beginning to become ideas.—Up to now, what was lacking in Italy was not instincts, but organisation and an idea. Both are coming into being, so that Italy, after Spain and with Spain, is perhaps the most revolutionary country at this moment. Italy has what other countries lack: a youth which is passionate, energetic, completely at a loss, with no prospects, with no way out, and which, despite its bourgeois origins, is not morally and intellectually exhausted like the bourgeois youth of other countries. Today, it is throwing itself headlong into revolutionary socialism accepting our entire programme, the programme of the Alliance. Mazzini, our mighty antagonist of genius, is dead, the Mazzinist party is completely disorganised, and Garibaldi is letting himself be carried away more and more by that youth which bears his name, but is going, or rather running, infinitely further ahead of him. I have sent to our friends in Barcelona an Italian address; I shall soon send them others. It is good and it is necessary that the Alliancists in Spain should enter into direct relations with those in Italy. Are you receiving the Italian socialist newspapers? I recommend above all: the Eguaglianza of Girgenti, Sicily; the Campana of Naples; the Fascio Operaio of Bologna; II Gazzettino Rosa, and, above all, II Martello of Milan—unfortunately the latter has been banned and all the editors imprisoned.

“In Switzerland, I recommend to you two Alliancists: James Guillaume (Switzerland, Neuchâtel, 5, rue de la Place d’Armes) and Adhémar Schwitzguébel, engraver (member and corresponding secretary of the Committee of the Jura Federation), Switzerland, Jura Bernois, Sonvillier, Mr. Adhémar Schwitzguébel, engraver.” (Bakunin’s address follows.)

“Alliance and fraternity.

M. Bakunin

“Please convey my greetings to brother Morago, and ask him to send me his newspaper.

“Are you receiving the Bulletin de la Federation jurassienne?

“Please burn this letter, as it contains names.”

The Hague Congress has expelled Bakunin from the International, not only as a founder of the Alliance, but also for a personal deed. The authentic document in support of this deed is still in our hands, but political considerations oblige us to refrain from publishing it.

The End