The Congress of Sonvillier and the International

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Engels wrote this article for Der Volksstaat, in reply to the circular to all sections of the International (see Note 32) adopted at the Sonvillier Congress and directed against the decisions of the London Conference. In his letters to Wilhelm Liebknecht of January 3 and 18, 1872, Engels wrote that he intended to have that article distributed (in translation and as copies of Der Volksstaat carrying it) in the countries which had become centres of Bakuninist propaganda, namely, Belgium, Italy and Spain.

This article was published in English for the first time in Marx, Engels, Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972.

It is hardly necessary to enlarge upon the present position of the International Working Men’s Association. On the one hand, owing to the tremendous events in Paris, it has become stronger and more widespread than ever before; on the other we find almost all the European governments united against it—Thiers and Gorchakov, Bismarck and Beust, Victor Emmanuel and the Pope, Spain and Belgium. A general drive against the International has been launched, all the powers of the old world, the courts-martial and civil courts, the police and the press, squires from the backwoods and bourgeois, vie with each other in persecuting it, and there is hardly a spot on the entire continent where every means is not used to outlaw this fear-inspiring great brotherhood of workers.

At this very moment of general and inevitable disorganisation caused by the forces of the old society, when unity and solidarity are more indispensable than ever, at this very moment a small number of the Internationals—whose number by their own admission is steadily diminishing—in some corner of Switzerland has chosen to throw an apple of discord in the shape of a public circular among the members of the International. These people— they call themselves the Federation of the Jura—are essentially the same who under the leadership of Bakunin have continuously undermined the unity in the French-speaking part of Switzerland for more than two years and who through their assiduous private correspondence with kindred notabilities in various countries have obstructed concerted action in the International. So long as these intrigues were confined to Switzerland or done on the quiet we did not want to give them wide publicity, but this circular compels us to speak.

Because this year the General Council has not convened a Congress but a Conference, a circular to all sections of the International has been adopted by the Federation of the Jura at its Congress at Sonvillier on November 12. Large numbers of the circular were printed and mailed in all directions requesting all sections to press for the immediate convocation of a Congress. Why a Conference had to take the place of a Congress is perfectly clear, at least to us in Germany and Austria. If we had been represented at a Congress our delegates on their return would have been immediately apprehended and placed into safe custody, and the delegates from Spain, Italy and France would have been in the same position. But a Conference which held no public debates but only committee meetings could very well take place, for the names of the delegates would not be published. It had the disadvantage that it could not decide fundamental issues or make any changes in the General Rules, that it had no legislative power at all and could pass merely administrative decisions designed to facilitate the putting into practice of the organisational measures laid down by the General Rules and Congress resolutions. But nothing more was required under the circumstances, it was merely a question of adopting measures to deal with the present emergency, and a Conference was sufficient for the purpose.

The attacks on the Conference and its decisions, however, were merely a pretext. In fact, the present circular only makes passing mention of them. It considers, on the contrary, that the evil is far more deep-rooted. It asserts that according to the General Rules and the original Congress resolutions the International is nothing but “a free federation of autonomous” (independent) “sections”, whose aim is the emancipation of the workers by the workers themselves

“without any directing authority, even if set up by voluntary agreement”.

The General Council therefore was nothing but “a simple statistical and correspondence bureau”. But this original basis was very soon distorted, first by conferring on the General Council the right to co-opt new members, and even more by the resolutions of the Basle Congress, which gave the General Council the right to suspend individual sections till the next Congress and to decide controversies provisionally until the Congress adopted a relevant resolution. This placed dangerous powers in the hands of the General Council and turned the free association of independent sections into a hierarchical and authoritarian organisation of “disciplined sections”, so that

“the sections are entirely under the control of the General Council, which can arbitrarily either refuse to admit them or suspend their work”.

To our German readers, who know only too well the value of an organisation that is able to defend itself, all this will seem very strange. And this is quite natural, for Mr. Bakunin’s theories, which appear here in their full splendour, have not yet penetrated into Germany. A workers’ association which has inscribed upon its banner the motto of struggle for the emancipation of the working class is to be headed, not by an executive committee, but merely by a statistical and correspondence bureau! For Bakunin and his companions, however, the struggle for the emancipation of the working class is a mere pretext; their real aim is quite different.

“The future society should be nothing but a universalisation of the organisation which the International will establish for itself. 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.”

We Germans have earned a bad name for our mysticism, but we have never gone the length of such mysticism. The International is to be the prototype of a future society in which there will be no executions à la Versailles, no courts-martial, no standing armies, no inspection of private correspondence, and no Brunswick criminal court! Just now, when we have to defend ourselves with all the means at our disposal, the proletariat is told to organise not in accordance with requirements of the struggle it is daily and hourly compelled to wage, but according to the vague notions of a future society entertained by some dreamers. Let us try to imagine what our own German organisation would look like according to this pattern. Instead of fighting the government and the bourgeoisie, it would meditate on whether each paragraph of our General Rules and each resolution passed by the Congress presented a true image of the future society. In place of our executive committee there would be a simple statistical and correspondence bureau; it would have to deal as best it knew with the independent sections, which are so independent that they can accept no steering authority, be it even one set up by their own free decision; for they would thus violate their primary duty—that of being a true model of the future society. Co-ordination of forces and joint action are no longer mentioned. If in each individual section the minority submits to the decision of the majority, it commits a crime against the principles of freedom and accepts a principle which leads to authority and dictatorship! If Stieber and all his associates, if the entire black cabinet, if all Prussian officers were ordered to join the Social-Democratic organisation in order to wreck it, the committee, or rather the statistical and correspondence bureau, must by no means keep them out, for this would amount to establishing a hierarchical and authoritarian organisation! And above all, there should be no disciplined sections! Indeed, no party discipline, no centralisation of forces at a particular point, no weapons of struggle! But what, then, would happen to the model of the future society? In short, where would this new organisation get us? To the cowardly, servile organisation of the early Christians, those slaves, who gratefully accepted every kick and whose grovelling did indeed after 300 years win them the victory of their religion—a method of revolution which the proletariat will surely not imitate! Like the early Christians, who took heaven as they imagined it as the model for their organisation, so we are to take Mr. Bakunin’s heaven of the future society as a model, and are to pray and hope instead of fighting. And the people who preach this nonsense pretend to be the only true revolutionaries!

As far as the International is concerned, all this is still a long way off. Until the Congress passes new decisions it is the duty of the General Council to carry out the Basle resolutions and it will do its duty. Just as it did not hesitate to expel the Tolains and Durands, so it will see to it that admission to the International will remain barred for the Stiebers & Co., even if Mr. Bakunin should consider this dictatorial.

But how did these reprehensible Basle resolutions come into being? Very simply. The Belgian delegates proposed them, and no one supported them more ardently than Bakunin and his friends, especially Schwitzguébel and Guillaume, who signed the circular in question! But then matters were of course quite different. These gentlemen then hoped to secure a majority and that the General Council would be dominated by them. At that time they wanted to make the General Council as strong as possible. And now—now it is quite a different matter. Now the grapes are sour, and the

Council is to be reduced to a simple statistical and correspondence bureau, so that Bakunin’s chaste future society should not have to blush.

These people, professional sectarians, who, with all their mystical early-Christian doctrines, form an insignificant minority in the International, have the effrontery to reproach the General Council and its members with wanting

“to make their particular programme, their personal tenets the predominant ones in the International; they regard their private ideas as the official theory which alone should be entided to full recognition in the Association”.

This is indeed bold language. Anyone who has been able to follow the internal history of the International knows that for nearly three years now these people have been mainly occupied in trying to force their sectarian doctrine on the Association as its general programme, and having failed in this they underhandedly seek to pass off Bakunin’s phrases as the general programme of the International. Nevertheless, the General Council protested only against this insinuation but has so far never challenged their right to belong to the International or freely to propagate their sectarian humbug as such. How the General Council will look upon their latest circular is yet to be seen.

These people have themselves brilliantly demonstrated what they have achieved by their new organisation. Wherever the International did not encounter the violent resistance of reactionary governments, it has made enormous advances since the Paris Commune. What do we see, on the other hand, in the Swiss Jura, where these gentlemen were free to run things their own way during the last eighteen months? Their own report to the Sonvillier Congress (printed in the Geneva journal La Révolution Sociale of November 23) says:

“These terrible events could not but exert a partly demoralising and partly beneficial influence on our sections... Then the gigantic struggle which the proletariat has to wage against the bourgeoisie will begin, and that makes people think ... some withdraw (s’en vont) and hide their cowardice, others rally closer than ever in support of the regenerating principle of the International.—This is at present the dominant fact of the internal history of the International in general and of our Federation in particular.” What is new here is the statement that this happened in the International in general, where just the opposite took place. It is true that this happened in the Jura Federation. According to these gentlemen themselves, the Moutier section has suffered least of all, but has achieved nothing:

“Though no new sections were set up, it is to be hoped that, etc.” ... and this section was after all “in a particularly favourable position because of the excellent temper of the population” ... “the Grange section has been reduced to a small nucleus of workers”.

Two sections in Biel never answered the letters of the Committee, and the same applies to the sections in Neuchâtel and one in Locle; the third section in Biel

“is for the time being dead” ... although “there is still some hope of the International in Biel reviving”.

The Saint-Blaise section is dead; that of Val de Ruz has vanished, no one knows how; after a prolonged agony the central section at Locle was dissolved, but has managed to reconstitute itself, evidently for the purpose of the Congress elections; that of La Chaux-deFonds is in a critical position; the watch-makers’ section in Courtelary is now transforming itself into a trades association and adopting the rules of the association of Swiss watch-makers; it thus adopts the rules of an organisation which is not part of the International; the central section at the same district has suspended its activities because its members have formed separate sections at Saint-Imier and Sonvillier (which has not prevented this central section from sending two delegates to the Congress, in addition to the delegates from Saint-Imier and Sonvillier); after an outstanding career the Catébat section had to dissolve itself as a result of intrigues by the local bourgeois, and the same happened to the Corgémont section; finally in Geneva one section is still in existence.

That is what in eighteen months the representatives of a free federation of independent sections headed by a statistical and correspondence bureau have done to a flourishing, though not widespread or numerous, Federation. And that in a country where they had complete freedom of action and at a time when everywhere else the International had made gigantic advances. And at the very moment when they themselves exhibit this picture of their miserable failure, when they utter this cry of helplessness and dissolution, they demand that we should divert the International from the course it has hitherto followed, a course which has made it what it is now, and lead it along the path which brought the Jura Federation from a comparatively flourishing state to complete dissolution.