The General Council to All the Members of the International Working Men's Association, August 1872

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In the summer of 1872, after the circular Fictitious Splits in the International had been published, Marx and Engels received from Paul Lafargue, José Mesa, Nikolai Utin and others a large number of documents proving the existence of the secret Bakuninist Alliance of Socialist Democracy within the International Working Men’s Association. The preparations for the Hague Congress made the exposure of the Alliance’s subversive activities all the more important. At a meeting on July 5, 1872, the Sub-Committee decided to request the General Council to propose the expulsion of Bakunin and other members of the Alliance at the coming congress of the International (see this volume, p. 176 and Note 137). On August 6, Engels submitted to the Council a draft address to all members of the Association, written on behalf of the Sub-Committee. A heated discussion ensued and by a majority vote Engels’ draft was adopted.

The document has survived in the form of Engels’ two manuscripts in French, one of them with insertions in Charles Longuet’s hand, and also in the form of Engels’ manuscript in English which is reproduced in this volume.

The document was published in English for the first time in The General Council of the First International. 1871-1872. Minutes, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968.

Citizens,

The General Council finds itself under the necessity of publicly denouncing to you the existence, within the International, of intrigues which, although in full work for several years past, have never been even suspected by the majority among you.

In our private circular dated 5th March 1872, on “the pretended divisions within the International”, we were compelled to call your attention to the manoeuvres of the so-called “Alliance of Socialist Democracy”, manoeuvres aiming at the creation of discord in our ranks, and at the handing over, in an underhand manner, of the supreme direction of our Association to a small clique directed by Michael Bakounine.

The Alliance of Socialist Democracy, you will recollect, published, at its very origin, a set of rules which, if we had sanctioned them, would have given it a double existence, within and without the International at the same time. It would have had its own sections, federations and congresses at the side of the sections, federations and congresses of the International, and yet it pretended to take part in the latter. Its aim was to supersede our General Rules by the special programme of M. Bakounine and to force upon our Association his personal dictatorship.

The General Council, by its circular of the 22 December 1868, repelled these pretentions. It admitted the Alliance of Socialist Democracy into the International on the express condition only, that it should cease to be an international body; that it should dissolve its organisation; that its sections should enter simply as local sections. These conditions were formally accepted by the Alliance. But of all its pretended sections, only the Central Section of Geneva entered into our Association. The others remained a mystery to the General Council, thus leaving it under the impression that they did not exist.

And now, three years later, we are put in possession of documents which prove irrefragably that this same Alliance of Socialist Democracy, in spite of its formal promise, has continued and does continue to exist as an international body within the International, and that in the shape of a secret society; that it is still directed by M. Bakounine; that its ends are still the same, and that all the attacks which for the last twelve months have been directed apparently against the London Conference and the General Council, but in reality against the whole of our organisation, have had their source in this Alliance. The same men who accuse the General Council of authoritativeness without ever having been able to specify one single authoritative act on its part, who talk at every opportunity of the autonomy of sections, of the free federation of groups; who charge the General Council with the intention of forcing upon the International its own official and orthodox doctrine and to transform our Association into a hierarchically constituted organisation—these very same men, in practice, constitute themselves as a secret society with a hierarchical organisation, and under a, not merely authoritative, but absolutely dictatorial leadership; they trample under their feet every vestige of autonomy of sections and federations; they aim at forcing upon the International, by means of this secret organisation, the personal and orthodox doctrine of M. Bakounine. While they demand that the International should be organised from below upwards, they themselves, as members of the Alliance, humbly submit to the word of command which is handed down to them from above.

Need we say that the very existence of such a secret society within the International is a flagrant breach of our General Rules? These Rules know only one kind of members of the International, with rights and duties equal for all; the Alliance separates them into two classes, the initiated and the profane, the latter destined to be led by the first, by means of an organisation whose very existence is unknown to them. The International demands of its adherents to acknowledge Truth, Justice and Morality as the basis of their conduct; the Alliance imposes upon its adepts, as their first duty, mendacity, dissimulation and imposture, by ordering them to deceive the profane Internationals as to the existence of the secret organisation and to the motives and ends of their own words and actions. The programme of the International is laid down in our Rules and known to all; that of the Alliance has never been avowed and is unknown up to this day.

The nucleus of the Alliance is in the federation of the Jura. From it the watchword is issued which is taken up and repeated immediately by the other sections and by the newspapers belonging to the secret organisation. In Italy, a certain number of societies are controlled by it. These societies call themselves International sections, but have never either demanded their admission, or paid any contributions, or fulfilled any of the other conditions prescribed by our Regulations. In Belgium, the Alliance has a few influential agents. In the South of France, it has several correspondents, among them pluralists, who couple their functions of correspondents to the Alliance with the office of clerk to the inspector of police. But the country where the Alliance is organised most effectively, and where it has the most extended ramifications is Spain. Having managed to slip itself quietly and from the commencement into the ranks of the Spanish Internationals, it has managed to control, most of the time, the successive Federal Councils and Congresses. The most devoted Internationals in Spain were induced into the belief that this secret organisation existed everywhere within our Association and that it was almost a duty to belong to it. This delusion was destroyed by the London Conference where the Spanish delegate, himself a member of the Alliance, could convince himself that the contrary was the fact, and by the lies and violent attacks which, immediately afterwards, Bakounine ordered his faithful flock to launch against the Conference and the General Council. After a prolonged struggle within the Alliance, those of its Spanish members who had more at heart the International than the Alliance, retired from the latter. Immediately they were assaulted by the most atrocious insults and calumnies on the part of those who remained faithful to the secret society. Twice they were expelled from the local federation of Madrid, in open violation of the existing regulations. When they proposed constituting themselves as the “New Federation of Madrid”, the Federal Council refused its authorisation and returned the contributions they had proffered. And here we must state that out of eight members of that Federal Council there are five (Vicente Rossell, Peregrin Montoro, Severino Albarracin, Francisco Tomas, and Franco Martinez) whom we know to be members of the Alliance; it is moreover likely that there are others besides these. Thus the sections and local federations of Spain, so proud of their autonomy, are led like a flock of sheep, without even suspecting it, by secret orders sent from Switzerland, which the Federal Council has to carry out without a murmur, under penalty of being outlawed by the Alliance.

The Spanish Federal Council, in order to ensure the election, as delegates for the Congress at The Hague, of members of the Alliance, has sent to the sections and local federations a private circular dated 7th July, in which it calls upon them for an extraordinary contribution with which to defray the expenses of the delegates, and moreover orders them, authoritatively, to vote for a certain number of delegates, to be elected by the whole of the Spanish Internationals; all voting papers to be sent to the Federal Council which would ascertain the result of the election. In this manner, the success of the candidates of the Alliance was placed beyond all doubt. Moreover, the Federal Council announced that it will draw up instructions’ by which the delegates elected shall be bound. As soon as we had cognisance of this plot to have the delegates of the Alliance sent to the Congress with the money of the International, and had received, besides, the proofs of the complicity of the Spanish Federal Council in the manoeuvres of the secret society, we have summoned it, on the 24th July:

1) To hand us in a list of all members of the Alliance in Spain, with the designation of such offices as they may hold in the International;

2) To institute an inquiry into the character and action of the Alliance in Spain, as well as into its organisation and its ramifications beyond the frontier;

3) To send us a copy of their private circular of July 7th;

4) To explain to us how they reconciliated with their duties towards the International, the presence, in the Federal Council, of at least three notorious members of the Alliance;

5) To send a categorical reply by return.

This reply could have been in our hands on the 1st August at latest. But only on the 5th August we received a letter dated Valencia, Aug. 1st (postmark illegible), in which a reply was deferred under the pretence that the members of the Council did not understand our letter which was written in French, and that time was required to translate it. That same Council, in its letter of June 15th, had requested us to send them our publications, etc., as much as possible in French, they (the members of the Council) being somewhat familiarised with that language! Thus the pretence is false; all that is wanted is to make us lose time while it is precious.

We are therefore under the necessity of denouncing to all the members of the Association, and above all to the Spanish Internationals, the Spanish Federal Council as traitors towards the International Working Men’s Association. Instead of faithfully fulfilling the mandate entrusted to them by the Spanish Internationals, they have made themselves the organ of a society not only foreign, but hostile to the International. Instead of obeying the General Rules and Regulations, and the resolutions of the General and Spanish Congresses, they obey to secret orders emanating from M. Bakounine. The very existence of a Federal Council composed, in its majority, of members of a secret society foreign to the International, is a flagrant violation of our General Rules.

These are, Citizens, the facts which we have to lay before you before the elections for the Congress take place. For the first time in the history of the working-class struggles, we stumble over a secret conspiracy plotted in the midst of that class, and intended to undermine, not the existing capitalist régime, but the very Association in which that régime finds its most energetic opponent. It is a conspiracy got up to hamper the proletarian movement. Thus, wherever we meet it, we find it preaching the emasculating doctrine of absolute abstention from political action; and while the plain profane Internationals are persecuted and imprisoned over nearly all Europe, the valiant members of the Alliance enjoy a quite exceptional immunity.

Citizens, it is for you to choose. What is at stake at this moment, is neither the autonomy of sections, nor the free federation of groups, nor the organisation from below upwards, nor any other formula equally pretentious and sonorous; the question today is this: Do you want your central organs composed of men who recognise no other mandate but yours, or do you want them composed of men elected by surprise, and who accept your mandate with the resolution to lead you, like a flock of sheep, as they may be directed by secret instructions emanating from a mysterious personage in Switzerland?

To unveil the existence of this secret society of dupers, is to crush its power. The men of the Alliance themselves are not foolish enough to expect that the great mass of the Internationals would knowingly submit to an organisation like theirs, its existence once made known. Yet there is complete incompatibility between the dupers and those who are intended for the dupes, between the Alliance and the International.

Moreover, it is time once and for all to put a stop to those internal quarrels provoked every day afresh within our Association, by the presence of this parasite body. These quarrels only serve to squander forces which ought to be employed in fighting the present middle-class régime. The Alliance, in so far as it paralyses the action of the International against the enemies of the working class, serves admirably the middle class and the governments.

For these reasons, the General Council will call upon the Congress of The Hague to expel from the International all and every member of the Alliance and to give the Council such powers as shall enable it effectually to prevent the recurrence of similar conspiracies.