The International and the Neuer

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London, May 2, 1873

No. 49 of the Neuer carries a mendacious article about the latest trials of the International in France, which will probably have earned its author an extra douceur from the reptile funds, so thickly does he lay on the lies. For the trial in Toulouse the Neuer refers to an article in the Brussels Internationale ; this article was itself borrowed from the Liberie and emanates from Mr. Jules Guesde, a French refugee who, since his arrival in Geneva, has been blowing the Bakunist trumpet fit to burst, along with the other panjandrums in exile there, and was one of the signatories of the famous circular of the Jura Federation at the Jura Congress at Sonvillier (November 1871), in which the secret Alliance of Mr. Bakunin declared war on the public International We shall see presently what part Mr. Guesde played in the French International. He calls Mr. Dentraygues, who at this trial had denounced his co-defendants as members of the International, the general authorised representative of Marx and wants to transfer the blame for this betrayal and the subsequent sentences on Marx, the General Council, and the “authoritarian organisation from above”.

Here are the facts.

On December 24, 1871, Mr. Dentraygues, a draughtsman at the railway office at Pézenas (Département Hérault), contacted the General Council to announce that a radical democratic committee representing seven trade unions, whose president he was, was seeking admission to the International. On January 4, the secretary for France wrote to Pézenas to Calas (now sentenced to one year), who was fully accredited by a reference from the affiliated Social-Democratic committee in Béziers (Hérault)—its members were also sentenced and were, moreover, known to be trustworthy by several members of the Commune present in London. On January 14, Calas gave Dentraygues a declaration of trustworthiness, saying that he had reached agreement with him: “we will play into each other’s hands”. In March, Dentraygues moved to Toulouse; thus, at the time of his arrest, he had been active there for a full nine months, and far from complaining about him, the Toulouse Internationals had always lived in harmony with him, and confirmed this on August 18, by selecting him unanimously in all four—large—sections as their delegate to the Hague Congress. The four mandates, signed only by the members of the committee and the group leaders, bear a total of 67 signatures. If, then, the General Council appointed this man as its authorised representative for Toulouse and area, it was merely expressing the wishes of the Toulouse members themselves.

Now for Mr. Guesde.

On August 18, 1872, the Montpellier section informed the General Council that Mr. Paul Brousse, a correspondent and friend of Mr. Guesde, was trying to bring about a split in the section; he was demanding that the members refuse to pay the agreed contributions to the travel expenses of the Toulouse delegate, in fact do nothing at all until the Hague Congress had decided. Mr. Brousse, it was said, had been expelled from the section for this; it requested the General Council to expel him from the International. The letter was signed by Calas and three others. The General Council knew that Mr. Brousse was engaged in intrigues on behalf of the secessionists of the Jura Federation, but considered it unnecessary to attribute any further importance to the young man—he was a medical student—and let him go. Mr. Guesde, then in Rome, wrote in early October to the Liberie branding the quite natural steps of the Montpellier section as “authoritarian”; but while he designated his friend Brousse by his initial only, he had the name “Calas in Montpellier” printed in full. The French police needed no further prompting. A letter despatched about this time from the secretary of the General Council to Calas was immediately intercepted at the post office; in it there was much talk of Dentraygues; Dentraygues was immediately arrested and, shortly afterwards, so was Calas.

Who, then, was the informer—Dentraygues or Guesde?

When Mr. Guesde further says that the despatch of missi dominici by the General Council, that the coming and going of delegates from outside, whose description is well known to the police, is the best way to betray the International in France, he is forgetting:

1. that the three authorised representatives of the General Council in France were not benefactors who had arrived from outside, but people resident at the places that had authorised them, who enjoyed the trust of the sections themselves;

2. that the only international “delegates from outside” who figured in Southern France last autumn and winter had not been sent by the General Council, but by the secessionists of the Jura Federation. These gentlemen were so loudmouthed in public cafés in Toulouse, etc., shortly before the arrests, that the attention of the police was thereby directed to our Association; and only the real Internationals were seized, as always and everywhere, while the anarchistic braggarts enjoy the special protection of the upper police echelons.

Although Mr. Dentraygues has made certain revelations for personal reasons and from weakness, there are sufficient grounds for proving he was not a police spy up to his conviction. In any event, the gentlemen of the Alliance, whose co-founder was the present Bonapartist agent Albert Richard of Lyons, have no cause whatsoever to throw stones at others, still less has the Neuer, whose political past and present constitute the worst blemish on the German labour movement.

As far as the Paris trial is concerned, it is now established that Heddeghem was a police spy. This man, appointed secretary by his section in Paris, gave as his reference the Communard and member of the General Council Ranvier, who gave him a splendid testimonial with regard to his reliability and activity; Heddeghem was admitted on its basis. In this case, as in the first, the General Council had thus observed all the precautions at its disposal.

What is new is the assertion that Bakunin was expelled at The Hague because he wished to “eliminate the reprehensible engagement in secret conspiracies”. The commission of the Hague Congress on the Alliance to which the rules of this Bakuninist secret conspiracy—not against the government but against the International—were submitted, came to a quite different result.

Just as new is the assertion that Marx has “experienced more than a dozen Communist trials of his followers”. History knows of only one Communist trial, that in Cologne in 1852; but the Neuer is not paid for telling the truth. In any event, we shall bear in mind its final warning:

“The manoeuvre of the police force, when they bring about a political trial, of. formally convicting their secret agents, too, but ensuring that they have a comfortable life in prison thereafter.”

We should give heed to this passage taken from the “Life” of Herr von Schweitzer.

“So may the workers always keep their eyes open”, if one day the gentlemen of the Neuer should happen to be “formally convicted”!