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And the history of the International was a continual
struggle on the part of the General Council against the sects and amateur
experiments which attempted to assert themselves within the International
itself against the genuine movement of the working class. This struggle
was conducted at the Congresses, but far more in the private dealings
of the General Council with the individual sections.
In Paris, as the Proudhonists (Mutualists) were
co-founders of the Association, they naturally had the reins in their hands
there for the first years. Later, of course, collectivist, positivist,
etc., groups were formed in opposition to them.
In Germany--the Lassalle clique. I myself went on
corresponding for two years with the notorious Schweitzer and proved irrefutably
to him that Lassalle's organisation is nothing but a sectarian organisation
and as such hostile to the organisation of the genuine workers'
movement striven for by the International. He had his "reasons" for not
understanding this.
At the end of 1868 the Russian, Bakunin, entered
the International with the aim of forming inside it a second International
called the "Alliance of Social-Democracy," with himself as leader.
He--a man devoid of theoretical knowledge--put forward the pretension that
this separate body was to represent the scientific propaganda of
the International, which was to be made the special function of this second
International within the International.
His programme was a superficially scraped together
hash of Right and Left--EQUALITY Of CLASSES (!), abolition of the right
of inheritance as the starting point of the social movement (St. Simonistic
nonsense), atheism as a dogma to be dictated to the members, etc.,
and as the main dogma (Proudhonist), abstention from the political
movement.
This infant's spelling-book found favour (and still
has a certain hold) in Italy and Spain, where the real conditions of the
workers' movement are as yet little developed, and among a few vain, ambitious
and empty doctrinaires in French Switzerland and Belgium.
For Mr. Bakunin the theory (the assembled rubbish
he
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has scraped together from Proudhon, St. Simon, etc.) is a secondary
affair--merely a means to his personal self-assertion. If he is a nonentity
as a theoretician he is in his element as an intriguer.
For years the General Council had to fight against
this conspiracy (which was supported up to a certain point by the French
Proudhonists, especially in the south of France). At last, by means
of Conference resolutions I (2) and (3), IX, XVI, and XVII, it delivered
its long prepared blow.
Obviously the General Council does not support in
America what it combats in Europe. Resolutions I (2) and (3) and IX [Resolutions
I (2) nd (3) of the London Conference forbade all sectarian names for sections,
branches, etc., and laid down that they should be exclusively designated
as branches or sections of the International Workingmen’s Association with
the addition of the name of their locality; Resolution IX stressed the
necessity of the political activity of the working class and declared that
their economic movement cannot be separate from their political activity.
Resolution XVI declared the questions of the Bakuninist Alliance of Socialist-Democracy
disposed of since its Secretary, Joukovsky, had declared the Alliance dissolved;
Resolution XVIII permitted the Jura section in Switzerland to adopt the
name of Jurassian Federation and censured its organ, Progress.]
now give the New York committee legal weapons with which to put an end
to all sectarian formations and amateur groups and if necessary to expel
them.
The New York Committee will do well to express its
full agreement with the decisions of the Conference in an official communication
to the General Council.
Bakunin, personally threatened in addition by Resolution
XIV (publication in Égalité of the Netchaev trial)
which will bring to light his infamous doings in Russia, is making every
possible effort to get a protest started against the Conference among the
remnants of his followers.
For this purpose he has got into contact with the
demoralised section of the French political refugees in Geneva and London
(a numerically weak section, anyway). The slogan given out is that the
Geneva Council is dominated by Pan-Germanism (especially Bismarckism).
This refers to the unpardonable fact that I
am by birth German and do actually exercise a decisive intellectual influence
on the German Council. (N.B. The German element on the Council is
two-thirds weaker numerically than either the English or
the French. The crime therefore consists in the fact that the English
and French elements are
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dominated by the German element where theory is concerned (!)
and find this domination, i.e., German science, very useful and indeed
indispensable.)
In Geneva, under the patronage of the bourgeois
Madame Andrée Léo (who at the Lausanne Congress was shameless
enough to denounce Ferré to his executioners in Versailles), they
have published a paper, La Révolution Sociale, which conducts
arguments against us in almost literally the same words as the Journal
de Genève, the most reactionary paper in Europe.
In London they attempted to establish a French section,
of whose activities you will find an example in No. 42 of Qui Vive?
which I enclose. (Also the number which contains the letter from our French
Secretary, Seraillier). This section, consisting of twenty people (including
a lot of spies), has not been recognised by the General Council, but another
much more numerous section has been.
Actually, despite the intrigues of this bunch of
scoundrels, we are carrying on great propaganda in France--and in Russia,
where they know what value to place on Bakunin and where my book on capital
is just being published in Russian....
N.B. as to political movement: The political
movement of the working class has as its object, of course, the conquest
of political power for the working class, and for this it is naturally
necessary that a previous organisation of the working class, itself arising
from their economic struggles, should have been developed up to a certain
point.
On the other hand, however, every movement in which
the working class comes out as a class against the ruling classes
and attempts to force them by pressure from without is a political movement.
For instance, the attempt in a particular factory or even a particular
industry to force a shorter working day out of the capitalists by strikes,
etc., is a purely economic movement. On the other hand the movement to
force an eight-hour day, etc., law is a political movement. And
in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there
grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement
of the class, with the object of achieving
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its interests in a general form, in a form possessing a general social
force of compulsion. If these movements presuppose a certain degree of
previous organisation, they are themselves equally a means of the development
of this organisation.
Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced
in its organisation to undertake a decisive campaign against the collective
power, i.e., the political power of the ruling classes, it must
at any rate be trained for this by continual agitation against and a hostile
attitude towards the policy of the ruling classes. Otherwise it will remain
a plaything in their hands, as the September revolution in France showed,
and as is also proved up to a certain point by the game Messrs. Gladstone
& Co. are bringing off in England even up to the present time.