Declaration Sent by the General Council to the Editors of Italian Newspapers Concerning Mazzini's Articles about the International

Author(s) First International
Frederick Engels
Written 6 December 1871


First published in La Plebe, No. 144, December 12, 1871; Gazzettino Rosa, No. 345, December 12, 1871; La Roma del Popolo, No. 43, December 21, 1871
Printed according to La Roma del Popolo checked with Engels' rough manuscript
Translated from the Italian
Source : Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 23
Collection(s): Ireland and the Irish Question (Marx-Engels), La Plebe (newspaper)

This Declaration of the General Council, written by Engels on December 5, 1871 was sent to La Roma del Popolo with the covering letter of December 6 and, according to Engels' note in the rough manuscript, between December 5 and 7 also to a number of other Italian newspapers.

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

INTERNATIONAL WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION,

256, High Holborn, London.—W.C.

December 6, 1871

TO THE EDITOR OF LA ROMA DEL POPOLO

Dear Sir,

I count on you having the honesty to publish the enclosed declaration. If we are going to fight, let's fight honestly.

Yours most respectfully,

F. Engels,

General Council Secretary for Italy

INTERNATIONAL WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION

TO THE EDITORS OF LA ROMA DEL POPOLO

In number 38 of La Roma del Popolo Citizen Giuseppe Mazzini publishes the first of a series of articles entitled "Documents about the International".[1] Mazzini notifies the public:

"I ... have gathered from all the sources I was able to refer to all its resolutions, all the spoken and written declarations of its influential members."

And these are the documents he intends publishing. He begins by giving two samples.

I. "The abstention" (from political action) "went so far that some of the French founders [of the International] promised Louis Napoleon that they would renounce all political action provided he grant the workers I don't know what sum of material aid."

We defy Citizen Mazzini to prove this assertion which we regard as calumnious.

II. "In a speech at the Berne Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom in 1868, Bakunin said: 'I want the equalisation of individuals and classes: without this an idea of justice is impossible and peace will not be established. The worker must no longer be deceived with lengthy speeches. He must be told what he ought to want, if he doesn't know himself. I'm a collectivism not a communist, and if I demand the abolition of inheritance rights, I do so to arrive at social equality more quickly'."

Whether Citizen Bakunin pronounced these words or not is quite immaterial for us. What is important for the General Council of the International Working Men's Association to establish is:

1) that these words, as Mazzini himself asserts, were spoken at a congress not of the International but of the bourgeois League of Peace and Freedom;

2) that the International congress, which met at Brussels in September 1868, disavowed this same congress of the League of Peace and Freedom by a special vote[2] ;

3) that when Citizen Bakunin pronounced these words, he was not even a member of the International;

4) that the General Council has always opposed the repeated attempts to substitute for the broad programme of the International Working Men's Association (which has made membership open to Bakunin's followers) Bakunin's narrow and sectarian programme, the adoption of which would automatically entail the exclusion of the vast majority of members of the International;

5) that the International can therefore in no way accept responsibility for the acts and declarations of Citizen Bakunin. As for the other documents about the International, which Citizen Mazzini intends to publish shortly, the General Council hereby declares that it is only responsible for its official documents.

By order and in the name of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association,

Secretary for Italy,

Frederick Engels

  1. ↑ Published on November 16, 1871; the next two articles of the series appeared in La Roma del Popolo, Nos. 39 and 41, November 23 and December 7, 1871.— Ed.
  2. ↑ The Brussels Congress of the International (September 5-13, 1868) refused to accept the invitation of the League of Peace and Freedom to participate officially in its forthcoming congress in Berne. The resolution of the Brussels Congress recommended members of the International to attend it only in an individual capacity. The League of Peace and Freedom was a pacifist organisation set up in 1867 with the active participation of Victor Hugo, Giuseppe Garibaldi and other democrats. Voicing the anti-militarist sentiments of the masses, the League's leaders did not reveal the social sources of wars. In 1867-68 Bakunin took an active part in the work of the League; under his influence it tried to use the working-class movement and the International Working Men's Association for its own purposes. At the League's second congress which took place in Berne between September 21 and 25, 1868, Bakunin moved a resolution on the necessity for the economic and social "equalisation of classes". Having failed to win support at the congress, Bakunin and his followers withdrew from the League and that same year set up the Alliance of Socialist Democracy.