Letter to Gustav Kwasniewski, September 29, 1871

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 29 September 1871


First published in Die Gesellschaft, No. 3, Berlin, 1933
Printed according to the handwritten copy
Published in English in full in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO GUSTAV KWASNIEWSKI[1]

IN BERLIN

Ramsgate, 29 September 1871 As from: 1 Maitland Park Road, Haverstock Hill, London

The Conference of the delegates of the International Working Men's Association, which met in London last week,[2] has resolved that in the future no membership cards will be distributed by the General Council. Instead the General Council will send out stamps (after the manner of postage stamps) which each member should stick either to his copy of the Rules, or to his membership card in cases where, as in Switzerland, for example, national membership cards are issued. I shall accordingly send you a certain number of these stamps as soon as they become available.

As to the Rules themselves, a new edition of them is being arranged for here (London) in English, French and German (the last is to be printed in Germany). In accordance with the resolutions of the Conference every member must be in possession of a copy of the Rules. For it is important to include in them additions and amendments necessitated by the various resolutions passed by Congress since 1866.[3]

At the Conference, Germany was not represented either by delegates or by reports, and no financial contributions have been received since September 1869. It is not possible for the purely platonic relationship of the German workers' party to the International to continue. The party cannot expect services to be performed by the one side without any services being performed by the other in return. This relationship compromises the German working class. Therefore, I would request the Berlin Section to enter into direct correspondence with me, and I shall put the same request to all other sections, as long as the leadership of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party continues to do nothing about the organisation of the International in Germany. The laws may prevent normal organisation, but they cannot prevent the existing organisation of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party from carry- ing out the same tasks in practice as are performed in every other country, tasks such as enrolling individual members, paying dues, sending in reports, etc.

As a member of the Control Commission of the Social- Democratic Workers' Party, it will perhaps be possible for you personally to work in this direction.

Yours in sincere friendship,

Karl Marx

  1. ↑ This letter is printed according to a handwritten copy now in the Berlin police archives.
    It was published in English for the first time in: Karl Marx, On the First International. Arranged and edited, with an introduction and new translations by Saul K. Padover. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1973.
  2. ↑ This refers to the London Conference of the International Working Men's Association held between 17 and 23 September 1871 (see Note 254).
  3. ↑ The London Conference adopted a decision to put out a new authentic edition of the International's Rules and Administrative Regulations in English, French and German (see present edition, Vol. 23, pp. 3-20). This edition appeared in English as a pamphlet published in London in November 1871. The French edition appeared in December 1871. The official German edition appeared in Der Volksstaat on 10 February 1872, and as a separate publication in Leipzig in 1872.