Letter to Gennaro Bovio, April 16, 1872

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 16 April 1872


First published abridged in: N. Rosselli, Mazzini e Bakounine. 12 anni di movimento operaio in Italia, Turin, 1927 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVI, Moscow, 1935
Printed according to the original. Translated from the Italian
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


ENGELS TO GENNARO BOVIO

IN TRANI

London, 16 April 1872

To Citizen Gennaro Bovio, Trani4SS

Esteemed Citizen,

I have received, and am returning with thanks, the various documents which you were so kind as to send me through esteemed Citizen Enrico Bignami.

The General Council of the International, as an administrative committee with clearly defined functions, has not been able to become acquainted with these documents and discuss them officially. I did, however, consider it my duty to submit them to those of its members who understand Italian, and they have all read them with great pleasure.

We are happy to acknowledge that, at the same time as an international league of workers was being formed here in London, you, in far-off Apulia, had the same idea and bravely promoted it at the Naples Congress.[1] We are grateful to you for informing us of this: it is fresh proof that the alliance of workers of the civilised world was already recognised in 1864 as a historical necessity, even in countries with which we were unable to establish contacts at that time, not knowing whom to address.[2] And we sincerely regret that the Italian workers' societies, not having taken up your idea in 1864, have greatly delayed the development of the proletarian movement in Italy.

It gave us great pleasure to read your articles in the Liberia defending the Paris Commune against V. Hugo and others[3] ; we willingly believe that they were the first articles to be written with this purpose in Italian. We published here at the same time the manifesto of the General Council on The Civil War in France, of which I have taken the liberty of sending you, on 23 March, a copy in English and one in German, since I do not have the French translation and the Italian one (in the Eguaglianza of Girgenti[4] ) has not yet been completed. You will see from this pamphlet that our ideas coincide on this matter too, and that we have not failed in our duty either.

Greetings and brotherhood

Frederick Engels
Secretary for Italy to the General Council
of the International Working Men's Association

  1. ↑ A reference to the Eleventh Congress of Italian pro-Mazzini Workers' Associations held in Naples on 25-27 October 1864. At the congress, Gennaro Bovio, representative of the Workers' Association of Trani, suggested that international workers' congresses be regularly convened, and that common Rules be worked out for them.
  2. ↑ Crossed out after '...address' in the draft of the letter: 'No doubt, if the Italian workers' societies in 1864, had taken up your idea and thus called into being, at that time, an Italian working-class movement based on the social conditions of their country, fewer workers' societies in Italy today would be advocating sectarian doctrines which, moreover, are not Italian but French or Russian. I further believe that in the working-class movement true national ideas, i.e. ideas corresponding to the economic realities, both in industry and in agriculture, to the realities that are dominant in the country in question, are, at the same time, true international ideas. The emancipation of the Italian peasant will not occur in the same form as the emancipation of the English factory worker, but the better the one and the other realise what form corresponds to his conditions, the less will they disagree on matters of substance'.
  3. ↑ G. Bovio, 'Via smarrita!', La Liberia, No. 90, 10 June 1871, and 'Una difesa dopo la morte', La Liberia, Nos. 97-100; 5, 8, 12 and 15 July 1871.
  4. ↑ Modern name: Agrigento.