Letter to E. Glaser de Willebrord, August 19, 1872

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 19 August 1872


First published, in the language of the original (French), in: M. Nettlau, Michael Bakunin. Eine Biographie, Bd. III, London, 1898
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44

ENGELS TO E. GLASER DE WILLEBRORD[1]

IN BRUSSELS

[Excerpt from a letter]

[London,] 19 August 1872

As you will already know, victory is now ours. The Italians, self-styled Internationalists, have held a Conference at Rimini[2] at which the representatives of 21 sections resolved that: The Conference, etc., etc.

It would be advisable to publish this immediately, in the Internationale and the Liberté. Bakunin, whose style is detectable throughout the document, realising that the game was up, has beaten a retreat all along the line and, with his followers, is leaving the International. Bon voyage to Neuchâtel.

But what is even more absurd is that, of the 21 sections which claim the right to convene an International Congress, only one, that of Naples, actually belongs to the International. The remaining 20, in order to safeguard their autonomy, have repeatedly abstained from taking any of the steps prescribed by our General Regulations as conditions of admission. Their principle is 'L'Italia farà da sè'[3] ; they constitute an International outside the International. The three other sections which maintain relations with the General Council—Milan, Turin and Ferrara— did not send delegates to Rimini.

Thus, in addition to the Conseil fédéraliste universel*'[4] constituted by societies which do not belong to the International and, for that very reason, claim to control it, we now have an anti-authoritarian Congress convened by societies outside the International and claiming to make laws for it.

For the rest, this has happened just at the right moment to open the Spaniards' eyes; in that country we have succeeded in enticing the fox from his lair. We have forced the Alliancists themselves to publish the Rules of the 'eminently secret' Alliance.10 The present (Spanish) Federal Council, with 5 Alliancists out of 8 members, has been unmasked and publicly denounced as perfidious to the International. Everywhere the struggle has broken out between

Alliancists and Internationalists. The oldest TRADE UNION in the world, that of machine-spinners and weavers in Catalonia, 40,000 strong,[5] has come out in support of us and sent Mora, who is one of us, to the Congress[6] because, according to his mandate, he knows better than anyone else what the Alliance is like." The Rimini resolution will put paid to the Alliance in Spain.

The Danes are sending two delegates; the Germans 5 or 6 at least. Sorge and Dereure are on their way from America; the schismatics there want to send three.

Lafargue is coming with a mandate from the Portuguese. Another advantage is that the Congress will henceforth be free of public rumpuses. Everything will go off decorously in front of the bourgeois public.

As for the Neuchâtel Congress, it will turn out to be nothing more than a meeting of the Jura Federation, in company with a few Italian sections, and hence an utter fiasco.

At last all is going well, but we must not allow this to lull us to sleep. If the Internationalists do their duty, the Hague Congress will be a great success; it will establish the organisation on a sound basis and will once again enable the Association to develop internally in a peaceful manner while confronting its external enemies with renewed vigour.

  1. ↑ All that has survived of Engels' letter to Glaser de Willebrord is a long excerpt copied by Nikolai Zhukovsky from Glaser de Willebrord's letter to Désiré Brismée of 21 August 1872, in which he quoted the bulk of what Engels had written. The copy made by Zhukovsky was published by Nettlau in his lithographic biography of Bakunin (M. Nettlau, Michael Bakunin. Eine Bio graphie, Vol. Ill, Ch. 57, pp. 613-15) and, in an abridged form, by James Guillaume (J. Guillaume, L'Internationale. Documents et souvenirs (1864-1878), Vol. II, Société nouvelle de librairie et d'édition, Paris, 1907, pp. 318-19).
  2. ↑ The Rimini Conference (4-6 August 1872) was a conference of Italian anarchists which Bakunin helped prepare. A national Italian anarchist organisation was formed in Rimini which illegitimately assumed the name of the Italian Federation of the International. In a special resolution passed on 6 August the Conference declared that it was rupturing all solidarity with the General Council and urged the International's sections to send delegates to the separatist Bakuninist congress, scheduled for 2 September 1872 in Neuchâtel, rather than to the regular congress at The Hague. This divisive proposal was not backed by any of the sections of the International.
  3. ↑ 'Italy will cope on her own' (the device of the Italian independence fighters in 1848 49).
  4. ↑ The Landwehr—a second-line army reserve formed in Prussia during the struggle against Napoleonic rule. In the 1870s, it consisted of men under forty years of age who had seen active service and had been in the first-line reserve. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the Landwehr was used in military actions on a par with the regular troops.
  5. ↑ Mora did not attend the Hague Congress.
  6. ↑ On 11 June 1872, on Marx's suggestion, the General Council resolved to convene a regular Congress in Holland on 2 September 1872 and decided on the principal item on the agenda, the consolidation of the International's organisation (revision of the General Rules and Administrative Regulations). At its next meeting on 18 June the Council decided on The Hague as the venue for the Congress and appointed a special commission (Engels, Edouard Vaillant, Joseph MacDonnel) to prepare an official announcement of the forthcoming Congress. The announcement was written by Engels and despatched to The International Herald, which published it on 29 June 1872 (see present edition, Vol. 23, pp. 170-73).—325, 366, 372, 374, 376, 392, 396, 398, 401, 404, 407, 409, 411-13, 415, 417, 418, 422, 425, 426