ENGELS TO WILHELM LIEBKNECHT
IN HUBERTUSBURG[1]
London, 24 August 1872
Dear Liebknecht,
I regret that I have to decline your proposal for me to offer myself as a candidate, if only because I have forfeited my status as a Prussian subject, and hence my rights of citizenship in the German Empire, by having stayed abroad for ten years without permission.
We learned today that the Jurassians will be coming to The Hague[2] after all, but that they will withdraw after the first resolutions against the Alliance10 and will then hold their own congress in Neuchâtel. Bakunin seems to have been premature with his instructions to Italy; the Spaniards will have shown him that things cannot be dealt with in such a way and that they would have to go to The Hague, if only to protest. The situation is that the Spanish Federal Council has an Alliance-majority and has operated an electoral procedure which makes it probable that they will send 4 Alliance representatives.[3] In contrast, the union of the (40,000-strong) Catalan factory workers[4] will send Mora, a supporter of ours.[5] The Italians will take good care not to show up after their Rimini resolution.[6]
Sorge is here, with me, and sends his regards.
Your
F. E.
The Bakuninists are
unlikely
to provoke
a fight.
Their cowardice is really without limits, though they are always ready to speak out of turn. But they won't attack unless they are 8 against 1.
- ↑ On 15 June 1872 Wilhelm Liebknecht began to serve in the Hubertusburg fortress the prison sentence to which he had been condemned at the Leipzig trial (see Note 274). He remained in prison until 15 April 1874.
- ↑ 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
- ↑ In a private circular of 7 July 1872 the Spanish Federal Council, which was dominated by the Bakuninists, suggested that all sections elect a delegation to the Hague Congress from a single list, and that a binding mandate be drawn up. As a result the Spanish Federation sent four Bakuninists as its delegates to the Hague Congress (Tomas Morago Gonzalez, Nicola Marselau, Alonso Charles Alerini and Rafael Farga Pellicer).
- ↑ A reference to the Union de las très clases de vapor (Union of the Three Categories of Factory Workers), one of the first trade unions in Catalonia, which embraced weavers, spinners and other workers employed in the textile industry. The Union was a collective member of the International.
- ↑ Mora did not attend the Hague Congress.
- ↑ 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.