Letter to Friedrich Bolte, February 12, 1873

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 12 February 1873


First published in Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A. an F. A. Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO FRIEDRICH BOLTE[1]

IN NEW YORK

London, 12 February 1873

Dear Friend,

Up to now the first 8 instalments of the German edition of Capital have appeared.[2] Since the last part will come out in two or three weeks as well, I shall send the whole thing off at once (i.e. from instalment 5) to you and other friends in New York. As for an English edition, this is no doubt assured now, as a result of the French version.[3] Nevertheless, I look forward to it with some concern. The revision of the French translation is causing me more work than if I had done the whole translation myself. So if I am unable to find a completely competent English translator I would have to take the thing into my own hands, and the French edition has already prevented me—and, until I am through with it, will continue to prevent me—from working on the final version of the second volume.

Engels and I will, as far as our time permits, contribute to both the German and the Federal paper.[4]

The secessionists in England—Mottershead, Huber, Roach, Alonzo, Jung, Eccarius & Co.— have in recent weeks repeated the farce of the London UNIVERSAL FEDERALIST COUNCIL[5] in the form of a so-called Congress of the British Federation.[6] The gentlemen consisted only of themselves; two of them, Jung and Pape, had already been unseated by their sections, Middlesborough and Nottingham, and so did not even nominally represent anything. If you add all these HOLE-AND-CORNER SECTIONS together, which these people have invented, they will certainly not come to 50. With the exception of a small notice which Eccarius as a wage-slave of The Times managed to smuggle into that paper,[7] the congress passed unnoticed, but will be exploited by the secessionists on the Continent. Jung's speech at the congress surpasses everything in its stupidity and infamy. It is a gossipy tissue of lies, distortions and idiocy. The vain fellow seems to have suffered a softening of the brain. That is the way things are and one just has to get used to it; the movement wears people out and as soon as they feel themselves to be on the outside, they lapse into meanness and try and persuade themselves that it is someone else's fault that they have become scoundrels.

In my opinion the General Council in New York has made a great mistake by suspending the Jura Federation.[8] These people have already left the International by their declaration that the International's Congress and Rules do not exist for them; they have formed the centre of a conspiracy to set up a Counter- International; following their congress at Saint-Imier5 similar congresses have taken place in Cordoba,[9] Brussels[10] and London, and lastly the Alliancists in Italy will hold a similar congress.6

Everyone and every group has the right to withdraw from the International, and when that happens the General Council has only to record their departure officially; it is not in any way its function to suspend them. Suspension is provided for where groups (sections or federations) merely dispute the authority of the General Council, or infringe one or another of its Rules or Regulations. However, the Rules have no article concerning groups which reject the organisation in its entirety—for the simple reason that, according to the Rules, it is self-evident that such groups no longer belong to the International.

This is by no means a pure formality. The secessionists have resolved at their various congresses to convene a general secessionist congress to constitute their new organisation, which would be independent of the International. Such a congress is to take place in the spring or summer.[11]

At the same time these gentlemen would like to keep a door open in case of failure. This emerges from the bulky circular of the Spanish Alliancists.[12] If their congress is a failure, they reserve the right to attend the Geneva Congress,[13] a plan which the Italian Alliancist Gambuzzi was naive enough to reveal to me back during his stay in London.

So if the New York General Council does not alter its procedure, what will be the consequences?

The Council will follow up its suspension of the Jura by suspending also the secessionist federations in Spain, Italy, Belgium and England. Result: all the riff-raff will turn up again in Geneva and paralyse all serious work there, just as they did in The Hague, and they will once again compromise the whole work of the Congress for the greater good of the bourgeoisie. The great achievement of the Hague Congress[14] was to induce the rotten elements to exclude themselves, i.e. to leave. The procedure of the General Council now threatens to invalidate that achievement.

These people do no harm when they openly oppose the International, the latter only benefits by it; but as hostile elements within the International they spell the ruin of the movement in all the countries where they have managed to obtain a foothold.

The work they and their emissaries cause for us in Europe can scarcely be imagined in New York.

In order to strengthen the International in those countries where the struggle is chiefly being carried on, what is needed above all is vigorous action from the General Council.

Now that the mistake has been made with the Jura, it would perhaps be best simply to ignore the others entirely for the time being (unless our own federations demand the opposite), and then to bide our time until the general secessionist congress, when we can announce that all its CONSTITUENCIES have withdrawn from the International, that they have excluded themselves from it and from now on are to be treated as alien and even hostile associations. Eccarius very naively stated at the London hole-and-corner congress that they must make politics with the bourgeoisie. His soul has been longing to sell itself for some considerable time now.

The news of the great misfortune that has befallen Sorge[15] has affected us very deeply. My very best regards to him.

Salut fraternel

Karl Marx

  1. ↑ This is Marx's reply to Bolte's letter of 22 January 1873. Having received information from Friedrich Adolph Sorge about his disagreements with some members of the General Council, notably Bolte, regarding the divisive activities of anarchists and British reformists, Marx outlines here the stand to be taken by the Council. Under Marx's influence, Bolte supported Sorge when the General Council resolution of 30 May 1873 was being worked out. It declared all organisations and individuals refusing to recognise the resolu tions of the Hague Congress to have placed themselves outside the Interna tional.
    Part of this letter 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. ↑ In early February 1871, at Marx's request, Harney sent a written inquiry to the General Land Office in Washington (see The Harney Papers. Ed. by F. G. Black and R. M. Black, Van Gorcum and Co., Assen, 1969, pp. 267-69).
  3. ↑ The surviving manuscript copy of the letter does not bear the name of the addressee. However, its contents and Marx's correspondence on the subject indicate that it was addressed to the heads of the Lachâtre publishing house in Paris. On 13 February 1872 Marx received a reply from the manager Juste Vernouillet, who informed him about the despatch of copies of the agree ment on the publication of the French translation of Volume I of Capital. The agreement was signed on 15 February by Marx on one side, and Maurice Lachâtre and Juste Vernouillet on the other. It stipulated that the French edi tion was to be published in 44 instalments, and sold five instalments at a time.
    The French authorised edition of Volume I of Capital was published between 17 September 1872 and November 1875. The translation was done by Joseph Roy, who began in February 1872 and completed work in late 1873. The quality of the translation largely failed to satisfy Marx; besides, he was convinced that the original needed to be revised to adapt it to French readers.
  4. ↑ Bolte asked Marx and Engels to contribute to the Arbeiter-Zeitung newly established in New York, and to the bulletin of the US Federal Council, which was to appear in English. The latter was never published.
  5. ↑ In April 1872 the Universal Federalist Council was formed in London, comprising what was left of the French Section of 1871 (see Note 338), some of the Lassalleans expelled from the German Workers' Educational Society in London, and representatives of the bourgeois Universal Republican League and the Land and Labour League. The Council proclaimed itself a 'true' leading body of the International in a pamphlet called Conseil fédéraliste universel de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs et des Sociétés républicaines socialistes adhérentes. This prompted Marx to write the 'Declaration of the General Council Concerning the Universal Federalist Council'. In September 1872 the Universal Federalist Council convened a congress in London which claimed to be a congress of the International Working Men's Association. Its subsequent activities amounted to in-fighting between the various cliques which laid claim to leadership of the workers' movement.
  6. ↑ The congress of the secessionist part of the British Federation (see Note 652), was attended by Bennet, Dunn, Eccarius, Foster, Grout, Hales, Jung, Mac Ara, Pape, Roberts, Seaman and Weston.
  7. ↑ [J. G. Eccarius,] 'An English International Congress', The Times, No. 27598, 28 January 1873.
  8. ↑ A reference to the General Council resolution of 5 January 1873, which announced the suspension of the Jura Federation pending the next regular congress of the International, since this organisation had rejected the resolutions of the Hague Congress.
  9. ↑ The congress in Cordoba, attended only by Spanish anarchists (48 delegates), took place on 25 December 1872-2 January 1873. The congress rejected the resolutions of the Hague Congress and the General Rules of the International Working Men's Association, disbanded the Federal Council and replaced it with a federal commission with severely restricted powers. It also aligned itself with the resolutions of the international anarchist congress in Saint-Imier (see Note 599), which were hostile to the International.
    On the Address of the New Madrid Federation, see Note 612.
  10. ↑ On 25-26 December 1872 a regular congress of the Belgian Federation was held in Brussels, with the anarchists in the majority. The congress refused to recognise the resolutions of the Hague Congress or to maintain contacts with the General Council in New York, and voiced support for the resolutions of the anarchist congress in Saint-Imier (see Note 599).
  11. ↑ A congress of anarchist and reformist organisations within the International, which had refused to abide by the resolutions of the Hague Congress, was held in Geneva on 1-6 September 1873. Its organiser was the Bakuninist Geneva Section of Propaganda and Revolutionary Socialist Action (see Note 339). Having declared rejection of all authority as the basic principle of the international anarchist association, the congress abolished the General Council, revoked the right of congresses to pass any definite decisions on issues of principle, and removed from the General Rules Article 7a on the political action by the working class.
  12. ↑ A reference to the private 'Circular â todas las federaciones locales' issued in 1872 in Valencia by the Bakuninist Spanish Federal Council. It called for an extraordinary congress of the Federation with a view to declaring its agreement with the decisions of the Bakuninist congress in Saint-Imier. The circular included the report of the four Spanish delegates to the Hague Congress, which had originally appeared in La Federation, No. 162, on 21 September 1872.
  13. ↑ A reference to the next regular congress of the International scheduled for September 1873.
    The 6th Congress of the International Working Men's Association was held in Geneva between 8 and 13 September 1873. Of the 31 delegates present at the Congress, 28 were representatives of the International's Swiss branches or its émigré sections in Switzerland. When considering the General Rules, the majority headed by Johann Philipp Becker endorsed the decisions of the Hague Congress of 1872 on extending the functions of the General Council (against opposition from Henri Perret and a number of other Swiss delegates). The Congress stressed the need for the working class to engage in political struggle. New York was left as the General Council's headquarters until the next Congress scheduled for 1875. The Geneva Congress of 1873 was the last congress of the International Working Men's Association.
  14. ↑ On 19 July 1872 at the meeting of the General Council Executive Committee (Sub-Committee; see Note 435), Engels was instructed to prepare the financial report for the Hague Congress covering the period since the London Conference in September 1871. The report was read out by Engels at the Hague Congress sitting of 7 September 1872, and unanimously approved.
    Marx and Engels arrived at The Hague to take part in the Congress on 1 September 1872. On 8 September they travelled to Amsterdam, where they took part in the meeting marking the closure of the Congress. Engels returned to London on 12 September, and Marx around 17 September 1872.
    The Fifth Congress of the International Working Men's Association was held on 2-7 September 1872 in The Hague and attended by 65 delegates from 15 national organisations. Its decision to include in the General Rules (as Article 7a) the major tenet on the conquest of political power by the proletariat, and its resolutions relating to Administrative Regulations signified a victory for Marxism. The Congress took stock of the struggle Marx, Engels and their followers had waged for years against petty-bourgeois sectarianism in the workers' movement, in whatever guise it appeared, most notably against Bakuninism; Mikhail Bakunin and James Guillaume, the anarchist leaders, were expelled from the International. The resolutions of the Hague Congress laid the groundwork for the future formation of independent political parties of the working class on a national level.
  15. ↑ the death of his daughter