Letter to Paul Lafargue, December 30, 1871

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 30 December 1871


First published in: F. Engels, P. et L. Lafargue, Correspondance, t. I, Paris, 1956
Published in English for the first time in: Frederick Engels, Paul and Laura Lafargue, Correspondence, Vol. I: 1868-1886, Moscow, 1959
Published also in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE

IN MADRID

London, 30 December 1871

My dear Friend,

Yesterday evening, when I was on the point of writing a pretty tart letter to the Spanish Council regarding the translation and publication of the Bakuninists' manifesto,[1] a letter arrived from you which gave me a great deal of pleasure. Although I am sorry that circumstances should have necessitated your going to Madrid, it is most fortunate that you should be there at the moment, for the coyness and silence of the Spanish Council are really such as to invite a somewhat unpleasant interpretation. Though I wrote to Mora 24 days ago,[2] I have had no reply, or rather, for all reply, the publication of the hostile manifesto; if it were not for your letters, what could we make of this?

I am sending you herewith the resolutions of the 30 sections in Geneva in case they have not come your way. Likewise the Romance Committee's reply to the Bakuninists and I can only hope that the 'Emancipacion' will provide its readers also with a translation of that excellent piece.[3] In the same issue of L'Egalité you will find several other articles relating to this debate and to the meeting of the 30 sections. For the time being the Genevans' reply will suffice; needless to say, the General Council must at once take the matter in hand and will reply in a circular embracing all phases of the dispute from its inception[4] ; as you can imagine, it will be lengthy and will take us some time. Meanwhile, what the Spaniards must be made to realise is [the following]:

1) It is plainly apparent from the Sonvilliers circular what these gentry are after. The attack on the Conference[5] was no more than a pretext. What is now being attacked are the Basle resolutions[6]

which, for the Association, have the force of law and which have to be obeyed by the General Council. This is an act of open rebellion and it is fortunate that these people should have shown their hand. But

2) who were the authors of those Basle resolutions? The General Council in London? Certainly not. They were put forward by the Belgian delegates (amongst them Robin! the Bakuninist) and they were most warmly supported by whom?—Bakunin, Guillaume, Schwitzguébel, etc., the very men, that is, who are attacking them today as having, by their authoritarian character, demoralised the General Council. Not that this has prevented Guillaume and Schwitzguébel from signing the self-same circular. We have witnesses over here and, unless Sentinon and Farga Pellicer have been blinded by the spirit of sectarianism, they must surely remember this (if they were at the meeting, which I do not know). But then things were different. The Bakuninists believed that they were certain of a majority and that the General Council would be transferred to Geneva. It turned out otherwise, and resolutions which, had they been passed by a General Council of their choosing, would have been as revolutionary as might be, became all at once authoritarian and bourgeois!

3) The convening of the Conference was absolutely in order. The Jurassians, represented on the Council by Robin, who himself requested that the dispute be brought before that Conference, must have been notified of it by him since he was their regular correspondent. Jung, the secretary for Switzerland, could not continue to correspond officially with a committee which, flying in the face of a resolution passed by the General Council, continued to flaunt the title of Committee of the Romance Federation.[7] The said resolution of the General Council was taken by virtue of the power delegated to it by the Administrative Resolution of Basle No. VIII (new edition of the Rules, etc., Administrative Regulations[8] II, Art. 7). All the other sections were officially notified, and through the usual channels.

Our friends in Spain will now realise the way in which these gentry misuse the word authoritarian'. Whenever the Bakuninists take a dislike to something, they say: 'It's authoritarian and believe that by so doing they damn it for ever and aye. If, instead of being bourgeois, journalists and so forth, they were working men, or if they had only devoted some study to economic questions and modern industrial conditions, they would know that no communal action is possible without submission on the part of some to an external will, that is to say an authority. Whether it be the will of a majority of voters, of a managing committee or of one man alone, it is invariably a will imposed on dissidents; but without that single, controlling will, no co-operation is possible. Just try and get one of Barcelona's big factories to function without control, that is to say, without an authority! Or to run a railway without knowing for certain that every engineer, stoker, etc., is at his post exactly when he ought to be! I should very much like to know whether the good Bakunin would entrust his portly frame to a railway carriage if that railway were administered on the principle that no one need be at his post unless he chose to submit to the authority of the regulations, regulations far more authoritarian in any conceivable state of society than those of the Congress of Basle! All these grandiloquent ultra-radical and revolutionary catchphrases serve only to conceal an abysmal paucity of ideas and an abysmal ignorance of the conditions under which the daily life of society takes place. Just try abolishing 'all authority, even by consent', among sailors on board a ship!

You are right, we must find some way of achieving a wider continental circulation for the reports of the General Council's meetings. I am still searching for such a way. For some time I have been sending The Eastern Post to Lorenzo, he having assured me they had someone who spoke English. Now I am sending you the latest issue of that journal and enclosing cuttings from earlier issues (care of Lorenzo). You might be able to do something with them for the Emancipacion. I really do not have the time to translate all these things myself, being obliged to conduct a vast correspondence with Italy. But I shall see what can be done—if there was someone in Barcelona who spoke English, might I not send the paper there?

I have not seen Moor today, he is hard at work on his second German edition,[9] but I will give him your letter this evening. We are very well. Jenny[10] is keeping well and Moor passably so. I make him go for walks as often as possible since what he needs is fresh air. My wife[11] sends you her compliments and wishes you A HAPPY NEW YEAR. REMEMBER ME TO LAURA WHEN YOU WRITE. THE POST CLOSES.

Yours ever,

The General[12]

Para Lafargue si esta a Madrid
y si no para Mora y Lorenzo.[13]

  1. ↑ The resolutions of Thirty Sections in Geneva were adopted at the meeting of the Geneva Sections of the International on 2 December 1871. They rejected the Bakuninist Sonvillier circular and expressed solidarity with and support for the General Council's activities and the London Conference resolutions. The resolutions of the thirty sections were published in L'Égalité, Nos. 23 and 24, 7 and 24 December 1871. In addition, Engels sent to Lafargue the 'Réponse du Comité fédéral romand à la Circulaire des 16 signataires, membres du Congrès de Sonvilliers', published in L'Egalité, No. 24, 24 December 1871, which condemned the Bakuninists' splitting activities. All these documents were published by Lafargue in La Emancipacion, Nos. 29 and 30, 1 and 7 January 1872.
  2. ↑ F. Engels, 'To the Federal Council of the Spanish Region in Madrid'.
  3. ↑ In his letter to Marx of 26 July 1870, Sigfrid Meyer expressed the opinion that Friedrich Sorge was incompetent to carry out his duties as the Corresponding Secretary for the General Association of German Workers in the USA.
  4. ↑ From mid-January to early March 1872 Marx and Engels wrote 'Fictitious Splits in the International. Private Circular from the General Council of the International Working Men's Association' (see present edition, Vol. 23). Marx set forth its principal propositions at the meeting of the General Council on 5 March 1872.
    The circular was issued as a pamphlet in French at the end of May 1872; it was signed by all members of the General Council and sent to all federations of the International.
  5. ↑ the London Conference of 1871
  6. ↑ On 23 December 1871 the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 300, and on 28 December, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 302, printed a report on the 1871 London Conference, including the texts of its resolutions. At Marx's request Eleanor Marx informed Liebknecht on 29 December (see this volume, p. 571) that the report was a falsification. On 30 December Der Volksstaat, No. 104, printed a statement in its 'Politische Uebersicht' column pointing out that the above-mentioned resolutions were falsified.
    Engels referred to it as the 'Stieberian escapade' after Wilhelm. Stieber, the organiser of the trumped-up Communist trial in Cologne (1852). On the trial, see Note 138.
  7. ↑ K. Marx, 'General Council Resolution on the Federal Committee of Romance Switzerland'.
  8. ↑ K. Marx, General Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Working Men's Association.
  9. ↑ of Volume I of Capital; see this volume, p. 283.
  10. ↑ Marx's daughter
  11. ↑ Lydia Burns
  12. ↑ Engels' nickname
  13. ↑ For Lafargue if he is in Madrid and if not for Mora and Lorenzo (the postscript on the blank, fourth, page of the letter).