| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 14 January 1872 |
[Second Version]
[Draft]
London, 14[-15] January 1872
256 High Holborn
14 January 1872, to Terzaghi, Turin
My dear Terzaghi,
If I have not replied sooner to your letter of 4 December last year, it was because I wanted to give you a precise answer about the matter which interests you most of all, namely the money for the Proletario.
You know that the millions of the International do not exist except in the terrified imagination of the bourgeoisie and of the governments, which cannot understand how an association like ours has been able to win such a great position without having millions at its disposal. If they had only seen the accounts submitted at the last Conference!
We would have voted 150 frs for you in spite of our penury, but the Gazzettino Rosa arrived with the news, etc.[1] This changed everything. If you had simply decided to send people to the future Congress, fine. But[2] what you had in mind was a Congress called for in a circular full of lies and false accusations against the General Council! And if you had only waited for the General Council's reply to this circular! S85 The Council could not but see in your resolution the proof that you had taken the side of the accusers, and without having waited for the Council's defence,— and the authorisation to send you the money in question was withdrawn from me. In the meantime you have received the
Égalité with the answer of the Romance Committee, which represents ten times as many Swiss workers as the Jurassians. But the writers' malevolent intention is already apparent from the Jura circular.1[3] First they look for an argument with us using the pretext of the Conference, and now they attack us because we are carrying out the resolutions of the Basle Congress, resolutions which we are obliged to carry out. They do not want the authority of the General Council, not even if it were to be voluntarily consented to by all I would really like to know how without this authority (as they call it) the Tolains, the Durands and the Nechayevs could have been
dealt with according
to their deserts
and
how, with
that fine-sounding phrase about the autonomy of the sections, as it is explained in the circular, they expect to prevent the intrusion of Mordecaians and traitors. Certainly, no one disputes the autonomy of the sections, but one cannot have a federation unless some powers are ceded to the federal committees and, in the last instance, to the General Council.
But do you know who the authors and advocates of these authoritarian resolutions were? The delegates of the General Council? Not at all. These authoritarian measures were put forward by the Belgian delegates, and the Schwitzguébels, the Guillaumes, the Bakunins were their most ardent advocates That's the truth of the matter.
It seems to me that the phrases authority and centralisation are much abused. I know of nothing more authoritarian than a revolution, and when one imposes one's will on others with bombs and rifle bullets, as in every revolution,2[4] it seems to me one performs an authoritarian act. It was the lack of centralisation and authority that cost the life of the Paris Commune. After the victory make what you like of authority, etc., but for the struggle we need to gather all our forces into a single band and concentrate them on the same point of attack. And when people speak to me about authority and centralisation as if they were two things to be condemned in all possible circumstances, it seems to me that those who talk like this either do not know what a revolution is, or are revolutionaries in name only.
If you want to know what the authors of the circular have done in practice for the International, read their own official report on the state of the Jura Federation to the Congress (Révolution sociale, Geneva, 23 November 1871) and you will see to what a state of dissolution and impotence they have reduced a federation which was well established a year before. And these are people who want to reform the International![5]
Greetings and fraternity.
Yours,
F. Engels