Letter to Carlo Terzaghi, January 29, 1872

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 29 January 1872


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXIX, Moscow, 1946
Printed according to the original
Translated from the Italian
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


ENGELS TO CARLO TERZAGHI

IN TURIN

[Draft] [London, 29 January 1872]

My dear Terzaghi,

I wrote to you on the 15th of this month[1] and I then received your letter dated the 15th inst.[2] I communicated the contents of your letter to the General Council, where the great activity of the Turin workers was recognised with pleasure.

So far the Workers' Federation of Turin has not approached the General Council. If it did, the Council, after listening to both parties, would have to deliberate whether this federation could be provisionally admitted or not. I cannot promise you in advance that it will under no circumstances be admitted. For one thing, I am not the Council; then there is the Council's position, as follows.

It is true that the Basle Congress conferred upon the General Council the power to refuse admission, until the next Congress, to any new section[3] ; but this power has never been put into practice except in cases of well-proven necessity, and only after hearing the defence of the section in question. How can we possibly commit the General Council in advance, before it has heard the other party? You can rest assured that in any case the Council will look after the interests of the International.

As for Mr Beghelli, we cannot vote for the public declaration you request. Beghelli does not belong to the International and he is outside the Council's jurisdiction, and even if this were not the case I do not think he is sufficiently important to be distinguished in this manner from other journalists hostile to the International.

But I must tell you: we did not expect requests of this sort from you. You have supported the calling of a special congress[4] whose sole aim is to accuse the General Council of authoritarianism, and to abolish the powers given to the General Council by the Basle Congress. And no sooner do you vote this support than you ask the General Council to perform acts ten times more authoritarian than any it has ever performed: you ask it to make use of these same powers which you have already condemned and refuse admission to a new section without even listening to what it has to say in its defence. What would your Jura friends say if we were to make ourselves guilty of such authoritarianism? You have certainly taken your decision on the basis of the Jura circular and you have, albeit indirectly, approved the lies and slanders it contains, without waiting for the reply of the General Council—you, a brand-new section, necessarily ignorant of the whole[5] matter. You had a right to do this, you are an autonomous section insofar as this autonomy is not limited by the laws of the International. But the General Council is responsible for its actions and cannot allow itself such liberty.

Perhaps you will now see for yourselves that such authoritarian powers were conferred upon the General Council not without reason, that they may have some use and that, instead of inaugurating your career as Internationalists by indirectly condemning a General Council quite unknown to you, and with decisions which only tend to sow dissension at a time when universal government persecutions should be pushing all true Internationalists into the closest union—that instead of all this you would have done better to suspend your judgment until you are better informed.

Thank you for the twenty franc contribution, which I have passed on to the treasurer; I am enclosing in return 200 stamps at 10c. each. These stamps, affixed to a page of the General Rules which every member must possess, constitute proof of membership of the International.[6]

To the Emancipation of the Proletarian Society

International Section

Turin

  1. ↑ See this volume, pp. 294-95.
  2. ↑ In a letter of 14 January 1872, Carlo Terzaghi informed Engels about the split in the Workers' Federation (Federazione operaia) and the founding of a society called the Emancipation of the Proletarian (see Note 408). He appealed to the General Council not to recognise the Workers' Federation as a section of the International Working Men's Association. He also asked the General Council officially to disavow the statements made by Giuseppe Beghelli, one of the leaders of the Workers' Federation.
  3. ↑ 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.
  4. ↑ The Congress of the Bakuninist Jura Federation held in Sonvillier on 12 November 1871 adopted the Sonvillier circular, 'Circulaire à toutes les fédérations de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs'. It was directed against the General Council and the 1871 London Conference, and countered the Conference decisions with anarchist phrases about the sections' political indifferentism and complete autonomy. The Bakuninists proposed that all the federations demand the immediate convocation of a congress to revise the General Rules and to condemn the General Council's actions.
    The International's sections in Germany, Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, the USA, and also the Section in Milan, came out against the circular. Engels gave the Bakuninists a vigorous rebuff in his article 'The Congress of Sonvillier and the International' (present edition, Vol. 23).
  5. ↑ Crossed out in the original: 'previous history of the International'.
  6. ↑ Resolution IV of the 1871 London Conference introduced penny stamps for the payment of membership dues. 'These stamps are to be affixed to a special sheet of the livret or to the Rules which every member is held to possess' (see present edition, Vol. 22, p. 424). Consequently, the General Council ceased to issue membership cards.