Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, March 15, 1872

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 15 March 1872


First published, in the language of the original (English), 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 Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE[1]

IN HOBOKEN

[London,] 15 March 1872
33 Rathbone Place, W. C.
(new address of the General Council)[2]

Dear Citizen,

I enclose the Resolutions of the General Council (in English and French[3] ). The other Council[4] will receive them from Le Moussu.

Eccarius, at the end of the sitting of 12 March, told rhe privately that he would not send the Resolutions to New York and that, at next sitting, he would tender his resignation as Secretary for the United States. As this affair cannot be settled by the General Council before Tuesday next,[5] the Resolutions sent by me and Le Moussu, are not signed by a Secretary, the which, considering the form chosen, was not necessary. They will be printed in next week's Eastern Post.

During the discussion Eccarius spoke in a spirit most hostile to your Council. He spoke and voted against Resolution III, 2.[6] He was moreover offended because, in order to save time, I had not submitted the Resolutions to the subcommittee[7] of which he forms part, but laid them at once before the General Council. As the latter fully approved this proceeding, after my statement of the reasons which had induced me to act as I have done, Eccarius ought to have dropped his personal spleen.

For the private information of your Council I add that M. and Madame Huleck—he is an imbecile and she is une intrigante de bas état[8] —had for a moment slipped into the General Council at a time when most of us were absent, but that, soon after, this worthy couple was forced to withdraw consequent upon their intrigues with the soi-disant Branche Française[9] the which was excluded from the International and denounced by us, in the Marseillaise and the Réveil, on the eve of the plebiscite,[10] as une section policière[11] ."'[12]

Moreover, these two persons, after their arrival at New York, cooperated in the foundation of a Society hostile to the International and were in constant connection with les beaux restes de la branche française[13] at London. The same facts have been communicated by Le Moussu to the other Council.

Section 10 (French) has written an excellent letter to the General Council on the American split.[14]

Yours fraternally,

Karl Marx

  1. ↑ The meeting Marx is writing about was called by the Labour Representation League (see Note 406) and trade union leaders on 13 September 1870 in honour of the French Republic. The resolution moved by George Howell was limited to the expression of sympathies with the French people. To oppose this, Robert Applegarth, a General Council member, moved a resolution that urged the British Government to use all its influence to bring an end to the war between France and Germany and to protest against any dismemberment of France. The resolution also demanded that a peace treaty be concluded on conditions that ensured a lasting peace in Europe. After a prolonged and heated discussion Applegarth's resolution was adopted by a majority of 7 votes.
    By instructions for Belgium, Marx probably meant his letter to César De Paepe of 14 September 1870 (see this volume, pp. 79-81). Instructions for Switzerland and the United States have not been found.
  2. ↑ Marx added this on the letterhead of the General Council.
  3. ↑ K. Marx, 'Resolutions on the Split in the United States' Federation Passed by the General Council of the I.W.A. in Its Sittings of 5th and 12th March, 1872'.
  4. ↑ A reference to the split in the Central Committee of the International Working Men's Association for North America, which occurred in December 1871.
    After the London Conference of 1871 strife flared up within the Committee between the proletarian and the bourgeois-reformist elements. As a result of the split two committees were formed, the Provisional Federal Council (Committee No. I), which comprised representatives of the 14 sections adhering to the proletarian stand (Friedrich Adolph Sorge, Friedrich Boite, etc.), and the separatist council (Committee No. II), headed by Victoria Woodhull and other bourgeois reformists belonging to Section No. 12. At its meetings of 5 and 12 March the General Council voiced its support for the proletarian wing of the North American Federation; Section No. 12 was suspended from the International pending the next Congress. On 28 May 1872 the General Council declared the Provisional Federal Council the sole leading body of the North American sections. The congress of the North American Federation held in July 1872 elected the standing Federal Council which included all members of the provisional body (see Engels' 'The International in America' and Marx's 'American Split', present edition, Vol. 23, pp. 177-83, 636-43).
  5. ↑ 19 March
  6. ↑ During discussion of the split in the Central Committee of the International Working Men's Association for North America (see Note 422) at the General Council, Johann Georg Eccarius spoke out against Article 2 of Resolution III, specifically against the part reading: 'For these reasons the General Council recommends that in future there be admitted no new American section of which two-thirds at least do not consist of wage-labourers'.
  7. ↑ The Sub-Committee (Standing Committee), or Executive Committee, grew out of the commission set up at the time of the International's inauguration in 1864 to draw up its rules and programme. It comprised corresponding secretaries for various countries, the General Council Secretary, and its treasurer. The Standing Committee, which had not been envisaged in the Rules of the International Working Men's Association, functioned as a working executive body. In the summer of 1872 the General Council decided to entrust all organisational matters to the Sub-Committee (which in June 1872 was renamed the Executive Committee).
    As Corresponding Secretary of the General Council for Switzerland, Jung received a large number of letters dealing with the campaign waged by the Romance Federation against the divisive Bakuninist sections; the letters were referred to the Sub-Committee for consideration.
  8. ↑ 'an intrigante of the basest kind'
  9. ↑ so called French branch
  10. ↑ Comités de la défense (defence committees) were set up in a number of major French cities in the early stages of the Franco-Prussian War; their main function was to organise the supply of provisions for the army.
  11. ↑ 'a police section'
  12. ↑ This refers to the French Branch in London, founded in the autumn of 1865. Besides proletarian members (Eugène Dupont, Hermann Jung, Paul Lafargue and others), the Branch also included petty-bourgeois refugees (Victor Le Lubez and later Félix Pyat). In 1868, after the General Council had adopted a resolution proposed by Marx (7 July 1868) condemning Pyat's provocative calls for terrorist acts against Napoleon III (see present edition, Vol. 21, p. 7), a split occurred in the Branch, and its proletarian members resigned. But Pyat's group, having lost virtually all ties with the International, continued to call itself the French Branch in London. It also repeatedly gave support to anti-proletarian elements opposing Marx's line in the General Council. On 10 May 1870 the General Council officially dissociated itself from this group (see present edition, Vol. 21, p. 131).
  13. ↑ worthy remnants of the French section
  14. ↑ On 1 February 1872 New York Section No. 10 sent the General Council a copy of its letter to the separatist Federal Committee in which it censured attempts by bourgeois reformists to use the International to promote their own ends.