Letter to Cesare Bert, March 21, 1872

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 21 March 1872


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVI, Moscow, 1935
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


ENGELS TO CESARE BERT[1]

IN TURIN

[Draft]

London, 21 March 1872

Citizen Carlo Bert,

I have received your address from Citizen Et. Péchard, who was passing through Turin at the end of February, and also the information that you are now the secretary of our section Emancipation of the Proletarian, instead of C. Terzaghi, who was expelled for embezzlement, etc. It will therefore now be my pleasant duty to correspond with you.

I have just received a long letter from Terzaghi[2] saying that he resigned as secretary and member of the Emancipation of the Proletarian because this society is made up in part of government agents and Mazzinians, and that this society wanted to pass a vote of no confidence in him because he was preaching war on capital

Naturally, we here are much more inclined to believe what you and the other members of your Council told Péchard than what I hear from Terzaghi, who has always played all sorts of tricks on us. But in order to be able to act confidently and decisively and to fulfil our responsibility at the next Congress, we should like you to send us an official letter from your Council, setting out the charges against Terzaghi and letting us know the resolutions passed by your society concerning him. In no way can we have two rival, warring sections in the same town. Fortunately, the Administrative Regulations (Resolutions of the Basle Congress) give the General Council the right to admit or reject any new section.[3] You yourself see how necessary it is for our organisation to possess a right which Terzaghi's Jurassian friends wanted you to believe was authoritarian and unjustifiable.

Please reply as quickly as possible. A fraternal handshake.

Yours

  1. ↑ This letter was written on the basis of the information received from Vitale Regis. In the second half of February 1872, on the instructions of the General Council, Regis (under the pseudonym of Etienne Pechard) spent ten days in Milan and Turin, where, acting on Engels' instructions, he was to acquaint himself with the actual state of affairs in the International's sections.
    Regis described his trip in a letter to Engels of 1 March; he wrote about Carlo Terzaghi's expulsion from the Turin section of the International—the Emancipation of the Proletarian society — and his suspicions of Terzaghi's contacts with the police. This information prompted Engels to demand that Terzaghi explain his behaviour (see this volume, p. 352).
    The original is mistakenly addressed to Carlo Bert and not Cesare Bert. Engels wrote across the letter: 'London, 21 March 1872. To C. Bert, Turin.'
  2. ↑ See this volume, pp. 352 53.
  3. ↑ A reference to Article 5 of Section II of the Administrative Regulations published on the decision of the 1871 London Conference; this article corresponds to Administrative Resolution V passed by the 1869 Basle Congress (see Note 399).