Letter to Octave van Suetendael, June 21, 1872

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 21 June 1872


First published in Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch 9, Berlin, 1986
Printed according to the original
Translated from the French
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO OCTAVE VAN SUETENDAEL

IN BRUSSELS

[London,] 21 June 1872

Dear Citizen,

Many thanks for your letter.[1] Everywhere the same thing is going on. Everywhere it is non-working men who hamper the advance of the International and who intrigue against the General Council precisely because it represents the general interest and stands in the way of their petty personal ambitions.

According to the General Regulations, we have the right to ask the Belgian Federal Council for a copy of its printed regulations, and for information regarding the financial position of the sections and the number of members. We shall make these requests in such a manner as not to arouse suspicion.

As for the Paris correspondent, I now have his name.[2]

According to the General Regulations, II, Art. 5[3] : 'The General Council has the right to admit or to refuse the affiliation of any new society or group, subject to appeal to the Congress. Nevertheless, where there exist Federal Councils or Committees, the General Council is bound to consult them before admitting or rejecting the affiliation of a new branch or society, without prejudice, however, to its right of provisional decision'.

Thus, the new section now forming in Brussels has only to write to the General Council (and it may use my address, the Belgian secretary being away) and state that it wishes to form 'an independent society', in direct relation with the General Council. It must explain (without holding anything back) the reasons why it wants to constitute itself independently of the Belgian Federal Council. Whereupon, the General Council must consult the Belgian Council, however, 'without prejudice to its right of decision'.

The Federation of Working Men's Societies of which you speak would be well-advised, when nominally constituting several sections (say 3 or 4), to request the Council to admit them all at the same time. Their very number would make it easier for the General Council to act. For the fact that several societies in Brussels desired to constitute themselves independently of the Belgian Federal Council would of itself provide serious presumptive evidence against the latter. Once admitted by the General Council, the said societies will have the right to send delegates to the next Congress—either a common delegate or one delegate per society. The next Congress will take place at The Hague,[4] on the first Monday of September 1872. I shall be sending an official communication to that effect to the Brussels Internationale in a few days' time.[5]

As for the Hins draft[6] (Hins and his wife are correspondents and agents of Bakunin), this has had a very bad reception in all the countries from which we have heard so far, France, Germany, England, etc.

In L'Egalité (organ of the Romance Federal Council), which I am sending you, you will find resolutions against the Hins draft.[7]

L'Emancipaciön (of Madrid), organ of the Spanish Federal Council, has published two articles against the Hins draft.[8]

The first article is in the issue of 8 June and is entitled 'The Belgian Draft of the General Rules'. It says, among other things:

'If the draft stood the slightest chance of being accepted, this would of itself suffice to disorganise the International... The Congresses, which take place only once a year, cannot serve as a true link uniting the various federations. The immediate effect of the suppression of the General Council would be to disrupt the unity of the Association and the strength deriving therefrom... Consistency would further demand the suppression of the federal and local Councils, etc.... The suppression of the General Council would spell death to the International.'

The Volksfreund ('Friend of the People'), the organ of the International sections of Brunswick, gave the Hins draft a thorough trouncing.[9] Among other things it says that, if the working men of other countries were to imitate those of Belgium, the International would be transformed from a society organised for struggle into an incoherent mass of pietistic[10] socialist conventicles. In its issue of 16 June it returns to the charge.[11]

It refers to the police Conference (consisting of Prussian, Austrian, Hungarian, etc., functionaries) which is to be held in Berlin in August and is to discuss measures to be taken by governments against the International. One of the first measures adumbrated by these gentlemen is to confine the proletarian movement within the national boundaries of each country. The

Volksfreund concludes its article by saying: Thus it is the despotic governments on the Continent which, in order to destroy the International, propose to break the ties which bind the various national proletarian movements to the centre in London.

'Let our friends, the Belgians, ponder this: If we are reduced to the national level, as proposed by Bismarck's agents in Berlin,'[12] we shall be killed off in all the Continental countries, one after the other, by the reactionary forces. If, on the other hand, we retain our centre in London and thus remain Europeans, we shall be invulnerable. Our General Council and headquarters in London is not accessible to the blows struck by reaction: it would succumb in one situation only: if government agents were able to stir up successful rebellions against the common centre of the Association among the ranks of continental Internationalists.'

Letters from the French sections express contempt for the Hins draft and say, for example, that according to this fine draft, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary—in a word, all those countries where the International is prevented by the governments from forming official federations, will be virtually excluded from the International 1) because it is intended to deprive them of their right to vote at Congresses, and 2) because, circumstances being what they are, the different sections in those countries would, without the General Council, lose all unified organisation and all reciprocal ties.

So, as you can see, the Hins draft will prove a fiasco. But there is one thing you must not forget! If the Federal Council sends deputies to the Hague Congress, insist that they be given precise written mandates signed by all the members of the Federal Council That is the only way to prevent the trickery to which the friends of the Alliance never hesitate to stoop in furtherance of their own particular little plans.

It goes without saying that you need fear no indiscretion, however slight, on my part.

Fraternal greetings,

Karl Marx

  1. ↑ Marx's letter is a reply to Suetendael's letter of 20 June 1872. He thanked Marx for having sent him the General Council's circular on Fictitious Splits in the International, inquired about Eugène Hins' draft, and wrote about the dissent within the International's Brussels section.
  2. ↑ Léon Adrien Massenet
  3. ↑ K. Marx, General Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Working Men's Association.
  4. ↑ This letter by Engels has not been found.
  5. ↑ See F. Engels, 'Announcement of the General Council on the Convocation and the Agenda of the Congress at The Hague', L'Internationale, No. 182, 7 July 1872.
  6. ↑ The congress of the Belgian Federation held in Brussels on 19-20 May 1872 considered the draft Rules which had been drawn up by the Belgian Federal Council on the instructions of the Federation's congress held on 24- 25 December 1871 (see Note 404). Under this draft, which was written by Eugène Hins, the powers of the General Council to all intents and purposes were to be annulled and the Council turned into a mere correspondence and statistical bureau. After heated debates the congress decided to submit the draft for discussion by the sections, and then for approval by the Federation's extraordinary congress scheduled for July 1872 (see Note 568).
  7. ↑ Marx is referring to Resolution IV, 'Contre la suppression du Conseil Général', adopted by the Fourth Congress of the International's Romance Federation, which was held in Vevey on 2-3 June 1872. It appeared in L'Égalité, No. 12, on 13 June 1872. The Congress unreservedly supported the resolutions of the 1871 London Conference and turned down the proposal of the Belgian Federal Council for a revision of the General Rules of the Association.
  8. ↑ La Emancipacion, Nos. 52 and 53, 8 and 15 June 1872, featured an article entitled 'El proyecto belga de Estatutos générales', which sharply criticised the draft Rules drawn up by the Belgian Federal Council.
  9. ↑ B. Becker, 'Der Kongreß der belgischen Internationale', Braunschweiger Volksfreund, No. 129, 5 June 1872.
  10. ↑ Pietists, adherents of a mystical Lutheran trend which originated in Germany in the 17th century and placed religious feeling above religious dogmas.
  11. ↑ 'Die anti sozialistische Konferenz in Berlin', Braunschweiger Volksfreund, No. 139, 16 June 1872.
  12. ↑ Italics by Marx.