Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, November 16, 1872

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 16 November 1872


First published abridged 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, and in full 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 FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE

IN HOBOKEN

London, 16 November 1872

Dear Sorge,

Your letter of the 25th crossed with mine of 2 November. Marx will have written to you since then.

I gave a copy of the Address[1] to Serraillier in French and first of all to MacDonnel in English for the Irish. I next copied one out myself for The International Herald and lastly sent one to the FEDERAL COUNCIL. The fact is that I was very uncertain whether the FEDERAL COUNCIL might not suppress it or, alternatively, that they might not print it word for word with various mistakes in the English and strong Germanisms, so as to expose it to ridicule. I have, of course, changed the latter since the Address was, as it stood, quite unprintable either in English or French. We have always had such things corrected by some educated NATIVE. You will have to do the same as in official documents it is often not possible to make even grammatical alterations, and it is always fatal. For Hales and the Jurassians, etc., any mistake of that sort is in any case a source of amusement.

Up to now the Belgians have not printed anything. You will have to send the Address to Australia yourselves; you will have had a visit from Harcourt in the meantime; I do not have any addresses in Australia.[2]

Jones and Le Moussu have been warned. I shall see Serraillier tomorrow and shall tell him to send you a report which, on account of Dereure, will have to dispense with both names and addresses—the latter he can send you privatim. More on Dereure below.

The stamps[3] cost about £1—Le Moussu did the design gratis. To print the Rules in English[4] cost around £12.

I have already told you of the formation of two new Italian sections.[5] The official letter now enclosed.

I am sending you today: 1 Emancipation and the manifesto of the Nueva Federation Madrilena[6]

1 Égalité 1 International Herald—report of the FEDERAL COUNCIL[7] 7 Résolutions du Congrès de la Haye. The following matters to report in addition: 1. Blanquists. They have issued a pamphlet: Internationale et révolution of which several copies per NEXT STEAMER. They announce their resignation from the International on the grounds that with the transfer of the General Council to New York it has committed suicide. They will found their own association and are already intriguing actively in France. It is therefore absolutely essential, firstly, that Dereure should not get hold of any addresses in France, and secondly, that he should say where he stands. Of course, this second point is only urgent if you consider it desirable. Serraillier will reply to this concoction in the Liberté and the Égalité. Ranvier has told Lafargue that the first draft was so full of personalities that he declared he would never put his name to it. He had never seen the second, published, version and his name appeared under it without his authorisation. He has quarrelled with them: they have had the audacity to put him on trial because he continues to belong to a refugee club called the Cercle d'Études Sociales[8] without permission, and he refused to submit to a schoolmasterly examination in the court set up by the purs (which is the name the Blanquists give themselves). As you can see, they are playing at Commune révolutionnaire in the same old way. You will be amused by their little pamphlet in which Vaillant in all seriousness presents all our economic and political ideas as Blanquist discoveries. They have already started to cause trouble[9]

in various places in France, apart from Paris where that tall man, Walter, is their agent. Although they are not a threat, they must not be given the means to stir up even more trouble, which is why Dereure must not have any addresses and why we must keep an eye on him.

2. Spain. Matters are going splendidly here. The FEDERAL COUNCIL has had a long thing printed and circulated on the quiet.[10] It contains

a) a report on the Congress by the 4 Spaniards which is full of lies,[11]

b) the resolutions of the anti-authoritarians of Saint-Imier,[12]

c) a motion from the Barcelona Federation to convoke a Spanish Congress on 25 December which would decide between the resolutions of The Hague and Saint-Imier,

d) a request to all local federations to give their views on this by 10 November.

The Nueva Federación Madrilena replied to this with the manifesto being sent to you today. It objects to the submission of the Hague resolutions to any International assembly except for the purposes of consideration and implementation. (We have already sent the materials necessary to counter the lies of the 4 Spaniards to Madrid.)

However, in order that the Spaniards should realise who actually rules them, the Jura Committee has already sent the Saint-Imier resolutions direct to all local federations in Spain with the request for their views on them; they have completely by-passed the Spanish FEDERAL COUNCIL.

In the meantime, things have been happening in Spain. The federations of Gracia (industrial suburb of Barcelona) with 500 members, of Toledo (200 members) and those of Badalona and Denia near Barcelona, have come out in our favour and against the Spanish Congress. In Valencia a large part of the local federation is on our side, as well as part of the one in Cadiz, which has already broken away from the old federation there. The sale of the Emancipación, which had been moribund and kept alive by money we had sent from here, is greatly on the increase once more (150 copies in Cadiz, Valencia and Gracia alone). In Gracia there was a large general assembly on 4 November.[13] The Barcelonese, with Alerini at their head, put their proposal forward, but as Mora (who is there) writes:

'Despite all his shouting and gesticulating with his arms and his stick, Alerini was unable to convince these atheists that the Society of Jesus[14] had been acting well. So it was resolved to approve all the Hague resolutions and to censure the attitude of the Spanish delegates.'[15]

Things are going well; if the worst comes to the worst we shall keep a very respectable minority in Spain which will part company with the rest and be of greater value than all the vague nonsense hitherto. However, it is quite possible that we shall smash the whole thing to pieces and throw the Alliance out. For all of this we have Mesa to thank, who has had to bear the brunt all on his own. Mora is feeble and at one point vacillated for a moment. Read the article 'Los medios de la Alianza', in Emancipación No. 71, to see how the Spanish FEDERAL COUNCIL attempted to win over Mora by INTIMIDATION.

3. London FEDERAL COUNCIL. Thanks to the slackness of the better people among the English, Hales and Mottershead have succeeded in gaining complete control of the FEDERAL COUNCIL. A mass of delegates from imaginary sections have momentarily provided Hales with a majority; he is secretary and treasurer all in one, and you can see from the report in today's International Herald[16] that he is doing as he pleases. The only thing we can do is to hold the better elements together until those crooks clash with each other, which will happen soon enough. GIVE THEM ROPE ENOUGH AND THEY WILL HANG THEMSELVES. You will now be receiving The International Herald regularly so that you can see for yourselves how Hales is giving himself airs and acting as if he were the GENERAL COUNCIL. As soon as an opportunity presents itself—a breach of the Rules or something of the sort—and, as an intimate and correspondent of the Jurassians, Hales will provoke one soon enough, our people will split off and form a federation of their own, perhaps one together with the Irish. Unfortunately MacDonnel is leaving for America, but even so we have a very good successor to him in De Morgan, one, moreover, who travels all over England as a LECTURER. He is completely in the picture about the situation.

In order to ensure here the desired publicity for your proclamations, etc., it would be good if the General Council could officially put me in charge of these matters for England. The FEDERAL COUNCIL undoubtedly suppresses as much as it can, and although Riley of The International Herald is an honest fellow and has left the FEDERAL COUNCIL in DISGUST, he is weak and somewhat dependent on the FEDERAL COUNCIL for the sale of his paper. So if I can show him a resolution to that effect he will be covered and will do everything.

I leave it to you to decide whether you wish to send me plenary powers for Italy.[17] In view of the struggle there, in which our people are in a tiny minority, swift intervention would be very desirable. I do indeed maintain my private correspondence with them and also write for the Plebe, but without plenary powers I cannot exert any influence on the sections, which, like the one in Turin, appear to be going to seed entirely and do not communicate at all, something which happens all too often in Italy.

Marx is on a visit to Longuet and his wife in Oxford for a few days[18] so as to go through a part of the French translation of Capital[19] with Longuet. He will probably not be back before Monday.[20]

In my opinion you should in any case delegate plenary powers for France to Serraillier.[21] This sort of correspondence cannot possibly be conducted from over there; only, you should require him to send you monthly reports. You will not find anyone better; Dupont is too negligent unless he is spurred on daily and we frequently do not see him here for a fortnight at a time.

As to the Jurassians, it is our view that the best way to proceed is simply to declare that they had disqualified themselves from membership of the International by the resolutions of their congress in Saint-Imier,[22] which contravene such-and-such articles of the Rules and Administrative Regulations, and then simply to notify the other federations of this fact. Incidentally, things are going badly for them. In Biel, where they no longer had a single member (see Scissions[23] ), a new section has been formed but it has affiliated itself to Geneva, and their model section in Moutier (see Scissions) has repudiated the resolutions of Saint-Imier. As you see, the Hague resolutions[24] are already bearing fruit everywhere.

As for Germany, it would be good if Marx were to have plenary powers—just in case of emergencies with the Schweitzerians.

All these are matters that you must consider. I am up to my eyes in work here. The fact that Mesa has started to translate the Manifesto has forced me to send him a revised version of the French translation from the Socialiste.[25] The version you brought with you in manuscript turned out to be very useful in this, as it is much better, although still based on Woodhull's English.[26] I am taking the opportunity this provides to put the French translation in order altogether. In addition I have articles to do for Volksstaat, Emancipación and Plebe; and as soon as Lafargue, who is now here, has found somewhere to live, we shall make a start on the Alliance business.[27] Lucain still has a lot of papers in Brussels and now writes that he will send them at the end of next week, because he wants to copy them![28]

What is that scamp Cuno up to?

Your

F. Engels

  1. ↑ See this volume, pp. 425-29.
  2. ↑ See this volume, p. 453.
  3. ↑ 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.
  4. ↑ K. Marx, General Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Working Men's Association.
  5. ↑ In his letter of 18 July 1870, Eugen Oswald, a German refugee, asked Marx to sign an Address on the Franco-Prussian War drawn up by a group of French and German democratic refugees. The Address was published as a leaflet on 31 July 1870; the editions that followed were signed by Marx, Engels, Liebknecht, Bebel and other members of the International. Marx and his associates agreed to sign it on conditions outlined by Marx in his letter to Oswald of 3 August 1870 (see this volume, p. 34).
    Oswald enclosed with his letter an excerpt from Louis Blanc's letter in which he called for the Address on the Franco-Prussian War to be signed by as many people as possible.
  6. ↑ The Bakuninist Spanish Federal Council issued a private circular which announced the convocation of a congress in Cordoba earlier than scheduled and arbitrarily changed the agenda, demanding that a choice be made between the resolutions of the Hague Congress and those of the anarchist congress in Saint-Imier. In this connection, on 1 November 1872, the New Madrid Federation issued an Address, 'La Nueva Federación madrilena á todas las federaciones, secciones é individuos de la Asociación Internacional en España', which was signed 'Victor Pages' and published in La Emancipación, No. 73, 9 November 1872. The authors of the Address proposed the election of a new Federal Council which would act in conformity with the International's Rules and the resolutions of its General Congresses.
    The Nueva Federación madrilena (New Madrid Federation) was founded on 8 July 1872 by the members of the Emancipación editorial board expelled from the Madrid Federation by its anarchist majority. An important part in the foundation and work of the Federation was performed by Paul Lafargue. On 15 August 1872 the General Council recognised it as an equal member of the International (see present edition, Vol. 23, p. 215). The New Madrid Federation resolutely opposed the anarchist influence in Spain and spread the ideas of scientific socialism.
  7. ↑ Presumably J. Hales' article 'Federal Council', The International Herald, No. 33, 16 November 1872.
  8. ↑ The Cercle d'Études Sociales (Circle for Social Studies) was set up in London by refugee Communards in late 1871-early 1872 with the active participation by the French-speaking section formed in London in October 1871. International members Gabriel Ranvier, Hippolyte Lissagaray and Adolphe Hubert contributed greatly to the work in the Cercle. On their suggestion, Marx was unanimously admitted to the Cercle on 3 February 1872 and took part in its work until the autumn of that year.
  9. ↑ See this volume, pp. 444-45.
  10. ↑ A reference to the private 'Circular á todas las federaciones locales' issued in 1872 in Valencia by the Bakuninist Spanish Federal Council. It called for an extraordinary congress of the Federation with a view to declaring its agreement with the decisions of the Bakuninist congress in Saint-Imier. The circular included the report of the four Spanish delegates to the Hague Congress, which had originally appeared in La Federación, No. 162, on 21 September 1872.
  11. ↑ 'El Congreso de la Haya', La Federación, No. 162, 21 September 1872.
  12. ↑ On 15-16 September an extraordinary congress of organisations comprising the Bakuninist Alliance was held in Saint-Imier, Switzerland. The congress decided not to recognise the resolutions of the Hague Congress and the powers of the General Council. It concluded the 'Pacte d'amitié de solidarité et de défense mutuelle' for the purpose of campaigning against the federations and sections of the International Working Men's Association which supported the decisions of the Fifth Congress at The Hague. The anarchist congress also adopted a special resolution rejecting political struggle on the part of the working class and denying the need to establish an independent proletarian political party. The congress issued an address to the sections of the International urging them to convene, six months later, an 'anti-authoritarian' congress.
  13. ↑ A general assembly of the Gràcia Federation was held on 4-6 November 1872. Having heard the report on the Hague Congress delivered by Charles Alerini, one of the leaders of the Alliance, the assembly censured the attitude of the Spanish delegates at the Congress, rejected the anarchists' proposal to support the resolutions of the Saint-Imier congress and approved by a majority vote the resolutions of the Hague Congress.
    The meeting of the Valencia Federation was held on 9 November 1872. It voted down the Alliancists' proposal to include the demand that the Saint-Imier resolutions be approved in the binding mandate given to the delegate to an extraordinary congress in Cordoba (see Note 627).
  14. ↑ i.e. the Alliance of Socialist Democracy
  15. ↑ Engels learned about the success in the struggle against the Alliance in Spain from José Mesa. Presumably Mesa had enclosed with his letter the information received from Francisco Mora, who was in Barcelona at the time.
  16. ↑ The International Herald, No. 33, 16 November 1872 featured a report, signed by John Hales, on the meeting of the British Federal Council held on 7 November.
  17. ↑ By the General Council decision of 5 January 1873, Engels was appointed temporary representative of the Council for Italy and received the appropriate powers and instructions.
  18. ↑ Marx stayed with Jenny and Charles Longuet in Oxford between 15 and 18 November 1872.
  19. ↑ K. Marx, Le Capital.
  20. ↑ 18 November
  21. ↑ By a decision of 22 December 1872, Auguste Serraillier, who in 1871 and 1872 was Corresponding Secretary of the London Council for France, was appointed temporary representative of the General Council for France, and received his mandate and instructions.
  22. ↑ In his article 'Notes on the War.—XII' Engels not only forecast the possibility of MacMahon's Chalons Army being encircled by the Prussian troops, but also pointed quite accurately to the place where it was to happen. Engels' prediction came true. On 1 and 2 September 1870, at Sedan, the Prussian troops defeated the French army under MacMahon and forced it to capitulate. Over 80,000 soldiers, officers and generals, Napoleon III among them, were taken prisoner. The Sedan catastrophe caused a revolution in Paris on 4 September 1870 which led to the collapse of the Second Empire and the proclamation of the republic in France. All power passed to the Provisional Government (known as the Government of National Defence) headed by the Orleanist Louis Jules Trochu.
  23. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, Fictitious Splits in the International.
  24. ↑ On 19 July 1872 at the meeting of the General Council Executive Committee (Sub-Committee; see Note 435), Engels was instructed to prepare the financial report for the Hague Congress covering the period since the London Conference in September 1871. The report was read out by Engels at the Hague Congress sitting of 7 September 1872, and unanimously approved.
    Marx and Engels arrived at The Hague to take part in the Congress on 1 September 1872. On 8 September they travelled to Amsterdam, where they took part in the meeting marking the closure of the Congress. Engels returned to London on 12 September, and Marx around 17 September 1872.
    The Fifth Congress of the International Working Men's Association was held on 2-7 September 1872 in The Hague and attended by 65 delegates from 15 national organisations. Its decision to include in the General Rules (as Article 7a) the major tenet on the conquest of political power by the proletariat, and its resolutions relating to Administrative Regulations signified a victory for Marxism. The Congress took stock of the struggle Marx, Engels and their followers had waged for years against petty-bourgeois sectarianism in the workers' movement, in whatever guise it appeared, most notably against Bakuninism; Mikhail Bakunin and James Guillaume, the anarchist leaders, were expelled from the International. The resolutions of the Hague Congress laid the groundwork for the future formation of independent political parties of the working class on a national level.
  25. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifeste du parti communiste.
  26. ↑ At Engels' request, Sorge brought with him to the Congress the handwritten text of a French translation of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which had been prepared in the summer of 1872 by a Frenchman residing in the USA. The translator had used the English edition of the Manifesto in Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly (see Note 440).
  27. ↑ Since the committee appointed by the Hague Congress to inquire into the secret activities of the Alliance did not manage to examine the bulk of the documents submitted to it (see Note 584), Marx had the idea back at the time of the Congress of writing an exposure of the Bakuninist organisation. The Hague Congress decided to publish the documents pertaining to the Alliance (see present edition, Vol. 23, pp. 249-50). The documents were passed on to the committee appointed to prepare the Congress minutes and resolutions for publication, which included Marx and Engels among its members. In April 1873 they started work on The Alliance of Socialist Democracy and the International Working Men's Association, as the Congress had resolved. The bulk of the work involved in the collection of additional material, its comparison and analysis was carried out by Engels and Paul Lafargue. The concluding part of the pamphlet was written by Marx (see this volume, p. 521). The pamphlet appeared in French in late August-early September 1873 (see present edition, Vol. 23, pp. 454-580). In the summer of 1874 it was published in German in Brunswick in Samuel Kokosky's translation entitled Ein Complot gegen die Internationale Arbeiter-Association.
  28. ↑ See this volume, p. 430.