FICTITIOUS SPLITS IN THE INTERNATIONAL 
 
 
                   written by Marx and Engels between  
                        January and March 5, 1872 
  
          adopted by the General Council as a private circular 
 
             published in Geneva 1872 as a French pamphlet  
         called _Les Pretendues Scissions dans l'Internationale_ 
 
       this etext is derived from a Progress Publisher translation 
 
 
Until now, the General Council has completely refrained from any 
interference in the International's internal squabbles and has never 
replied publicly to the overt attacks launched against it during more 
than two years by some members of the Associations.  
 
But if the persistent efforts of certain meddlers to deliberately 
maintain confusion between the International and a society [the 
International Alliance of Socialist Democracy] which has been hostile to 
it since its inception allowed the General Council to maintain this 
reserve, the support which European reaction finds in the scandals 
provoked by that society at a time when the International is undergoing 
the most serious trial since its foundation obliges it to present a 
historical review of all these intrigues.  
 
 
                                    I 
 
After the fall of the Paris Commune, the General Council's first act was 
to publish its Address on the Civil War in France, in which it came out 
in support of all the Commune's acts which, at the moment, served the 
bourgeoisie, the press, and all the governments of Europe as an excuse 
to heap the most vile slander on the vanquished Parisians.  Within the 
working class itself, some still failed to realize that their cause was 
lost.  The Council came to understand the fact, among other things, by 
the resignation of two of its members, Citizens Odger and Lucraft, who 
repudiated all support of the Address.  It may be said that the unity of 
views among the working class regarding the Paris events dates from the 
publication of the Address in all the civilized countries.  
 
On the other hand, the International found a very powerful means of 
propaganda in the bourgeois press and particularly in the leading 
English newspapers, which the Address forced to engage in a polemic kept 
going by the General Council's replies.  
 
The arrival in London of numerous refugees from the Commune made it 
necessary for the General Council to constitute itself as a relief 
committee and function as such for more than eight months, besides 
carrying on its regular duties.  It goes without saying that the 
vanquished and exiles from the Commune had nothing to hope for from the 
bourgeoisie.  As for the working class, the appeals for aid came at a 
difficult moment.  Switzerland and Belgium had already received their 
contingent of refugees whom they had either to support or send on to 
London.  The funds collected in Germany, Austria, and Spain were sent to 
Switzerland.  In England, the big fight for the nine-hour working day, 
the decisive battle of which was fought at Newcastle, had exhausted both 
the workers' individual contributions and the funds set up by the trade 
unions, which could be used, incidentally, according to the rules, only 
for labor conflicts.  Meanwhile, by working diligently and sending out 
letters, the Council managed to accumulate, bit by bit, the money which 
it distributed weekly.  The American workers responded more generously 
to its appeal.  It is unfortunate that the Council could not avail 
itself of the millions which the terrified bourgeoisie believed the 
International to have amassed in its safes! 
 
After May 1871, some of the Commune's refugees were asked to join the 
Council, in which, as a result of the war, the French side was no longer 
represented.  Among these new members were some old Internationalists 
and a minority composed of men known for their revolutionary energy 
whose election was an act of homage to the Paris Commune.  
 
Along with these preoccupations, the Council had to prepare for the 
Conference of Delegates that it had just called.  
 
The violent measures taken by the Bonapartist government against the 
International had prevented the holding of the Congress at Paris, which 
had been provided for by a resolution of the Basel Congress.  Using the 
right conferred upon it by Article 4 of the Rules, the General Council, 
in its circular of July 12, 1870, convened the Congress at Mainz.  In 
letters addressed at the same time to the various federations, it 
proposed that the General Council should transfer its seat from England 
to another country and asked that delegates be provided with definite 
mandates to that effect.  The federations unanimously insisted that it 
should remain in London.  The Franco-Prussian War, which began a few 
days latter, made it necessary to abandon any plans for convening the 
Congress.  It was then that the federations which we consulted 
authorized us to fix the date of the next Congress as may be dictated by 
the political situation.  
 
As soon as the political situation permitted, the General Council called 
a private Conference, acting on the precedents of the 1865 Conference 
and the private administrative meetings of each Congress.  A public 
Congress was impossible and could only have resulted i the continental 
delegates being denounced at a moment when European reaction was 
celebrating its orgies; when Jules Favre was demanding from all 
governments, even the British, the extradition of refugees as common 
criminals; when Dufaure was proposing to the Rural Assembly a law 
banning the International, a hypocritical counterfeit of which was later 
presented by Malou to the Belgians; when in Switzerland a Commune 
refugee was put under preventive arrest while awaiting the federal 
government's decision on the extradition order; when hunting down 
members of the International was the ostensible basis for an alliance 
between Beust and Bismarck, whose anti-International clause Victor 
Emmanuel was quite to adopt; when the Spanish Government, putting itself 
entirely at the disposal of the butchers of Versailles, was forcing the 
Madrid Federal Council to seek refuge in Portugal; at a time, lastly, 
when the International's prime duty was to strengthen its organization 
and to accept the gauntlet thrown down by the governments.  
 
All sections in regular contact with the General Council were invited in 
good time to the Conference, which, even though it was not to be a 
public meeting, nevertheless faced serious difficulties.  In view of the 
internal situation, France was, of course, unable to elect any 
delegates.  In Italy, the only organized section at the time was that of 
Naples; but just as it was about to nominate a delegate it was broken up 
by the army.  In Austria and Hungary, the most active members were 
imprisoned.  In Germany, some of the more well-known members were 
prosecuted for the crime of high treason, others landed in jail, and the 
party's funds were spent on aid to their families.  The Americans, 
though they sent the Conference a detailed memorandum on the situation 
of the International there, employed the delegation's money for 
maintaining the refugees.  All federations, in fact, recognized the 
necessity of substituting the private Conference for a public Congress.  
 
After meeting in London from September 17 to 23, 1871, the Conference 
authorized the General Council to publish its resolutions; to codify the 
Administrative Regulations and publish them with the General Rules, as 
reviewed and corrected, in three languages; to carry out the resolution 
to replace membership cards with stamps; to reorganize the International 
in England; and, lastly, to provide the necessary money for these 
various purposes.  
 
Following the publication of the Conference proceedings, the reactionary 
press of Paris and Moscow, of London and New York, denounced the 
resolution on working-class policy as containing such dangerous designs 
-- the _Times_ accused it "of coolly calculated audacity" -- that it 
would outlaw the International with all possible speed.  On the other 
hand, the resolution that dealt a blow at the fraudulent sectarian 
sections gave the international police a long-awaited excuse to start a 
noisy campaign ostensibly for the unrestricted autonomy of the workers 
whom it professed to protect against the despicable despotism of the 
General Council and the Conference.  The working class felt itself so 
"heavily oppressed", indeed, that the General Council received from 
Europe, America, Australia, and even the East Indies reports about the 
admission of new members and the formation of new sections.  
 
 
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