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 
 
 
                                   II 
 
The denunciations in the bourgeois press, like the lamentations of the 
international police, found a sympathetic echo even in our Association.  
Some intrigues, directed ostensibly against the General Council but in 
reality against the Association, were hatched in its midst.  At the 
bottom of these intrigues was the inevitable International Alliance of 
Socialist Democracy, fathered by the Russian Michael Bakunin.  On his 
return from Siberia, the latter began to write in Herzen's _Kolokol_, 
preaching the idea of Pan-Slavism and racial war, conceived out of his 
long experience.  Later, during his stay in Switzerland, he was 
nominated to head the steering committee of the League of Peace and 
Freedom, founded in opposition to the International.  When this 
bourgeois society's affairs went from bad to worse, its president,  
Mr. G. Vogt, acting on Bakunin's advice, proposed to the 
International's Congress which met at Brussels in September 1868, that 
it make an alliance with the League.  The Congress unanimously proposed 
two alternatives: either the League should follow the same goal as the 
International, in which case it would have no reason for existing; or 
else its goal should be different, in which case an alliance would be 
impossible.  At the League's congress, held in Bern a few days later, 
Bakunin made an about-face.  He proposed a makeshift program whose 
scientific value may be judged by this single phrase: "economic and 
social equalization of classes".  Backed by an insignificant minority, 
he broke with the League in order to join the International, determined 
to replace the International's General Rules by the makeshift program, 
which had been rejected by the League, and to replace the General 
Council by his personal dictatorship.  To this end, he created a special 
instrument, the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, intended 
to become an International within the International.  
 
Bakunin found the necessary elements for the formation of this society 
in the relationships he had formed during his stay in Italy, and in a 
small group of Russian emigrants, serving him as emissaries and 
recruiting officers among members of the International in Switzerland, 
France, and Spain.  Yet it was only after repeated refusals of the 
Belgian and Paris federal councils to recognize the Alliance that he 
decided to submit for the General Council's approval his new society's 
rules, which were nothing but a faithful reproduction of the 
"misunderstood" Bern program.  The Council replied with the following 
circular dated December 22, 1868...  
 
     [ omitted -- see Dec. 1868 file in International subdirectory ] 
 
A few months later, the Alliance again appealed to the General Council 
and asked whether, _yes or no_, it accepted its _principles_.  If yes, 
the Alliance was ready to dissolve itself into the International's 
sections.  It received a reply in the following circular of March 9, 
1869...  
 
     [ omitted -- see Mar. 1869 file in International subdirectory ] 
 
Having accepted these conditions, the Alliance was admitted to the 
International by the General Council, misled by certain signatures 
affixed to Bakunin's program, and supposing it recognized by the 
Romanish Federal Committee in Geneva, which on the contrary had always 
refused to have any dealings with it.  Thus it had achieved its 
immediate goal: to be represented at the Basel Congress.  Despite the 
dishonest means employed by his supporters, means used solely on this 
occassion in an International Congress, Bakunin was deceived in his 
expectation of seeing the Congress transfer the seat of the General 
Council to Geneva and give an official sanction to the old St. Simon 
rubbish, the immediate abolition of hereditary rights which he had made 
the practical point of departure of socialism.  This was the signal for 
the open and incessant war which the Alliance waged not only against the 
General Council, but also against all International sections that 
refused to adopt this sectarian clique's program and particularly the 
doctrine of total abstention from politics.  
 
Even before the Basel Congress, when Nechayev came to Geneva, Bakunin 
got together with him and founded, in Russia, a secret society among 
students.  Always hiding his true identity under the name of various 
"revolutionary committees", he sought autocratic powers based on all the 
tricks and mystifications of the time of Cagliostro.  The main means of 
propaganda used by this society consisted in compromising innocent 
people in the eyes of the Russian police by sending them communications 
from Geneva in yellow envelopes stamped in Russian on the outside 
"secret revolutionary committee".  The published accounts of the 
Nechayev trial bear witness to the infamous abuse of the International's 
name.  
 
The Alliance commenced at this time a public polemic directed against 
the General Council, first in the Locle _Progres_, then in the Geneva 
_Egalite_, the official newspaper of the Romanish Federation, where 
several members of the Alliance had followed Bakunin.  The General 
Council, which had scorned the attacks published in _Progres_, Bakunin's 
personal organ, could not ignore those from _Egalite_, which it was 
bound to believe were approved by the Romanish Federal Committee.  It, 
therefore, published the circular of January 1, 1870.  
 
     [ omitted -- see Jan. 1870 file in International subdirectory ] 
 
Meanwhile, before having read this circular, the Romanish Federal 
Committee had already expelled supporters of the Alliance from the 
editorial board of _L'Egalite_.  
 
The January 1, 1870, circular, like those of December 22, 1868, and 
March 9, 1869, was approved by all International societies.  
 
It goes without saying that none of the conditions accepted by the 
Alliance have ever been fulfilled.  Its sham sections have remained a 
mystery to the General Council.  Bakunin sought to retain under his 
personal direction the few groups scattered in Spain and Italy and the 
Naples section which he had detached from the International.  In the 
other Italian towns, he corresponded with small cliques composed not of 
workers but of lawyers, journalists, and other bourgeois doctrinaires.  
At Barcelona, some of his friends maintained his influence.  In some 
towns in the South of France, the Alliance made an effort to found 
separatist sections under the direction of Albert Richard and Gaspard 
Blanc, of Lyon, about whom we shall have more to say later.  In a word, 
the International within the International continued to operate.  
 
The big blow -- the attempt to take over the leadership of French 
Switzerland -- was to have been executed by the Alliance at the 
Chaux-de-Fonds Congress, opened on April 4, 1870.  
 
The battle began over the right to admit the Alliance delegates, which 
was contested by the delegates of the Geneva Federation and the 
Chaux-de-Fonds sections.  
 
Although, on their own calculation, the Alliance supporters represented 
no more than a fifth of the Federation members, they succeeded, thanks 
to repetition of the Basel maneuvers, in procuring a fictitious majority 
of one or two votes, a majority which, in the words of their own organ 
(see _Solidarite_ of May 7, 1870), represented no more than _15_ 
sections, while in Geneva alone there were 30! On this vote, the 
French-Switzerland Congress split into two groups which continued their 
meetings independently.  The Alliance supporters, considering themselves 
the legal representatives of the whole of the Federation, transferred 
the Federal Committee's seat to Chaux-de-Fonds and founded at Neuchatel 
their official organ, _Solidarite_, edited by Citizen Guillaume.  This 
young writer had the special job of decrying the Geneva "factory 
workers", those odious "bourgeois", of waging war of _L'Egalite_, the 
Federation newspaper, and of preaching total abstention from politics.  
The authors of the most important articles on this theme were Bastelica 
in Marseilles and Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc in Lyon, the two big 
pillars of the Alliance.  
 
On their return, the Geneva delegates convened their sections in a 
general assembly which, despite opposition from Bakunin and his friends, 
approved their actions at the Chaux-de-Fonds Congress.  A little later, 
Bakunin and the more active of his accomplices were expelled from the 
old Romanish Federation.  
 
Hardly had the Congress closed when the new Chaux-de-Fonds Committee 
called for the intervention of the General Council in a latter signed by 
F. Robert, secretary, and by Henri Chevalley, president, who was 
denounced two months later as a thief by the Committee's organ, 
_Solidarite_, on July 9.  After examining the case of both sides, the 
General Council decided on June 28, 1870, to keep the Geneva Federal 
Committee in its old functions and invite the new Chaux-de-Fonds Federal 
Committee to take a local name.  In the face of this decision which 
foiled its plans, the Chaux-de-Fonds Committee denounced the General 
Council's _authoritarianism_, forgetting that it had been the first to 
ask for its intervention.  The trouble that the persistent attempts of 
the Chaux-de-Fonds Committee to usurp the name of the Romanish Federal 
Committee caused the Swiss Federation, obliged the General Council to 
suspend all official relations with the former.  
 
Louis Bonaparte had just surrendered his army at Sedan.  From all sides 
arose protests from International members against the war's 
continuation.  In its address of September 9, the General Council, 
denouncing Prussia's plans of conquest, indicated the danger of her 
triumph for the proletarian cause and warned the German workers that 
they would themselves be the first victims.  In England, the General 
Council organized meetings which condemned the pro-Prussian tendencies 
of the court.  In Germany, the International workers organized 
demonstrations demanding recognition of the Republic and "an honorable 
peace for France"....  
 
Meanwhile, his bellicose nature gave the hotheaded Guillaume (of 
Neuchatel) the brilliant idea of publishing an _anonymous_ manifesto as 
a supplement, and under cover, of the official newspaper _Solidarite_, 
calling for the formation of a Swiss volunteer corps to fight the 
Prussians, something which he had doubtless always been prevented from 
doing by his abstentionist convictions.  
 
Then came the Lyon uprising.  Bakunin rushed there and, supported by 
Albert Richard, Gaspard Blanc, and Bastelica, installed himself on 
September 28 in the town hall -- where he _refrained_ from posting a 
guard, however, lest it be viewed as a political act.  He was driven out 
in shame by some of the National Guard at the moment when, after a 
difficult accouchement, his decree on the abolition of the state had 
just seen the light of day.  
 
In October 1870, the General Council, in the absence of its French 
members, coopted Citizen Paul Robin, a refugee from Brest, one of the 
best-known supporters of the Alliance, and, what is more, the instigator 
of several attacks on the General Council in _L'Egalite_, where, since 
that moment, he has acted constantly as official correspondent of the 
Chaux-de-Fonds Committee.  On March 14, 1871, he suggested the calling 
of a private Conference of the International to sift out the Swiss 
trouble.  Foreseeing that important events were in the making in Paris, 
the Council flatly refused.  Robin returned to the question on several 
occassions and even suggested that the Council take a definite decision 
on the conflict.  On July 25, the General Council decided that this 
affair would be one of the questions for the COnference due to be 
convened in September 1871.  
 
On August 10, the Alliance, hardly eager to see its activities looked 
into by a Conference, declared itself dissolved as from August 6.  But, 
on September 15, it reappeared and requested admission to the Council 
under the name of the Atheist Socialist Section.  According to 
Administrative Resolution No. V. of the Basel Congress, the Council 
could not admit it without consulting the Geneva Federal Committee, 
which was exhausted after its two years of struggle against the 
sectarian sections.  Moreover, the Council had already told the Young 
Men's Christian Association that the International did not recognize 
theological sections.  
 
On August 6, the date of the dissolution of the Alliance, the 
Chaux-de-Fonds Federal Committee renewed its request to enter into 
official relations with the Council and said that it would continue to 
ignore the June 28 resignation and to regard itself, in relation to 
Geneva, as the Romanish Federal Committee, and that it was "up to the 
General Congress to judge this affair".  On September 4, the same 
Committee challenged the Conference's competence, even though it had 
been the first to call for its convocation.  The Conference could have 
replied by questioning the competence of the Paris Federal Committee, 
which the Chaux-de-Fonds Committee had, before the siege of Paris, asked 
to deliberate on the Swiss conflict.  But it confined itself to the 
General Council decision of June 28, 1870 (see the reasons given in 
_L'Egalite_ of Geneva, October 21, 1871).  
 
 
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