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 
 
 
                                   VII 
 
Some weeks after the Conference, Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc, the 
most influential and most ardent members of the Alliance, arrived in 
London.  They came to recruit, among the French refugees, aides willing 
to work for the restoration of the Empire, which, according to them, was 
the only way to rid themselves of Thiers and to avoid being left 
destitute.  The General Council warned all concerned, including the 
Brussels Federal Council, of their Bonapartist plots.  
 
In January 1872, they dropped their mask by publishing a pamphlet 
entitled _The Empire and the New France.  Call of the People and the 
Youth to the French Conscience_, by Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc, 
Brussels, 1872.  
 
With the modesty characteristic of the charlatans of the Alliance, they 
declaim the following humbug: 
 
     "We who have built up the great army of the French proletariat...  
     we, the most influential leaders of the International in 
     France [8],...  happily, we have not been shot, and we are here to 
     flaunt in their faces (to wit: ambitious parliamentarians, smug 
     republicans, sham democrats of all sorts) the banner under which we 
     are fighting, and despite the slander, threats, and all manner of 
     attacks that await us, to hurl at an amazed Europe the cry that 
     comes from the very heart of our conscience and that will soon 
     resound in the hearts of all Frenchmen: 'Long Live the Emperor!' 
     Napoleon III, disgraced and scorned, must be splendidly 
     reinstated"; and Messrs. Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc, paid 
     out of the secret funds of Invasion III, are specially charged with 
     this restoration.  
 
Incidentally, they confess: 
 
     "It is the normal evolution of our ideas that made us 
     imperialists."  
 
Here is a confession that should give pleasure to their co-religionists 
of the Alliance.  As in the heyday of _Solidarite_, A. Richard and G.  
Blanc mouth again the cliches about "abstention from politics" which, on 
the principle of their "normal evolution", can become a reality only 
under the most absolute despotism, with the workers abstaining from any 
meddling in politics, much like the prisoner abstaining from a walk in 
the Sun.  
 
     "The time of the revolutionaries," they say, "is over...  communism 
     is restricted to Germany and England, especially Germany.  That, 
     moreover, is where it had been developed in earnest for a long time 
     to be subsequently spread throughout the International, and this 
     disturbing expansion of German influence in the Association has in 
     no small degree contributed to retarding its development, or 
     rather, to giving it a new course in the sections of central and 
     southern France, whom no German has ever supplied with a slogan." 
 
Perhaps this is the voice of the great hierophant, who ever since the 
Alliance's foundation has taken upon himself, in his capacity as a 
Russian, the special task of representing the Latin races? Or do we have 
here "the true missionaries" of the _Revolution Sociale_ (November 2, 
1871) denouncing "the backward march which endeavors to foist German and 
Bismarckian mentality on the International"? 
 
Fortunately, however, the true tradition has survived, and Messrs.  
Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc have not been shot! Thus, their own 
"contribution" consists in "setting a new course" for the International 
in central and southern France to follow, by an effort to found 
Bonapartist sections, ipso facto basically "autonomous".  
 
As for the constitution of the proletariat as a political party, as 
recommended by the London Conference, "After the restoration of the 
Empire, we" -- Richard and Blanc -- "shall quickly deal not only with 
the Socialist theories but also with any attempts to implement them 
through revolutionary organization of the masses." Briefly, exploiting 
the great "autonomy principle of the sections" which "constitute the 
real strength of the International...  especially in the Latin 
countries" (_Revolution Sociale_, January 4), these gentlemen base their 
hopes on anarchy within the International.  
 
Anarchy, then, is the great war horse of their master Bakunin, who has 
taken nothing from the socialist systems except a set of slogans.  All 
socialists see anarchy as the following program: 
 
     Once the aim of the proletarian movement -- i.e., abolition of 
     classes -- is attained, the power of the state, which serves to 
     keep the great majority of producers in bondage to a very small 
     exploiter minority, disappears, and the functions of government 
     become simple administrative functions.   
 
The Alliance draws an entirely different picture.  
 
     It proclaims anarchy in proletarian ranks as the most infallible 
     means of breaking the powerful concentration of social and 
     political forces in the hands of the exploiters.  Under this 
     pretext, it asks the International, at a time when the Old World is 
     seeking a way of crushing it, to replace its organization with 
     anarchy.   
 
The international police want nothing better for perpetuating the Thiers 
republic, while cloaking it in a royal mantle.  
 
 
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