Black Flag 215 index
Decline and Fall of the First International
This text comes from the book "Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom"
by Brian Morris, published by Black Rose (but we believe out of
print). In this chapter Morris looks at the decline of the
International and Bakunin's conflict with Marx.
Between the Basel congress of the International in 1869 and the end
of 1871 there had been a great growth of the International in both
Italy and Spain, largely due to the influence of Bakunin. In 1870,
at a general congress in Barcelona one hundred and fifty societies
from thirty-six regions constituted the Spanish Regional Federation
and adopted as their statutes those of the Jura Federation (drawn up
by Bakunin). Thus, while the International was experiencing a marked
decline in membership in the industrial countries, particularly in
Britain where Marx lived, it was expanding in the Latin countries in
leaps and bounds. And, wherever it was spreading it was doing so, as
Paul Thomas writes, "under the mantle of Bakuninism." 1 Thomas even
hints that Marx's "The Civil War in France" was a calculated move,
using the symbolism of the Paris Commune to reunify a disparate
movement. But there was little awareness at that time among most
adherents of the International of the doctrinal differences
separating Bakunin and Marx - except in Switzerland. And it was in
Switzerland that the latent schism between two very different
concepts of socialism - Marxism and collectivist anarchism - first
began to be articulated in institutional terms.
At the end of 1869, Nicholas Utin arrived in Geneva and in January
1870, as Bakunin was leaving for Locarno, Utin established himself
as an editor of L'Égalité. Utin had an intense dislike for Bakunin
and soon took every opportunity to denounce him as an advocate of
Pan-Slavism - though Bakunin had long since abandoned his
nationalist tendencies. A Russian exile like Bakunin, Utin also
began to spread the old rumour that Bakunin was a Tsarist agent.
Later that same month, January 1870, Utin organised a Russian
section of the International in Geneva - in direct opposition to
Bakunin's Alliance - and applied to the General Council in London
for recognition. He also asked Marx, who he addressed as the
"Venerable Dr Marx", to become the representative for Russia on the
General Council. Marx found all this rather strange but seems to
have accepted the proposal especially as Utin mentioned that it
would be among the tasks of the new section to publicly "unmask
Bakunin." Thereafter, Utin continued to supply Marx with a steady
flow of information, or misinformation, about Bakunin and played a
considerable part in poisoning relations between the two men,
although Marx had long harboured quite unfounded suspicions that
Bakunin was simply a political intriguer out to "wreck" the
International. If anything, Bakunin did far more to expand the
membership of the International than did Marx himself, who had
little influence on the English trade unionists. Significantly,
after having helped to destroy the International, Utin made his
peace with Tsarism, returned to Russia and ended his days as a
wealthy government contractor. 2
In April 1870, the annual congress of the Federation Romande,
consisting of sections of the International in French-speaking
Switzerland, was held in the little town of La Chaux-de-Fonds in the
Jura. Utin took the opportunity, in Bakunin' absence, to launch a
bitter personal attack on him, quoting from Nechaev's "Revolutionary
Catechism" to imply that Bakunin recognised neither justice nor
morality and that he was essentially a nihilist. This all arose in
the debate regarding the application of the Geneva Section of the
Alliance for admission to the Federation. Guillaume spoke in defence
of Bakunin and the Alliance was admitted by a majority vote. This
led to a virtual split in the International in Switzerland with the
Geneva sections under Utin following Marx and the General Council,
while the Jura sections became fervent supporters of Bakunin. James
Guillaume and Adhemar Schwitzguebel were leading members of the
latter group, which became known as the Jura Federation. The General
Council eventually agreed to accept both the Geneva Federation and
the Jura Federation as affiliated bodies of the International. It is
important to stress that this split represents a genuine
disagreement within the International between the libertarian and
State socialists. G.D.H.Cole expressed this cogently. He wrote:
"This conflict of views was not the outcome of any "conspiracy"
either on Bakunin's part or on that of Marx. It arose out of real
differences both in attitude and in the character of the movements
of which the International was made up. Bakunin and Guillaume, and
the Spanish and Italian leaders, did carry on increasingly active
propaganda against Marx and the General Council; but there was
nothing particularly conspiratorial about it, unless one counts
Bakunin's habitual tendency to give his most commonplace activities
a conspiratorial tone. Marx for his part, intensely irritated by
what he regarded as the unrealistic folly of the anarchists, had
developed an aggravated form of conspiracy-mania which led him to
see the entire anti-authoritarian movement as a sinister conspiracy
directed against himself. 3
The conflict between Marx and Bakunin, however, came to a head in
the sham conference of the International held in London in September
1871. Given the widespread support for Bakunin and his anarchism
among the Internationalists in Spain, Belgium, Italy and the Jura,
it was clear that Marx and the General Council could only defeat him
by upstaging him. 4 The London conference was therefore largely a
private and secret affair. It consisted only of the General Council
and invited guests, almost entirely partisans of Marx. Two delegates
were invited from Switzerland - Utin was one, but none fro the Jura
Federation, only one from Spain and none from Italy. Because of the
war, Germany had no delegates and France was represented only by
refugees, mostly Blanquists. The dice, as E.H.Carr put it, were well
and truly loaded against Bakunin. Besides implying that anarchism
was almost a heresy and forbidding the formation of separate
sections, one of the most important decisions taken by the
conference was to declare the necessity for workers to form their
own political party, independent of bourgeois parties. With the
complete absence of the anarchists and the support of the
Blanquists, this was easily carried.
The Swiss groups of the International, all Bakuninists and hostile
to Marx, immediately organised their own conference at Sonvillier in
the Jura in November 1871. Bakunin could not attend, and the leading
spirits of the meeting were Guillaume, Spichiger and Schwitzguebel.
They immediately repudiated the London decisions, refusing to
recognise that the London conference was a properly constituted
organ of the International. They denounced the autocratic powers
assumed b the general Council and called for the reaffirmation of an
International that was composed of a free federation of autonomous
sections rather than one governed by a General Council. The
congress produced the "Sonvillier Circular", which demanded an
immediate congress of the International to debate its structure. The
circular was sympathetically received not only in Span and Italy,
but also Belgium. As a result, the General Council was obliged to
announce a congress at the Hague in September 1872. It was clear
that this meeting would prove to be an important encounter between
the Marxist and anarchist (i.e. Bakuninist) sections of the
International. as it turned out, it proved to be the last real
meeting of the First International.
The Sonvillier Circular was a critique of the basic doctrine
formulated by the General Council of the International, namely the
importance of the "conquest of political power by the working
class." The circular counterposed this doctrine with the notion that
a social revolution should involved the "emancipation of the workers
by the workers themselves" and that:
The future society must be nothing else than the universalization of
the organisation that the International has formed for itself. We
must therefore strive to make this organisation as close as possible
to our ideal. How could one expect and egalitarian society to emerge
out of an authoritarian organisation ? it is impossible. The
International, embryo of the future society, must form now on
faithfully reflect our principles of federation and liberty, and
must reject any principle tending toward authority and dictatorship.
5
Bakunin enthusiastically welcomed the Sonvillier Circular and
devoted his energies to actively propagating its principles. Marx
responded to it by issuing, as a circular from the General Council,
a pamphlet entitled " Fictitious splits in the International." it
was printed in Geneva and sent out to all sections of the
International. It outlined Marx's own views on Bakunin, and his
opinion of events surrounding the formation of the International
Alliance of Socialist Democracy. Marx was critical of Bakunin on a
number of grounds : his advocacy of total abstention from politics;
his attempt to create and "international within the International"
thereby creating confusion between the programme of the
International Working Men's Association (identified with Marx's own
ideas) and Bakunin's makeshift programme; his assertion that making
the International an embryonic egalitarian society would only weaken
the organisation in its fight against the exploiters. Marx seems to
have seen Bakunin's Alliance as a kind of sectarian organisation
like those of the early utopian socialists, which could only inhibit
the formation of the International as a "militant organisation of
the proletarian class of all countries." He also saw the various
radical manifestos by Bakunin as "verbiage" which would be useful in
promoting the aims of the reactionaries, the implication being that
one shouldn't publish radical manifestos in case they upset or
helped the bourgeoisie. Yet Marx's pamphlet indicates an underlying
ambivalence, for he wants to believe that the splits in the
International are all of a "fictitious" nature and that the
Bakuninist groups are "sham sections" that have either no reality or
are small cliques composed not of real workers but of "lawyers,
journalists, and other bourgeois doctrinaires". This coming form a
man who studied law at university, earned a living as a journalist
(as well as being supported by Engels) and whose whole lifestyle was
thoroughly bourgeois. Marx was also obsessed with the idea that
Bakunin was an intriguer who intended to replace the General Council
with his own personal dictatorship. Guillaume and other supporters
of Bakunin found Marx's pamphlet full of personal slander. Bakunin
is said to have described it as a "heap of filth".
The all-important congress at the Hague was duly held in early
September 1872. Sixty four delegates attended the congress, the
majority of whom were supporters of Marx, for the Italians had
decided to boycott the meeting. In August 1872 , the first national
congress of Italian Socialism was held in Rimini and there formed an
Italian Federation of the International. The congress denounced the
"slander and mystification" of the General Council, and Marx's "lust
for authority". and therefore resolved to break all solidarity with
the General Council. It proposed "to all those sections who do not
share the authoritarian principles of the General Council to send
their representatives to Neuchatel in Switzerland for the purpose of
opening..... (an) anti-authoritarian congress". 6
Bakunin, who could not attend the congress, lost much of his support
at the congress, and only six delegates, two from the Jura and four
from Spain, were supporters of Bakunin. The General Council made up
largely of Marx's followers and Blanquists and the German state
socialists formed the bulk of Marx's support. Again Marx had
engineered a conference that was packed with his own supporters. But
it was clear that Marx aimed to defeat Bakunin- and the ideas he
propagated- not only by weight of numbers, but also by destroying
his personal reputation. To this end, Engels drafted a long report
at the request of the General Council aiming to demonstrate that
Bakunin had founded a secret society, the Alliance, (the main organ
of which was the Central Committee of the Jura Federation), whose
aims whose aims were incompatible with those of the International
which it sought , it said, to disorganise and dominate. Engels
therefore proposed that the congress should expel Bakunin and all
present members of the Alliance of Social Democracy (including the
Jura Federation) from the International Working Men's Association.
On the last day of the congress- after one third of the delegates
had already gone home- this proposal was put before congress and by
a vote of twenty seven for and seven against- with eight
abstentions- Bakunin (along with his friend Guillaume) was expelled
from the International.
Although there was little evidence that the Alliance had existed as
a secret society after 1869, Bakunin was nevertheless condemned.
What seemed to have swayed the committee of inquiry that had been
set up to examine the allegations was that Marx produced-behind
closed doors- a copy of the letter that Nechaev had written to
Bakunin's publishers regarding the translation of Marx's Das
Capital.
Bakunin was therefore unfairly dismissed from the International on
two grounds:
1. That he had tried to establish and perhaps succeeded in
establishing a society in Europe named "the Alliance" with rules ,
social and political matters entirely different from those of the
International.
2. That Bakunin had made use of deceptive tricks in order to
appropriate some portion of another person's fortune, which
constitutes fraud. 7
It was clear that Marx was determined to remove Bakunin from the
International even if he had to use the most underhand methods to do
it.
But the bombshell at the 1872 Congress was the startling proposal,
presented by Marx and the General Council, that the seat of the
General Council of the International should be transferred to New
York. It came as a complete surprise to most of the delegates,
although they voted for the proposal nonetheless. What Marx's
motives were for such a move has been debated, but it effectively
killed the International. But at least, by removing it to New York,
he had saved the International from the influence of Bakunin.
Immediately after the Hague Congress, the anarchist members of the
International held their own congress in the Swiss town of St Imier.
It comprised delegations from Spain, Italy and the Swiss Jura. It
was a small gathering and the delegates unanimously rejected the
decisions of the Hague Congress and the powers given to the new
general council. They constituted themselves into a free union of
federation of the International, bound together not by an autocratic
council, but by solidarity and mutual friendship. For a while, two
rival Internationals continued to exist, but by the end of the
decade the First International Working Men's Association had
essentially ceased to function. The International congress held in
Geneva in September 1873 was perhaps the last viable meeting. The
congress dissolved with the General Council and declared the
International a free federation of autonomous sections each with a
right to reorganise itself as it saw fit.
Notes
1. Thomas, P. 1980 Karl Marx and the Anarchists. London RKP, p319
2. Cole, G.D.H., 1954. History of Socialist Thought, Vol.II, Marxism
and Anarchism 1850-1890. London, Macmillan, p.197
3. Cole, op.cit., p.193
4. Thomas, op. cit., p.320
5. Guillaume in Dolgoff, S., ed., trans., introd., 1973 Bakunin on
Anarchy, New York; Knopf, p.45
6. Hostetter, R. 1958. The Italian Socialist Movement. Princeton,
NJ: Van Nostrand, p.284
7. Guillaume in Dolgoff, op. cit., p.47