Under the chairmanship of Citizen Anseele from Ghent, who indicates that strict measures have been taken in order to bring the work of the Congress to a successful conclusion undisturbed.
The German delegates subscribed 1000 francs for the miners who fell victim to the St. Etienne disaster. (Applause)
The Bureau invites the delegates of the other nationalities to follow this example and to make contributions according to their means.
French delegates demanded that the proceeds of the collection be shared with the striking miners of Westphalia, but the German delegates insist that the 1,000 francs they have contributed go to the victims of St. Etienne in full.
The congress agrees by acclamation to the motion of the German delegates to go together to the Père la Chaise cemetary in order to lay a wreath on the grave of the Communards who were shot in 1871 — the bureau is instructed to determine the day and the hour.
—31— New delegates have enrolled, including two from Christiania, whereby the members of the Congress increase to 467, namely 223 French and 184 foreigners.
After receiving the telegrams and declarations of sympathy by letter, citizen Lawroff begins to read his report on the state of socialism in Russia, to applause:
It is the first time that Russian socialists have been able to send delegates to an international socialist congress. But they do not appear before you as members of workers’ organizations, but only as socialists, fighting for the first elements of a political system of government for which a workers organization could serve as the basis. But 16 years of struggle in the name of the socialist idea in which we are all united, 16 years of courageous practice of this idea in the prisons, in the deserts of Siberia, at the foot of the scaffold, perhaps give the Russian socialists the right to say to their united brothers: Through our apostolate we have won our place in the union of the socialists of all countries!
I regret that among the Russian delegates there is no representative of the long and terrible struggle between an almighty monarchy on the one hand and a comparatively small group of young people defending their convictions on the other. But in the name of those fighters I greet our brothers who have succeeded in winning the international organization of workers on the basis of political rights in their own countries. This basis was and is still missing in Russia, the only country in Europe where all political rights are concentrated in the person of an omnipotent and irresponsible monarch.
The year of the centenary of the French Revolution — perhaps it would be more correct to say the European Revolution — is also the year of a two-hundredth anniversary for Russia.
It is two hundred years since a young man of seventeen, crushing his inconvenient opposition, became the first Russian monarch of the European type.
The historians have called him a genius.
Possessing an untamed energy, a passionate proponent of European civilization, he seems to have sincerely wanted the good of his empire.
He was all powerful; he was supported in his efforts by all the educated in his country. The system of government which he laid down as a basis was followed by all of his successors. Absolute Monarchy has never had such an easy job of it to establish the welfare of a country and, relying on the strengths of the nation, to make itself happy through them.
Well, this period of civilizing reform, begun by Peter I, was also the time for Russia when the slavery of the majority of the Russian peasants made the most terrible advances, and when millions of free farmers were turned into serfs.
As a result, by the end of the century, the educated had entered the ranks of the opposition.
The moral and political impotence of an absolute monarchy has never revealed itself more drastically. Since then the advanced groups began to struggle against the absolutism of the Czars, against the serfdom of the peasants, and against the ruling economic system, the cause of these two cancers.
Voltaire’s friend, Catherine the Great, banished scientifically educated men to Siberia because they belonged to the opposition. She had to struggle against the most terrible peasant uprising ever lived through. Her son wanted to separate Russia from Europe by strict orders.
—32— But the viewing window which Peter I had opened towards the West could no longer be closed, and the breath of the revolution blew inexorably in.
Russian officers brought the idea of secret political societies with them from the wars against Napoleon.
The fighters of December 1825 — the Decembrists - had included a liberal constitution and the liberation of the peasants in their program. Nicholas I's accession to the throne was distinguished by the penalty of death by hanging on the bastions of the St. Petersburg fortress pronounced over five conspirators, and bz the exile to Siberia of a number of men who were the flower of their generation.
The era of purely political programs was replaced by that of utopian socialism.
The question of workers' organization emerged in the midst of the struggle of the western political parties.
The Communist Manifesto called on the proletarians of all countries to unite with one another.
The opposition in Russia did not stop being the bitter enemy of absolutism, but immersed itself more and more in socialist ideas. Among the systems that were especially cultivated by a select group of men in Moscow and Petersburg , St. Simonism took the place of honour. One of the most influential members of this group was Hertzen, later the founder of the first Russian free press and printing company abroad.
The young people who were transported to Siberia in 1849 were for the most part Fourierists. Chernyshevsky convincingly set out the socialist criticism of economics. Under the influence of the ideas developed in the country through the literary propaganda of Hertzen, Chernyshevsky and their worthy students, the Czar's government, terrified by the ongoing peasant revolts, was forced to emancipate the serfs and to undertake some other reforms.
But again absolutism showed itself in all its impotence.
All the reforms of Alexander II were spoiled as soon as they came into existence because the bitterest enemies of every act of reform were entrusted with carrying them out.
And so it was that these reforms were later brought to a standstill, precisely in their essential parts.
After more than a quarter of a century the emancipated peasant finds himself economically ruined and even more miserable than he was before his emancipation.
By the year 1870 Carl Marx's ideas had already penetrated Russia. His masterpiece: “Capital”, was translated into Russian before any other language.
The conviction that the people could in fact not be emancipated other than through an uprising of the workers was accepted more and more by the Russian socialists. But in Russia the worker was the worker on the land — the farmer of the communities of Greater Russia.
Sympathy with the peasant created a whole realistic literature, which precisely through its realism became a literature of social agitation.
The educated Russian youth was imbued with the conviction:
“We owe everything we are to the Russian worker, especially the peasant; our duty is therefore to pay off our debt to him by working together, to help socialism to victory.”
—33— Under the influence of the Commune of Paris, around 1873 a new Russian socialist literature emerged abroad and a new apostolate of socialism among Russian youth, which spread to the masses in the country and in the factories, bringing the new gospel to the people.
A characteristic fact which emerged then and still exists today deserves to be mentioned even today: the Russian socialist press abroad presented the spectacle of passionate disagreement. The anarchists or Bakuninists fought against the supporters of the journal „Forwards“ (Vperëd); the Jacobins of the „Tocsin“ attacked both. But in Russia itself, in view of the size of the country and of the factories, in view of the prisons and forced labor which determined the careers of so many propagandists, regardless of party, all these disagreements disappeared.
The anarchists, the Jacobins, the supporters of “Forwards” distributed the same brochures and called for the same struggle.
Hundreds of young men and young women took part in this great movement.
The administration of the empire itself had to admit that 37 Guberniya had been gripped by revolutionary propaganda. The ideas of a Sophia Bardina and the peasant Alexeyev before the judges of the court made a deep impression throughout the country.[a]
They showed the degree of expansion of socialism in Russia at that time.
But the propaganda among the peasants was a long and arduous task, and the number of victims was very considerable.
The prisons and Siberia quickly thinned the ranks of propagandists. People began to doubt the effectiveness of the propaganda, especially in the countryside. One began to believe that the struggle against absolutism required more concentrated attention, that one would have to act more forcibly if one wanted to continue the propaganda among the people. It was hoped that an energetic attack on the despotism of the Czar would soon lead to victory.
This belief was reinforced by the impression produced by the acquittal of Vera Zassulisch in 1878; it suddenly became apparent that the liberal tendencies had spread and gained ground almost everywhere in the country.
But the liberal Russians, lacking any organization or political tradition or any aptitude for sacrifice they could keep up in the struggle against hated absolutism, were unable to play an influential political role under such difficult conditions.
The socialist revolutionary youth alone can fight Czarism and carry high the socialist banner at the same time. At that time the revolutionary party of Russia, Zemlya i volya (“land and liberty”), split into two parties. One faction of this party, the Chornyi peredel (“black repartition”) kept to the basis of federalism and the original program.
They later became the Emancipation of Labour group, and finally the Association of Russian Social Democrats — and more and more doubted the benefits of propaganda among the peasants and the role of the current Russian peasant community.
They preached the impossibility of Russia's socialist evolution going any other way than that of Western Europe, namely the development of capitalism, the formation of an —34— industrial proletariat, its organization and eventual triumph. In addition to a number of polemical works, the Federation of Russian Social Democrats recently published writings by Marx, Engels, Lafargue and Guesde in very valuable translations.
One of the members, Vera Zassulisch, is currently working on a history of the International Workingmens' Association. The other faction, the People's Will (Narodnaya Volya) party, centralized itself as a fighting party under the direction of an executive committee and, although it remained socialist, and carried on the propaganda among the workers of the cities, which it tried to organize, and for whom it founded a newspaper, it directed its activity chiefly to the struggle against the government.
Most cruely persecuted, this party responded to lawless assassination with terrorist attacks. All the living forces of the country flowed towards it; their rivals themselves applauded. One of them, and he was one of the most significant, woke me one day at 4 a.m. with the news of one of the most terrible blows which the Committee of the “People's Will” had dealt its opponents. Here, too, the theoretical disputes blurred in the face of the struggle; for the followers of the “People’s will” believed in the possibility of socialist propaganda among the peasants; They were supporters of the Peasant Commune and were inclined to support the plan for economic development to take a shorter route than that of the formation of an industrial proletariat under the pressure of capitalist rule.
In response to this attack, the imperial government had to change all of its administrative arrangements.
An emperor fell in the battle. The Russian Social Democrats have been fortunate to see the Polish Socialists of the “Proletariat” join them, forgetting the hundred years of national hatred. But the terrible struggle exhausted the forces of the party of the “People’s Will”. There were betrayals, terrible catastrophes, divisions — distrust crept into the ranks of the brothers — all dangerous symptoms of demoralization. The organization of the party became weak, the Committee disappeared, the majority of the members died on the gallows or in prison. Towards the end of 1886 there was a moment when all seemed lost; but from then on new life appeared. New groups, young and energetic, are looking to find a path despite the brutal police pressure. The elements are parting company, a painful but useful process. Many who were considered to be firm supporters of the revolution showed themselves to be weak; many fell away from the party. But those who remained loyal to the revolutionary socialist banner are more irreconcilable than ever. Groups of new fighters form daily and threaten the government, without it being possible to control their sometimes too daring activities.
The ever increasing harshness of the administration against the prisoners and deportees, of which we only recently saw outrageous examples in Yakutsk, Sakhalin, Moscow - this harshness is driving the new groups to increasingly terrorist acts.
Since the accession to the throne of Alexander III a furious reaction in all branches of administration has embittered all classes of the population. This growing bitterness can lead to unexpected and terrible events which no power is now able to prevent. The groups which adhere to the program of the “People’s Will” are still numerous; the absence of a Committee that centralizes their actions makes this action something quite different from what it was before. But in the most scrupulous way they posed themselves the problem of gaining political freedoms for their country, as the necessary basis of its social revolution. Others —35— seek their way elsewhere. And at this very moment a quite deplorable fact is occuring.
In order to fight absolutism, some groups have arrived at the unfortunate idea of leaving the social question aside for the moment and seeking a coalition against absolutism with the liberal Russians, from whom nothing is to be hoped, even if they are cruelly oppressed by the current government.
It is the first time that revolutionary Russian socialists have decided to temporarily deny the basic principles of their program. Faced with this apostasy, the groups that stick to their principles as a political justification of their existence have the appearance of wanting to unite and forsake the disputes of recent times. This union can become the basis of a socialist organization which can once again be called a Russian revolutionary socialist party. —
That is the current state of the socialist movement in my country. The various groups which honoured me with their mandate have shown through the presence of their delegate to this congress that socialism remains the unshakeable basis of their actions. The memory of Marx and Hasenclever, of Varlin and Blanqui is as sacred to them as it is to their brothers in the West. (Enthusiastic applause.) As socialists, and not otherwise, they will continue the struggle against absolutism. (Renewed applause.) They exist as a party strictly separated from the liberal parties of the non-socialists — or they cease to be. The journal “The Socialist”, which gave me a mandate, is striving to become its organ. The “Society of Russian Workers in Paris”, which I have the honour of representing, has been socialist since it was founded several years ago. The groups that follow the program of the “People‘s Will”, some of which have existed abroad for five years, continue the socialist tradition. The “Bank of socialist publications of Zurich”, the “Revolutionary socialist group of St. Petersburg”, the “Armenian group of Geneva” send their support to the socialist congress in Paris and their greetings to the socialist brothers of all countries. Also present here is the delegate of the "Association of Russian Revolutionary Social Democrats", of which I have spoken in more detail, and the delegates of socialist Russian workers from London and New York. The London organization dates from 1885, that of New York from 1887. A Russian-socialist-democratic paper appears in America: “The Standard”. The Jewish socialists of London, almost all Russians and Poles, have their socialist organ: “The Worker's Friend”, edited in Hebrew dialect. They assure the Congress that, although compelled to use the only language they know, they are far from being isolated in their nationality, and that in England, in America, as in Russia, they are a lively part of the socialist workers’ movement as they find it in different countries. “The Association of Jewish Craftsmen of New York”, represented here by two delegates, consists of 1,500 Jewish proletarians.
In the report which I have been deputed to make, I can therefore give the assurance that Russian socialism has not been defeated in the struggle it has now kept up for 16 years. It has not yet managed to form a workers' party, but only the political situation in Russia has prevented this so far. The revolutionary socialist party, which has fought and which is still fighting to change these conditions, has suffered severe blows - its martyrdom —36— has been long and painful, it has had deserters, it still lacks organization and at this moment is going through a deep crisis.
But those who are on your side are determined to fight to the utmost to create favourable conditions for the establishment of a workers' party. They are determined to fight to the death to ensure a better future for their homeland. I am confident that I will be able to convey the wishes of Congress for their success to the groups that have sent me, as I have conveyed their fraternal gratitude to you. (Repeated storm of “bravo”s.)
Several anarchists had repeatedly interrupted Lawroff's report; the President had to draw their attention to the fact that they owed respect to the Russian nihilists and to the Congress. Since they disobeyed this first warning, citizen Anseele found it necessary to declare that the delegates of the proletariat of both hemispheres had not travelled hundreds of miles and spent thousands of francs to have their work disturbed by some hooligans (gaillards ); and he then asked the French delegates to remove these systematic troublemakers from the room, which was done in a few moments.[b]
After calm had been restored, citizen Vaillant declared that they did not want to remove anyone because of their opinion, but that they were determined to prevent any willfully provoked tumult from the outset and with the utmost vigour.
The floor is now given to citizen Jules Guesde for a report on France . There was loud applause when he appeared on the platform, Guesde attributing this reception to the great cause to which he has dedicated his life. And this cause is the same for which, under different names, but with a common aim, the struggle is waged everywhere in Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, and the United States. The socialism, which the imagination of some has managed to nationalize, to differentiate into a French one and a German one, is in reality one and the same, just as the capitalist mode of production, which enabled socialism, is one and the same; and that one banner of one colour that the proletarians of the whole world have planted on their own initiative, a banner under which victory beckons us, it waves over us in this international workers’ congress. (Repeated ‘bravo’s.)
Citizen Guesde apologizes for the imperfect nature of the report which he will seek to give at the request of the brothers abroad. He will try to be as true to the facts as possible in this delicate task.
Three main groups are represented at this Congress: The Workers’ Party (Parti Ouvrier), to which the speaker belongs; the Central Revolutionary Comitee (Comité revolutionnaire centrale) and the National Association of the Workers' Syndicates of France (Fédération nationale des syndicats ouvriers de France).
These different organizations operate on different grounds, some being more economically oriented, others more political. But they are all animated by the same spirit, they all pursue the same goal and have always marched together in all decisive cases.
To start with the oldest organization that was founded under complete proscription in London by refugees from the Commune: the Central Revolutionary Committee, which has declared itself to be communist like Blanqui, from whom it derives. From Paris, where it —37— has its headquarters, it spread over Lyons and the Cher department. And its politics, regardless of the differences in expression, is so close to our politics that in 1884, when the most important of its members was sent from the Père la Chaise district to the Paris city council, we could celebrate Vaillant's election as though it were the triumph of one of our own. All the demands of our Marxist program, including the suppression of the national debt or the budget of the rentiers, have been so well represented by the Blanquist — Vaillant — elected to the city council that we only have one regret: that such an admirable campaign of the fighting proletariat did not take place in the Chamber of Deputies, not on the legislative platform, and could not be well-known in all parts of the country.
The Workers‘ Party, of which 145 groups are represented here, oficially dates from the Workers‘ Congress of Marseille which the journal Equality (Egalité) had prepared. For the first time the delegates of the French proletariat at the Congress of 1879 broke not only with the bourgeoisie, but also with the narrow-minded bourgeois ideas of savings banks, consumer associations, and so on, with the sole aim of their efforts being to recapture the means of production and their utilization by the united workers in a society they have liberated from scroungers. At that time, when even the elite of our workers in the great international democracy of labour had remained largely individualistic, captured by Proudhon's metaphysics, at Marseille collectivism — another name for communism — finally triumphed.
And while the liberation of labour was made dependent on the expropriation of the capitalist class, it was decided at the same time to organize the proletariat as a definite political party which must conquer the state from the bourgeois parties of every shade.
At the end of the year the National Congress of Havre completed this class organization by giving the Workers‘ Party its election program, which included the immediate demands which Marx and Engels had worked on together. With this program, which withstood all attacks, we penetrated the town councils of Alais, St. Quentin, Armentière, Roubaix, Montluçon, Beauvais, Comentry, Calais, etc.
In the departments of: Allier, Norden, Pas de Calais, Aisne, du Rhone, Marne, Heraut, the workers' party is most numerous and best organized.
Guesde then moves on to the National Federation of labour syndicates, which was created in Lyon in 1886, in a trade union congress which the Freycinet-Lockroy ministry hoped to dominate and which it had supported for that purpose. However, the government miscalculated. The workers were invited to organize themselves in trade unions and in professional associations without any political party tendency, but the federation declared itself from the beginning to be socialist in the scientific and revolutionary sense of the word. It looked for salvation where it actually is, in “Socialization of the means of production”, and demanded as preparatory measures the limitation of the working day to eight hours and the removal of national and international barriers and restrictions on the labour movement. Since then, the association has held two more national congresses, at Montluçon in 1887 and Bordeaux in 1888, and it now comprises 450 unions or corporate groups.
—38— It is the Federation which, in order to break the resistance of the political powers, has taken the initiative of the demonstrations, which took place in work places on February 10th and 24th this year. But even if it is the most powerful of the workers’ associations that have ever existed in our country, it can undoubtedly not be compared with the Trades Unions of England, either with regard to the number of members or the resources it has at its disposal. But why this lag relative to others? Because no working class as much as ours has been subject to absolute bourgeois anarchy and bourgeois despotism for nearly a century.
Our bourgeoisie, the worst, most ruthless, most pitiless of all bourgeoisies (remember the butchers of June 1848 and May 1871) and the most hypocritical, has systematically pounded the French proletariat into powder, dissolved it into atoms, cured it of carrying out any act in common, by prohibiting from 1790 on and the Chapelier Law not only every association, but also every union of a trade, allegedly in the public interest. And this prohibition, aggravated by the draconian articles of the law named after Napoleon ( Code Napoleon ) against associations, was the shame of France until 1884, that is until the day when industrial centralization made the freedom of the unions illusory. We have seen it at Anzin, Vierzon, Montceau, wherever the serfs of the mines, the railways, the blast furnaces wanted to make use of the right of association and union finally granted them by law, they saw themselves overwhelmed by the veto of the companies: < em>No unions! - no associations! — if not, no work! which means no bread!
Can it be any wonder that the French workers, deprived of the use of their legs for several generations, march so slowly along the path of trade union organization? Even our really socialist organizations cannot be compared with German social democracy and its hundreds of thousands of supporters. What paralyzes us, at least for this moment, what makes our propaganda less fruitful and our recruitment slower, though perhaps safer — is, strange as it may seem at first sight — the political freedom we enjoy, and through which many of the workers are deceived. What holds us back is the republic, which has lasted for 19 years and which the masses do not cease to see as a talisman which, without any effort on their part, will in the course of time tear them away from their misery and servitude.
A people of action more than of organization, we French are also used to proceeding in leaps and bounds where others march step by step . Under the pressure of events we improvise, and in the fight itself we recruit the necessary army.
Our traditions, our temperament, allow us to hope for the same in the future: everything comes down to cadres, nothing but cadres. And to cadres that are adequate for the mobilization required by the circumstances; these we have already. And that also allows us, without any boasting, to look to the future with confidence.
Not only in Paris, but in all industrial cities, there is a conscious minority among the workers, capable of taking over the leadership of the movement and preventing errors and mistakes.
What we did not know either in July 1830 or in February 1848 we now know. At that time the workers were masters of public spaces, yet —39— they allowed another faction of the same hostile class to install itself on the ruins of the bourgeois government which they had overthrown by their heroism.
That is no longer possible. Once power has fallen from the hands of the opportunists into those of the socialists, then neither Boulanger nor any other person will snatch it away from the workers. The power belongs to us, it must belong to us; the proletarians who will sieze it will know how to defend it against all and sundry.
When a new Commune comes, this time the whole of working France will support Paris; the spectacle of 19 years ago will not be repeated: workers standing guard over the account of the capitalists, in order to protect for the bourgeoisie the billions in the bank which they have stolen from working France; or if guards are put in place, it will happen after the bank has really become the Bank of France , by repaying sou for sou the stolen proceeds of the people‘s labour.
Our small numbers will suffice for this task of directing the next action. The comrades abroad can be sure that even if the conflict which the social contradictions will cause and which the political divisions of the ruling classes will accelerate begins tomorrow, the struggle will end favourably for socialism.
The era of defeats, as glorious as they are and as fruitful as they can be, is ended, ended with certainty. Brothers from abroad, we guarantee you the victory and we can guarantee it for you (Stormy prolonged applause.)
New delegates from the departments are registered by the citizen Lafargue, who on this occasion, with facts to hand, reveals the tricks of the Possibilists who wake up our friends from the provinces at the stations and regardless of their formal mandates “seek to entice them into their mock congress”.[c]
The President is reciting these words, which so contradict yesterday's vote in favor of an understanding, when Citizen Vaillant shares with the Congress the exchange of letters with the Possibilists, and the day’s agenda through which these latter have finally buried the merger of the two congresses. Citizen Vaillant adds that this unconditional refusal of any understanding aroused the unconditional protest of the Italian delegates, and that these, like the Dutch delegates, withdrew from the congress of the Rue de Lancry (where the Possibilists met). (Applause.)
The session ended at 11 p.m. after the next meeting had been scheduled for the following day at 9 a.m.
a. Sophia Bardina and Alekseev were both members of a propaganda group of 50, arrested in St. Petersberg in 1875 and sentenced to hard labour or exile in 1877. The group was centred on bringing literacy and an understanding of socialism to factory workers.
b. The French manuscript page after Lavrov's speech is in a different hand and appears to start in the middle of a sentence. It begins slightly differently from the German translation: "a few anarchists, for the most part not Congress delegates, having interrupted Lavrov's report on several occasions ...". The same anarchists had put forward a motion during Lavrov's talk which is not included in the printed proceedings, presumably because several of the 9 signatories were in fact not delegates (5 were delegates: Sebastien Faure, Lucien Weil, Paul Siguret, Brunet, Auguste Viard; 2 were not: Gustave Mathieu and Emil Ferrieres, a further 2 are illegible — but those legible were truly self-defined as anarchists). The motion explained the cause of their discontent, that Lavrov's talk, while excellent, was a document that could be read at any time, and that because of such talks Congress was running out of time for discussion of the actual resolutions, in particular the first, on international labour legislation.
c. The German is Scheincongreẞ, but in the French original Lafargue simply says "they try to reroute them to their congress.".