Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

96 / ANARCHISM
nority, carefully hiding its despotism behind the appearance of obsequious respect
for the will of the sovereign people and fo r its resolutions, would yield to the necessities
and requirements of its privileged position, thus assuming along with all its responsibilities,
all the rights of government, a government all the more absolute
because it would urge those resolutions itself upon the so-called will of the people,
thereby very soon becoming increasingly despotic, malevolent, and reactionary.
The International.. .will become an instrument of humanity's emancipation
only when it is first itself freed, and that will happen only when it ceases to be divided
into two groups, the majority blind tools and the minority skilled manipulators:
when each of its members has considered, retlected on, and been penetrated by the
knowledge, the philosophy, and the policy of socialism.
26. The SOl1vil/ier Circular (1871)
Tfle allti-authoritarian elements in the First International were particularly prominent in
Spain, Italy OIld the Swissjura. III 1871, Marx alld his supporters, through the General COUIlcil
ill London, which was supposed to be all administrative, not goveming body, held a secret
col1ferel1ce, to which most of the anti-authoritarian sections were not invited, at which they
gave tile General Council the power to expel dissident sections of the Intemational. The jura
Federation responded with the fo llowing circular, translated by Paul Sharkey.
IF THERE IS ONE INCONTROVE RTI BLE FACT, borne out a thuuSdnd limes by expenence,
it is that authority has a corrupting effect on those in whose hands it is placed.
It is absolutely impossible fo r a man with power over his neighbours to remain a
mOfal man.
The General Council was no exception to this inescapable law. Made up fo r five
years running of the same personnel. re-elected time after time, and endowed by the
Basle resolutions with very great power over the Sections, it ended up looking upon
itself as the legitimate leader ofthe International. In the hands of a few individuals,
the mandate of General Council members has turned into something akin to a personal
possession and they have come to see London as our Association's immovable
capital. Little by little, these men, who are not our mandatories-and most of them
are not even regularly mandated by us, not having been elected by a Congress-these
men, we say, accustomed to walking in front of us and speaking on our
behalf, have, by the natural tlow of things and the very force of this situation, been induced
to try to fo ist their own special program, their own personal doctrine upon the
International. Having, in their own eyes, become a sort of government, it was natural
that their own particular ideas should have come to appear to them as the official