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

Origins OfThe Anarchist Movement / 77
terests are reconciled and mutually assured, who can fa il to see that the corollary of
mutuality is mutual tolerance: which rules out the likelihood of such conflict As fo r
fo reign aggression, from where might that spring The confederation, which acknowledges
that every one of its confederated States enjoys a right of secession, is
scarcely likely to want to bully the fo reigner. The idea of conquest is incompatible
with its very principle. So there can be only one foreseeable possibility of war emanating
from without, namely, the possibility of a war of principle: should the surrounding
States, greatly exploitative and greatly centralized, determine that the
existence ofa mutualist confederation cannot be reconciled with their own principle,
just as, in 1 792 the Brunswick manifesto declared that the French Revolution was incompatible
with the principles governing the other States! To which my response is
that the outlawing of a confederation rooted in economic right and the law of mutuality
would be the very thing that ... would incite federative, mutualist republican sentiment
to settle its accounts once and fo r all with the world of monopoly and bring
about the victory of Worker Democracy right around the world.
19. Statutes of the First International (1864- 1866)
In his On the Political Capacity of the Working Classes, Proudhon had advocated that the workers
should create their own mutualist institutions outside of and in opposition to the existing political
system. In 1864, workers from various countries, including some of Proudhon's supporters from
France, created the International Association of Workingmen, later known as the First International.
The First International began as a loosely knitfoderation of workers' organizations, based on
the following statutes, which tried to take into account the often diverging views of its members regarding
such issues as political versus economic action, and the relationship between trade unions,
national political parties and the state. The following translation by Paul Sharkey is taken.from the
French versions of the statutes, which diff ered from the English versions on at least one crucial point,
namely whether all political activity was to be subordinate to economic emancipation, or whetller
political activity was to be subordinate to economic emancipation only as a means. The
anti-authoritarian federalist faction insisted on the fo rmer interpretation, while Marx and his supporters
insisted on the latter, ultimately leading to the split between the two factions following the
Hague Congress ill 1872, and the creation of an explicitly anti-authoritarian International.
1864 Paris Text, Adopted By The 1866 Geneva Congress
CONSIDERING: THAT THE EMANCIPATION of the workers must be the workers' own
doing: that the workers' efforts to achieve their emancipation should not be geared
towards the establishment of fresh privileges, but rather to establishing the same
rights and the same duties fo r all;