Anti-authoritarian International

Why did they meet separately?

On 15–16 September 1872, about a week after the Hague Congress (2–7 September 1872) expelled Bakunin and Guillaume, fifteen delegates from the Spanish, Italian, French, American and Jura federations met at Saint-Imier at the invitation of the Swiss Jura Federation. Historiography treats this congress as the birth of the Anti-authoritarian International. The delegates rejected the Hague decisions, the expulsion of Bakunin and the obligation of political struggle, and adopted a pact of friendship, solidarity and mutual defence between free federations. They did not think they were founding a new organisation: they claimed to be the legitimate continuation of the International Working Men's Association. Nor was the congress purely anarchist at first. The delegates were more interested in the federative pact than in the three anti-political theses, and James Guillaume convinced Bakunin that a purely anarchist International would not win majority support, so the organisation stayed open to socialists in its early years. Gustave Lefrançais, a Communard delegate for two American sections, is an example. Debates between socialists and anarchists continued until at least 1873–1874.

What did it stand for?

The most cited Saint-Imier political resolution declared that the destruction of all political power is the first duty of the proletariat; that any organisation of a supposedly provisional and revolutionary political power can only be another deception, as dangerous as existing governments; and that proletarians must establish solidarity of revolutionary action outside all bourgeois politics. Claiming to be the legitimate heir of the International, it differed from the Marxist International (1872–1876) both organisationally and programmatically. The Marxists wanted a centralised International controlled by a General Council, while the Bakuninists insisted on the original statutes giving strong autonomy to national and regional federations, with the General Council as a mere coordinating body. The theoretical split crystallised over the state: Marxists held that the state must be retained for a transitional 'dictatorship of the proletariat', whereas Bakunin considered that transitional phase highly problematic and likely to lead toward dictatorship.

Congresses and repression

Describing itself as the legitimate heir of the IWA founded in London in 1864, the organisation held its Second Congress (officially the Sixth General Congress) at Geneva from 1 September 1873, attended by delegates from Britain, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain, with a United States federation announcing accession. The Geneva congress agreed to dissolve the General Council and debated the general strike and syndicalist action as means of revolution. Congresses followed at Brussels (7–12 September 1874), Bern (26–29 September 1876) and Verviers (6–8 September 1877). Some sources give Brussels 7–13 September 1874 and Berne 26–29 October 1876, a date discrepancy worth noting. The Bern congress of 1876 debated opening the next congress to non-anarchist organisations; this was opposed by the Italian and Spanish delegates unless the International was recognised as the only existing organisation truly representing popular socialism, and a comprehensive congress was then convened for Ghent in September 1877.

Repression shaped the organisation. It was banned in France by the Dufaure Law of 1872, which punished any French citizen holding a position within it with up to five years' imprisonment, and was harshly repressed in Germany and Italy. This crackdown prompted the turn to propaganda of the deed.

Verviers and the question of the end

Verviers (6–8 September 1877) was the ninth congress. There, collectivist anarchism (based on Bakunin, who had died the previous year) was for the first time debated against anarcho-communism, defended by Kropotkin, Malatesta and Reclus; it was agreed each regional federation would decide which principle to follow, with the Spanish Regional Federation remaining collectivist while anarcho-communism spread in Andalusia. The congress showed sympathy and solidarity with the Saint Petersburg attacks and the Italian insurrection at Benevento, marking a radicalisation toward violence under the influence of Russian populism and nihilism and the approval of 'propaganda of the deed'.

Where the organisation ended is disputed. Anselmo Lorenzo wrote that the IWA 'ceased to exist materially in the Congress of Verviers', and some accounts call Verviers its last congress. Yet congresses and structures survived to 1880–81, and expansion was still shown by delegates from France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Greece, Uruguay, Argentina and Mexico. At the 1881 London Congress the formal structures were abolished except a correspondence bureau in London, with Malatesta, Trunk and Tchaikovsky named to it. The entry is therefore standardly dated 1872–1881, while the framing of Verviers as the effective end is recorded alongside it.

Distinction from the Black International and later lineage

It must not be confused with the International Working People's Association, the so-called 'Black International', a separate anarchist international founded, or reconstituted, at the 1881 London Congress and distinct from the earlier Anti-authoritarian International. In 1881 Most's revolutionary socialists, the anarchists of the Anti-authoritarian International and other socialist factions met at the London Congress and voted to refound the International on a platform accepting propaganda of the deed as its central strategy, abolishing formal structures except a London correspondence bureau. This body disappeared in the second half of the 1880s amid internal conflicts, heavy repression and the use of agents provocateurs, giving rise to anarchist companionship. After 1881 other bodies claimed the legacy: the International Working People's Association (1881–1887), the International Workers' Association (1922–present), the International of Anarchist Federations (1968–present) and Black Bridge International (2001).

The anarcho-syndicalist International Workers' Association (IWA–AIT), founded at an illegal Berlin conference in December 1922, explicitly rejects centralism, political parties, parliamentarism and statism including the dictatorship of the proletariat. It presented itself as the 'true heir' of the original International, emerging from a workers' movement resurgent after the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War. The IWA–AIT presents the Anarchist St. Imier International (1872–1881) and the Black International (1881–87) as the specifically anarchist Internationals attempted before anarcho-syndicalist international organisation began in earnest in the early 20th century. As an example of continuity, the largest anarcho-syndicalist union of the time, the Spanish CNT (founded 1910 in Barcelona), joined the IWA in 1923 with 600,000 members, although its delegates were unable to attend the 1922 founding because they were arrested en route; the CNT's tradition traces to the Spanish IWA chapter of 1870. In August 2012 an International Anarchism Gathering met at St. Imier to commemorate the 1872 congress.