Jura Federation
쥐라 연맹
The Bakuninist federation of the International Working Men's Association, centred on the watchmaking artisans of the Swiss Jura. It began to split from the Fédération Romande in 1869, was formally inaugurated at the Sonvilier congress of November 1871 and issued the Sonvilier Circular against the London Conference's resolution on political action and the centralism of the General Council. It convened the Saint-Imier Congress of 1872 and became the core of the Anti-authoritarian International.
In depth
The watchmakers of La Chaux-de-Fonds and elsewhere in the Jura shared anti-state, egalitarian views on work and social emancipation, and with the Swiss government lax towards political agitators the region became the geographic centre of the Bakuninists in the late 1860s and early 1870s. From February 1872 the federation published the Bulletin de la Fédération jurassienne to set out its stand against the General Council; James Guillaume and Adhémar Schwitzguébel were among its leaders.
When the Hague Congress of 1872 expelled Bakunin and Guillaume, the federation joined the Spanish and Italian federations at the Saint-Imier Congress, which rejected the Hague resolutions and pledged the federations' autonomy and mutual defence. It argued for abstention from political action, citing its fruitless experience of parliamentary politics. Peter Kropotkin, who spent a week among its watchmakers in 1872, wrote that he left an anarchist.
By 1876 the federation was in decline, short of work and isolated, but it remained the home of the Bakuninists, and its congress at La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1880 adopted anarchist communism.