The International Workingmen's Association, 1872

The Hague Congress

Statement by Jose Mesa on the Alliance in Spain


Translated: by Richard Dixon & Alex Miller, for Progress Publishers, 1976.
Transcribed: by director@marx.org.


Statement
To the delegates of the International Congress of The Hague

Comrades,

In view of the conspiracy hatched against the International by the members of the secret society of the Alliance of Socialist Democracy, a conspiracy which you will have to reveal and render harmless, I would believe that I was failing in a great duty of conscience or betraying the cause of the proletariat endangered by the machinations of the Alliance if I did not contribute as far as I can to clear up the facts and help to arrive at a precise decision in the most grave matter which you are called to resolve.

Consequently and for the purpose mentioned I declare:

That at the end of January of this year Citizen Tomàs Gonzales Morago, a member of the old Madrid Federation and a delegate to this Congress, came to visit me and proposed to assemble all our friends (the members of the Madrid Alliance) to hear the accusations that he intended to make against Francisco Mora for having failed in his duties as a member of the Alliance. In order to demonstrate to me the arguments on which he based his accusation the said Citizen Morago expounded to me all the theories of the Alliance that you are familiar with and gave me to read a letter of Mikhail Bakunin in which was developed a whole

Machiavellian plan to establish domination over the working class. This plan was more or less the following:

the Alliance must appear to exist within the International, but in reality at a certain distance from it in order better to observe it and more easily to direct it. For this reason the members who belong to the Councils, committees of sections, etc., must always be in the minority in the Alliance sections.

This basis, the foundation of the accusation which Morago levelled against Mora was that he initiated all the members of the former Regional Federal Council in the secret of the Alliance; in this way the members of the International who could be considered as active formed the majority in the Madrid Section of the Alliance and thus the Council could not be dominated or disorganised, which was the mission of the Alliance according to the admission of Citizen Morago.

The same individual showed me a card or certificate of membership of the Alliance sent from Geneva, but I do not remember on what date.

All this I declare to be true on my word of honour.

José Mesa
Madrid,
September 1, 1872
Spanish original