These two decisions of the congress will convey an idea of the anarchist conception of organization. There was to be no executive or administrative body. Nor were the decisions of the congress to have any authority. Anybody could join, believing anything he liked and doing anything he liked. Only those federations which voluntarily accepted the decisions of the congress were expected to obey them. Matters of principle were in no-wise to be voted upon, and each individual was allowed to accept or reject them according to his wishes. The actual rules, adopted unanimously, ran as follows: "Federations and sections, composing the Association, will conserve their complete autonomy, that is to say, the right to organize themselves according to their will, to administer their own affairs without any exterior interference, and to determine themselves the path they wish to follow in order to arrive at the emancipation of labor." [(7)]
It was fully expected that, in addition to its work of reorganization, if we may so speak of it, the congress would definitely devise some method, other than a political one, for the emancipation of labor. The general strike had been put down upon the agenda for discussion. In the report of the Jura section it was declared: "If the workers affiliated with the Association could fix a certain day for the general strike, not only to obtain a reduction of hours and a diminution[V] of wages, but also to find the means of living in the coöperative workshops, by groups and by colonies, we could not decline to lend them our assistance, and we would make appeal to the members of all nations to lend them both moral and material aid." [(8)] Unfortunately, the congress had little time to discuss this part of its program. In the Compte-Rendu Officiel there is no report of whatever discussion took place. But Guillaume, in his Documents et Souvenirs, gives us a brief account of what occurred. After two resolutions had been put on the subject they were withdrawn because of opposition, and finally Guillaume introduced the following:
"Whereas partial strikes can only procure for the workers momentary and illusory relief, and whereas, by their very nature, wages will always be limited to the strictly necessary means of subsistence in order to keep the worker from dying of hunger,
"The Congress, without believing in the possibility of completely renouncing partial strikes, recommends the workers to devote their efforts to achieving an international organization of trade bodies, which will enable them to undertake some day a general strike, the only really efficacious strike to realize the complete emancipation of labor." [(9)] All the delegates approved the resolution, excepting Hales, who voted against it, and Van den Abeele, who abstained from voting because the matter would be later discussed in Holland.
It was of course inevitable that such an "organization" should soon disappear. Vigorous efforts were made by a few of the devoted to keep the movement alive, but it is easy to see that an aggregation so loosely united, and without any really definite purpose, was destined to dissolution. During the next few years various small congresses were held, but they were merely beating a corpse in the effort to keep it alive. And, while the Bakouninists were engaged in this critical struggle with death, the spirit that had animated all their battles with Marx withdrew himself. Bakounin was tired and discouraged, and he left his friends of the Jura without advice or assistance in their now impossible task. Thus precipitately ended the efforts of the anarchists to build up a new International. George Plechanoff illuminates the insolvable problem of the anarchists with his powerful statement: "Error has its logic as well as truth. Once you reject the political action of the working class, you are fatally driven—provided you do not wish to serve the bourgeois politicians—to accept the tactics of the Vaillants and the Henrys." [(10)] That this is terribly true is open to no question whatever. And the anarchists now found themselves in a veritable cul-de-sac. Like the poor in Sidney Lanier's poem, they were pressing
"Against an inward-opening door
That pressure tightens evermore."
The more they fretted and stormed and crushed each other, the more hopelessly impossible became the chance of egress. The more desperately they threw themselves against that door, the more securely they imprisoned themselves. It was the very logic of their tactics that they could not circumvent so small an obstacle as that inward-opening door. It meant self-destruction. And that, of course, was exactly what happened, as we know, to those who followed the vicious round of logic from which Bakounin could not extricate himself. Their struggle for an organized existence was brief, and at the end of the seventies it was entirely over.
Naturally, the complete failure of all their projects did not improve their temper, and they lost no opportunity to assail the Marxists. The Jura Bulletin of December 10, 1876, translated an article entitled Poco à Poco, written by Andrea Costa, who labeled the "pacific" socialists "apostles of conciliation and ambiguity." They wish, said Costa, to march slowly on the road of progress. "Otherwise, indeed, what would become of them and their newspapers? For them the field of fruitful study and of profound observations on the phenomena of industrial life would be closed. For the journalists the means of earning money would have likewise disappeared.... Finding the satisfaction of their own aspirations in the present state of misery, they end by becoming, often without wishing it, profoundly egotistic and bad.... While calling themselves socialists, they are more dangerous than the declared enemies of the popular cause." [(11)] About this time a new journal appeared at Florence under the name of l'Anarchia and announced the following program: "We are not armchair (Katheder) socialists. We will speak a simple language in order that the proletariat may understand once for all what road it must follow in order to arrive at its complete emancipation. L'Anarchia will fight without truce not only the exploiting bourgeoisie, but also the new charlatans of socialism, for the latter are the most dangerous enemies of the working class." [(12)]