Title: Decision regarding the General Council at the Rimini Congress
Date: August 1872
Source: https://archive.org/details/linternationaled01guiluoft/page/n646/mode/1up
Notes: Declaration taken by the Rimini Congress against the activities of the Marxist dominated General Council of the IWA. The Rimini Congress, happening only one month before The Hague Congress (2-7 September 1872), marked the schism between the Italian Federation (soon joined by a majority of the others IWA's federations) and the General Council. While Italian delegates wouldn't attend the Hague Congress, they provided a plan for anarchists and anti-authoritarian to act, by uniting the Anti-authoritarian federations in a congress that would exclude the Marxists from the organization of the IWA. After the Hague Congress, where the Marxists expelled Bakunin and Guillaume from the IWA, this plan would be followed to give birth to the Anti-authoritarian International at the St. Imier Congress (September 1872).

Carlo Cafiero, Andrea Costa, Italian Federation of the First International

Decision regarding the General Council at the Rimini Congress

Considering that the London Conference (September 1871) tried, through his IXth resolution, to impose upon the whole International Workingmen's Association (IWA), a specific, authoritarian theory, which is properly the one of the German Communist Party... ;

That the General Council used the most shameful means, such as slander and lies, with the sole aim of reducing the International to the unity of its specific authoritarian communist doctrine ;

That the General Council went even farther in its indignities through its Private Circular, dated from London, the 5 March 1872. In this circular, pursuing its work of slander and lies, the General Council showed all its passion for authority... ;

That the General Council reaction determined the revolutionary opposition of the Belgians, French, Spanish, Slavs, Italians and part of the Swiss, and that it was proposed to abolish the General Council and to revise the General Statutes ;

That the General Council, not without its motives, convened the General Congress in The Hague, the pojnt farthest removed from revolutionary countries ;

For these reasons :

The Conference solemnly declares, in presence of workers from the entire world, that from this moment onwards, the Italian Federation of the International Workingmen's Association breaks all solidarity with the General Council from London. The Conference stresses all the more the its economic solidarity with all workers and proposes to all Sections that don't share the authoritarian principles of the General Council to send their delegates on 2 September 1872, not to The Hague, but to Neuchâtel, in Switzerland, to open there the General Anti-authoritarian Congress.