(en) France, Alternative Libertaire #223 - Read Marianne Enckell: The Jura Federation (fr)

As we celebrate this year the 140th anniversary of the Congress of antiauthoritarian 
Saint-Imier, founding the anarchist movement, this new edition of the indispensable work 
of Marianne Enckell a classic become virtually untraceable, timely to recontextualize this 
event too often associated with single confrontation between Marx and Bakunin. Behind 
these two great historical figures the author brings to life the story of the events in 
the AIT. It is the opposition and eventually inevitable divide between two radically 
different visions of political action: centralism and federalism. Above all, the book 
sheds light on the role of the Jura Federation which has been the linchpin of the 
constitution of another socialist self-management and federalist, libertarian brief.

Why Saint-Imier? Why Switzerland? Is it the influence of pseudo-Swiss federalism? The 
author looks for an explanation rather less romantic. The influence of Bakunin is 
undeniable in a region where he remained some time, and whose lectures were "greeted with 
enthusiasm." It will also be the particular mode of production and specific to this 
region, a single industry and work very compartmentalized combined with a rich civic and 
cultural life. Especially since 1870, within the Federation Romanesque, the AIT debate 
wiggle until rupture of 1872 were, as a rehearsal for the general, because of the same 
divisions between Marxists and Bakuninists.

And Saint-Imier in 1872 held the Congress of antiauthoritarian, because all do not 
recognize the name of anarchists. This conference addresses the coup of Marx and his 
accomplices attempt to lock the AIT since the Congress of The Hague, which, besides the 
exclusion of Bakunin, strengthens the powers of the General Council in exile in New York. 
Congress then proposes a new path to socialism which libertarians today are the heirs of 
the refusal to compromise with the bourgeois political institutions, federalism and 
self-management.

The book is clear and concise, very informative, reads a processed and happily plunges 
sources of libertarian communism. The adventure of the International antiauthoritarian has 
been brief but will all irrigated social anarchism of the twentieth century and still 
today we make our declaration of the congress: "The destruction of all political power is 
the first duty of the proletariat"

David (AL Paris North East)

Marianne Enckell, The Jura Federation, Entremonde, Geneva - Paris, 2012, 12 euros