Saint-Imier Congress
| Saint-Imier Congress | |
|---|---|
The congress was held in one of the rooms of that location | |
| Date | 15–16 September 1872 |
| Locations | Saint-Imier, Switzerland |
| Participants | 15 delegates |
| People | Mikhail Bakunin James Guillaume Errico Malatesta Carlo Cafiero Adhémar Schwitzguébel Gustave Lefrançais Rafael Farga i Pellicer |
The Saint-Imier Congress, held from 15 to 16 September 1872 in the eponymous town, was a congress led by the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), better known as the First International. It is one of the foundational events in the history of the labour movement, often considered the birth of the anarchist movement.
Following the International’s founding, numerous factions gathered within it, notably the Bakuninists or anti-authoritarians, comprising anarchists, collectivists, and anti-authoritarian socialists, who constituted the majority of the organisation, and the Marxists and Blanquists, who were allied and controlled the IWA's General Council. While these groups began as allies within the organisation, personal and theoretical conflicts arose between them, crystallised in the growing opposition between Mikhail Bakunin and Karl Marx. The two increasingly opposed movements were on the verge of rupture at the Hague Congress, where Marx, controlling its management, engineered the expulsion of Bakunin and James Guillaume, one of his Swiss allies.
This decision marked a break between the two movements, and the Bakuninists, caught off guard and pressed for time, decided to organise a counter-congress in Saint-Imier. They were joined by about fifteen delegates and decided to invalidate the decisions taken at The Hague and to refound the International based on statutes ensuring the autonomy and freedom of the federations composing it. The greater part of the International joined this reorganisation, without the Marxists and their Blanquist allies. Historiographically, it is called the Anti-authoritarian International to distinguish it from the unified International that preceded it and the parallel Marxist International.
The Saint-Imier Congress is often considered the or one of the foundations of the anarchist movement and has received various tributes over time, one of the most recent being the organisation of Anarchy 2023, a large-scale anarchist gathering, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the congress.