Contro le sette nel movimento operaio

“…The movement in America, just at this moment, is I believe best seen from across the Ocean. On the spot, personal bickerings and local disputes must obscur much of the grandeur of it. And the only thing that could really delay its march, would be the consolidation of these differences into established sects. To some extent, that will be unavoidable; but the less of it the better. And the Germans have most to guard against this. Our theory is a theory of evolution, not a dogma to be learnt by heart and to be repeated mechanically. Je weniger sie den Amerikanern von außen eingepaukt wird und je mehr sie sie durch eigne Erfahrung – unter dem Beistand der Deutschen – erproben, desto tiefer geht sie ihnen in Fleisch und Blut über. When we returned to Germany in spring 1848, we joined the Democratic party, as the only possible means of gaining the ear of the working class; we were the most advanced wing of that party, but still a wing of it. When Marx founded the International, he drew up the General Rules in such a way that ‘all’ working class socialists of that period could join it  – Proudhonists, Pierre-Lerouxists, and even the more advanced section of the English Trades Unions; and it was only through this latitude that the International became what is was, the means of gradually dissolving and absorbing all these minor sect, with the exception of the Anarchists whose sudden appearance in various countries was but the effect of the violent bourgeois reaction after the Commune and could therefore safely be left by us to die out of itself, as it did. (…)” [Engels a F. Kelley-Wischnewetzky, January 27, 1887] [K. Marx F. Engels, Ausgewählte Briefe, 1953]