The International League of Peace and Freedom () was a political international dedicated to building peace and freedom through the establishment of a United States of Europe. Founded by French republicans in the wake of the Luxembourg Crisis, the League aimed to unite European democrats of all tendencies under the platform of democratic republicanism, decentralisation and federalism. At the League's first congress in Geneva, the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin spoke about the establishment of a European federation by asserting the primacy of international justice against the interests of the nation state; it concluded with a call for the abolition of standing armies and the improvement of the wellbeing of the working classes.
Under Bakunin's influence, the League's central committee then adopted a programme that advocated for freedom of religion and secularism, the creation of a decentralisated European federation with full equality before the law, and the abolition of social classes and the redistribution of wealth. The social question caused a split within the League's second congress, where Bakunin unsuccessfully pushed for the organisation to adopt the platform of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), which called for social equality and the abolition of private property; he subsequently left the League and established the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy (AIDS).
Following the Franco-Prussian War, the League effectively collapsed to its internal divisions and its attempts to organise further peace congresses were stillborn. The League's advocacy of a Federal Europe was later taken up in the 20th century and its attempts to foment peace constituted a precursor to those of the League of Nations.
Background In the wake of the suppression of the Revolutions of 1848, radicalism and republicanism entered into a period of decline over the course of the 1850s. But during the early 1860s, radical tendencies of anti-authoritarianism, secularism and Pan-Europeanism began to flourish again, with a number of international associations being established to promote democracy and international cooperation. Meanwhile, in 1866, the Schleswig–Holstein question was resolved on the side of the Kingdom of Prussia, which annexed the duchies of Holstein and Schleswig, creating the North German Confederation. This provoked a response from the French Empire, with Napoleon III threatening to annex Luxembourg, which caused a diplomatic crisis. People throughout Europe protested the emperor's pronouncement, which French republicans took as an opportunity to put out an international call for peace and democracy. Seeking to prevent conflict between France and Prussia, Émile Acollas and Frédéric Passy moved to establish a "League of Peace and Freedom". On 30 May 1867, Passy announced the establishment of this new League, which received support from pacifists throughout Europe.
This League received support from the Swiss politician James Fazy and established an organising committee, with as president. In June 1867, the organising committee issued a manifesto, inviting "all friends of free democracy" to participate in a congress in Geneva, with the aim of maintaining "liberty, justice and peace". The following month, they published an additional programme, which announced that the Congress would have a more specific objective: "to determine the political and economic conditions of peace among the nations, and in particular to establish the United States of Europe". From its founding, the nascent League took on a staunchly progressive and republican political orientation, advocating for the extension of civil liberties, the decentralisation of state power to the regional and municipal levels, the replacement of standing armies with militias and the creation of a Federal Europe.
The League's call for democracy was a radical one, but was broadly defined enough as to accommodate for a range of different political tendencies. In the months leading up to the congress, 10,000 people co-signed the manifesto and each contributed a small fee to fund the Congress. Its members would largely be liberal democrats and philanthropists. The Congress received sponsorship and public support from the English liberals John Bright and John Stuart Mill, the French republicans Louis Blanc, Victor Hugo and Edgar Quinet, the Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi, and the Russian socialists Alexander Herzen and Nikolay Ogarev. In contrast, Polish revolutionary leader Ludwik Mierosławski turned down the invitation, replying that he would not talk about peace in Europe until Polish independence was restored. Karl Marx, the leader of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), also objected to the absence of class warfare from the programme.
Geneva Congress (1867)
The Inaugural Congress began at 14:00 on 9 September 1867, in the Palais Electoral in Geneva. It was attended by 6,000 people, most of whom came from Geneva. The Congress appointed an organisational bureau, on which every nationality would be represented by two delegates; the Swiss democrat was elected as its president. The Congress then agreed on its "preliminary manifesto", which set as its goal the establishment of peace between European nations and a Federal Europe.
The guest of honour, the Italian delegate Giuseppe Garibaldi, was the first to speak. He put forward a twelve-point programme, proposing that: any disputes between nations should now be ajudicated by the Congress; that the Papacy be abolished and that the Congress adopt and preach a "religion of truth and reason"; that only democratic republics could achieve peace; and that every nationality maintained a right of self-defense. Delegates from the Lausanne Congress of the IWA then spoke, proclaiming that inter-state wars could only be solved through the abolition of class stratification and capitalism. Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin spoke next, declaring that the main thing preventing international peace was nationalism, as maintained by the existing order of large, centralised states. He believed this to be the main obstacle to the United States of Europe, due to the inherent imbalance of power between large and small states, and thus that larger states would have to be overthrown.
As the Congress went on, debates about the social question and religion caused relations between the radical and conservative delegates to break down. To resolve the disputes, the organisational bureau put forward a resolution that omitted any objectionable content. With a view to establishing peace in Europe, on the basis of liberty and democracy, the Congress established the League of Peace and Freedom, with a central committee to run the organisation between annual congresses. It called on every member of the League to shape public opinion against the ignorance and prejudices that caused war, agitate for the abolition of standing armies and their replacement with a militia system, and to improve the welfare of the working and propertless classes.
First Committee (1867-1868)
After the Congress, the League's new executive committee began meeting in Bern. It published The United States of Europe (), a weekly newspaper published in French and German. Its president was and consisted of two representatives for each nationality. The left-wing of the committee was led by Mikhail Bakunin, and also consisted of the Polish delegates Walery Mroczkowski and Włodzimierz Zagórski, and Russian delegate Nikolay Zhukovsky. The right-wing was formed by its French, Italian and Swiss delegations. The English delegates Randal Cremer and George Odger were largely unable to attend meetings, as they did not have the funding to travel the distance between England and Switzerland. The German delegates often fell into infighting, which prevented them from forming a voting bloc.
Mikhail Bakunin's voice dominated the committee meetings, to the chagrin of Vogt, who complained of the anarchist's obscurantism. In the committee's first meeting, Bakunin proposed the adoption of his draft manifesto Federalism, Socialism, and Anti-Theologism as the League's official programme, but he was ultimately unable to convince the majority of the committee to adopt it, and the manifesto remained unfinished and unpublished. He managed to pass a motion for the committee to reject religion and adopt a humanist conception of morality and justice, but his motion for "a radical transformation of the economic position of the working class" was defeated by a single vote by Vogt. His proposal that the organisation be renamed to the "Democratic and Republican League for Peace and Freedom" was defeated by a large majority. At the committee's second meeting, on 31 May 1868, it began making preparations for the League's second congress, which they decided would be held in Bern in September of that year. The committee also adopted a radical three-point programme put forward by Bakunin, which called for: freedom of religion, the separation of church and state and the establishment of a secular education system; the creation of a United States of Europe as a federation of autonomous and self-governing municipalities and regions, on the basis of equality before the law; and an equitable redistribution of wealth, the division of the working day into time for labour, leisure and education, and the abolition of social classes. The third point closely paraphrased Karl Marx's own programme for the IWA.
With the programmes of the League and the IWA beginning to align, in June 1868, Bakunin joined the IWA and began laying plans for an alliance between the two organisations, with himself assuming leadership of both. He proposed that the League could be the political counterpart to the IWA's socio-economic organisation, with the League's aim being to explore how to resolve the social question through political means. At the committee's third meeting in August 1868, it approved Bakunin's proposal for an alliance between the League and the IWA. Vogt sent out letters of invitation for the upcoming Bern Congress, including to members of the IWA, which was preparing for its Brussels Congress. Bakunin personally invited IWA members Johann Philipp Becker and César De Paepe, and sent a letter to the Brussels Congress laying out his "programme of Russian social democracy". Bakunin was enthusiastic about a resolution of the Brussels Congress, which had called for the abolition of class stratification and hereditary property; he believed that the political implementation of this would necessitate the transformation of existing state structures. But the IWA proved to be apathetic towards the League's overtures, with Karl Marx dismissing the League as the "Geneva wind-bag". The Brussels Congress rejected the invitation for an alliance and passed a resolution calling for the League to dissolve itself into the IWA. Bakunin was castigated by other members of the League, including Vogt, for the failed attempt at establishing an alliance. Bakunin himself blamed Marx for the decision of the Brussels Congress and promised he would speak on behalf of the committee to respond to the IWA's "insolent proposal". In a letter to Vogt, sent on 16 September, Bakunin assured him that he had no intention of dissolving the League into the IWA but still hoped they could unify their objectives while remaining separate organisations with their own individual focuses.
Bern Congress (1868)