International Alliance of Socialist Democrats

an anarchist organization established by M. A. Bakunin in Geneva in September 1868. After the General Council of the First International refused to accept the alliance into the International (March 1869), the Bakuninists announced the dissolution of the organization; however, they actually maintained it, and in March 1869, under the guise of the Geneva Section, they brought it into the International.

The International Alliance of Socialist Democrats was constructed along the principle of the unconditional subordination of rank and file members to a small number of “initiates.” It had secret organizations in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and southern France. It allied with anti-Marxist elements within the International such as Lassalleans and the opportunistic leaders of British trade unions. It did not shrink “. . . from the use of any means, nor any treachery” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 18, p. 329), and it waged a struggle against K. Marx and F. Engels to sieze control of the General Council. Marx and Engels exposed the petit bourgeois anarchist nature of the subversive activity of the International Alliance of Socialist Democrats. Soon after the expulsion of Bakunin from the International by the Hague Congress (1872), the alliance disintegrated.