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CHAPTER VIII
THE BATTLE BETWEEN MARX AND BAKOUNIN
At the moment when the future of the International
seemed most promising and the political ideas of Marx
were actually taking root in nearly all countries, an application
was received by the General Council in London
to admit the Alliance of Social Democracy. This, we will
remember, was the organization that Bakounin had
formed in 1868 and was the popular section of that remarkable
secret hierarchy which he had endeavored to
establish in 1864. The General Council declined to admit
the Alliance, on grounds which proved later to be
well founded, namely, that schisms would undoubtedly be
encouraged if the International should permit an organization
with an entirely different program and policies to
join it in a body. Nevertheless, the General Council declared
that the members of the Alliance could affiliate
themselves as individuals
with the various national sections.
After considerable debate, Bakounin and his followers
decided to abandon the Alliance and to join the
International. Whether the Alliance was in fact abolished
is still
open to question, but in any case Bakounin
appeared in the International toward the end of the sixties,
to challenge all the theories of Marx and to offer,
in their stead, his own philosophy of universal revolution.
Anarchism as the end and terrorism as the means
were thus injected into the organization at its most formative
period, when the laboring classes of all
Europe had
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