KARL MARX

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362 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY
as follows: 'The role of the General Council is to act impartially. Would
it not therefore be better to wait until (i) the nullity of the results of
Schweitzer's game have become apparent; and (2) Liebknecht and Co.
have really organised something?' 73 This ambiguous situation was brought
to an end when Schweitzer found himself compelled, in order to safeguard
his leadership, to reunite with the Hatzfeld faction - a move which
provoked the exodus of the more liberal-minded members of the ADAV.
These members joined with the Verband at a Congress at Eisenach in
August 1869 to found the Social Democratic Workers' Party and sent a
twelve-man delegation, including Liebknecht, to the Basle Congress.
The Congress reaffirmed the Brussels resolution on the nationalisation
of land, this time by a decisive majority. This point was vital to Marx as
land nationalisation was the 'prime condition' of the Irish emancipation
to which he attached particular importance. 74 The resolution was supported
by Bakunin, making his first appearance at a congress, who also
supported a proposal of the General Council, soon to be used against
himself, that the General Council should have power, pending a decision
by the next congress, to suspend any section which acted against the
interests of the International. He also tried to persuade the General
Council to abolish the right of inheritance. Marx's view, as expressed in
the General Council, was that the first task was to change the economic
organisation of society of which the inheritance laws were a product and
not the cause. A measure of the general support for Bakunin's ideas was
the majority which he had on his side against the General Council on
this specific question (although this did not amount to the necessary twothirds).
The right of inheritance was only one of the many views for which
Bakunin had been agitating in Italy and Switzerland, where he had been
working for the last few years following his romantic escape from Siberia
in 1861. Bakunin did not have a very orderly mind, but when he did
formulate his ideas, they were usually the opposite of Marx's: he was
opposed to any and all manifestations of state power (Marx's views he
referred to as 'authoritarian communism'); he was against any centralisation
of the International, and he opposed all co-operation with bourgeois
political parties. Whereas Marx believed that the new society was being
nurtured in the womb of the old and that there was thus a certain
continuity between them, Bakunin believed in the thorough destruction
of every facet of contemporary society. Marx saw the history of the
International as 'a continual struggle against sects' - the chief of these
being the Proudhonists, the Lassalleans and eventually the followers of
Bakunin. 'The development of socialist sects', he declared, 'and that of the
real workers' movement are in inverse relationship. As long as the sects