KARL MARX

THE INTERNATIONAL 35 1
arc historically justified, the working class is not yet ripe to develop as
an independent historical movement. . . . Here the history of the International
has merely repeated the general lesson of history that the obsolete
tries to reinstate and confirm itself inside the newly achieved form.' 75
It is significant that Bakunin evolved his ideas against the background
o! Russia and Italy, where no organised working-class movement was
possible, whereas Marx was thinking primarily of Germany, Britain and
I'Vance. At the beginning of the International, nevertheless, relations
between Marx and Bakunin were amicable. Bakunin had visited Marx in
I .oiulon in 1864 and Marx had found him 'very agreeable and better than
before .. . one of the few people who, after sixteen years, have progressed
instead of going backwards'. 76 Up to the end of 1868 Bakunin had been
in live in the League of Peace and Freedom and only seceded from it
when it would not accept his ideas on the abolition of the right of
inheritance; on leaving, he founded the Alliance of Social Democracy
which then applied to join the International. When he first heard of the
alliance Marx considered it 'stillborn' 77 - though Engels was much more
disturbed by this attempt to create 'a state within a state'. 78 The General
< louncil refused the application of the Alliance, and so the Alliance disbanded
and urged its individual sections to join the International.
Although Marx was extremely scornful of the Alliance's programme as
drawn up by Bakunin, 79 the General Council approved the projected
ulliliation on condition that the Alliance replace 'equalisation of classes'
by 'abolition of classes' in its programme. Even so, there were constant
squabbles in Geneva where the local section of the International refused
to accept the Alliance as an affiliated body.
Bakunin's ideas had most influence in Italy and Spain; they made
•.omc impact in French Switzerland and the South of France, and on
many questions the Belgian delegation to the Congress tended more to
llakunin's position than to Marx's. It would, however, be quite untrue
in suppose that Bakunin actually organised opposition within the International.
The Alliance was not a close-knit party; it was much nearer to
being merely a name that Bakunin applied to the totality of his friends,
acquaintances and correspondents. Bakunin had no wish to challenge
Marx despite vicious accusations that he was a Russian spy made by Marx's
nsociates Liebknecht and Hess. When Herzen urged him to do this, he
trplied by referring to Marx as a 'giant' who had rendered 'tremendous
• I vices in the cause of socialism which he has served for practically
twenty-five years with insight, energy and disinterestedness, in which he
luis undoubtedly surpassed us all'.
I le went on: