KARL MARX

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200
Switzerland simply two ex-supporters of Bakunin, including Utin. 139
The
only strong delegation was the six-man group from Belgium where the
International was flourishing. This group mediated between Marx,
strongly supported by the Blanquist refugees on the Council, and the
pro-Bakunin forces. The Conference, in which Marx was the most active
and dominant participant, began by recommending the General Council
to limit its numbers and not to take its members too exclusively from
one nationality. It then forbade the use of the title General Council by
national committees, renewed the efforts of the Geneva Congress to
obtain comprehensive working-class statistics, discussed ways of attracting
peasants to membership of the International, and in general attempted to
tighten discipline and make the International more of a political party
than a forum for discussion: the London Conference resolutions are the
first documents of the International to speak specifically of a 'workers'
party'. But the main business was the dispute with the Bakuninists. The
Conference re-emphasised the commitment to political action by declaring
that 'in the militant state of the working class, its economic movement
and its political action are indissolubly united'. This political action might
well be within the framework of parliamentary democracy, for Marx
declared: 'the governments are opposed to us: we must answer them with
all the means that are at our disposal. To get workers into parliament is
equivalent to a victory over the governments, but one must choose the
right man.' 140 Yet the onus of deciding whether the revolution would be
violent or not lay with those who held power: 'we must declare to the
governments: we will proceed against you peaceably where it is possible
and by force of arms when it may be necessary'. 141 The Conference
dissociated itself from the activities of Netchayev, though Marx did not
manage to implicate Bakunin. Marx also wished to get a condemnation
of Bakunin's Alliance, but Belgian mediation persuaded the conference to
consider the matter of the Alliance closed by remarking that it appeared
to have dissolved itself and that the International would henceforth only
admit sections or federations to membership. In Switzerland the dissident
Bakuninists were invited to join the Swiss Federation or, if they found
this impossible, to call themselves the Jura Federation. The Conference
also agreed to set up an English Federal Council. Marx moved this motion
himself: he had at last given up his opposition to its establishment,
realising that it was impossible for the General Council to infuse the
English workers with internationalism and the revolutionary spirit. Marx
also criticised the trade unions for being an 'aristocratic minority' 142 and
not involving lower-paid workers, to whom, together with the Irish, Marx
increasingly looked for support.
In spite of Marx's view that it had 'achieved more than all the earlier