*352 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYrelations between Marx and Schweitzer soon became strained: the Sozial-
Demokrat was faithful to Lassalle's doctrines and it seemed to be directly
attacking the International when it printed an article from Hess in Paris
which repeated a rumour that Tolain and his friends were Bonapartist
agents. Marx was furious and, although Schweitzer agreed to make Lieb-
knecht responsible for all material concerning the International, Marx
eventually withdrew his collaboration and vigorously criticised Schweitzer
for his appeasement of Bismarck's Government. It would have been sur-
prising if Marx's designs on the ADAV had come to anything: it was
more than fifteen years since he had been active in Germany^48 and his
close friends and supporters there could be counted on the fingers of one
hand.
At first, the International met with no greater success in South Ger-
many. When Liebknecht arrived in Saxony, he could do no more for the
International there than he had done in Berlin. The only political party
in which action was possible was the Verband Deutscher Arbeitervereine
(Association of German Workers' Unions) - a loose federation of liberal
People's Parties, united mainly by opposition to Prussia, with no central-
ised leadership and very little socialism. Moreover, the political atmos-
phere was dominated by the approaching Austro-Prussian War.
Liebknecht - to whom both Marx and Engels referred in their letters
with the most scathing epithets - was willing to help the International
(and, indeed, was obviously intimidated by Marx's personality), but the
political situation just would not permit it. Marx, embarrassed by the lack
of enthusiasm in the very area for which he was responsible, made greatly
exaggerated, if not outright false, statements to the General Council on
progress in Germany. By far the most effective person working for the
International in Germany was the veteran socialist Johann Philipp
Becker.^49 On the foundation of the International Becker had been very
active in recruiting members in Switzerland from his base in Geneva. In
late 1866 Becker, encouraged by Marx, founded active sections of the
International in at least a dozen German cities and formed them, in 1867 ,
into a well-organised 'Group of German-speaking Sections' centred on
Geneva.
Even during these relatively lean years Marx retained his early faith in
the vocation of the German proletariat to constitute the vanguard of the
proletarian revolution owing, in particular, to its ability to curtail the
'bourgeois' stage of social evolution. Especially interesting in this context
is the speech that Marx delivered on the twenty-seventh anniversary of
the German Workers' Educational Association in February 1867. Here
he is reported as attributing the Germans' revolutionary superiority to
three factors: 'The Germans had achieved most freedom from religious