THE INTERNATIONAL^340HI attitude towards the International until J. B. von Schweitzer, a gifted
lawyer of aristocratic descent and editor of the party's newspaper Sozial-
I hmokrat, gained control in 1866. Marx was to retain a deep, life-long
antipathy to the legacy of Lassalle - the 'Richelieu of the proletariat',
who had wanted to sell the working class to Bismarck.^41 'It is beyond all
doubt', he wrote to Schweitzer, 'that there will be a disappointment over
I assalle's unholy illusions about a socialist initiative on the part of the
Prussian Government. The logic of things will tell. But the honour of
the workers' party demands that it reject such phantasms itself before it
discovers their emptiness from experience. The working class is revol-
utionary or it is nothing.'^42
I )uring the first year of the International Engels referred to Wilhelm
I icbknecht in Berlin as 'the only reliable contact that we have in Ger-
many'.^41 Although he got the Inaugural Address printed in the Sozial-
Drmokrat, Liebknecht was able to do little more, for he had difficulty
supporting his family and was put in an ambiguous position by having
agreed to write a life of Lassalle (commissioned by the Countess von
ll.it/Ield). Liebknecht was expelled from Prussia in July 1866 and Marx
wrote disapprovingly to Engels that 'he has not been able to found even
1 six-man branch of the International Association'.^44
II would have been very difficult to implant the International in Berlin,
loi Marx's relations with the ADAV soon reached breaking point. Before
the founding of the International both Liebknecht and Klings in Solingen
•. 1 ingested that Marx stand for the presidency of the ADAV. He at first
1 rinsed, then agreed to stand, though he had decided to decline the office
publicly if and when elected. This would be 'a good party demonstration,
both against the Prussian Government and against the bourgeoisie'.^45
I lowever, Lassalle's will, which nominated for President Bernhard Becker
(who was already acting in that capacity), was made public a few days
before the election and Marx's attempt failed completely: even in Solingen
he got no votes at all. Marx nevertheless urged the few contacts he had
in (I'ermany to secure the affiliation of the ADAV to the International
it ns Congress in December. To Engels' cousin, Karl Siebel, he wrote:
I lie adherence of the ADAV will only be of use at the beginning,
i|;.imst our opponents here. Later the whole institution of this Union,
which rests on a false basis, must be destroyed.'^46
In November Liebknecht passed on Schweitzer's invitation to Marx
uul Kngels to write for the Sozial-Demokrat, and Marx's first contribution
apart from the Inaugural Address - was a long ambivalent obituary of
I'roudhon, in which he repeated the views of Poverty and Philosophy and,
with an eye on the position of the ADAV in Germany, criticised Proud-
lion's apparent 'compromise with the powers-that-be'.^47 However,