SELECT CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 349League of Peace and Freedom, the Congress replied that its members
would do better to disband their association and join the International.
I he Congress accepted strikes as a legitimate weapon of working-class
pressure and also adopted a resolution - concerning the impact of machin-
ery - proposed on behalf of the General Council by Eccarius with the
help of a long quotation from Capital. The proposal was drafted by Marx
and summarised the views on the ambivalent nature of machinery that he
had already published in Capital. Marx had previously defended these
views at length in the General Council when the Brussels agenda was
being drawn up.^70 Proudhonist resolutions on free credit and exchange
banks were referred back to individual sections for study. Most impor-
tantly the Congress adopted a resolution calling for the collective owner-
ship of land, railways, mines and forests. Marx was especially pleased with
the results of the Congress: a resolution had been passed paying particular
tribute to Capital, saying that 'Karl Marx has the inestimable merit of
being the first economist to have subjected capital to a scientific analysis'.^71
I he instructions that Marx had given both before and during the Con-
gress to the General Council delegates, Eccarius and Lessner, had set the
tone - heightened by considerable support from the massive Belgian
delegation. The two main points for which Marx had been striving - the
common ownership of the means of production and the necessity for
political action by the working class - had both become part of the
programme of the International. The Times published two lengthy reports
from Eccarius, and Marx (in spite of his annoyance that Eccarius had
omitted the references to Capital in the debate on machinery) wrote
enthusiastically to Meyer in America that 'it's the first time that the paper
has abandoned its mocking tone concerning the working class and now
takes it very seriously'.^72
The Basle Congress of 1869 saw the International at its zenith: it
confirmed the defeat of the Proudhonists, and that the influence of Bakun-
in's anarchism was not yet dangerous; it was also the most representative
(> 1 t he congresses. For the first time there was a delegation from Germany.
Schweitzer had renewed his correspondence with Marx, and the Inter-
national and Marx had been warmly praised at the ADAV's Congress in
I lamburg in the autumn of 1868. Thus forced to declare himself, Lieb-
knecht persuaded the Verband at its Congress in September 1868 to adopt
the first four paragraphs of the Preamble to the International's statutes,
liasing himself on this, Liebknecht then tried to get Marx to declare in
Ins favour and condemn Schweitzer. Marx refused - still regarding Lieb-
knecht as unenthusiastic about the International. In fact, Becker's group
1 > 1 (Jerman-speaking sections was much more active on the International's
behalf. Marx summed up his attitude to both Liebknecht and Schweitzer