In September 1872, during the Hague Congress of the International Workingmen's Association, the Belgian delegates spoke out against the exclusion of Mikhail Bakunin proposed by the General Council of London, dominated by Karl Marx. In this founding conflict of anarchism, they joined the camp of the "anti-authoritarians" against the "authoritarians". Like Bakunin, the Belgian delegates refused to achieve their objectives by conquering political power and were in favor of a federalist structure of the International, in which the local groups retained a large degree of autonomy. According to them, the revolution would take place quickly and a new society would be built from below.