Bernstein's political career began in 1872, when he joined a socialist party with Marxist tendencies, known formally as the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany. The party was a proponent of the Eisenach style of German socialism, named after the German town where it was founded. Bernstein soon became known as an activist. His party contested two elections against a rival socialist party, the Lassalleans (Ferdinand Lassalle's General German Workers' Association), but in both elections neither party was able to win a significant majority of the left-wing vote. Consequently, Bernstein, together with August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, prepared the "Einigungsparteitag" ("Unification Party Congress") with the Lassalleans in Gotha in 1875. Karl Marx's famous "Critique of the Gotha Program" criticised what he saw as a Lassallean victory over the Eisenachers, whom he favoured. Bernstein later noted that it was Liebknecht, considered by many to be the strongest Marxist advocate within the Eisenacher faction, who proposed the inclusion of many of the ideas that so thoroughly irritated Marx.