George Novack On First Two Internationals

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The First Three
Internationals.
Their History and Lessons
George Novack
Dave Frankel
Fred Feldman
PATHFINDER PRESS, INC., NEWYORK
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"The Evolution of the Comintern (1919-36)" is reprinted from
Documents of the Fourth International (1933-40) copyright
1973 by Pathfinder Press, Inc. "The History of the Left Op-
position (1923-33)" first appeared as two series of articles
from December 1, 1972, to March 30, 1973, and from Decem-
ber 28, 1973, to February 1, 1974, in The Militant, 14 Charles
Lane, New York, N.Y. 10014. It is reprinted in a revised
version by permission.
Copyright 197 4 by Pathfinder Press, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
First Edition, 1974
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-79908
ISBN Cloth 87348-367-7, Paper 87348-368-5
Manufactured. in the United States of America
Pathfinder Press, Inc.
410 West Street
New York, N.Y. 10014

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contents
Introduction
The First and Second Internationals
by George Novack
The Historical Necessity of Internationalism
The First International (1864-76)
The Rise of the Labor and Socialist International
(1889-1904)
The Spread of Opportunism in the Socialist
International ( 1904-14)
The First World War and the Collapse of the
Second Ihternational
The Evolution of the Comintern (1919-36)
The History of the Left Opposition ( 1923-33)
by Dave Frankel
Stalinism and Internationalism (1935-73)
by Fred Feldman
Sources and Further Reading
7
9
27
43
55
67
79
99
173
205
34 The First Three Internationals
gram and a correct theoretical basis to. the international labor
movement. Third was the International Committee organized
by Ernest Jones in London, which by its mass meetings and
manifestos kept alive the traditions of internationalism during
the reactionary 1850s.
When the conditions for its creation ripened, the First Interna-
tional was built upon the foundations of the work accomplished
by these pioneers. After the defeat of the revolutions of 1848
and the subsequent capitalist boom during the 1850s, the work-
ers' movement became terribly depressed. It appeared to many
that it would never recover the revolutionary intensity it had
displayed at the height of the 1848 revolts. Though the idea
of internationalism died down, it was never completely extin-
guished. It was kept alive by small groups of isolated, im-
poverished but stalwart leaders of the working class. Those
who have passed through comparable periods of reaction and
retreat in the twentieth century can understand the temper of
the times.
Then, late in the 1850s, a series of. events occurred that
changed the international situation and led to a revival of the
labor movement and therewith of the spirit of internationalism.
Most important were the economic crisis of 1857, the most
catastrophic and widespread in the nineteenth century, the Ital-
ian war for independence in 1859, and the outbreak of civil
war in the United States in 1860-61.
These great historical events had extremely significant econom-
ic and political consequences in France and England, the most
highly industrialized countries of Europe. They weakened N a-
poleon III's dictatorship and impelled him to extend economic
and political concessions to the hitherto atomized French work-
ers. Step by step, the workers made advances. They were given
a chance to vote at elections; laws forbidding union
tion to improve working conditions were repealed.
The decisive developments, however, took place in England.
Although the English workers had won the right to have trade
unions in 1825, the masses didnothavethe right to vote. Mean-
while, the development of continental capitalism created danger-
ous competition for the English workers in the form of sweated
labor. When they attempted to secure higher wages or shorter
working hours, the English capitalists threatened to import
cheap labor power from France, Belgium, Germany, and other
countries. The outbreak of the American Civil War and the
embargo on cotton exports produced a cotton crisis which
caused great misery among the English textile workers.
The First and Second Internationals 35
These conditions shook up the English trade unions and
prompted the development of what became known as the "New
Unionism," headed by a number of the experienced leaders of
the engineers', carpenters', joiners', builders', shoemakers', and
other unions. These men recognized the need for political strug-
gle on behalf of the trade unions and began to take an energetic
interest in domestic and foreign affairs. They held monster mass
meetings, demanding the extension of voting rights to the
workers, protesting against Prim.e Minister Palmerston's con-
spiracy to intervene against the North in the American Civil
War, and held a welcoming reception for the Italian freedom-
fighter Mazzini when he visited London in 1864.
This political awakening of the English and French working
class also revived the idea of internationalism. The visit of
French worker delegates to the World Exposition in London
in 1862, coupled with the joint conspiracy of France, England,
and Russia to put down the Polish insurrection for independence
in 1863, led to an exchange of correspondence on their common
grievances and finally to a joint meeting of representatives of
the French and English workers in St. Martin's Hall, London,
on September 28, 1864. There it was resolved, and a committee
elected, to draw up the statutes of an international workers'
association to be approved at an international congress set
for Belgium the next year. The newspaper accounts of the
committee, which consisted of numerous trade unionists and
representatives of foreign workers, mention Karl Marx last
of all. But he was destined to be among the foremost figures
associated with the organization.
The role of Marx
After the defeats of 1848 enforced the dissolution of the Com-
munist League, and during the subsequent long years of reac-
tion, the exiled Marx and Engels, although they kept the closest
watch upon events, concentrated upon their scientific work.
Recognizing that "there is a season for everything," they awaited
a turn in the tide of affairs that would render their practical
intervention in the organizational activities of the labor move-
ment fruitful. The moment that the labor and revolutionary
movement showed new life, the warriors put on their armor and
plunged into the fray with the weapons at their disposal. On
February 13, 1863, Marx wrote to Engels: "The era of revolu-
tion has now fairly opened again in Europe" (Marx-Engels,
Selected Correspondence, New York, p. 144). When the Inter-
national Workers Committee was formed, he wrote to American
3 6 The First Three Internationals
friends: "Although for years I have systematically refused to
take part in any 'organizations' I accepted this time because
here is a possibility of doing some real good" (Mehring,
p. 323).
Marx at once came to the fore as the intellectual leader of
this committee of fifty members, half of them English workers.
Mter others had fumbled, he took over the task of drafting the
program and statutes of the First International. The committee
enthusiastically and unanimously adopted "The Inaugural Ad-
dress" and "Provisional Rules," demanding only the addition of
a few abstract phrases about "right and duty, truth, morality
and justice" that, as . Marx told Engels, he inserted in such a .
way that they did not mar the tone of the whole.
"The Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen's
Association," delivered to the public meeting in St. Martin's
Hall, London, on September 28, 1864, belongs with The Com-
munist Manifesto as a powerful indictment of capitalism and an
exposition of the aims of the working class. It opened by re-
cording the striking fact that in the years from 1848 to 1864
the misery of the working class did not diminish although this
period was one of unparaileled industrial development and com-
mercial growth. It proved this point by comparing the fright-
ful statistics published in the official Blue Books concerning the
misery of the English proletariat with the official figures used
by the chancellor of the exchequer, Gladstone, in his budget
speeches. These showed that "the intoxicating augmentation of
wealth and power" which had taken place in the same period
had been entirely confined to the propertied classes. The possi-
ble single exception was a small section of labor aristocrats
in England who received somewhat higher wages, though even
this improvement was canceled out by the general increase in
prices. "Everywhere the great mass of the working classes
were sinking down to a lower depth, at the same rate at least,
that those above them were rising in the social scale ....
Every fresh development of the productive powers of labour
must tend to deepen social contrasts and point social antago-
nisms. . . . That epoch is marked in the annals of the world
by the quickened return, the widening compass, and the deadly
effects of the social pest called a commercial and industrial
crisis" (Selected Works, vol. 1, pp. 345-346).
The address noted that, even during the reactionary 1850s, the
workers had made two significant achievements. One was the
legal enactment of the ten-hour day, forced by the struggle of
the English proletariat. "The Ten Hours' Bill was not only
a great practical success; it was the victory of a principle; it
was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy
of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the
working class" (Selected Works, vol. 1, p. 345-346). The other
victory was the establishment of the cooperative movement
and cooperative factories which proved in practice that the
workers can organize production and exchange by themselves
without the exploiters.
But, it went on, "the lords of the.land and the lords of capi-
tal will continue steadily to use their political privileges for the
defence and perpetuation of their monopoly [of the means of
production]." It was therefore the great duty of the working
class to capture political power. The workers seem to have
grasped the necessity of this, as was proved by the simultaneous
resuscitation of the working class movements in England,
France, Germany, and Italy and by the efforts to organize
the workers politically. The workers "possess one element of
success-numbers. But numbers are weighty in the scales only
when they are united in an organization and lead towards
a conscious aim" (p. 34 7 ). Past experience had shown that
ignoring the solidarity that should exist between the workers
of all countries and failing to spur them on to stand shoulder
to shoulder in all the struggles for their emancipation always
revenges itself in a general failure of all their related efforts.
This consideration, together with the considerations of foreign
policy outlined earlier, had moved the meeting in St. Martin's
Hall to found the International Workingmen's Association
(Mehring, p. 327).
The address concluded with the imperishable battle cry of
The Communist Manifesto: "Workers of All Countries, Unite!"
In the "Provisional Rules" are embodied many of the classi-
cal maxims of Marxism. The emancipation of the working
class must be the task of the workers themselves. The struggle
for the emancipation of the working class is not for the estab-
lishment of new class privileges but for the abolition of class
rule altogether. The economic subjugation of the worker to
those who have appropriated the tools of labor, that is, the
source of life, results in all forms of servitude: social misery,
intellectual atrophy, and political dependence. The economic
emancipation of the working class is therefore the great aim
for which all political movements must serve as a means.
The emancipation of the workers is neither a local nor a na-
tional task, but a social one. It embraces all countries in which
modern society exists and can be achieved only by systematic
cooperation between all these countries. The rules provided for
and defined the tasks of a General Council composed of work-
ers from various countries represented in the association.
The "Inaugural Address" differed in form from The Commu-
nist Manifesto. "Time is necessary," Marx wrote to Engels,
"before the revived movement can permit the old audacious
language. The need of the moment is: bold in matter, but
mild in manner" (Mehring, p. 329). The document was like-
wise different in content since it aimed to embrace in a single
framework workers of varying degrees of political develop-
ment. But it contained, although implicitly, the fundamental
ideas of communism. Marx relied upon the further development
and heightened class consciousness of the workers, which would
result from their united action, to guarantee the final victory
of scientific socialism within the International, and through the
International over the capitalist class.
Achievements of the First International
The First International lived for fourteen years from 1864
to 1878. Since it would be impossible to describe all its work
and the proceedings of its congresses, only its most outstanding
achievements and organizational activities will be mentioned.
The International scored its first signal success in the fight
its members led for the reform of the franchise in England.
Writing to Engels on July 7, 1866, Marx declared: "'The work-
ers' demonstrations in London, marvellous compared with
anything we have seen in England since 1849, are purely
the work of the International. Lucraft, for instance, the leader
of the Trafalgar Square demonstration, is a member of our
council.' At a meeting of 20,000 people in Trafalgar Square,
Lucraft proposed a demonstration in Whitehall Gardens, 'where
we once chopped .off the head of a King,' and shortly after-
wards a demonstration o'60,000 people in Hyde Park almost
developed into an insurrection" (Mehring, pp. 349-350).
The present leaders who have converted the Labour Party
into an agency for preserving British capitalism and scoff
at Marxism as un-English and impractical actually owe their
offices and power to this struggle for the extension of the fran-
chise conducted under Marx's intellectual direction.
The International members led a vigorous campaign for
progressive labor legislation. They demanded a shorter work-
ing day; condemned night work and all forms of labor they
thought harmful to women and children. "By compelling the
adoption of such laws," declared the 1866 Geneva Congress of
the International, "the working class will not consolidate the
ruling powers, but, on the contrary, it will be turning that
power which is at present used against it into its own instru-
ment" (Mehring, p. 354 ).
The International stimulated trade-union organization in
many countries. It also sought to raise the political level of the
trade-union movement and make its members conscious of
their historical mission. "Conducting a ceaseless guerrilla war-
fare in the everyday struggle between capital and labour, the
trade unions would become still more important as a lever
for the organized abolition of wage-labour. In the past the
trade unions had concentrated their activities too exclusively
on the immediate struggle against capital, but in the future
they ought not to hold themselves aloof from the general po-
litical and social movement of their class. Their influence would
grow stronger to the extent that the great masses of the work-
ers would realize .that their aim was not narrow and selfish,
but directed to securing the general emancipation of the down-
trodden millions" (Mehring, p. 355);
In line with this directive, the International supported the
strikes which swept one country after another after the eco-
nomic crash of 1866. Wherever these struggles broke out, the
International called upon the workers to support in their own
interests the struggle of their foreign comrades. The capitalists
sought then to attribute these strikes to the machinations of the
First International, just as today they attribute strikes to the
activities of alien agitators, "Reds," and Trotskyists. Some Swiss
capitalists even sent an emissary to London to investigate
the financial sources of the International, which were slender
indeed. "If these good and orthodox Christians had lived in
the early days of Christianity they would have instituted in-
quiries into the banking account of the apostle Paul in Rome,"
jested Marx (Mehring, p. 395).
The International expressed its active solidarity whenever
the struggles of the peoples reached the point of civil or na-
tional war. The International from 1864 to 1869 sent four
addresses to the people of the United States. The first was to
President Lincoln supporting the government's resistance to
the slave power; the second was to President Johnson on
Lincoln's assassination; the third to the people on their tri-
umph over the slaveholders; and the fourth in 1869 went to
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William .. Sylvis, president of the. National Labor Union, in
protest against the attempts of the European ruling classes to
drag the United States into war.
The International brought the rage of all the bourgeoisie and ~
the philistines down upon its head when, in two addresses
written by Marx, it hailed the French workers who rose at the
end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 to take power and
create the Paris Commune. With an invading army at their
gates, these "heaven-storming Titans" of the working class
moved forward to set up a workers' republic. They were blood-
ily crushed by the forces of the French bourgeoisie, aided by
the army of Bismarck, just as in 1943-45 General Badoglio
succeeded in derailing and crushing the Italian revolution with
the aid of the Anglo-American forces and the Stalinists.
The major achievement of the International was the living
proof it gave that international unity of the workers was pos-
sible and fruitful. Despite its inescapably primitive internal
organization, the First International provided a model for all
subsequent international proletarian organizations. The term
"internationalism" is in the dictionary and the song "The Inter-
nationale" was written thanks to the existence of the First In-
ternational.
The struggle for Marxism
Together with this practical demonstration of working-class
solidarity, the International served as an instrument and arena
for the popularization of the ideas of Marxism. Although Marx
was the acknowledged inspirer and theoretical head of the
International, his doctrines had to struggle for domination
within the organization and among the .ranks of the class-
conscious workers. From the first Marx had to contend with
the bourgeois-liberal ideology and ward off the pressures of
the British trade-union leaders 'on the General Council.
But the most serious competitors with the ideas of scientific
socialism for influence among the advanced workers came
from several varieties of petty-bourgeois socialism, anarchism,
and forms of sectarianism and opportunism in connection with
the problems confronting the workers' movement. The history
of the International, Marx wrote in a letter to Bolte on Novem-
ber 23, 1871, was "a continual struggle of the General Council
against the sects and amateur experiments, which sought to
assert themselves within the International against the real move-
ment of the working class. This struggle was conducted at
the congresses, but far more in the private negotiations of the
General Council and the individual sections" (Selected Corre-
spondence, Moscow, p. 326).
Marx had to grapple with the ideas of Proudhonism, which
has now completely disappeared, but was then the most popu-
lar brand of petty-bourgeois socialism. Marx's two future sons-
in-law, Paul Lafargue and Charles Longuet, were troublesome
apostles of Proudhon before they became Marxists.
Unlike the scientific socialists, the Proudhonists wanted to
leave private property in existence but to reorganize the ex-
change of privately owned products. Their practical prescrip-
tions for reforming bourgeois society came down to forming
cooperative societies and tinkering with the monetary system.
These petty-bourgeois socialists opposed themselves to the main
forms and methods of proletarian struggle. Proudhon opposed
trade unions and deplored strikes and repudiated direct partici-
pation in politics. His disciples held that the nations should
be dissolved into little groups which would then form some
kind of voluntary association in place of the state.
Marx and his followers had to struggle continually against
this tendency, which was powerful among the French and
Swiss workers who were not factory hands but small crafts-
men and were still swayed by petty-bourgeois modes of thought.
Marx's chief theoretical and organizational struggle, however,
was with the ideas of anarchism represented by Mikhail Ba-
kunin, a heroic Russian revolutionist and the father of the po-
litical anarchist movement, which is today on its last legs.
The main differences between Marx and Bakunin can only be
briefly indicated. Marxism bases itself foursquare upon the
industrial proletariat as the decisive social force of modern
society. Bakunin sought the social base for his revolutionary
movement in the peasants, in the lumpen proletariat, and the
dispossessed and despairing petty-bourgeois elements.
Marxism fights against all reactionary authorities and govern-
ments and seeks to establish the state power of the working class
as the necessary transition to the abolition of all state authority
and forms of coercion. Anarchism is against all authority and
all states regardless of their reactionary or progressive charac-
ter or their class nature. The anarchists are therefore opposed
to participation in politics, whereas the Marxists teach that the
workers must engage actively in politics and conquer state
power "by any means necessary."
These principled differences formed the basis for Bakunin to
set up a secret organization within the International which
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sought to take over its leadership by conspiratorial 1tactics.
The internal struggles between the two irreconcilable tendencies
disrupted and weakened the International considerably.
The Marxists also had to contend against the Lassallean lead-
ers of the German labor movement on two main issues. One
was their tactical opportunism around the question of what
forces to unite with in struggle. They supported the Junker
landlord policies of Bismarck against the bourgeois parties
instead of pursuing an independent proletarian policy. At the
same time these "Bismarck Socialists" had a sectarian attitude
toward the trade unions and refused to enter or organize any
unions that were not theirs in program and leadership. They
did not understand the differences between the trade union as a
mass organization, embracing workers of all states of political
development on economic grounds, and the proletarian party,
which is a selection of the socialist-minded revolutionary
workers.
Throughout its life the founders of the International had to
contend against a host of external enemies and internal op-
ponents. These destructive forces became overwhelming under
the adverse historical conditions which depressed the labor
movement after the crushing of the Paris Commune. These led
to the decline, disintegration, and finally the formal dissolu-
tion of the First International in 1878 after its headquarters
were transferred to New York.
Although the First International had become outlived, its
work endured. In 1878 Marx wrote, attacking the contention
that the International had failed: "In reality the social-demo-
cratic workers parties in Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Por-
tugal, Italy, Belgium, Holland and North America, organized
more or less within national frontiers, represent just as many
international groups, no longer isolated sections sparsely dis-
tributed over various countries and held together by a General
Council on the periphery, but rather the working-class itself
in constant, active and direct connection, held together by the
exchange of ideas, mutual assistance and joint aims .... Thus,
far from dying out, the International has developed from one
stage into another and higher one in which many of its original
tendencies have already been fulfilled. During the course of this
constant development it will experience many changes before the
final chapter in its history can be written" (Mehring, pp. 483-
484).
It will be seen how this prophetic vision of Marx about the
vicissitudes of the International has worked out in reality.
The Rise of the Labor and Socialist
International ( 1889-1904)
Trotsky once characterized the period of international work-
ing-class activity covered by the First International as essen-
tially an anticipation. The Communist Manifesto was the
theoretical anticipation of the modern labor movement. The
First International was the practical anticipation of the labor
associations of the world. The Paris Commune was the revo-
lutionary anticipation of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Lenin later characterized the Third International as the Inter-
national of action which had begun to put into practice Marx's
foremost contribution to political theory: the idea that the work-
ing class had to strive to establish the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat.
The historical bridge between the International of anticipa-
tion and the International of action was the Second Inter-
national. This can be tersely characterized as the International
of organization, which raised broad masses of workers to their
feet in a number of countries, organized them into trade unions
and political labor parties, and prepared the soil for the inde-
pendent mass labor movement.
Although it lingered on for another six years, the First. In-
ternational really died in 1872, its back broken by the defeat
of the Paris Commune. Seventeen years passed until the work-
ing class had recuperated its forces enough to mov(l forward
again in the international arena and found a new International.
The 1870s and 1880s were times of oppressive political
reaction all over Europe. This was fundamentally the result
of economic circumstances which were essentially the same as
had produced the conservatism of the 1850s. It sprung from
the prodigious development of capitalism upon the founda-
tion of the national states. The mighty upswing of capitalist
economy not only inspired the capitalist rulers with confidence
but overawed the workers, binding them to the capitalist system,
its state, and its ideology. The most subservient sections of
43
labor were the labor bureaucrats and aristocrats who shared
in the imperialist exploitation by the advanced countries. It
is a historical rule that the more stable the material power of
the capitalists, the greater is the rule of reaction in the ranks
of labor. This has been likewise reflected in the U. S. from
1923 to 1929 and from 194 7 to the present day.
Paradoxically, the rapid development of industry at the same
time gave an impetus to the labor movement on the most
elementary level. It provided the material conditions for more
extensive organization so that, despite the prevailing political
reaction, the trade unions and even in certain cases the socialist
parties proved able to gather strength and gain considerable
ground. This same phenomenon is taking place in the U. S.
today where certain unions are growing in size and numbers
despite their political backwardness and ideological inertia.
This contradictory process, whereby labor by and large
made headway despite the reinforcement of ruling class reac-
tion, was most graphically demonstrated in Germany. The
center of the First International was England. Germany be-
came the center of the Second International. After its victory
in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, Germany, united under
the Prussian monarchy, entered upon an era of industrial
expansion similar to that which England had passed through
twenty years before. As the economic foundations of Germany
were revolutionized, the labor movement became filled with
fresh life and energies which sought organized expression in
the struggle for better living and working conditions.
The character and consequences of this industrial revolution
in Germany were delineated by Engels in a letter to Bebel,
the outstanding Marxist mass leader of the German Social-
Democracy. Writing from London on December 11, 1884,
Engels said:
Our great advantage is that with us the industrial revolu-
tion is only just in full swing, while in France and England,
so far as the main point is concerned, it is closed. There the
division into town and country, industrial district and agri-
cultural district is so far concluded that it only changes
slowly. The great mass of the people grow up in the condi-
tions in which they have later to live, are accustomed to
them; even the fluctuations and crises have become some-
thing they take practically for granted. Added to this is
the remembrance of the unsuccessful attempts of former
movements.
With us, on the other hand, everything is still in full
flow .... Our industrial revolution, which was set in mo-
tion by the Revolution of 1848 with its bourgeois progress
(feeble though this was), was enormously speeded up 1)
by- getting rid of internal hindrances in 1866 to 1870, and
2) by the French milliards [indemnity paid to the German
conquerors after the defeat of 1870], which after all were
to be invested capitalistically. So we achieved an industrial
revolution which is more deep and thorough and spatially
]UOre extended and comprehensive than that of the other
countries, and this with a perfectly fresh and intact
proletariat, undemoralised by defeats and finally.-,-thanks
to Marx- with an insight into the causes of economic and
political development and into the conditions of the im-
pending revolution such as none of our predecessors
possessed. [Selected Correspondence, Moscow, pp. 455-456].
Acting for the German bourgeoisie, the Junker landlords, and
their monarchy, Chancellor Bismarck sought to suppress this
growing Social Democratic movement among the advanced
German workers. The total Social Democratic vote atthe Reichs-
tag elections had risen from 102,000 in 1871 to 493,000 in
1877. Then in 1879 came the enactment of the Anti-Socialist
Law which illegalized the socialist propaganda activities of the
German Social Democracy and limited the party to parliamen-
tary activity, much as the application of the Smith Act sought
to illegalize first the Socialist Workers Party and then the Com-
munist Party. Thousands of police persecutions were undertaken
against the Social Democratic leaders and workers.
But, instead of crushing the Marxist party, these persecutions
served to temper its ranks and to increase its popularity with
the workers. After a drop during the first years of illegality,
a rapid growth of votes began. In 1884 the party received its
highest vote up to that time, 550,000. In 1890 when the law
was repealed, it got three times that number.
"The elections have shown," wrote Engels to Bebel on Novem-
ber 18, 1884, ~ t h a t we have nothing to expect from yielding,
i.e., from concessions to our adversaries. We have only won
respect and become a power by defiant resistance. Only power
is respected, and only so long as we are a power shall we
be respected by the philistine. Anyone who makes him con-
cessions can no longer be a power and is despised by him.
The iron hand can make itself felt in a velvet glove but it must
make itself felt. The German proletariat has become a mighty
party; may its representatives be worthy of it" (Selected Corres-
pondence, New York, pp. 429-430).
While these stirring developments were invigorating the Ger-
man labor movement, English organized labor had sunk into
apathy and stagnation. Engels described and explained this
decline in a letter to Bebel, August 30, 1883: "Participation in
the domination of the world market was and is the basis of the
political nullity of. the English workers. The tail of the bour-
geoisie in the economic exploitation of this monopoly but never-
theless sharing in its advantages, politically they are naturally
the tail of the 'great Liberal Party,' which for its part pays them
small attentions ... " (Selected Correspondence, New York;
p. 42 0 ). Earlier Engels had explained to Bernstein, June 17,
1889: "The Trades- Unions even bar all political action on
principle and in their charters, and thereby also ban partici-
pation in any general activity of the working-class as a
class. . . . One can speak here of a labour movement only in
so far as strikes take place here which, whether they are won
or not, do not get the movement one step further" (Selected
Correspondence; Moscow, p. 386).
Under these conditions Marx regarded any attempts to or-
ganize a new International as premature. He wrote accordingly
in 1881 to the Dutch revolutionist F. Domela Nieuwenhuis:
"It is my conviction that the critical juncture for a new inter-
national workingmen's association has not yet arrived and for
this reason I regard all workers' congresses or socialist con-
gresses, in so far as they are not directly related to the condi-
tions existing in this or that particular nation, as not merely
useless but harmful. They will always fade away in innumerable
stale, generalised banalities" (Selected Correspondence, Moscow,
p.411 ). This prediction was verified by the fact that several
efforts made by Belgian and German socialists early in the
1880s to revive the Internati.onal brought no practical results.
Three main factors changed this situation by the end of the
eighties. These were the gradual growth and strengthening of
the socialist movement and the trade unions throughout
Europe; England's loss of her industrial monopoly and the
consequent unemployment and economic crises which led to
the. growth of a new unionism; and the staunch struggle of the
German socialist workers' movement previously described.
In France Jules Guesde, amnestied for his part in the Paris
Commune, had captured the young trade union movement and
after 1880 organized a strong socialist party. Several societies
The First and Second Internationals 4 7
for the propaganda of Marxist and socialist ideas (The Social
Democratic Federation and Fabian Society) were founded in
England. Throughout the eighties socialist and labor parties
were either organized or their foundations laid in Denmark,
Sweden, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. The first
Marxist groups set to work in Finland and Russia. The Social-
ist Labor Party was organized in 1877 in the United States
and 1886 witnessed the peak of strength of the Knights of
Labor and a national strike wave.
The collapse of England's monopoly on the world market
after 1878 produced considerable unemployment and distress,
especially in the East End of London. In 1886 there were
violent demonstrations of the unemployed in Hyde Park. With
the upturn of industry there arose a great movement among
the unskilled workers of London in 1889. The outstanding
events of this "New Union" movement, led by John Burns, Tom
Mann, and Ben Tillet (members of the Social Democratic Feder-
ation who were inspired by socialist ideas), were the dock strike
and gas-workers' strike. Here is how Engels summarized this
movement in 1892:
That immense haunt of misery [the East End of London]
is. no longer the stagnant pool it was six years ago. It
has shaken off its torpid despair, has returned to life, and
has become the home of what is called the "New Union-
ism", that is to say, of the organisation of the great mass
of "unskilled" workers. This organisation may to a great
extent adopt the form of the old Unions of "skilled" workers,
but it is essentially different in character. The old Unions
preserve the traditions of the time when they were founded,
and look upon the wages system as a once for all es-
tablished, final fact, which they at best can modify in the
interest of their members. The new Unions were founded
at a time when the faith in the eternity of the wages system
was severely shaken; their founders and promoters were
socialists either consciously or by feeling; the masses, whose
adhesion gave them strength, were rough, neglected, looked
down upon by the working-class aristocracy; but they had
this immense advantage, that their minds were virgin soil,
entirely free from the inherited "respectable" bourgeois
prejudices which hampered the brains of the better-situated
"old" Unionists. And thus we see now these new unions
taking the lead of the working-class movement generally,
and more and more taking in tow the rich and proud "old"
unions. [Quoted in Selected Correspondence, New York,
p.465].
The specific occasion for the founding of the Second Inter-
national was provided by the Centenary Celebration of the
Great French Revolution in 1889. Sixty-nine international con-
gresses were held in connection with the International Exhibi-
tion arranged in Paris by the French government. Among
them were two different socialist and labor congresses, one called
by the German Socialists and arranged by the French Guesd-
istes, and the other arranged by the British trade unionists and
French reformists, or Possibilists, as they were then called.
"Two mutually recriminating congresses were held in separate
halls by Possibilists and Impossibilists respectively, the anar-
chists being impartially present at both. This publication of the
incapacity of socialist fraternities to fraternize was greeted with
storms of derision by the unregenerate world," wrote the British
socialist Hyndman. (See Braunthal, History of the Interna-
vol. 1, pp. 198-200.)
Nevertheless it was the congress of the "Impossibilists" based
upon Marxist principles that turned out to have lasting unity
and vitality. That was the first congress of the Second Inter-
national.
Two practical questions were taken up by the first congress.
In opposition to those who contended that "labor legislation
was incompatible with socialist principles," the congress called
upon the workers to support a program for international labor
legislation. The congress also resolved to support the eight-
hour day struggle carried on by the American Federation of
Labor (AFL). The AFL, although represented at neither, had
greeted both congresses and solicited support for its campaign
which was slated to begin on May 1, 1890. The congress de-
cided to arrange on that day an international demonstration
in favor of the eight-hour ,.day, thus laying the foundation for
international May Day. The AFL, whose suggestion initiated
May Day, later dissociated itself from this international so-
cialist and promoted instead the celebration of Labor
Day in a bourgeois-nationalist spirit.
The main political struggle against rival tendencies in the la-
bor movement of the early years of the Second International
was waged against the ideas and methods of anarchism, a
continuation of Marx's fight against Bakuninism. The anar-
chists of the so-called "Black International" opposed political
and parliamentary action; practiced acts of terrorism; made
a fetish of the general strike. These anarchist influences were
combatted under the leadership of the German Marxists, and
at the London Congress of 1896 anarchists and nonparliamen-
tarians were definitely excluded and rules adopted admitting
only socialist political parties and trade unions. This solidi-
fication of the socialist ranks marked the consolidation and
permanent organization of the Second International. From that
time forward until 1914 it was the acknowledged leadership
of the labor vanguard.
The next ten years saw the Second International rise to the
heights of its power and prestige. At its congresses the
cipal problems confronting the working class were debated by
the chief leaders of the various countries and codified in resolu-
tions. Before and after these congresses these issues were taken
up and decided in the various national parties. The interna-
tional character of these discussions was a great advance for
the labor movement, raising its theoretical level permanently
and overcoming provincialism and national narrow-mindedness.
Since that time the great issues affecting the working class have
become the common property of advanced workers in all coun-
tries.
One of these issues revolved around the relation between re-
form and revolution. Marxist theory reconciled these two with
perfect success. "The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelio-
ration of the condition of the workers within the framework of
the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers
to the social democracy the only means of engaging in the pro-
letarian class war and working in the direction of the final
goal- the conquest of political power and the suppression of
wage labor," wrote Rosa Luxemburg in 1899 in her pamphlet
Reform or Revolution (p. 8).
The Marxists had to combat two false and harmful tenden-
cies on this question in the socialist movement: the opportun-
ists and the sectarians. The opportunists, basing themselves
upon the practices imposed upon the social democratic parties
at this stage of their development which was necessarily re-
stricted to the struggle for reforms within the framework of the
national capitalist states, sought to counterpose reforms to the
social revolution and to make reforms the essence, the sum to-
tal of the socialist movement. "The mistake of the Revision-
ists was ... that they wanted to perpetuate reformism theoret-
ically and make it the only method of the proletarian class
struggle," Trotsky pointed out in The War and the Interna-
tionaL "Thus, the Revisionists failed to take into account the
.i
objective tendencies of capitalistic development, which by deep-
ening class distinctions must lead to the Social Revolution
as the one way to the emancipation of the proletariat"
(p. 60).
The viewpoint of the reformists was clearly formulated as
follows by Bernstein: "To me that which is generally called
the ultimate aim of socialism is nothing, but the movement
is everything" (Reform or Revolution, p. 64). In her criticism
Rosa Luxemburg pointed out that "Between social reforms and
revolution there exists for the social democracy an indissol-
uble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social rev-
olution, its aim" (p. 8).
The sectarians committed the opposite error. Whereas the op-
portunists set up reforms against revolution, the ultraradicals
absolutely counterposed the bare abstraction of revolution to
the struggle for reforms. They opposed fighting for reforms
on principle because, they argued, reforms tended to reconcile
the workers to capitalism and thereby interposed obstacles to
the revolutionary struggle for emancipation. The United States
has a horrible example of such sterile sectarianism in the So-
cialist Labor Party, which rejects any mass action for reforms
as reactionary.
In the theoretical disputes with these two tendencies within
the International, Marxism emerged as the victor all along the
line. Against the opportunists who sought to adapt the social-
ist movement to the capitalist order, the Marxists insisted upon
the necessity of promoting the class struggle to the conquest
of power in order to suppress capitalism and establish social-
ism. Against the ultralefts they maintained the necessity of
fighting for reforms and of utilizing democratic and parlia-
mentary institutions to educate, organize, and enlighten the
workers until the majority was ready for the taking of power,
for the revolutionary assault upon capitalism.
The continual conflict between the Marxists and opportunists
erupted most violently in the countries of Europe with the
most advanced socialist movements- France and Germany.
In France the struggle came to a head over the practical
political issues involved in the action of Alexandre Millerand,
a member of the Independent Socialist Party, who in 1899
accepted on his own .responsibility the post of minister of in-
dustry in the capitalist cabinet "of republican defense." This
was the first time a socialist leader accepted a post in a bour-
geois government- but it was far from the last. Millerand
justified his entry into the ministry on the pretext that it was
imperative to save French democracy from the monarchists
and Bonapartists who were taking advantage of the agitation
over the Dreyfus case to menace the Third Republic. The sub-
sequent struggle around Miller and's betrayal of socialism led
to a split between the right and left wings in the French So-
cialist Party and the controversy spread throughout the entire
European Social Democracy.
This basic question of coalition politics, of socialist collab-
oration with the liberal wing of the capitalist class against
other forces of reaction, has not only an historical but an
actual interest. This issue has reasserted itself time and again
at each new turn in the course of the socialist movement. And
every time the opportunists have brought forward the same
false slogans and arguments and prepared the same disastrous
consequences for the working class. In Germany in 1918 Ebert
and Scheidemann entered a bourgeois-republican government
"to save German democracy." Net results: the crushing of the
proletarian revolution and the eventual triumph of Nazism.
Socialists and later the Stalinists participated in the bourgeois-
republican government of Spain in order to defend democracy
against the monarchists and fascists. Result: the victory of
Franco. Roosevelt must be supported, said the labor leaders
and Stalinists, against the ultrareactionaries at home, and his
war program must be supported in order to beat back Euro-
pean fascism. Results: the job and wage freeze, government
strikebreaking activities and, after the war, the launching of
the "red purge" in the labor unions and the McCarthy witch-
hunt under the liberal "friend of labor," Harry Truman. In
1968 Lyndon Johnson had to be supported against the reac-
tionary "warmonger" Barry Goldwater. As the saying goes:
"The more things change, the more they stay the same."
These and similar historical experiences of the twentieth
century have irrefutably proved what the Marxists of
Miller and's time declared and predicted: that political collab-
oration of socialists with any representatives of capitalism
only serves to strengthen the reactionary ruling class, to en-
feeble the .positions of the workers, and to undermine democ-
racy. The precedent was set with Millerand, who later broke
the strike of French railroad workers. Such collaboration was
the basis for the "people's fronts" that led European labor to
so many defeats before the Second World War and for the
national unity with the democratic imperialists that proved
.no less disastrous during the. war. The workers can defend
their economic gains and democratic rights, not by joining
forces with their class enemies in coalition politics, but only
by organizing themselves for intransigent and independent
struggle against them, their policies, and their governments.
These two issues were integral parts of the broader struggle
between the Marxist and revisionist wings of the Social
Democracy. The standard bearer and theoretical head of the
revisionists was Eduard Bernstein, who, in his series of articles
on Problems of Socialism (1897-98) and in his book Evolu-
tionary Socialism (1899), called for a revision of Marxism
in the light of "living reality." He was the theoretical leader
of the petty-bourgeois oppositionists of that day who were
breaking with Marxism. He ridiculed dialectics in the same
spirit as the Burnham-Shachtman opposition in the Socialist
Workers Party (1939-1940), abandoned the method of his-
torical materialism (as they did over the question of the class
nature of the Soviet Union), and denied the importance of
theory in general for the socialist movement. He especially
assailed the labor theory of value, upon which the entire
structure of Marxist political economy rests; the historical
necessity of socialism; the inevitable collapse of capitalism;
the law of the concentration of capital; and the tendency
toward the exploitation of the working class. He
advocated alliances with bourgeois-democratic parties and the
methods of opportunism.
History has supplied the best refutation of Bernstein's theory
and its predictio.ns, which today read like a voice from the
grave, even though they have acquired renewed popularity
in wide circles. Bernstein held, against the Marxists, that
capitalism was growing more peaceful, more progressive,
eliminating crises, raising the living standards of the masses.
He predicted that reforms would gradually pave the way for
socialism, that the capitalist state would evolve painlessly into
socialism as class antagonisms died away. The past half-
century has shown how capitalism decays and degenerates,
lurches from crisis to crisis, breeds hunger, unemployment,
fascism, as class antagonisms reach their maximum intensity
and break out in wars and revolutions.
Even at that time, armed with the weapons of scientific so.-
cialism, the Marxists scored a complete theoretical victory over
the ideas of revisionism, though they were unable to eliminate
reformist practices. and habits in their parties. In Germany
Bebel, Kautsky, and Rosa Luxemburg beat back the revi-
sionists headed by Bernstein and Vollmar, who, incidentally,
was the progenitor of Stalin's theory of "socialism in one
country."
At the congress of German Social-Democracy at Dresden
in 1903 Bebel and Kautsky succeeded in maintaining the unity
of the party while passing a resolution directed against the
revisionists. This resolution read:
The Congress condemns most determinedly the revision-
ist efforts to change the tested and successful line of tactics
which we have pursued in the past and which is derived
from the class struggle idea, by substituting a policy of
concessions to the present order for the conquest. of politi-
cal power through defeat of our enemies.
These revisionist .tactics would inevitably change the char-
acter of our party . . . from a movement striving for the
quickest possible replacement of the existing bourgeois so-
ciety by a socialist society, into a group content with re-
forming bourgeois society.
The Congress declares:
First, that the party declines to accept responsibility for
political and economic conditions which follow from the
capitalistic mode of production ....
Second, that the Social Democratic party cannot strive for
a share of governmental power within bourgeois so-
ciety ....
Furthermore, the Congress condemns all efforts to con-
ceal the existing, ever-increasing antagonism between the
classes, in order to facijitate cooperation with bourgeois par-
ties. (Quoted in Landauer, European Socialism, vol. 1,
p. 359.]
At the Amsterdam Congress of the Social Democracy in 1904,
this Dresden resolution became the center of an ardent and
passionate debate that lasted four days and witnessed a "titanic
international duel" between the French socialist Jaures and the
German leader Bebel. By adopting the Dresden resolution the
International repudiated revisionist theory and ranged itself in
principle as standing under the banner of revolutionary
Marxism.
The Amsterdam Congress marked the high point of the Sec-
ond International. There were 444 delegates present, the larg-
est and most cohesive group of representatives the socialist
movement had ever known. As the Dutch Socialist Van Kol
!I
, I
greeted the assembly, he pointed out the contrast between 1904
and 1872 when the few dozen delegates of the First Internation-
al had met at The Hague in a little cafe to bury their organiza-
tion. In 30 years that handful of exiles and hunted men had
given birth to a world movement.
It was the shining hour of triumph for the Second Interna-
tional and for the ideas of Marxism within that organization.
This triumph was still further heightened when the first Russian
revolution broke out the following year and the. young Rus-
sian working class under the leadership of the Social Democ-
racy first displayed itsrevolutionary prowess.
This was the high point of .the Second International. Its
descent began with the ebbing of the revolutionary flood tide.
The Spread of Opportunism in the
Socialist International ( 1904-14)
The Amsterdam Congress of 1904 and the Russian Revolution
of 1905 were the twin peaks of revolutionary spirit in the his-
tory of the Second International. The congress marked the
triumph of the ideas of Marxism over the ideas of the revision-
ist right wing; of the proletarian will to struggle for the over-
throw of capitalism over the trend to adapt qrganized labor
to the framework of parliamentary democracy, of the tactics
based upon intransigent class struggle over the tactics of the
opportunists and socialist-reformists- in short, the ascendancy
of the proletarian tendency over the petty-bourgeois influences
in the Second International.
The Russian Revolution of 1905 saw this spirit and this
program guiding mass action. It must be remembered that there
had been no large-scale revolutionary rising in Europe for
thirty-five years since the Paris Commune had been crushed
in 1871. Now, in the backward czarist empire, the mainstay
of European reaction, "the prison house of nationalities" where
an absolutist regime had repressed democratic institutions,
the socialist and labor movements- the entire oppressed popu-
lation began to move into opposition after the debacle of the
Russo-Japanese War. At their head was the young Russian
working class- and it was led by the Russian Social Democ-
racy.
In a lecture on the 1905 revolution given in Swiss exile
a month before the outbreak of the 1917 revolution, Lenin
observed:
Prior to January 22(9), 1905, the revolutionary party of
Russia consisted of a small handful of people, and the re-
formists of those days (exactly like the reformists of today)
derisively called us a "sect." Several hundred revolutionary
organizers, several thousand members of local
tions, half a dozen revolutionary papers appearing not
55
r--'
more frequently than once a month, published mainly
abroad and smuggled into Russia with incredible difficulty-
and at the cost of many sacrifices- such were the revolu-
tionary parties in Russia, and revolutionary Social-Democ-
racy in particular, prior to January 22(9), 1905. This
circumstance gave the narrow-minded and overbearing re-
formists formal justification for asserting that there was not
yet a revolutionary people in Russia.
Within a few months, however, the picture completely
changed. The hundreds of revolutionary Social-Democrats
"suddenly" grew into thousands; the thousands became lead-
ers of between two and three million proletarians. The pro-
letarian struggle produced widespread ferment, often revolu-
tionary movements among the peasant masses, fifty to a
hundred million strong; the peasant movement had its re-
percussions in the army and led to soldiers' revolts, to
armed clashes between one section of the army and another.
In this manner, a colossal country, with a population of
130,000,000, went into the revolution; in this way, slumber-
ing Russia became transformed into a Russia of a revolu-
tionary proletariat and a revolutionary people. [Collect-
ed Works, vol. 23, p. 238.]
The Russian Revolution set revolutionary currents in motion
throughout Europe, as Trotsky later noted:
The Russian Revolution was the first great event to bring
a fresh whiff into the stale atmosphere of Europe in the
thirty five years since the Paris Commune- The rapid de-
velopment of the Russian working class and the unexpected
strength of their concentrated revolutionary activity made
a great impression on the entire civilized world and gave
an impetus everywhere to the sharpening of political dif-
ferences. In England the 'Russian Revolution hastened the
formation of an independent labour party. In Austria,
thanks to special circumstances, it led to universal manhood
suffrage. In France the echo of the Russian Revolution took
the form of Syndicalism, which gave expression, in inade-
quate practical and theoretical form, to the awakened
revolutionary tendencies of the French proletariat. And
in Germany the influence of the Russian Revolution showed
itself in the strengthening of the young Left wing of the
party, in the rapprochement of the leading Centre to it,
and in the isolation of Revisionism. The question of the
Prussian franchise, this key to the political position of
Junkerdom, took on a keener edge. And the party adopted
in principle the revolutionary method of the general strike.
[The. War and the International, p. 61.]
The mighty uprising of 1905 also left deep traces throughout
the whole of Asia and stimulated the subsequent colonial rev-
olutions in Turkey, Persia, and China.
However, that revolution was defeated, and upon its defeat
and the triumph of the counterrevolution, a prolonged period
of reaction set in, not only in Russia but over all Europe.
Trotsky described the political ebb in the following terms:
In Russia the counter-revolution triumphed and began a
period of decay for the Russian proletariat both in politics
and in the strength of their organizations. In Austria the
thread of achievements started by the working class broke
off, social insurance legislation rotted in l .. :;) government
offices, nationalist conflicts began again with renewed vigor
in the arena of universal manhood suffrage, weakening
and dividing the Social Democracy. In England, the Labour
Party, after separating from the Liberal Party, entered
into the closest association with it again. In France the
Syndicalists passed over to reformist positions. Gustave
Herve changed to the opposite of himself in the shortest
time. And in. the German Social Democracy the Revisionists
lifted their heads, encouraged by history's having given
them such a revenge. The South Germansperpetrated their
demonstrative vote for the budget. The Marxists were com-
pelled to change from offensive to defensive tactics. The
efforts of the Left Wing to draw the party into a more
active policy were unsuccessful. The dominating Centre
swung more and more towards the Right, isolating the
Radicals. Conservatism, recovering from the blows it re-
ceived in 1905, triumphed all along the line. [Ibid., p. 63.]
In his lecture mentioned above, Lenin remarked that "the
Russian revolution-precisely because of its proletarian char-
acter . . . is the prologue to the coming European revolution"
(Collected Works, vol. 23, p. 252 ). This clear-sighted view was
also shared at that time by Karl Kautsky. But it was not pre-
dominant, and still less a guide for strategy, among the leaders
of the Second International from 1906 to 1914. They operated
!
a different analysis and outlook which, although
not clearly formulated and fully expressed, was nevertheless
evidenced in their actual conduct. This was the reformist per-
spective.
What were its premises? They believed that capitalism would
continue for the indefinite future as in the past hundred years
to expand and develop its productive forces. This would make
possible raising the living standards of the workers and suc-
cessfully acquiring more political liberties and economic gains.
These objectives could be won by strengthening step by step
the power of the working class organizations, their political
parties, unions and cooperative societies; by exerting pressure
upon the capitalist governments to grant political concessions
and cut taxes; and by forcing the employers to make economic
concessions. This outlook provided the justification for the
so-called minimal program, a policy for improving the situation
of the workers within the framework of the existing national
state. It went hand in hand with a line in foreign policy which
relied primarily upon warnings and protest from the workers'
organizations to preserve peace and prevent war.
However this minimal program of pressure upon the regime
tended to become the real program while the maximum pro-
gram based on the revolutionary struggle for power became
subordinated to it. The strategic aim of the conquest of power
and the abolition of capitalism receded into the distant future,
became lost in the mists, appeared more and more unreal
and improbable. The day-to-day fight for reforms became the
standard for action and soon the substitute for the ultimate
goal.
Opportunism, revisionism, and reformism had their material
roots. What were the economic and social conditions that pro-
moted the gradual shift of the Second International from rev-
olutionary to nonrevolutionary positions and prospects?
This process was bound-up with the spread and stengthening
of imperialism, the monopolist stage of capitalism where the
world was carved up between a small group of privileged,
exploiting, predatory, militaristic, and oppressive powers
(England, Germany, France, Russia, Italy, Japan, the U.S.)
and the majority of humanity living under colonial conditions.
The superprofits exacted and accumulated by the capitalist
rulers enabled the great powers during this upswing of world
capitalism to give a small stratum of their workers some
crumbs from their table. These privileged workers constituted
a labor aristocracy headed by a strong party and union bu-
reaucracy.
The leaders of the parliamentary labor parties together with
the trade-union bureaucracy led a comparatively peaceful, easy,
and cultured existence. They felt, thought, and acted, not like
representatives of the exploited, but more like the petty-
bourgeois shopkeepers, postmasters, teachers, and journalists
who surrounded them. As they became increasingly petty-bour-
geoisified, they became more and more insulated from the
sufferings, miseries, and aspirations of the ruined and im-
poverished masses and less inclined to buck the bosses on
their behalf.
They were especially indifferent toward the peoples of the
colonial lands from whose exploitation their own privileges,
comforts, and higher living standards were partially derived.
They in effect became petty shareholders in the imperialist
enterprises of the capitalists of their own nations. They cal-
lously acquiesced in the seizure of colonies, in the color lines
and bars, in the degradation of colonial peoples. Where they
did not go so far as to approve or endorse colonial enslave-
ment, they remained passive. They conducted no active struggle
against imperialist policies and practices and did not seek to
expose them in order to educate the workers, raise their socialist
class consciousness, and create ties of solidarity with the most
"wretched of the earth."
As a logical consequence, the most unrestrained right wingers
in the labor movement began to align themselves with the
native bourgeoisie against the colonial peoples, against the
workers of other countries, and even against the superex-
ploited majority of workers in town and country in their own
lands. The practice of class collaboration in place of consistent
class struggle is the core .of opportunism. Lenin defined this
as "the sacrifice of the fundamental interests of the masses
to the temporary interests of an insignificant minority of the
workers, or in other words, the alliance of a section of the
workers with the bourgeoisie against the mass of the prole-
tariat."
Four issues marked the growth of the outright opportunist
elements in the Second International from 1906 to 1914. First
and foremost was the colonial question.
At the Stuttgart Congress, held in 1907, the left wing led
a principled fight for the socialist policy of opposing conquest,
the subjugation of others, and the violence and plunder that
characterized the colonial operations of the imperialist powers.
The opportunists led by the heads of the German trade unions
resisted any struggle against the imperialists and stood for
adaptation to them. A German delegate, Eduard David, argued
that since colonial policy and oppression were inevitable under
capitalism, the Social Democracy should not fight against it
as such, but should fight rather for the improvement of the
conditions of labor of the inhabitants of the colonies and for
moderating the exploitation of the colonies by the bourgeoisie.
That is to say, the struggle was to be conducted not to end
slavery, but for bettering the conditions of the slaves.
Bernstein argued that there were bound to be two categories
of peoples- the rulers and the ruled. Some peoples were
children incapable of developing themselves. Therefore colonial
policy was inevitable even under socialism. To such ideologues,
their own nations were always mature and naturally belonged
among the slaveholders.
The congress voted for the revolutionists on this question
against the opportunists, 127 to 108, with ten abstentions,
All the Russian socialists voted in a revolutionary spirit while
the majority of the German trade-union leaders supported the
opportunists on this and other matters. Their respective posi-
tions were portents of the future.
The second dispute was over immigration policy. An Amer-
ican delegate argued that the International should demand
legislation restricting the entry of yellow-skinned workers into
"civilized countries," proposing to erect a wall between the West-
ern and Asian workers by capitalist legislation. This had been
a traditional policy of the American union movement, as indeed
it still is.
The third important point of contention involved the rela-
tions between the socialist parties and the unions. The breeding
ground of opportunism and the stronghold of the right wing
in the Second International was the trade unions. Union
leaders, leaning on privileged and backward workers, wanted
to escape the political control and surveillance of the party
where socialist ideas and class struggle methods were current.
They therefore called for "neutrality" of the unions in relation
to the programs and influence of the socialist parties.
Organizational autonomy of the unions is a necessity. But
total independence of the unions in policy and practice is im-
possible. Before the conquest of power they either fall under
the domination of the capitalist class and its government or
under the influence of the capitalists' working-class opponents.
There is no middle ground in actuality. By separating the
economic from the political struggle the right wing wanted a
charter to license their opportunism.
At Stuttgart the fight against neutrality was formally won
by revolutionists who adhered to traditional Marxist principles
on this question. Clara Zetkin wrote at the time: "In principle
no one any longer disputed the basic, historical tendency of
the proletarian class struggle to link the political with the
economic struggle, to unite the political and economic orga-
nizations as closely as possible into a single socialist working-
class force" (quoted in Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 15, p. 88).
Lenin remarked on the discussion: "While observing the nec-
essary caution and gradualness, and without taking any im-
petuous or tactless steps, we must work steadily in the trade
unions towards bringing them closer and closer to the Social-
Democratic Party" (Collected Works, vol. 13, p. 89).
The problem of the relationship between the vanguard party,
which represents the proletariat as it should be, and the trade
unions, which represent the proletariat as it is (and even then
very imperfectly), is one of the crucial questions of revolu-
tionary Marxism. It is also one of the most complicated and
difficult to deal with in practice.
These relations have not only differed in different countries
but differed considerably at various stages of development
in the same country. The union movement has witnessed two
polar types of relations. In Germany and Russia, the Social
Democracy for the most part created and led the union or-
ganizations. In England and the United States, on the other
hand, the socialist and union movements originated and de-
veloped apart from and even in antagonism to each other.
In France and in Spain, the syndicalists, who were opposed
in .principle to any tie--up between the unions and the political
organizations of the working class, had considerable influence.
Later on, in several of the major imperialist countries, such
as in Great Britain and Canada, the mass political movement
arose out of the trade unions and gradually merged with the
vanguard in the shape of labor parties, with or without an
explicit socialist ideology and program.
In view of the multitude of possible variants on both sides,
there can be no single, simple, final formula for determining
the relations between the economic and political movements
of the workers. What these are at any given stage depends
upon a whole complex of historical and political factors.
However, one consideration remains constant for Marxists.
j
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This is the decisive role of politics over economics, which is
organizationally expressed in the role of the party in trade-
union affairs. "Politics," as Trotsky observed, "is the generalized,
concentrated expression of economics."
Trotsky described the ideal aim of their relationship as fol-
lows. "The party, if it be worthy of the name, includes the whole
vanguard of the working class and uses its ideological influence
for rendering every branch of the labor movement fruitful,
especially the trade union movement. But if the trade unions
are worthy of their name, they include an ever growing mass
of workers, many backward elements among them. But they
can only fulfill their task when consciously guided on firmly
established principles. And they can only have this leadership
when their best elements are united in the party of the pro-
letarian revolution" (Leon Trotsky on the Trade Unions, p. 12).
The Second International had the merit of enunciating this aim,
however much it fell short of realizing it.
The major European powers were already engaged in the
diplomatic maneuvers and arms race that were to result in
war seven years later. The socialist struggle against these prep-
arations occupied a central place in the debates at the Stutt-
gart Congress.
The three classic positions on the war danger were all voiced.
The opportunist view was crassly expressed by Georg Voll-
mar, a leader of the right wing of the German Social Democ-
racy, who openly renounced revolutionaryproletarianprinciples
and preached patriotism to the capitalist fatherland. It is not
without significance that he was the first to advance the theory
of socialism in one country. Vollmar stated: "It is not true to
say that we have no fatherland. We have a fatherland. All
our love for humanity cannot prevent us from being good
Germans .... We are of the opinion that anti-militarist propa-
ganda is not only mistaken from the point of view of theory,
but is harmful in principle."
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Frenchman Herve
put forward an ultraleft position. He proposed to reply to any
war by a general strike and an uprising. Herve forgot, Lenin
pointed out, "that the employment of one or another means
of struggle [against war] depends on the objective conditions
of the particular crisis, economic or political, precipitated by
the war and not upon any previous decision that revolution-
aries may have made" (Collected Works, vol. 13, p. 91).
Experience has since shown that the general strike is as a
rule impossible at the outbreak of war when chauvinism and
national unity are at their peak, and the capitalists are strong-
est and the workers weakest. Herve's recipe was faulty, observed
Lenin, because it "was unable to link up war with the capital-
ist regime in general, and anti-militarist agitation with the en-
tire work of socialism" (ibid.).
The case of Herve is especially instructive because it dem-
onstrates how petty-bourgeois posturing and declamatory ultra-
leftism and adventurism on this life and death question is the
reverse side of opportunism and can give way to it at a later
turn of events. Herve, the rabid antimilitarist, became a fervent
patriot in 1914.
The Marxist wing, captained not only by Lenin but by Rosa
Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin, won out. They expressed, said
Zetkin, "the revolutionary energy and the courageous faith of
the working class in its fighting capacity ... over the pessi-
mistic gospel of impotence and the hidebound tendency to stick
to old, exclusively parliamentary methods of struggle [as well
as] over the banal anti-militarist sport of the French semi-
anarchists of the Herve type" (ibid., p. 92 ).
The congress concluded by adopting a resolution declaring
that wars "are part of the very nature of capitalism; they will
cease only when the capitalist system is abolished .... " The
resolution called for opposition to armaments spending and
for antimilitarist propaganda. It stated that while it was im-
possible to determine the "rigid forms" of antimilitarist action
the working class might take in the event of a war threat, it
was, nevertheless, the duty of the International to "co-ordinate
and increase to the utmost the efforts of the working class
against war." In addition it cited a number of examples of
successful working-class antiwar action, not the least of which
was the Russian revolution of 1905, which grew out of the so-
cial crisis precipitated by the Russo-Japanese war. The implicit
threat that war would lead to revolution was made explicit
in the concluding paragraphs of the resolution drafted jointly
by Luxemburg, Lenin, and Martov:
If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the
working classes and their parliamentary representatives in
the countries involved, supported by the co-ordinating ac-
tivity of the International Socialist Bureau, to exert every
effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means
they consider most effective, which naturally vary according
to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening
of the general political situation.
In case war should break out anyway, it is their duty
to intervene in favour of its speedy termination, and with
all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis
created by the war to rouse the masses and thereby to
hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule. [For the full
text of the resolution see Braunthal, pp. 361-63.]
It would appear from this summary of the proceedings and
decisions of the Stuttgart Congress, which were typical of those
held every year thereafter until 1914, that, despite the resis-
tance of the opportunists, Marxist ideas held sway within the
Second International. Such a judgment would mistake the for-
mal positions taken by the body for the underlying reality of
the situation.
No one analyzed the growing gap between the official Marx-
ist ideology and the real political character of the German
Social Democratic leadership of the prewar period more acutely
than Trotsky did in 1914.
Ideology is an important, but not a decisive factor in pol-
itics. Its role is that of waiting on politics. . ..
The German Revisionists were influenced in their conduct
by the contradiction between the reform practice of the party
and its revolutionary theories. . . . The mistake of the Re-
visionists was not that they confirmed the reformistic charac-
ter of the party's tactics in the past, but that they wanted
to perpetuate reformism theoretically and make it the only
method of the proletarian class struggle. Thus, the Revi-
sionists failed to take into account the objective tendencies
of capitalistic development, which by deepening class dis-
tinctions must lead to the Social Revolution as the one
way to the emancipation of the proletariat. Marxism emerged
from this theoretical dispute as the victor all along the line.
But Revisionism, although defeated on the field of theory,
continued to live, drawing sustenance from the actual con-
duct and psychology of the whole movement. [War and
the p. 60.]
Writing in 1914, Trotsky pointed out that the generation that
grew up in the spirit of moderation and constitutional dis-
trust of revolution was composed of"men of fifty to sixty years
old ... the very ones who are now at the head of the unions
and the political organizations. Reformism is their political
psychology, if not also their doctrine. The gradual growing into
I
Socialism- that is the basis of Revisionism- proved to be the
most miserable Utopian dream in face of the facts of capi-
talistic development. But the gradual political growth of the
Social Democracy into the mechanism of the national state
has turned. out to be a tragic actuality-for the entire race"
(ibid., pp. 60-61).
Thus, despite its expanding size and influence, the Second
International remained from 1904 to 1914 a loose federation
of conflicting tendencies and forces rather than a centralized,
disciplined combat organization of the world proletariat. Im-
portant and decisive questions were settled by compromise or
deferred for further investigation. The organization did not
engage in united actions upon the basis of a single common
program nor exercise disciplinary powers over its constituent
sections.
These contradictory features of the Second International be-
came more pronounced after the Copenhagen Congress of 1910.
From 1910 to 1913 social unrest and sharp class conflicts
shook most of the countries. Miners, railroad workers, and
dockers went out on big strikes in England as did the build-
big trades and railroad workers in France, machinists and
gold miners in Russia, textile workers and miners in the United
States. These social conditions engendered reform movements
t'o head off the rise of revolt.
.Nationalist struggles sprang to life in Turkey, the Near
and China. All these domestic developments were inter-
woven with a series of international crises: the Agadir incident,
which produced a clash between France and Germany in Mo-
rocco in 1911; the over posession of Libya between Tur-
key and Italy; and the first Balkan war of 1912.
These were rumblings of the quake that was to shake all
Europe in 1914. Yet all this while, the force of habit, the rou-
tine of relatively peaceful evolution, national prejudices, fear
ofsh(lrp .changes, and lack of faith in the forces of the working
class and their allies reinforced the opportunist tendency .and
the hypocritical and cowardly conciliation with opportunism
among the centrists.
This tumorous growth inside the main Socialist parties proved
to be malignant and caused the prostration and demise of
the Second International as a progressive force when the threat-
ened world war crashed down on its head.
I I
I I
I ,;
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!
! (Above) Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, leaders ofthe
revolutionary wing of the German Social Democracy. (Below)
Eduard Bernstein (left) and Karl Kautsky (right), theoreticians
of the right and center.
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~
The First World War
and the Collapse of
the Second International
In October 1912 Montenegro declared war on Turkey and
shortly afterward all the Balkans were ablaze. The danger that
the European powder magazines would be set off by sparks
from this conflict was obvious. The International Socialist
Bureau organized antiwar meetings and arranged an Extraor-
dinary International Socialist Congress which met in Basle on
November 24-25, 1912.
Although arranged on less than a month's notice, the congress
brought together 555 delegates from twenty-three countries.
It was intended as an impressive show of force and internation-
al working-class solidarity against the threat of a generalized
war. On the second day of the congress, the delegates unani-
mously approved a manifesto drafted by the Bureau,
The Basle Manifesto stated for the first time that the coming
European war could only have an imperialist character. It
reaffirmed the principled position on the workers' struggle
against war that had been adopted at the congresses in Stutt-
gart in 1907 and Copenhagen in 1910. It underlined the threat
that social revolution would follow the outbreak of war. Re-
calling the examples of the Paris Commune following the
Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the 1905 revolution in
Russia during the Russo-Japanese War, the manifesto declared:
"It would be insanity for the governments not to realize that
the very idea of the monstrosity of a world war would in-
evitably call forth the indignation and the revolt of the work-
ing class" (Landauer, European Socialism, p. 495).
Lenin and the Bolshevik representatives at the 1912 con-
gress were "extremely pleased" with this resolution. They re-
garded the Basle Manifesto as an important statement of the
Marxist attitude toward imperialist war. Nonetheless, Lenin was
aware that words were one thing and deeds another. He was
well acquainted with the patriotic and conciliatory currents
within the Second International. According to Zinoviev, Lenin
67
said when he read the manifesto: "They have given us a large
promissory note; let us see how they will meet it."
That promissory note came due in July 1914 with the Austro-
Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia. The parties of the Second
International did their best to meet this grave crisis by carry-
ing out the first injunction of the Basle resolution: "If a war
threatens to break out . . . to exert every effort to prevent it
by means which they consider most effective."
On July 29, while Austrian troops were moving on Belgrade,
the International Socialist Bureau held an emergency session
in Brussels, arranged huge antiwar demonstrations in Germany,
Austria, Italy, France, and Belgium, and moved up its 25th
anniversary celebration from Vienna on August 23 to Paris
on August 9. Two days later, the German Socialist Party pub-
lished a ringing manifesto urging the German government not
to enter the "horrible war." It arranged peace meetings in which
millions of workers took part. On August 1, the day Germany
declared war on Russia, Herman Mueller, assured that his
party would not vote for war credits, was sent by the German
Social Democracy to Paris to agree on a uniform procedure
in parliament. The day before, Jean Jaures, the French so-
cialist leader, was assassinated by a jingo.
Amidst the patriotic landslide the Social Democratic leaders
were over optimistic in their hope that these gestures and pres-
sures would force their governments to pause and back down.
Experience demonstrated that, although mass protests might
check for a time the warlike plans of the imperialists, the decay
of "capitalism and the tensions between the Great Powers had
become so aggravated that mere threats could not suffice to
prevent them from plunging into war when their interests dic-
tated it.
Having failed to prevent the outbreak of the imperialist con-
flict, the Bureau and the parties of the Second International
then had to decide if and ho.w they would carry out the second
injunction of the Stuttgart resolution: "to do all in their power
to utilize the economic and political crisis caused by the war
to rouse the masses and thereby to hasten the downfall of capi-
talist class rule."
Here was the acid test of proletarian internationalism and the
capacity of parties and individuals to withstand bourgeois
pressures. On this point the genuine revolutionists were divided
from the capitulators and differentiated from those who wavered
in their principles. Then, as today, wars and revolutions pro-
vided the touchstones that distinguish would-be Marxists from
the genuine article.
The unity and unanimity exhibited by socialists of different
countries in trying to prevent the outbreak of hostilities was
abruptly shattered by the calls for mobilization. It was never
to be restored on the old basis.
The war split the Second International into three different
groupings: the right wing, the center, and the left. The ten-
dencies that had been germinating over the previous period
were precipitated by the impact of the war. In their very first
manifesto, issued in November 1914, the Bolsheviks pointed
out that the social patriots were simply carrying to its logical
conclusion the opportunist course they had been pursuing and
even preaching for years.
The collapse of the Second International [they said] is
the collapse of opportunism, which developed from the fea-
tures of a now bygone (and so-called "peaceful") period
of history and in recent years has come practically to dom-
inate the International. The opportunists have long been
preparing the ground for this collapse by denying the so-
cialist revolution and substituting bourgeois reformism in
its stead; by rejecting the class struggle with its inevitable
conversion at certain moments into civil war, and by preach-
ing class collaboration; by preaching bourgeois chauvinism
under the guise of patriotism and defense of the fatherland,
and ignoring or rejecting the fundamental truth of social-
ism, long ago set forth in The Communist Manifesto, that
the working men have no country; by confining themselves,
in the struggle against militarism, to a sentimental, philis-
tine point of view instead of recognising the need for a
revolutionary war ofthe proletarians of all countries against
the bourgeoisie of all countries; by making a fetish of the
necessary utilisation of bourgeois parliamentarism and bour-
geois legality, and forgetting that illegal forms of organiza-
tion and propaganda are imperative in times of crises.
[Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 21, p. 32.]
The majority of the parties and their leaders made a sudden
and total turnabout. The war which they denounced as a "uni-
versal imperialist aggression" in July became converted by Au-
gust into a war of general national defense.
The German Social Democratic majority endorsed "national
defense" against Russia. Following party discipline, its Reichstag
members voted unanimously for war credits on August 4,
1914. At the parliamentary fraction meeting held the previous
night only 14 of 110 representatives had voted against the
party's taking a position in support of war credits- these
included Haase, the leader of the center, and Liebknecht, the
leader of the left wing. However, at the August 4 Reichstag
meeting, Haase read a declaration accepting the "grim fact
of war" and "refusing to leave the fatherland in the lurch in
the face of the Russian peril and the horrors of hostile inva-
sion." He conveniently left unmentioned Belgium, which the
Kaiser's armies were invading.
In Belgium, the socialist and union leaders rallied to King
Albert's regime and Vandervelde, chairman of the International
Socialist Bureau, became a minister in the war cabinet. In
France, not only the socialists but the syndicalists, who in
theory opposed all governments, went over to support the
government. A "sacred union" of all parties in defense of "la
patrie" was proclaimed.
In E n ~ l a n d , on August 1 and 2 the socialists and the Labour
Party ll.eld huge "stop the war" meetings. Several days later
the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress gave undivided
support to the war government. A pacifist tendency headed by
Ramsay MacDonald (who resigned his chairmanship of the
Labour Party), the Independent Labour Party, and a few
other small socialist groups continued their opposition. The
same story was duplicated in Austria-Hungary.
That is the way the leading parties proceeded from opportun-
ism to social patriotism, abdicated the class struggle in the
name of national defense and national unity, broke up the
solidarity of the international working class,. surrendered to
their capitalist masters, and betrayed the cause of socialism.
These shameful actions signaled the collapse of the Second
International, not only as an organization,. since war regula-
tions forbade the functioning of the International Socialist Bu-
reau, but in the more decisive political sense. It had failed to
fulfill its duty and carry out the pledge its leaders had given
to the proletariat in 1912. The opportunist betrayal of socialism
so besmirched and discredited the Second International that it
could never recover its prewar power and prestige.
The flipflops of the centrist leaders, Haase and Kautsky,
over the war credits was typical of the vacillations of this
tendency throughout its career. Lenin defined the centrists as
people who vacillated between the social chauvinists and the
true internationalists. In April 1917, he wrote:
The "Centre" all vow and declare that they are Marxists
and internationalists, that they are for peace, for bringing
every kind of "pressure" to bear upon the governments,
for "demanding" in every way that their own government
should "ascertain the will of the people for peace", that they
are for all sorts of peace campaigns, for peace without
annexations, etc., etc.- and for peace with the social-chau-
vinists. The "Centre" is for "unity", the "Centre" is opposed
to a split ....
The crux of the matter is that the "Centre" is not con-
vinced of the necessity for a revolution against one's own
government; it does not preach revolution; it does not carry
on a whole-hearted revolutionary struggle; and in order to
evade such a struggle it resorts to the tritest ultra-" Marxist"
excuses . ...
The "Centre" consists of routine-worshippers, eroded by the
canker of legality, corrupted by the parliamentary atmo-
sphere, etc., bureaucrats accustomed to snug positions and
soft jobs. Historically and economically speaking, they are
not a separate stratum but represent only a transition from
a past phase of the working-class movement-the phase
between 1871 and 1914, which gave much that is valuable
to the proletariat, particularly in the indispensable art of
slow, sustained and systematic organisational work on a
large and very large scale-to a new phase, that became
objectively essential with the outbreak of the first imperialist
world war, which inaugurated the era of social revolution.
[Collected Works, vol. 24, pp. 76-77.]
Not all the socialist parties voted war credits or ignored
the mandates of the Basel resolution. There were two con-
spicuous exceptions in Europe. In Russia the Social Democratic
deputies, both Bolshevik and Menshevik, refused. In Serbia,
the Austro-Hungarian invasion made it particularly difficult
to refuse to accept the theory of self-defense. Yet the Serbian
Social-Democrats, unlike their French and Belgian comrades,
refused support to the bourgeois regime. They did not consider
the invasion, which they denounced, a valid excuse for aban-
doning their socialist opposition.
Lenin described true internationalism in the following terms:
This trend is characterised by "its complete break with both
social-chauvinism and 'Centrism', and its gallant revolution-
ary struggle against its own imperialist government and against
its own imperialist bourgeoisie. Its principle is: 'Our chief ene-
. my is at home.' It wages a ruthless struggle against honeyed
social-pacifist phrases (a social-pacifist is a socialist in word
and a bourgeois pacifist in deed; bourgeois pacifists dream of
an everlasting peace without the overthrow of the yoke and
domination of capital) and against all subterfuges employed
to deny the possibility, or the appropriateness, or the timeliness
of a proletarian revolutionary struggle and of a proletarian
socialist revolution in connection with the present war" (ibid.,
pp. 77-78).
Lenin singled out the imprisoned Karl Liebknecht, who from
the Reichstag tribune openly called upon the workers and
soldiers to turn their guns against their own government, as
the outstanding representative of the revolutionary trend in
Germany. All the rest of Social Democracy, he wrote, to quote
the apt words of Rosa Luxemburg (with Liebknecht a member
and one of the leaders of the Spartacus Group) was .a "stinking
corpse."
The most consistent and far-sighted of .all the revolutionary
internationalists was the Bolshevik group headed by Lenin.
But its members in exile were likewise subjected to the pres-
sure of the war crisis. The Committee of Organizations Abroad,
which had served as a center at Paris for the Bolshevik sec-
tions outside Russia, disintegrated. Two of its members enlisted
in the French army and another withdrew, leaving only two
active members. Connections between the Bolshevik Central
Committee in Russia and Lenin and Zinoviev, members of the
Central Committee Bureau abroad, were broken.
When the two men went from Galicia to Switzerland at the
beginning of the war, they carried with them about all that
was left of the Bolshevik central organization outside Russia.
Lenin worked to reestablish contacts among the dispersed
Bolshevik sections abroad, to revive the Social Democrat (the
central party organ), to renew contacts, to smuggle party litera-
ture into Russia, and to get news out. Above all, he conducted
relentless polemics against the social patriots and centrists
not only in Russia but on an international scale, while he
hammered out the Bolshevik policy of struggle against
the war.
These were the main points in his program in
The First and Second Internationals .73
October 1914 in "The War and the Russian Social-Democracy":
1) The war was imperialist on both sides of the battlefronts
and national defense was not involved in the reciprocal ag-
gression .
2) "It (is] the duty of the class-conscious proletariat to de-
fend its class solidarity, its internationalism, and its socialist
convictions against the unbridled chauvinism of the 'patriotic'
bourgeois cliques in all countries. If class-conscious. workers
were to give up this aim, this would mean renunciation of their
aspirations for freedom and democracy, to say nothing of
their socialist aspirations" (Collected Works, vol. 21, p. 29).
3) The opportunists had betrayed the cause of socialism;
war to the end had to be waged against them. They were
"the meanest and most dangerous traitors" and there could be
no unity or conciliation with them, as the centrists advised.
4) The old International had died and was fit only for .dis-
honorable burial. It was essential to understand the reasons
why and begin immediately to lay the basis for a new Inter-
national.
5) The main enemy was at home, The immediate and stra-
tegic task was to convert the imperialist war into a struggle of
the workers for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. The
only road to peace and socialism was through revolutionary
mass action.
Although Trotsky was not then a Bolshevik, he substantially .
shared these views. He had still to overcome the residue of
conciliatory tendencies towards the Russian centrists or to for-
mulate his position as sharply and clearly as Lenin. None-
theless, he had a thoroughly internationalist outlook and hewed
consistently to it.
The vote of August 4, he wrote in his autobiography, ''has
remained one of the tragic experiences of my life" (as. it was of
Lenin's). As early as August 9, he wrote in his diary: "It is
perfectly obvious that the question here is not one of mistakes,
of certain opportunist acts, of confused statements from the
parliamentary tribune, of the voting of the budget by the So-
cial Democrats of the Grand Duchy of Baden, of the experi-
ments of French militarism, of certain leaders turning rene-
it is a question of the collapse of the
at the time of greatest responsibility, a time for which all the
preceding work was only preparation" (quoted in My Life,
p; 238).
"On August 11," he continues, "I entered this: 'Only an awak-
7 4 The First Three Internationals
ening of the revolutionary socialist movement, an awakening
which will need to be very warlike from the start, will lay
the foundations for a new International. The years to come
will be the period of a social revolution" (ibid.).
While the default of the International was generally recognized,
the representatives of the different currents had no agreement
on what was to be done about it. The opportunists believed
that after the war was over- and their fatherland victorious-
the International would continue in business as before. Although
the whole world was being turned upside down by the catas-
trophe, in their eyes nothing fundamental had changed and they
were ready to revert to the old ways and means of doing things
when peace came.
The centrists who adapted themselves to the opportunists
sought to cover up the collapse of the International. They
hesitated or refused to make a clean break with the social
patriots. They nursed illusions about the prospects of restoring
the old International to its former status and denied the ne-
cessity of going forward to build a new International on en-
tirely new foundations.
In excusing the debacle Kautsky said: "The International
is an instrument for peace, not for war." Stalin implied the
same thing when he junked the Comintern in 1943. For genuine
Marxists, however, the International is most needed not during
periods of calm but when national and social antagonisms
reach their culmination, during interimperialist, colonial, and
civil wars.
For their part the internationalists demanded a frank account-
ing of the bankruptcy of the International and its causes, a
repudiation of the opportunist and social-patriotic policies that
had produced the collapse, a clear break with the chauvinist
elements, no conciliation either in program or organization
with these rotten agents of the bourgeoisie, an exposure of the
hypocritical and conciliatory inclinations of the centrists, and
persistent work toward building a new International in revolu-
tionary struggle against the war and the capitalist system.
During the first years of the war all three groupings made
efforts to bring together the sundered parts of the Social De-
mocracy in accord with their general position and outlook.
The Italian, Swiss, and American Socialist parties, belonging
to neutral countries, first tried to call joint conferences to no
avail. The meeting of Scandinavians in January 1915 to con-
sider peace terms was equally futile.
The Conference of Socialist Women, held at Berne, Switzer-
The First and Second Internationals 7 5
land, March 26-28, 1915, was the first international socialist
conference actually convened after the outbreak of the war.
Russian Bolshevik women in collaboration with Clara Zetkin,
a leading member of the German Social Democracy, took the
initiative ih calling it. Two different tendencies came into con-
flict during the discussions. The majority resolution, sponsored
by Zetkin, condemned the war as imperialist and called upon
the workers to "fight for peace." But it did not draw the nec-
essary conclusions from this position. The minority resolution,
submitted by the Bolsheviks, went on to say that the repre-
sentatives of the majorities in the Socialist parties had "actually
betrayed socialism by substituting nationalism for it" and ap-
pealed to the workers to overthrow capitalism to bring about
peace and achieve socialism.
The most important conference of antiwar socialists took
place at Zimmerwald, Switzerland, in September 1915. There
were forty-two delegates present, Trotsky among them. Here is
how he characterized the meeting:
The delegates, filling four stage-coaches, set off for the
mountains. The passers-by looked on curiously at the
strange procession. The delegates themselves joked about
the fact that half a century after the founding of the first In-
ternational, it was still possible to seat all the international-
ists in four coaches. But they were not sceptical. The thread
of history often breaks -then a new knot must be tied. And
that is what we were doing in Zimmerwald.
The days of the conference, September 5 to 8, were stormy
ones. The revolutionary wing, led by Lenin, and the pac-
ifist wing, which comprised the majority of the delegates,
agreed with difficulty on a common manifesto of which I
had prepared the draft. The manifesto was far from saying
all that it should have said, but, even so, it was a long step
forward. Lenin was on the extreme left at the conference.
In many questions he was in a minority of one, even with-
in the Zimmerwald left wing, to which I did not formally
belong, although I was close to it on all-important ques-
tions. In Zimmerwald, Lenin was tightening up the spring
of the future international action. In a Swiss mountain vil-
lage, he was laying the corner-stone of the revolutionary
International. [My Life, pp. 249-50.]
A second conference along the same lines was held the follow-
ing April at Kienthal, Switzerland. It adopted resolutions
criticizing pacifism and the conduct of the International Socialist
Bureau. It represented a step forward in the demarcation of
divergent tendencies at war over the question of the war.
The ideological and political.struggle waged by Lenin, Trot-
sky, Luxemburg, and their co-thinkers had the greatest his-
torical importance. In the first years of the conflict they ap-
peared like isolated, persecuted, helpless figures, complaining
in a corner about the course the rest of the world was taking.
However, they retained confidence in their ideas, in the
recuperative capacity of the anticapitalist forces, and in the
prospects of the socialist revolution. The strength of their con-
victions was derived from the theoretical insight into the devel-
opment of capitalism provided by Marxism and their practical
experience with the power and fighting capacities of the prole-
tariat- disclosed in the 1905 revolution and other class battles.
Their spirit was eloquently expressed at the time in the con-
elusion to Trotsky's book The War and the International:
If the War got beyond the control of the Second Inter-
national, its immediate consequences will get beyond the
control of the bourgeoisie of the entire world. We revolu-
tionary Socialists did not want the War. But we do not
fear it. We do not give in to despair over the fact that the
War broke up the International. History had already dis-
posed of the International.
The revolutionary epoch will create new forms of organi-
zation out of the inexhaustible resources of proletarian
Socialism, new forms that will be equal to the greatness of
the new tasks. To this work we will apply ourselves. at
once, amid the mad roaring of the machineguns, the crash-
ing of cathedrals, and the patriotic howling of the capitalist
jackals. We will keep our clear minds amid this hellish
death music, our undimmed vision. We feel ourselves to be
the only creative force' of the future. Already there are
many of us, more than it may seem. Tomorrow there will
be more of us than today. And the day after tomorrow,
millions will rise up under our banner, millions who even
now, sixty-seven years after the Communist Manifesto, have
nothing to lose but their chains. [pp. 76-77.]
Animated by these ideas, the revolutionary socialists carried
forward their struggle for internationalism from 1914 to 1917.
They found their vindication in the triumph of the October
j
1917 revolution out of which came, in 1919, the Third Inter-
national.
'Ihe prospects for internationalism
This brief history has traced the vicissitudes of the first two
great efforts by the socialist vanguard of many countries to
create and maintain an organized and unified international
leadership to guide the struggles of the oppressed against
capitalism.
Two opposing general conclusions can be drawn from these
experiences.
The first is utterly pessimistic and defeatist. It reasons along
these lines. The collapse of both the First and Second Inter-
nationals, followed by the degeneration of the Third, demon-
strates that it is futile to try to build such an organization.
Marx, Engels, and their disciples were utopian in their expecta-
tions. It is the better part of wisdom to give up such an illusory
enterprise, settle for far less, and confine socialist ties and ac-
tivities to the national framework with occasional parleys and
visits elsewhere. Since 1914 many people and parties have
adopted such a position and outlook, in practice if not in
precept.
Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, and their followers had an
entirely different orientation. It was true, they acknowledged,
that the old form of organization, after doing good work, had
proved unviable and unworthy and had broken down. That
meant it was imperative to set about constructing a new and
improved International adequate to the changed conditions
and tasks confronting the world working class.
Trotsky wrote in the dark hours of the first imperialist blood-
bath and the downfall of the old International that his entire
book The War and the International, "from the first to the last
page, was written with the idea of the New International con-
stantly in mind, the New International which must rise up out
of the present world cataclysm, the International of the last
conflict and the final victory."
He observed that "the Second International has not lived in
vain. It has accomplished a huge cultural work. There has been
nothing like it in history before. It has educated and assembled
the oppressed classes. The proletariat does not now need to
begin at the beginning. It enters on the new road not with
empty hands. The past epo_ch has bequeathed to it a
rich arsenal of ideas. It has bequeathed to it the weapons of
criticism. The new epoch will teach the proletariat to combine
the old weapons of criticism with the new criticism of weapons"
(p.xiii ).
And so it turned out in 1917. That was in the second decade
of the twentieth century. Today we are in the eighth. The In-
ternational of the final conflict and the decisive victory that
he spoke of has still to be brought into being. The cadres of
the Fourth International are determined to build it.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE
COMINTERN (1919-36)
1. The imperialist world war of 1914-1918 was the clearest
indication that the capitalist mode of production had become
a fetter on the productive forces, and that conditions had be-
come ripe for the victory of the proletarian revolution. How-
ever, the Second International, whose bureaucracy had adapted
itself to bourgeois society during the long period of capitalist
expansion, betrayed the interests of the proletariat at the de-
cisive moment of the outbreak of war, and occupied the posi-
tion of defense of the fatherland, i.e., defense of the frontiers
of the bourgeois national state, which- together with the system
of private property-had become- a brake on the further de-
velopment of productive forces.
2. Only a very small number of revolutionary Marxists drew
from the shameful treachery and miserable collapse of the
Second International the conclusion that a Third International
was necessary. It is true, in most countries an opposition
formed against the chauvinist standpoint of the Social Demo-
cratic parties, but such opposition had in the beginning mainly
a pacifist-centrist character. At the international conferences of
the opponents of imperialist slaughter at Zimmerwald (1915)
and Kienthal (1916) the supporters of the building of the Third
International remained in the minority and were termed by all
centrists and social-imperialists as fanatics, utopians, and sec-
tarians.
3. The victory of the Russian Revolution in October 1917
was the victory of the revolutionary principle of struggling
against the enemy at home and of turning imperialist war into
civil war, which since 1914 had been counterposed by the
handful of revolutionary Marxists, and especially the leader-
ship of the Russian Bolsheviks, to the principle of defending
''the fatherland. The Bolsheviks- after overcoming analogous
tendencies in their own ranks- broke with the ambiguous cen-
trist majority of Zimmerwald and raised the banner of the
Third International.
79

George Novack On First Two Internationals

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