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HISTORY

Rise of socialist ideas (up to Marx); spread of Marxian Socialism- Part IV

The First International (1864-1876)

The International Workingmen’s Association (1864–1876), often called the First International, was an
international organization which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and
anarchist political groups and trade union organizations that were based on the working class and class struggle.
It was founded in 1864 in a workmen’s meeting held in London.

Its founders were among the most powerful British and French trade-union leaders of the time.
Though Karl Marx had no part in organizing the meeting, he was elected one of the 32 members of the
provisional General Council and at once assumed its leadership.

Marx drafted an address to the working classes which has become famous as inaugural address of the First
International. This address outlined rules, principles and aims of the International.

The International was persuaded by Engels to change its motto from “all men are brothers” to “working men
of all countries, unite!”.
It reflected Marx’s and Engels’ view of proletarian internationalism.

The International came to assume the character of a centralized organisation, based primarily on individual
members, organized in local groups, which were integrated in national federations, though some trade unions
and associations were affiliated to it.
Its supreme body was the Congress, which met in a different city each year and formulated principles and
policies.

Its first congress was held in 1866 in Geneva.

The Congress was attended by delegates from five countries.

The Geneva Congress is best remembered for its watershed decision to make universal establishment of
the 8-hour working day a main goal of the International Socialist movement.

For six years, it held annual congresses in different European towns.

It was persecuted and declared illegal in many countries. It exercised influence on workers movements in Europe
and North America.

Examples:
 When in 1867, around 5000 bronze workers in Paris who had formed a union were threatened with
dismissal, the International collected money from workers in other countries and forced the factory
owners to withdraw their threat.

During Franco-Prussia War in 1870, the war was condemned by German and French workers. The French
and German branches of the International sent messages of good wishes and solidarity to each other
stating workers of all nations are our friends and despots of all nations are enemies.

Failure of the First International:

From its beginnings, the First International was riven by conflicting schools of socialist though—Marxism,
Proudhonism (after Joseph Proudhon, who advocated only the reform of capitalism), Blanquism (after
Blanqui, who advocated radical methods and a sweeping revolution), and Mikhail Bakunin’s version of
anarchism.

When Mikhail Bakunin and his followers joined in 1868, the First International became polarised into
two camps, with Marx and Bakunin as their respective figureheads.
Differences between the groups emerged over their proposed strategies for achieving their visions of
socialism.
In the end, anarchists were expelled.

In 1872, the conflict in the First International climaxed with a final split between the two groups at the Hague
Congress.

This split is sometimes called the “red” and “black” divide, red referring to the Marxists and black
referring to the anarchists.
Bismarck remarked, upon hearing of the split at the First International, “Crowned heads, wealth and
privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!“

The failure of the Communist uprising in 1871 in Paris with which Marx sympathised, discredited the
International in the eyes of those who stood for law and order.
The International was attacked from outside and torn within by rival factions. The last Congress was held at
Geneva in 1873.
It should be noted that the International’s renown at the time as a formidable power with millions of
members and almost unlimited resources was out of proportion with the association’s actual strength; the
hard core of its individual members probably seldom exceeded 20,000.

Paris Commune, 1871:

Paris Commune was insurrection of Paris against the French government from March 18 to May 28, 1871.
It occurred in the wake of France’s defeat in the Franco-German War and the collapse of Napoleon III’s
Empire (1852–70).
As soon as the news of defeat at Battle of Sedan at the hand of Prussia reached Paris, a provisional Republic
was proclaimed. This government came to an end when Paris capitulated in 1871 and a National Assembly
was elected to ratify the terms of the treaty with Germany.
 The Assembly chose Thiers as Executive Head.
Thiers made peace with Germany through Treaty of Frankfurt on the basis of cession of Alsace and
Lorraine and payment of a large indemnity. Until the indemnity was paid in full, a German army, fed and

housed by French Government, was to occupy North-East of France.

A terrible Civil War followed. Between the Government (the National Assembly) and the people of Paris,
serious disagreement arose which led quickly to the war of Commune.
The Parisians, who were republican and Communistic in views, feared that the Assembly would effect a
monarchical restoration as Assembly had majority of royalists.
Also the Parisians were angry because Paris was decapitalised in favour of Versailles.
Paris was then full of explosive elements such as demobilised soldiers, unemployed workmen, socialists,
anarchists.
As soon as government sought to remove guns from the capital to restore order, Paris rose in revolt and the
insurgents set up the Commune, demanding complete self-government for Paris and the establishment of
similar Communes in the Provinces. The whole of France was to be organised on Communistic basis.
Thiers took up a strong line. For 6 weeks, fight continued under the eyes of victorious Germans who
remained encamped on the neighbouring hills.
At last Government troops from Versailles suppressed the revolt.
The government took terrible revenge on the Communards. Paris was defeated and socialism was knocked
on the head till the end of the century.
Following the 1871 Paris Commune, the socialist movement, as the whole of the workers’ movement, was
decapitated and deeply affected for years.

Second International

In 1870s and 1880s, in almost every country in Europe, socialist parties were formed. They participated in
elections and had large representation in parliament. Similarly, strength of trade union also increased and there
were many strikes.

German Socialist Party was largest in Europe.

In Britain, Social Democratic Federation, Socialist League and the Fabian Society.
In France there were many socialist parties.
In USA and some other countries in the Americas, many socialist parties emerged.
In Japan, Socialist movement began in 1890s.

To unite the Socialist parties in various countries into an international organisation, a Congress was held in Paris
on 14th July, 1889. The result of this Congress came to be known as the Second International.
It was decided:

The May 1 every year as a day of working class solidarity.

To organise on May 1 a great international demonstration demanding from the powers that be a limitation of
working time to 8 hours.
On 1st May of 1890, millions of workers all over Europe and America struck work and held massive
demonstrations.
The Second International, federation of socialist parties and trade unions, greatly influenced the ideology, policy,
and methods of the European labour movement from the last decade of the 19th century to the beginning of

World War I.
Unlike the First International, it was based on the membership of national parties and trade unions only.

It was not a centralized organization, like the first, but rather a loose federation.
Its headquarters was in Brussels, where the second congress of the International met in 1891.

The congresses met in a number of cities at various intervals, not on a yearly basis.
The period after the formation of the Second International saw a steady increase in the strength of the socialist
parties and trade unions.
By 1912 the Second International represented the socialist and social democratic parties of all European
countries, the United States, Canada, and Japan, with a voting strength of nearly nine million.
One of its main concern was the prevention of a general European war.

After extended debate it rejected the use of a general strike to ward off the imminent danger of a general
European war.
It demanded the introduction of compulsory courts of arbitration for the settlement of disputes between
nations; and the reduction of armaments with total disarmament as the ultimate aim.
In a resolution drafted by Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, and L. Martov and adopted by its Stuttgart
Congress in 1907, however, the International pledged its member parties in belligerent countries to use the
social and economic crisis brought about by war to promote social revolution.

Achievements of Second International:

Campaign against militarism and war.

Asserting the principle of the basic equality of all peoples and their right of freedom and national
independence.
Condemned colonalism and committed the socialist parties to oppose robbery and subjugation of colonial
peoples.
They expressed the conviction that capitalism was the root cause of war and decided that the socialists
should utilise the economic and political crisis created by the war to rouse the masses and thereby hasten
the downfall of the capitalist rule.
The socialist movement made the international solidarity of workers as a fundamental principle.

When Russia and Japan were warring on each other, the leader of the Japanese Socialist Party and
Russian Socialists were made the joint presidents of the Second International at its Congress in 1904.

The Sixth Congress (1904, Amsterdam) was attended by the Grand old man of the Indian National
Movement, Dadabhai Naoroji, who pleaded the cause of India’s freedom.

He was supported by the British delegates at the Congress.

The President asked the Congress to treat with the greatest revenue the statement of the Indian
delegate, 82 years old Naoroji, who had sacrifices 55 years of his life to the struggle for the freedom.
 Weaknesses of the Second International:

Unlike the first International, it was a loose federation of socialist parties of many countries.
While socialist parties in many countries had become mass parties, basic differences had arisen among
them. While some sections believed in revolution to overthrow Capitalism, other began to believe that
socialism could be achieved through gradual reforms.
Some socialist parties even favoured colonialism.
The power groupings in World War I confronted the socialist parties in the belligerent countries with a
dilemma. While attitude of the Second International on the question of war was clear, many socialist parties
had serious differences.

Some of them thought that if they organised opposition to the war, they would be crushed. (Jean
Jaures, the great leader of the French socialists, was assassinated on the eve of the First World War for
campaigning against the war).
When the First World War broke out, most of the socialist parties extended their support to their
respective governments (exception of the Serbian and Russian socialists). The Second International
ceased to function and socialist movement in every country was split.

Third International (Comintern)

Third International, also called Communist International (Comintern) was association of national communist
parties founded in 1919 in Moscow by Lenin.
Though its stated purpose was the promotion of world revolution (by stirring up and aiding Communist uprisings
all over the world), the Comintern functioned chiefly as an organ of Soviet control over the international
communist movement.
The Comintern emerged from the three-way split in the socialist Second International over the issue of World
War I.

A majority of socialist parties, comprising the International’s “right” wing, chose to support the war efforts of
their respective national governments against enemies that they saw as far more hostile to socialist aims.
The “centre” faction of the International decried the nationalism of the right and sought the reunification of
the Second International under the banner of world peace.
The “left” group, led by Vladimir Lenin, rejected both nationalism and pacifism, urging instead a socialist
drive to transform the war of nations into a transnational class war. He wanted a new International to
promote “civil war, not civil peace”.

In 1917, Lenin led the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, and in 1919 he called the first congress of the
Comintern, in Moscow, which was also aimed to undermine ongoing centrist efforts to revive the Second
International.

Only 19 delegations and a few non-Russian communists attended this first congress; but the second, meeting in
 Moscow in 1920, was attended by delegates from 37 countries.

Prerequisites for Comintern membership required all parties to model their structure on disciplined lines in
conformity with the Soviet pattern and to expel moderate socialists and pacifists.
The administrative structure of the Comintern resembled that of the Soviet Communist Party.

To attract the Asiatic peoples to their cause, the Bolsheviks denounced the imperialism of western powers. Thus
Soviet government surrendered the special privileges which the Czarist regime had acquired in China and gave
up all extra-territorial and financial rights in Turkey.
The realization that world revolution was not imminent led in 1921 to a new Comintern policy in order to gain
broad working-class support.

“United fronts” of workers were to be formed for making “transitional demands” on the existing regimes.
This policy was abandoned in 1923, when the Comintern’s left wing gained temporary control.

Joseph Stalin’s assault on the left group of his party brought a further rapprochement with moderate socialism.
Then Stalin’s move against the right wing of his party led to another turn in Comintern policy.

In 1928 the sixth congress adopted a policy of “extreme leftism” set forth by Stalin: once again, moderate
socialists and social democrats were branded as the chief enemies of the working class.
The dangers of the rising fascist movement were ignored. For e.g., in Germany in the early 1930s, the
communists focused their attacks on the social democrats rather than Nazis whom they claimed to fear less.
World revolution was once more to be considered imminent, despite Stalin’s own concentration on “building
socialism in one country.”

At the Comintern’s seventh and last congress in 1935, Soviet national interests dictated a new policy shift:

In order to gain the favour of potential allies against Germany, revolutionary ardour was dampened, and the
defeat of fascism was declared the primary goal of the Comintern. Now communists were to join with
moderate socialist and liberal groups in “popular fronts” against fascism.
By now the Comintern was being used as a tool of Soviet foreign policy. The program of popular fronts
ended with the signing of Stalin’s pact with Adolf Hitler in 1939.

Soon, however, Germany and the Soviet Union were at war, and in 1943 Stalin officially dissolved the Comintern
in order to allay fears of communist subversion among his allies.
In 1947 Stalin set up a new centre of international control called the Cominform, which lasted until 1956. The
international communist movement broke down after 1956 owing to a developing split between the Soviet
Union and China, among other factors.

Spread of Marxian Socialism

Germany:

The Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany, under the brilliant leadership of Ferdinand Lassalle, became
 the largest and most powerful socialist party in Europe, despite working illegally until the anti-socialist laws
were dropped in 1890.

It secured 35 seats in Reichstag in 1890 election.

It had 90 daily newspapers, together with trade unions and co-ops, sports clubs, a youth organization, a
women’s organization.

Under the pressure of this growing party, Bismarck introduced limited welfare provision and working hours
were reduced. He also nationalised railways and introduced a system of old age pensions and workmen’s
insurance.
Germany experienced sustained economic growth for more than forty years. Many suggest that this
expansion, together with the concessions won, gave rise to illusions amongst the leadership of the SPD that
capitalism would evolve into socialism gradually.
August Bebel, from 1892 until his death in 1913, served as chairman of SPD and kept it under discipline. SPD
remained prominent opposition party in Reichstag. Although he supported Marxism but he also favored
nationalism. So, his party earned enough popularity and was most organised and disciplined socialist party
of Europe.
Beginning in 1896, in a series of articles published under the title “Problems of socialism”, Eduard Bernstein
argued that an evolutionary transition to socialism was both possible and more desirable than revolutionary
change. Bernstein and his supporters came to be identified as “revisionists” because they sought to revise
the classic tenets of Marxism.
Although the orthodox Marxists in the party retained the Marxist theory of revolution as the official doctrine
of the party, and it was repeatedly endorsed by SPD conferences, in practice the SPD leadership became
increasingly reformist.
In 1919, one of the ablest leader of SPD, George Ebert, became the first President of the German Republic.

Russia:

The path of reform appeared blocked to the Russian Marxists while Russia remained the bulwark of reaction.
In the preface to the 1882 Russian edition to the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels had saluted the
Russian Marxists who, they said, “formed the vanguard of revolutionary action in Europe”.

But the working class comprised no more than a small percentage of the population.
According to Karl Marx, Russia was not prepared for revolution as she lagged behind western countries
in the race for industrialisation. (But Russian was the first foreign language in which his most significant
book Das Kapital was translated)

In 1883, Marx’s follower George Plekhanev founded Russian Social Democratic Party.

In 1898, that party established links with several other socialist groups and constituted Russian Socialist
Democratic Labour Party.
In 1903, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party split on ideological and organizational questions
into Bolshevik (‘Majority’) and Menshevik (‘Minority’) factions, with Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin
leading the more radical Bolsheviks.
 Both wings accepted that Russia was an economically backward country unripe for socialism.

The Mensheviks awaited the capitalist revolution in Russia. They advocated the cause of middle
class capitalist revolution before bringing total socialism and wanted to follow liberal humanistic
ways (with cooperation of all classes).
But Lenin and Trotsky argued that a revolution of the workers and peasants would achieve this
task.

After the Russian revolution of 1905, Leon Trotsky argued that unlike the French revolution of
1789 and the European Revolutions of 1848 against absolutism, the capitalist class would
never organise a revolution in Russia to overthrow absolutism, and that this task fell to the
working class who, liberating the peasantry from their feudal yoke, would then immediately
pass on to the socialist tasks and seek a “permanent revolution” to achieve international
socialism.

France:

French socialism was beheaded by the suppression of the Paris commune (1871), its leaders killed or exiled.
But when the republicans came to power between 1877-79, they exonerated the socialist leaders.
In 1879, at the Marseilles Congress, workers’ associations created the Federation of the Socialist Workers of
France.
Three years later, Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, the son-in-law of Karl Marx, left the federation and
founded the French Workers’ Party.
The influence of Socialism was gradually increasing in France, but the French socialists had diverse opinions.
By the end of 1896, there were 6 socialist groups of national importance, but there number reduced to 2 by
1905.

French Socialist Party (led by Jean Jaures)

prepared to participate in progressive governments

Socialist Party of France (led by Jules Guesde)

opposed any participation in bourgeois coalitions

At a congress held in Paris in 1905, the two parties merged to become the French Section of the Workers’
International—i.e., of the Second International.
 It was led by Jean Jaures and Jules Guesde.
The SFIO adhered to Marxist ideas but became, in practice, a reformist party.
The SFIO grew quickly and became an influential political force in France.

In 1906 it won 56 seats in Parliament.

By 1914 it won 103 seats in Representative Assembly (Chamber of Deputies).

Britain:

In Europe most Social Democratic parties participated in parliamentary politics and the day-to-day struggles
of the trade unions.
The cause of Socialism in Britain was represented by the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour Party.
By means of reform laws enacted in 1867 and 1887 in England, the labour class was invested with the right of
voting. After this, the socialist movement accelerated in England.
The Social Democratic Federation (SDF) was established as Britain’s first organised socialist political party by
H. M. Hyndman in 1881.

Many trade unionists who were members of the Social Democratic Federation felt that the Federation
neglected the industrial struggle.
Along with Engels, who refused to support the SDF, many felt that dogmatic approach of the SDF,
particularly of its leader, Henry Hyndman, meant that it remained an isolated sect.

Later the name of committee was changed to Labour Party and in 1910 election, it won 42 seats.
In Britain and the British dominions, labour parties were formed.

These were parties largely formed by and controlled by the trade unions, rather than formed by groups
of socialist activists who then appealed to the workers for support.
In Britain, in 1900, the Labour Party, (at first the Labour Representation Committee) was established by
representatives of trade unions together with affiliated socialist parties, principally the Independent
Labour Party but also for a time the avowedly Marxist Social Democratic Federation and other groups
such as the Fabians.
The British Labour Party first won seats in the House of Commons in 1902.
In the election of 1906, it secured 30 seats and in 1910, 42 seats in parliament.
It won the majority of the working class away from the Liberal Party after World War I.

United States:

Socialism in the USA began with utopian communities in the early 19th century such as communities
inspired by the Charles Fourier.
In 1877, the Socialist Labor Party of America was founded.
 This party, which advocated Marxism, was a confederation of small Marxist parties and came under the
leadership of Daniel De Leon.

By the 1880s anarchism was also present in the United States.

In 1901, Socialist Party of America was established.
In 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) formed from several independent labor unions.
In 1910, a socialist Congressman and a socialist mayor was elected.
The Socialist Party of America grew and polled 6% of the total votes in the presidential campaign of 1912.

The Socialist Party of America opposed World War I which led to the government repression.
The Socialist Party declined after the First World War.

Australia:

On 1 December 1899 Anderson Dawson of the Australian Labor Party became the Premier of Queensland,
Australia, forming the world’s first parliamentary socialist government.
Australian Labor Party achieved rapid success, forming its first national government in 1904.