The Second Socialist International

THE SECOND (SOCIALIST) INTERNATIONAL The Second International was constituted in 1889, 15 years after the disappearance of the First. Unlike the latter, it possessed no powerful central authority and its early meetings were mainly devoted to discussion of the tactics and methods of the affiliated national parties, but from 1911 onward the question of war and peace received more attention. It had already been discussed at the congress of Amsterdam in 1903, and from that date Jaures began the study of the question which inspired his book, L'Armee nouvelle. At the congress of Stuttgart in 1903 the question was again discussed, at greater length, and Herve's denunciation of all "patriotism" led Bebel and Volmar to declare that the Social Democrats would instantly rise to defend Germany if ever she were attacked.

Conditions Before the War.

The European horizon steadily darkened, especially after 1911. The Agadir incident, the Italo Turkish War and the Balkan wars, in succession, made the menace of a general conflagration appear imminent, and the efforts of the Socialist parties to avert the catastrophe became more urgent and strenuous from that time. Their efforts culminated in the extraor dinary congress (1912) at Basle, called to consider the interna tional situation and the action to be taken by Social Democrats to prevent war. A manifesto was issued, exhorting all workers to unite to secure from their Governments a pacific foreign policy.

This problem of peace was put on the agenda for the tenth congress of the International which was to have been held in Vienna two years later, in Aug. 1914. The congress would have coincided with the 5oth anniversary of the founding of the Inter national in London in 1864. For this occasion Austrian Socialists had prepared an illustrated commemorative album in which Kaut sky, Victor Adler and others had related the history of the Social ist movement during the last half century. This document, which appeared in print at the moment when the World War broke out, was distributed ten years after as a souvenir among members of the executive committee of the International when they met in the former capital of the Habsburgs in June 1924. The album con tains, among other things, a series of medallion portraits of 66 members of the B.S.I. (International Socialist Bureau), which had its headquarters before the war in the Maison du Peuple at Brus sels. Lenin's portrait is not among them, although he was a mem ber of the bureau for many years ; but there are Rosa Luxemburg and C. G. Rakovsky, together with Jaures, Ebert (the future president), also Stauning, Branting and MacDonald, who later became premiers of Denmark, Sweden and Great Britain respec tively. There are delegates of trade unions too, but these are few and far between. The bureau, representing all the live forces of Socialism, met for the last time at the Maison du Peuple, Brussels, on July 29 and 3o, 1914.

Even at that moment, when the world already lay under the shadow of war, optimism still prevailed. Adler regarded a war be tween Germany and France as a moral impossibility; Haase, chairman of the Social Democratic group in the reichstag, relied at this eleventh hour, not on humanity, but on the pusillanimity of the kaiser. Jaures, speaking on the evening of July 3o for the last time, still affirmed his confidence in a pacific solution, but prophesied in a flash of inspiration that if, in spite of all, war were let loose on the world by its masters, then at the close, each nation would turn upon those responsible for the disasters of the war and say: "Go, and seek pardon from God and man." The next day he was assassinated in Paris, and a state of war had been declared in Germany.

The bursting of the storm put an abrupt end to all international activities (see SOCIALISM). While the war lasted no single meet ing of the executive committee took place, but some tentative ef forts were made to revive international action. The most im portant of these were an attempt by the Dutch-Scandinavian com mittee (vigorously supported by Camille Huysmans, secretary of the Second International) to convene an international congress at Stockholm in 1917, and that of the Italian Socialist Morgari to convoke conferences at Zimmerwald (Sept. 1915) and at Kien thal (April 1916). The first of these efforts (the projected Stock holm conference) proved abortive mainly because of the refusal of the Allied Powers to grant passports to the delegates ; at the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences only certain groups of the international proletariat were represented, and from these ele ments there was presently to emerge the Communist International known as the Third International.

Activity After the Armistice.

On the morrow of the Armistice the need for international unification was felt with re newed force. Conferences were summoned successively at Berne (Feb. 1919), Lucerne (Aug. 1919) and Geneva (Aug. 192o) with a view to re-establishing the Second International. Meanwhile, however, the so-called Third or Communist International had been formed at Moscow, and for some time parties or groups who were unwilling to be affiliated to either the Second or the Third grouped themselves in a Workers' International Union of the Socialist parties with Vienna as its centre—hence the name "Vienna International." (The principal groups concerned were the British I.L.P., the German Independent Socialists and the Aus trian Social Democrats.) In the beginning of 1920 this organiza tion tried to bring about the unification of all proletarian organ izations, and succeeded in calling together in Berlin a reunion of the executives of the three groups in April 1922. But this effort at reconciliation ended in complete failure.

Since then the Communist International has steadily accentu ated its opposition to Social Democracy. On the other hand the points of dispute between Vienna and London became progres sively less. In 1921-22 the French, English, German, Italian and Belgian Socialists, who were adherents either of the Vienna Inter national or the Second International, met first in Paris, then in Frankfurt, and of one accord adopted the resolutions which have since become famous as the "Frankfurt Resolutions." Anticipat ing the Dawes scheme, these demanded the reduction of the Ger man debt to a reasonable figure, and, further, demanded the end of military occupations of former enemy territory and the annul ment of inter-Allied debts.

Congress at Hamburg.

By December of the same year these two internationals had agreed to call a Socialist international con gress at Hamburg. This took place on May 27, 1923, when the International was reconstituted—the Communists being excluded —and the conditions on which parties or groups could be ad mitted were defined. Agreement was reached with difficulty on a Franco-German text which, drawing on the Marxian vocabulary for its somewhat heavy terminology, appealed to "those who ac knowledged the aim of the working class to be the replacement of the capitalist mode of production by the Socialist mode of pro duction and who see in the class struggle (lutte des classes) which manifests itself in political and economic action the means of emancipating the working class." But when it came to translating this text into English the Brit ish delegates raised a discussion, arguing that the words "lutte des classes"—the touchstone of Socialism on the Continent—were not in current use in England ; that the extremists, who alone used the expression, spoke not of "class struggle" but of "class war," and that it would be better in these conditions to retain the idea but to paraphrase it in such a way as this : "independent political and industrial action of the workers' organizations." And so it was arranged. The Franco-German text was retained, for it could only have been altered at the cost of emasculation; but for British consumption a free translation was allowed.

The present writer has thought it necessary to report this little incident, as it cannot fail to be instructive, showing as it does that, in spite of community of words and, on the whole, unity of tac tics, English Labour men a nd Continental Socialists do not speak quite the same language. Now, these differences of terminology are the outward expression of other more deep-rooted differences arising out of the widely differing environment in which contem porary Socialism is formed and developed. On reading such pre war books, for instance, as the Etudes socialistes of Jean Jaures, Ramsay MacDonald's Socialism and Society or Kautsky's Des Erfurter Program, we see how widely the Socialism of Jaures, in stinct with the spirit of the French Revolution, and still more the Socialism of Ramsay MacDonald, who drew inspiration from the pacific and fraternal idealism of Christianity, is to be differentiated from the more "materialist" and more "economic" Socialism of the German Marxians.

Since the war, however, these differences have become less acute, even from the theoretical point of view. A sort of amalgam has been established between the various national parties. German Socialism has become less doctrinaire; French Socialism has drawn nearer to Marxianism under Guesdist influence ; the Social ism of the I.L.P. has almost completely captured the English working-class movement. Between those parties which recognise Social Democracy as their basis, there exists not only international unity of organization but unity of programme.

This emerges clearly from the two first congresses of the new International. The Hamburg congress of 1923 succeeded beyond all expectations. There were present 63o delegates from 3o coun tries, representing 7,0oo,o0o affiliated members. During the de bates, which lasted five days, the following points were discussed: international action against international reaction, working-class policy on an imperialist peace, the eight-hour day, and the reform of international social legislation. But the most important achieve ment of the congress was the fusion of the London and Vienna groups and the adoption of the statutes of the new "Labour and Socialist International" (L.S.I.).

In the three years preceding the second congress of the new Second International (Aug. 1925) that organization was finally consolidated, and began to'rnake itself more and more felt in in ternational politics; its congresses have been held regularly at the prescribed intervals. There is no gainsaying the fact that direct action by the workers and the existence in all Western countries of a powerful Socialist party (either working within the Govern ment or using its influence from outside) have to a very large extent determined the new policy which eventually produced the London agreement on reparations (1924) and the Locarno pact of mutual guarantee. To be convinced of this we have only to look for a comparison at the resolutions passed at Hamburg on the reparations problem and those at Marseilles on security. There can be no better instance of the influence which Socialism has acquired over the various Governments and of its emergence as the decisive factor in matters of international policy. (For bibliography see the article SOCIALISM.) (E. VA.)