Part 2 (1/2)
The official organ of the National Office, Socialist Party, ”The Eye Opener,” in its issue of February, 1919, gives a detailed explanation of the ”International”:
”It is an organization of Socialist Parties and labor organizations, meeting periodically in international conferences.
In order to be eligible for members.h.i.+p, an organisation must meet the following test, adopted by the International Congress of Paris, 1900.
”Those admitted to the International Socialist Congresses are:
”1. All a.s.sociations which adhere to the essential principles of Socialism; namely, Socialization of the means of production and exchange, international union, and action of the workers, conquest of public power by the proletariat, organized as a cla.s.s party.
”2. All the labor organizations which accept the principles of the cla.s.s struggle and recognize the necessity of political action, legislative and parliamentary but do not partic.i.p.ate directly in the political movement.
”This definition includes every Socialist Party and propaganda organization in the world and it further takes in those enlightened unions that recognize the need for political action. It excludes conservative unions that do not yet admit the soundness of the principles of the cla.s.s struggle.”
The First International was thoroughly Marxian and revolutionary.
According to ”The Revolutionary Age,” April 12, 1919, it accepted the revolutionary struggle against capitalism and waged that struggle with all the means in its power. It considered its objective to be the conquest of power by the revolutionary proletariat, the annihilation of the bourgeois state, and the introduction of a new proletarian state, functioning temporarily as a dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat. The First International collapsed after the Franco-Prussian War.
The Second International was formed at Paris in the year 1889. Its tendencies were much more moderate than those of its predecessor. ”The Revolutionary Age,” April 12, 1919, criticises it for being ”conservative and petty bourgeois in spirit,” and states that ”it was part and parcel of the national liberal movement, not at all revolutionary, dominated by the conservative skilled elements of the working cla.s.s and the small bourgeoisie. It was hesitant and compromising, expressing the demands of the 'pet.i.te bourgeoisie' for government owners.h.i.+p, reforms, etc.”
In 1900 an International Socialist Bureau was established at Brussels for the purpose of solidifying and strengthening the work of the Second International and for maintaining uninterrupted relations between the various national organizations.
That the American Socialists were closely united with the Marxians the world over during the Second International, which continued till the World War, was especially evident from the fact that representatives from the United States met abroad in the international congresses every three years to discuss party policies. Far from denying the international character of the whole movement, the Revolutionists of the United States have ever rejoiced and gloried in it, trusting that it would result in the rapid spread of their doctrines and the ultimate victory of their cause. In confirmation of the intimate union existing between American and foreign Socialists, during the time of the second International, we have the declaration of the Socialist Party of the United States in its national platform of 1904, pledging itself to the principles of International Socialism, as embodied in the united thought and action of the Socialists of all nations. Moreover, Morris Hillquit informed us in ”The Worker,” March 23, 1907, that the International Socialist Movement, with its thirty million adherents and its organized parties in about twenty-five civilized countries in both hemispheres, was everywhere based on the same Marxian program and followed substantially the same methods of propaganda and action. Writing again, in ”Everybody's,” October, 1913, Hillquit declared that the dominant Socialist organizations of all countries were organically allied with one another, that by means of an International Socialist Bureau, supported at joint expense, the Socialist parties of the world maintained uninterrupted relations with one another, and that every three years they met in international conventions, whose conclusions were accepted by all const.i.tuent[5] national organizations.
Commenting upon ”The Collapse of the Second International,” which is held to have taken place at the beginning of the World War, ”The Revolutionary Age,” March 22, 1919, says:
”Great demonstrations were held in every European country by Socialists protesting against their government's declarations of war, and mobilizations for war. And we know that these demonstrations were rendered impotent by the complete surrender of the Socialist parliamentary leaders and the official Socialist press, with their 'justification' of 'defensive wars' and the safeguarding of 'democracy.'
”Why the sudden change of front? Why did the Socialist leaders in the parliaments of the belligerents vote the war credits? Why did not Moderate Socialism carry out the policy of the Basle Manifesto, namely; the converting of an imperialistic war into a civil war--into a proletarian revolution? Why did it either openly favor the war or adopt a policy of petty-bourgeois pacifism?”
At the conclusion of the World War Socialists and representatives of labor from many countries met at Berne, Switzerland, in what was known as the Berne Conference. This international Socialist conference was comparatively moderate in tendencies, while another Socialist congress, held shortly before it in Bolshevist Moscow, was far more radical.
J. Ramsay MacDonald, commenting upon the Berne Conference in ”Glasgow Forward,” in the spring of 1919, said:
”It declined to condemn the Bolshevists and declined to say that their revolution was Socialism....
”Moscow seems to be more thorough than Berne, though as a matter of fact Berne was far more thorough than Moscow. There is a glamour and a halo about Moscow; but there are substance and permanence about Berne.
”That blessed word 'Soviet' has become a s.h.i.+bboleth. But Berne did not say anything about it. It declared its continuing belief in democracy and in representative inst.i.tutions. I hope that the Soviet is not contrary to democracy; I know that it is a representative inst.i.tution. But I know more. I know that beyond its primary stage it is a system of indirect representation--the representation of representatives--and that a few years ago there was not a single Socialist in the country that would have accepted such a form of representative government. For Socialists to pretend to prefer that system to one of direct responsibility is a mere pose.
”Therefore, two Internationals will be the worst thing that could happen to the revolutions now going on and to the general Socialist movement. The duty of every Socialist--especially of those of us who are not in revolution--is to strive by might and by main to get a union of the two. We may have to suffer a time of internal trouble owing to the friction of conflicting conceptions of Socialist reconstruction, but I am quite certain that no one has yet said what is to be the last word on the subject, and to split on such a controversy as this is to advertise to the world how unready Socialism is to a.s.sume command.”
The Berne Conference, which had at first been called to meet at Lausanne, the Russian Bolshevik government of Lenine denounced in a manifesto which the ”Chicago Socialist” of February 8, 1919, republished in part as follows:
”The Central Committee of the Russian Communist Bolshevik Party in a manifesto on the proposal to call together an International Conference at Lausanne, declares that the project cannot be considered even as an attempt to revive the Second International.
The latter ceased to exist during the first days of August, 1914, when the representatives of the majority of nearly all the Socialist parties pa.s.sed over into the ranks of their imperialist governments.
”The attempts made to revive this International, for which agitation has been carried on in all countries throughout the war, emanated from elements standing mid-way, which, whilst not recognizing openly Imperialist Socialism, nevertheless had no idea of creating a third revolutionary International.
”The attempts made to go back to the pre-war situation regarding the labor movement crashed against the Imperialist policy of the official parties, which could not, at that time, admit the appearance of an attempt to restore the International, fearing, as they did, that this might tend to weaken the war policy of the government and the working cla.s.s working in unison.