Reserve TextThe Internationals: Entry from The Dictionary of Marxist Thought, ed. Tom Bottomore. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983
Internationals, the
The International Work ing Men 's Association (1864-76), the First International, was an International federation of working class organizations based on Western and Central Europe, where the labour movement was reviving after the defeats of 1844-49. Although founded by the spontaneous efforts of London and Paris workers, expressing solidarity with the 1863 Polish national rising, Marx (from 1864 to 1872) and Engels (from 1870 to 1872) were to play the key role in its leadership. Marx immediately recognized that 'real "powers" were involved', but that it would 'take time before the reawakened movement allows the old boldness of speech' (letter to Engels, 4 November 18~4), which had characterized the much smaller inter- national cadres' organization, the League of Communists, led by Marx and Engels from 1847 to 1852. He therefore drew up and secured the acceptance of an Inaugural Address and Rules framed so as to provide a basis for cooperation with the Liberal leaders of the British trade unions, as well as the continental followers of Proudhon, Mazzini and Lassalle. It admitted both individual members and affiliated local and national organizations. Its General Council, elected at its (normally) annual congresses, had its seat in London until 1872.
In the early years of the International, Marx, who drafted almost all the documents issued by the General Council, restricted himself to 'those points which allow of immediate agreement and concerted action by the workers' (letter to Kugelmann, 9 October 1866). These included actions against the export of strikebreakers, protests against the
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maltreatment of Irish Fenian prisoners and the struggle against war. As the International developed, Marx succeeded in securing the adoption of demands of an increasingly socialist character. Thus, in 1868, despite a dwindling Proudhonist opposition, the IWMA, which began without any specific commitment to public ownership, had declared for collective ownership of the mines, railways, arable land, forests and com-
munications.The PARIS COMMUNE of 1871 represented a turning point in the history of the IWMA. Engels was to describe Paris's spring revolution as 'without any doubt the child of the International intellectually, although the International did not lift a finger to produce it.' (Letter to Serge, 12-17 September 1874.) The International's French supporters, mainly Proudhonists, played an important part in it and the General Council organized a campaign of international solidarity. Marx secured the endorsement of his passionate historical vindication of the Commune, The Civil War in France, by a majority of the General Council, in whose name it was issued as an Address. The experience of the Commune, as well as the growth of working-class suffrage, led Marx and Engels to place great emphasis on the need for effective forms of political action. In September 1871, on their initiative, the IWMA at its London Conference came out officially for the first time in favour of the 'constitution of the working class into a political party' (see PARTY). This objective was incorporated into the new Rule 7a, drawn up by Marx and adopted at the Hague Congress of the International in 1872, which also specified that 'the conquest of political power becomes the great duty of the proletariat'.
These positions were opposed by Bakunin and his supporters in the International who, rom anarchist premises (see ANARCHISM), argued for abstention from politics. Bakunin's nternational Alliance of Socialist Democracy had applied to enter the IWMA in 1868. Notwithstanding his distaste for its programme, Marx the next year supported the admission of its sections into the International on the principle that the IWMA should 'let every section freely shape its own theoretical programme' (Documents of the First International, vol. 3, pp. 273-7, 310- 11). The conflict between the supporters of Marx and of Bakunin, which escalated in the International from 1X69 to 1872, centred above all on how the IWMA should be organized. Bakunin attacked the 'authoritarianism' of the General Council, while at the same time seeking to place the International under the tutelage of a hierarchically organized secret society or societies controlled by himself. Faced with state repression from without and Bakuninist disruption from within, Marx and Engels argued for the powers of the General Council to be increased. Bakunin won support for his opposition to this in Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Belgium, as well as securing the backing of a substantial portion of the British.
The Hague Congress of 1872 brought together sixty-five delegates from thirteen European countries, Australia and the USA, a larger number than at any previous congress. It granted increased powers to the General Council and expelled Bakunin and his comrade, Guillaume, from the IWMA for trying to organize a secret society within the International, accompanied by a more contentious finding of fraud against Bakunin. The congress also approved by a narrow majority a proposal in the name of Marx and Engels and their supporters to move the seat of the General Council to New York. A significant motive for this was probably a fear that in London it might come under the control of the French Blanquist emigres (see BLANQUISM), with whom they had had to ally themselves to secure the defeat of Bakunin. This was effectively to mark the end of the IWMA, which was finally dissolved at a conference in Philadelphia in 1876. An 'anti- authoritarian' International, which sought to take over the mantle of the IWMA, enjoyed some initial success, but found itself hopelessly split by 1877 and held its last, purely anarchist, rump congress in 1881.
The following years saw an important growth of national workers' parties, mostly of a more of less Marxist character, which the IWMA had, expecially in 1871-2, worked so hard to promote. Marx, until his death in 1883, and Engels, even on the eve of
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the founding congress of the Second International, had opposed attempts'to play at international organisations which are at present as impossible as they are useless'. (Letter to Laura Lafargue, 28 June 1889). He was however subsequently to give the International important support and advice.
The Second International (1889-1914) was effectively founded at a Marxist-organized International Workers' Congress held in Paris July 1889. Like the First International it was based essentially on the European labour movement, but was very much larger than its predecessor. Largely dominated by German Social Democracy, its affiliated parties had secured - or were in the process of securing - a mass basis. By 1904 they were participating in elections in twenty-one countries and had won more than 6.6 million votes and 261 parliamentary seats. By 1914 they had a membership of four million and a parliamentary vote of twelve million. The Second International was essentially a loose federation of parties and trade unions. In 1900 an International Socialist Bureau, with a technical and coordinating rather than a directive function, was established in Brussels with Camille Huysmans as its fulltime secretary. In most affiliated parties, with the principal exception of the British Labour Parry (admitted in 1908), Marxism was the dominant ideology, though other trends and influences were also present. These included initially the anarchists who, following defeats on the question of political struggle at the congresses of 1893 and 1896, were excluded from the International. The two theorists who, after Engels's death in 1895, contributed most to the character of the official Marxism of the Second International were Kautsky and Plekhanov.
The International held its congresses every two to four years to decide on common actions and to debate questions of policy. Among the former was the call to organize, from 1890, demonstrations in every country every May Day in support of an eight-hour day. Struggles between right, left and centre trends, originating first in national parties, were carried into the international arena. The Paris Congress of 1900 sharply debated the question of 'Millerandism'; whether it was permissible to join a bourgeois government as the French socialist Millerand had done the previous year. Finally a compromise resolution, drafted by Kautsky, was adopted which allowed that such a step might be acceptable as 'a temporary expedient.., in exceptional cases' if sanctioned by the party. (Quoted by Braunthal, 1966, vol. 1, pp. 272- 3.)
The next congress, meeting in Amsterdam in 1904, was asked to give international approval and validity to the resolution condemning the revisionist ideas of Bernstein passed by the German Social Democratic congress at Dresden the previous year. This led to a major and impressive debate on strategy in which the German Social Democratic leader, Bebet, defended his party against charges from the French socialist leader, Jaures, that its doctrinal rigidity was responsible for a frightening contrast between the growth in its electoral support and its inability to change the Kaiser's autocratic regime. Congress gave its support to the Dresden resolution by 25 votes to 5, with 12 abstentions, but the revisionists remained in he International as in the German party, both f which they permeated with their ideas (see REVISIONISM).
Another important issue of controversy was COLONIALISM, which had already been unanimously condemned by the International's congress of 1900, at the time of the Beer War. However a majority of the colonial commission of the Stuttgart Congress seven years later argued that they should 'not reject all colonial policies in all circumstances, such as those which, under a socialist regime, could serve a civilising purpose' (Braunthal, ibid. p. 318). After a hard-hitting debate this view was rejected by 127 votes to 108 and a resolution passed condemning 'capitalist colonial policies (which] must, by their nature, give rise to servitude, forced labour and the extermination of the native peoples.' (Braunthal, ibid. p. 319.) The struggle against war was pivotal to the International and had, since its foundation, been reflected in congress resolutions. It dominated the Stuttgart Congress of 1907, meeting as the clouds of war were gathering over Europe. The final resolution adopted
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there unanimously - despite serious differences in the debate - incorporated an amendment submitted by Lenin, Luxemburg and Martov which, after urging the exertion of 'every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war', went on: 'In case war should break out anyway, it is [the labour movements'] 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' (Braunthal, ibid. p. 3~3). This was reaffirmed at the next two congresses. That of Basle in 1912, the last before the war, became a moving demonstration for peace and called - again unanimously - for revolutionary action if war came. The outbreak of the first world war two years later showed approval of such words 'to be only a thin veneer, covering deeply ingrained nationalism' (Deutscher 1972, p. 102). The leading parties of the Second International gave their support to the war waged by their own governments and thereby brought about the ignominious collapse of the International.
This was the culmination of a whole period of capitalist expansion and the national integration of the labour movement. Only the Russian, Serbian and Hungarian parties - together with small groups inside other parties - remained true to the principles repeatedly extolled by the International. Some unsuccessful wartime attempts were made, particularly by parties in neutral countries, to revive the Second International, whose International Bureau had been moved to Holland. In 1919, however, at a conference at Berne, a shadowy version of the old Second International was reconstituted ('Berne International') and held its first congress at Geneva the next year with seventeen countries represented. In 1921 left socialists from ten parties, including the German Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), the Austrian Social Democrats (SPO) and the British ILP, met in Vienna to constitute the International Working Union of Socialist Parties ('Vienna Union'), nicknamed the 'Second-and-a-Half International'. It saw itself as the first step towards an all-embracing International. In 1923, at a congress in Hamburg, it united with the revived Second International to form the Labour and Socialist International, which ceased to function in 1940. It was succeeded in 1951 by the present Socialist International, which is a loose association of the main Socialist and Social Democratic Parties throughout the world with its headquarters in London.
The Third International (1919-43) Following the disintegration of the Second International at the outbreak of the first world war, Lenin wrote in November 1914: 'The Second International is dead, overcome by opportunism.... Long Live the Third International ...''The Position and Tasks of the Socialist International', CW 28 p. 40). This Third International - called the Communist International, or Comintern - was founded in Moscow in March 1919 on the initiative of the Bolsheviks after the victory of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and at a time of revolutionary upsurge in Central Europe. Speaking at its first congress, Lenin expressed the prevailing mood and expectations when he declared that 'the founding of an international Soviet republic is on the way' (ibid. vol. 28, p. 477). He later defined 'recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat and Soviet power in place of 'bourgeois democracy' as 'the fundamental principles of the Third International.' (ibid. vol. 3 ~, pp. 197- 8). A 'World Union of Socialist Soviet Republics' (Degras 1971, vol. 2, p. 465) was to remain its official objective throughout its whole existence, though it was to recede into the background after 1935. At its second congress in Moscow in July-August 1920 there were delegates from parties and organizations in forty-one countries, and consultative delegates, among others from the French Socialist Party and the German USPD, a majority at whose congresses would vote before the end of the year to affiliate to the Comintern. Concerned that the new International was threatened with dilution by unstable Social Democratic elements, the congress laid down its draconic Twenty-One Conditions of affiliation. All parties desiring affiliation had to 'remove reformists and centrists from all responsible positions in the workers' movement', and combine legal with illegal work, including systematic propaganda
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in the army. Defining the epoch as one of 'acute civil war', it demanded 'iron discipline' and the greatest possible degree of centralization both under the party centres, nationally, and internationally under the Comintern executive whose decisions were binding between congresses. (Degras, vol. 1, pp. 166- 172.)
In its Statutes the Comintern declared that 'it breaks once and for all with the traditions of the Second International, for whom only white-skinned people existed'. Its task was to embrace and liberate working people of all colours. The Second Congress adopted Theses on the National and Colonial Question, drafted by Lenin, which emphasized the need for an anti-imperialist alliance of national and colonial liberation movements with Soviet Russia and working class movements fighting capitalism (Degras, vol. 1, pp. 138-44). Lenin's pamphlet,'Left-Wing Communism - an Infantile Disorder', written in 1920, sought to combat 'leftist' tendencies in the Comintern and argued the case for a principled Communist participation in parliamentary elections and work inside reactionary trade unions. It was such trends that he confronted at the third Comintern congress in 1921, when he saw that the revolutionary wave had receded, the Communist Parties outside Russia represented a minority oi the working class, and the previous offensive revolutionary tactics, modelled essentially on Russian experience, were no longer appropriate for the West. The congress called for a united front of working-class parties, nationally and Internationally, to fight for the immediate needs of the working class. Arising from this, a conference of the executives of the Comintern, the Second International and the Vienna Union was held in Berlin in 1922, but failed to reach agreement.
After the failure of the hoped for German revolution in October 1923, the Comintern recognized that a period of relative capitalist stabilization had set in. During the next few years the internal struggles of the Soviet Party were carried into the Comintern. After many bitter battles the Trotskyist opposition to Stalin's policies on Socialism in One Country, the Angle-Russian Trade Union Unity Committee, and the strategy and tactics to be followed in the Chinese revolution of 1925-27 was defeated, and Trotsky was expelled from the Comintern Executive in September 1927. The Sixth congress of the Comintern in 1928 adopted a comprehensive programme, largely drafted by Bukharin. It also ushered in the Comintern's'third period', in which social democracy was denounced as 'social fascism', and proposals for a united front with its leaders were rejected, in 1931 the Comintern executive stated that it was necessary to stop drawing a line 'between fascism and bourgeois democracy, and between the parliamentary form of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and its open fascist form' (quoted in Sobolev, 1971, p. 313). The disastrous effects of this policy, above all in Germany, led from 1933 to a revision of Comintern strategy. In March 1933, following the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship, the Comintern executive publicly recommended its affiliated parties to approach the central committees of Social Democratic Parties with proposals for joint action against fascism. This led to united action between Communists and Socialists in France. The Seventh, and last, Comintern congress in 1935, representing over three million Communists (785,000 in capitalist countries) in sixty-five parties, made a powerful case for a united front of working-class parties and its extension to a broader Popular Front to stem the tide of fascism. In his main report Dimitrov emphasized that the choice was now not between proletarian dictatorship and bourgeois democracy, but between bourgeois democracy and an open terrorist bourgeois dictatorship represented by fascism. The Comintern's new strategy helped to inspire the Popular Fronts in France and Spain. It mobilized international support for the struggle of the Spanish republic against fascism, as well as for the Soviet government's proposals for a peace front of the USSR and the Western bourgeois democracies to check fascist aggression.
The Comintern, which was always effectively dominated by the Soviet Communist Parry, gave its full support to Stalin's purges of the 1930s, in which some of its leading members perished and which led to the dissolution of the Polish Communist Party in 1938 on trumped up charges. Following the
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German-Soviet non-aggression pact of August 1939, the Comintern revised its strategy based on its crucial differentiation between the Western bourgeois democracies and the fascist states. From 1939 to 1941 it condemned the war as uniust, reactionary and imperialist on both sides. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 it gave its unstinting support to the Soviet Union and its Western allies in their struggle against the Axis powers. The Comintern was dissolved in June 1943 on the proposal of its presidium, which argued that the different conditions under which the greatly expanded international Communist movement now had to work made its direction from an international centre impossible. The dissolution was also intended to placate Stalin's Western allies (see Claudin 1972).
The Fourth International was founded in 1938 on the initiative of Trotsky from small groups of his supporters in opposition to the Second and Third Internationals, which it condemned as 'counter-revolutionary'. It has remained extremely small and has been subject to serious splits (see TROTSKYISM). (See also INTERNATIONALISM.)
MJReading
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Claudin, Fernando 1972 (1975): The Communist Movement. From Comintern to Cominform. Pt. 1.
Cole, G. D. H. 1954-60: A History of Socialist Thought. vols 2-5.
Collins, Henry and Abramsky, Chimen 1965: Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement. Years of the First International.
Degras, Jane ed. 1956-65 (1971): The Communist
International 1919-1 943: Documents. vols. 1-3
Deutscher, Isaac 1964 (1972): 'On Internationals
and Internationalism'. In Marxism in Our Time.
Documents ofthe First International.
Documents of the Fourth International. The Formative Years. (1933-40) 1973.
Jell, James 1955 (1975): The Second International 1889-1914.
Sobolev, A. I. et al. 1971: Outline History of the Communist International.
