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| Second International | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1889–1914 | |||||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||||
• First Congress | July 1889 | ||||||||||||
• Second Congress | August 1891 | ||||||||||||
• Third Congress | August 1893 | ||||||||||||
• Fourth Congress | July 1896 | ||||||||||||
• Fifth Congress | September 1900 | ||||||||||||
• Sixth Congress | August 1904 | ||||||||||||
• Seventh Congress | August 1907 | ||||||||||||
• Eighth Congress | August – September 1910 | ||||||||||||
• Ninth Congress | November 1912 | ||||||||||||
• Dissolution | July 1914 | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
The Second International was an international Marxist organization that existed from 1889 to 1914. It was mostly based in Europe and North America but gave support to anticolonial movements in the Global South. The International collapsed in 1914 when it broke into groups supporting different sides of the First World War.[1]
Political positions[edit | edit source]
At its first congress in 1889, the Second International stated that socialism cannot occur without a proletarian revolution. It advocated for the eight-hour work day, state-sponsored insurance and pensions, public education, and women's suffrage. The International prioritized the proletariat and did not make alliances with the peasants or petty bourgeoisie.[1]
The opinions of contemporary figures that were to oppose the positions of the Second International such as Lenin and Stalin viewed them as referencing Marx and Engels' writings but usurping its revolutionary meanings. They labeled the Second Internationalists as "opportunists" where instead of advocating for the smashing of the bourgeois machinery by revolution, the Second International sought to "kill capitalism by legal means" and advocating a position that were in line with parliamentary diplomacy and scheming.[2]
Stalin listed three essential dogmas of the Second International that were hindering the efforts of the proletariat movement:
- They assert that the proletariat cannot assume power unless it constitutes a majority in the country. Lenin replied to this assertion by stating that should there be a moment in history such as a war where the proletariat could rally around the working masses, the proletariat must take advantage of a favourable international and national situation to seize power and hasten the piercing of capital.
- That the proletariat cannot retain power if it lacks an adequate number of trained cultural and administrative cadres capable of organising the administration of the country, further asserting that the cadres would first have to be trained under capitalist conditions before taking power. Lenin then turned the assertion on its head by assuming that the proletariat first take power, create the favourable conditions for the development of the proletariat, before proceeding to raise the cultural level of the labouring masses and to train numerous cadres of leaders and administrators from among the workers. Stalin further adds that the experience of the Russian revolutionaries has smashed this assertion.
- That proletariat cannot accept the method of the political general strike because it is unsound in theory and dangerous in practice as it may disturb the normal course of economic life. In referencing Engels in their reply, Leninists countered by saying that Engels was not opposed to every kind of general strike, only the ones advocated by Anarchists instead of the ones advocated by the proletariat.
One of the biggest issues stemming from the Second International is what seems to be a myriad of slogans and resolutions that results in a lack of practical experience. In his political pamphlet, Left-Wing Communism, Lenin states that:
Their (Bolsheviks) creation is facilitated by a correct revolutionary theory, which, in its turn, is not a dogma, but assumes final shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement.[3]
Factions[edit | edit source]
During the First World War, the Second International split into three factions: social-chauvinists who supported the war such as Plekhanov and Scheidemann, internationalist anti-imperialists including Lenin, Luxemburg, and Liebknecht, and opportunist centrists such as Kautsky who varied between the two sides.[4]
See also[edit | edit source]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Mike Taber (2022-06-28). "The Second International’s Conflicted Legacy" Monthly Review. Archived from the original on 2022-06-29. Retrieved 2022-06-29.
- ↑ “This was the period of the relatively peaceful development of capitalism, the pre-war period, so to speak, when the catastrophic contradictions of imperialism had not yet became so glaringly evident, when workers' economic strikes and trade unions were developing more or less "normally," when election campaigns and parliamentary groups yielded "dizzying" successes, when legal forms of struggle were lauded to the skies, and when it was thought that capitalism would be "killed" by legal means-in short, when the parties of the Second International were living in clover and had no inclination to think seriously about revolution, about the dictatorship of the proletariat, about the revolutionary education of the masses.”
Joseph Stalin (1924). Foundations of Leninism: 'Method'. - ↑ Vladimir Lenin (1920). "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder: 'An Essential Condition of the Bolsheviks’ Success'.
- ↑ Vladimir Lenin (1917). The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution: 'The Situation within the Socialist International'. [MIA]