International Socialist Workers and Trade Union Congress, London 1896

Last updated

The International Socialist Workers and Trade Union Congress held in London from July 26 to August 1, 1896 was the fourth congress of the Second International. The congress has been described as "the most agitated, the most tumultuous, and the most chaotic of all the congresses of the Second International" [1] because of the many factional disputes between and within the national delegations.

Contents

The congress was the only one of the Second International to have its proceedings published in English. The chairman was Henry Hyndman. [2]

Country# of delegatesNotes
Germany48Representing the Social Democratic Party
Great Britain475Representing the Social Democratic Federation, Fabian Society, Miners' Federation of Great Britain
Austria6
Australia1The Australians had deputized a London doctor to represent them [3] Represented the Australian Socialist League. [4]
Bohemia1
Bulgaria4
Belgium19
Denmark7
Spain6
United States7
France129
Netherlands13
Hungary3
Italy13
Poland13
Portugal1
Romania1
Russia7
Sweden2
Switzerland12

Resolutions

The Congress passed resolutions on the Agrarian question, political action, education, the position of the working class regarding militarism, the industrial question and the further organization of social democracy. It also passed motions regarding the independence of Cuba, Macedonia and Armenia, tsarism, monarchism, and adopted a special address from the Bulgarian Social Democrats. [5]

Related Research Articles

Ferdinand Brunetière French writer and critic

Ferdinand Brunetière was a French writer and critic.

Eduard Bernstein German politician (1850 - 1932)

Eduard Bernstein was a German social democratic Marxist theorist and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Bernstein had held close association to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but he began to identify what he believed to be errors in Marxist thinking and began to criticize views held by Marxism when he investigated and challenged the Marxist materialist theory of history. He rejected significant parts of Marxist theory that were based upon Hegelian metaphysics and rejected the Hegelian perspective of an immanent economic necessity to socialism.

Harry Quelch

Henry Quelch was one of the first Marxists and founders of the social democratic movement in Great Britain. He was a socialist activist, journalist and trade unionist. His brother, Lorenzo "Len" Quelch, was also a socialist activist, while his son, Tom Quelch, achieved note as a prominent communist activist.

The International Working Union of Socialist Parties was a political international for the co-operation of socialist parties.

League of Peace and Freedom

The Ligue internationale de la paix was created after a public opinion campaign against a war between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia over Luxembourg. The Luxembourg crisis was peacefully resolved in 1867 by the Treaty of London but in 1870 the Franco-Prussian War could not be prevented so the league dissolved and refounded as the 'Société française pour l'arbitrage entre nations' in the same year.

The International Socialist Bureau was the permanent organization of the Second International, established at the Paris congress of 1900. Before this there was no organizational infrastructure to the "Second International" beyond a series of periodical congresses, which weren't even given a uniform name. The host party of the next congress was charged with organizing it.

Socialist League (UK, 1885) Political party in United Kingdom

The Socialist League was an early revolutionary socialist organisation in the United Kingdom. The organisation began as a dissident offshoot of the Social Democratic Federation of Henry Hyndman at the end of 1884. Never an ideologically harmonious group, by the 1890s the group had turned from socialism to anarchism. The group was finally disbanded in 1901.

International Workers Congresses of Paris, 1889 Two congresses which were held in Paris, beginning on July 14, 1889

The first meetings of the Second International were held in Paris, beginning on July 14, 1889, on the centenary of the storming of the Bastille. Internecine conflicts within the French socialist movement had prompted the "possibilist" and Marxist factions to hold their own congresses at the same time. The Marxist congress resolved to arrange a second meeting at Zurich, while the Possibilists would arrange one in Brussels. However the Marxist organizing committee would later decide to join the Brussels congress, and the next congress would meet in 1891.

International Socialist Labor Congress, the second congress of the Second International met in Brussels, Belgium from August 16–22, 1891 at the Maison du Peuple, the headquarters of the Belgian Workers Party.

International Socialist Workers Congress, Zürich 1893 3rd Congress of the Second International

The International Socialist Workers Congress in Zürich that met from 6 to 13 August 1893 was the third congress of the Second International. The congress passed the "Zurich resolution" which expelled anarchists from the Congress. On 12 August, Friedrich Engels was designated the honorary president for the day and delivered the closing address, the only time that Engels addressed a Second International period Congress.

The 5th International Socialist Congress of the Second International era was held in Paris from September 23 to 27 in Paris. It was originally supposed to be held in Germany in 1899, but difficulties with the German authorities prevented this.

Internationalist and defencist were the broad opposing camps in the international socialist movement during and shortly after the First World War. Prior to 1914, anti-militarism had been an article of faith among most European socialist parties. Leaders of the Second International had even suggested that socialist workers might foil a declaration of war by means of a general strike.

During the First World War there were a number of conferences of the socialist parties of the Entente or Allied powers.

Labour and Socialist International International political party (1923-40)

The Labour and Socialist International was an international organization of socialist and labour parties, active between 1923 and 1940. The group was established through a merger of the rival Vienna International and the former Second International, based in London, and was the forerunner of the present-day Socialist International.

British Socialist Party Political party in the United Kingdom

The British Socialist Party (BSP) was a Marxist political organisation established in Great Britain in 1911. Following a protracted period of factional struggle, in 1916 the party's anti-war forces gained decisive control of the party and saw the defection of its pro-war right wing. After the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia at the end of 1917 and the termination of the First World War the following year, the BSP emerged as an explicitly revolutionary socialist organisation. It negotiated with other radical groups in an effort to establish a unified communist organisation, an effort which culminated in August 1920 with the establishment of the Communist Party of Great Britain. The youth organisation the Young Socialist League was affiliated with the party.

Second International Organisation of socialist and labour parties, formed in 1889

The Second International (1889–1916) was an organisation of socialist and labour parties, formed on 14 July 1889 at two simultaneous Paris meetings in which delegations from twenty countries participated. The Second International continued the work of the dissolved First International, though excluding the powerful anarcho-syndicalist movement. While the international had initially declared its opposition to all warfare between European powers, most of the major European parties ultimately chose to support their respective states in the First World War. After splitting into pro-Allied, pro-Central Powers, and antimilitarist factions, the international ceased to function. After the war, the remaining factions of the international went on to found the Labour and Socialist International, the International Working Union of Socialist Parties, and the Communist International.

Henry Hyndman English writer and politician (1842–1881)

Henry Mayers Hyndman was an English writer and politician.

Claudie Weill was a French historian. She worked on the history of the German working world. She was also a specialist on Rosa Luxemburg.

Georges Haupt (1928–1978) was a historian of socialism.

Anarchism in Belgium began to spread after the fall of the Paris Commune, when many Communards, including Élisée Reclus, took refuge in Brussels. At the time, the Belgian César de Paepe defended a mutualism inspired by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, which proposed to organize production and distribution by relying on independent workers' associations without the intermediary of the State.

References

  1. Haupt, Georges La Deuxième Internationale, 1889-1914: étude critique des sources, essai bibliographique p. 153
  2. Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Hyndman, Henry Mayers"  . New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
  3. The Economic Journal, Vol. 6, No. 23 (September , 1896), pp. 460-465
  4. McIlroy, Jim (2003). Australia's First Socialists. Sydney, New South Wales, Australia: Resistance Books. p. 11. ISBN   978-1876646394.
  5. Haupt, Georges La Deuxième Internationale, 1889-1914: étude critique des sources, essai bibliographique p. 154