European Socialism Before World War I

...Unlike the Russian Communist party, the German Social Democratic party was always a democratic organization...

...The outstanding British delegate was William Morris...

...In Belgium, Emile Vandervelde and Camille Huysmans...

...To mention only a few: In Germany, August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Philip Scheidemann and Friedrich Ebert...

...Joll also writes of "Ebert [as] President and Scheidemann [as] Chancellor of a republic from whose prisons Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were dragged to their death by nationalist gangsters with the connivance of Social Democratic ministers...

...For, about a decade later, the Socialist movement began a period of rapid growth in nearly all the major nations of Europe which made it a major intellectual force for half a century...

...We are rid of it...

...The French Socialists were the most influential next to the Germans, and the story of the International, as Joll says, is to a large extent the story of "the influence of German Socialism on the rest of Europe, of French attempts to resist it in the interest of different traditions, and of the final power-lessness of the German Social Democrats to prevent war against France in 1914...

...Here is one of the hoariest of proto-Communist myths...

...It is a story that needed telling...

...The British Labor party, which was never revolutionary or Marxist, had no influence whatsoever at this time...

...In 1877, the French statesman Adolphe Thiers told his electors: "Nobody talks socialism any more, rightly...

...For a quarter of a century, the congresses of the International were a forum for discussion of the great problems which faced the Socialist movement—whether political or industrial action should take precedence, whether Socialists should take part in non-Socialist governments, how to prevent war, etc...

...It is, nevertheless, true that the ideological influence of German orthodox Marxism "retarded the development of a specifically French Socialism, excluding some of the ablest men in the Third Republic from office for many years and encouraging a rigid Marxism in the trammels of which an important section of the French Socialist party has been caught up to the present day...

...Too often, they were content simply to reaffirm Marxist dogmas without testing their validity, and, where they achieved political success, it was often in spite of, rather than because of, their assertions of doctrine...

...what presses hard on the political and social progress of Europe is not the alleged compromises, the dangerous enterprises of French Socialists who /itlied themselves with democracy in order to save the liberty, progress and peace of the world, but it is the political powerlessness of German Social Democracy...

...In fact, all the outstanding Marxist theoreticians—including its Russian founding fathers, Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich and Deutch—were and remained opponents of Bolshevism...

...More seriously, Joll errs when he says that "after October 1917 the Russian Marxists captured the leadership of the international Socialist movement...

...Among the delegates were three members of the family of Karl Marx: his daughter Eleanor and his sons-in-law Paul Lafargue and Charles Longuet...

...Social Democracy, Joll writes, was a genuinely international force...

...Ed-uard Bernstein, at the time a determined opponent of Ebert and Scheidemann, writes in his History of the German Revolution: "There is not a trace of any evidence whatsoever that the Government or anyone of its members, even with a hint, suggested the murder or encouraged the murderers...

...The Second International before 1914 represented large numbers of people all over Europe who believed that it would be possible to prevent war by international action against it...

...In France, Alexandre Millerand, Jean Jaures, Jules Guesde, Aristide Briand, Rene Viviani and Anatole France...

...3.50...

...James Joll, lecturer in modern history at Oxford, has written the first objective study of the Second Socialist International from its foundation in 1889 to the debacle of 1914...

...To begin with, Ebert was elected President a month after the killing of Liebknecht and Luxemburg...

...It was at this congress that May 1 was proclaimed the international holiday of the workers...

...Joll shows how the German Socialists tried hard in July 1914 to stop the war but were helpless in the face of all-powerful German militarism...

...yet, the creators of the kibbutzim, had no relations with the Mensheviks—they were influenced by the Narodniks, or populist socialists...

...Joll exaggerates, however, when he compares the results of the German Social Democratic influence on other Socialist movements before 1914 with the disastrous effects of the Russian Communists' intervention in the affairs of other Communist parties...

...Bismarck felt that the center of European Socialism was moving from France to Germany and in 1878 promulgated anti-Socialist legislation which he thought would destroy the movement...

...and the story of the failure of the Second International to do this is both pathetic and instructive...

...Second, they were dragged out of their hotels and not from the "prisons of the republic": they were murdered on the way to prison...

...it never had the power, nor did it seek, to impose its policies or theories on any other Socialist party...

...In Russia, Peter Lavrov, George Plekhanov, Victor Chernov and V. I. Lenin...

...The Austrian delegation was headed by Victor Adler, who in 1919 became first President of the Austrian Republic...

...The Second International was founded at an international Socialist congress held in Paris in 1889...

...In analyzing the events leading up to the outbreak of war in August 1914, Joll points out that only in two countries—Germany and France— could the Socialists have done much to prevent their governments from going to war...

...Despite the author's modesty, the book does convey the major developments affecting the leading Socialist parties during this period and also provides thumb-nail biographical sketches of almost all the outstanding personalities in the movement...

...Third, it is pure Communist invention that they were killed with the "connivance of Social Democratic ministers...

...In the period considered by Joll, the Socialist movement contained at one time or another scores of men who later played key roles in European and world history...

...In his introduction, Joll says that his book is not a history of the Socialist parties of Europe or of the development of socialist theory...

...Joll writes that the communal settlements in Israel "owe much to the Russian Menshe-vik tradition...

...In Russia and Austria-Hungary, the Socialists were powerless to interfere with the plans of the imperial governments...

...Four women were also major actors in the drama: Eleanor MarxAveling, Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin and Angelica Balabanoff...

...Ten years before World War I, at the International Socialist Congress at Amsterdam in August 1904, Jaures in debate with Bebel uttered these prophetic words: "What at present most weighs on Europe and the world, on the guarantee of peace, the safeguarding of political liberties, the progress of Socialism and the working class...

...In Poland, Ignace Dashinski and Joseph Pilsud-ski...

...Few thinking Social Democrats today will disagree with the author when he says: "The members of the European Socialist movement between 1!!!!° and the First World War were constantly faced with situations where they might have asked themselves whether Marxism and democracy were compatible and whether Marxism provided a suitable basis for practical political action...

...Most of the Continental Socialist parties between 1889 and 1914 were under the influence of the German Social Democrats...

...Germany was represented by Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Clara Zetkin, who decades later became a Communist and in September 1932, as the oldest Deputy, opened the last freely-elected German Reichstag...

...In Austria, Victor Adler and Karl Renner...

...The Russians were led by Plekhanov and Lavrov...

...Both men were mistaken...

...Notwithstanding these regrettable mistakes, The Second International is a valuable contribution to the history of Socialism and a great help to the understanding of contemporary world affairs...

...and Bolshevism split, rather than captured, European Socialism, holding only a minority of the workers in the various countries until after World War II...

...For those who like to see issues in personal terms, says Joll, Jaures and Bebel can be regarded "as the protagonists not only of two rival forms of socialism, but also of two different ways of looking at policies...

...This assumes that Marxism and Bolshevism are synonymous...

...In Britain, George Bernard Shaw, William Morris, Henry M. Hyndman, Sidney Webb, James Keir Hardie and Ramsey Macdonald...

...For not only was international Socialism a great intellectual force in Europe before 1914: democratic Socialism is still a powerful force in Western Europe and several Asian countries, and its ideas can now be seen penetrating and disarming the very Communist movement which assaulted it in the wake of war forty years ago...

...rather, it is intended as an account of European Socialism as it found expression in the congresses and other activities of the Second International...

...For it is doubtful whether a general, all-embracing, dogmatic theory of history and the nature of man can ever serve as a proper basis for political action in a society which believes in parliamentary government and personal liberty...

...In Italy, Philippo Turati, Enrico Ferri and Benito Mussolini...

...Interesting chapters of the book deal with the fight against the Anarchists at the early congresses, the fight between orthodox Marxists and the so-called "revisionists" or "reformists" in the International and within its parties, and the relationship between socialism and nationalism...

...There are a few regrettable errors in this otherwise scholarly and well-documented book...