This study is an attempt at a comprehensive history of the International. No historian will fail to acknowledge the idea of Socialism and its movement as one of the great intellectual, moral and social forces of society. But, surprisingly enough, while books on the history of Socialist ideas and Socialist movements constitute a rich and ever-expanding library, up to now there has appeared no universal history of the International as the organized expression and moral leadership of the world Socialist movement. There are valuable studies of particular periods. There is, above all, G. D. H. Cole's monumental five-volume History of Socialist Thought, containing a history of the First and Second Internationals, presented against a general background of the development of Socialist ideas and movements. However, even in this comprehensive history of Socialism the International can be traced as only one among a larger number of its aspects.
This is the first of three volumes devoted to the narration of the story of the International from its very inception up to the centenary of the founding of the First International. Two of these volumes have already been written and published in Germany and the English versions of the two books present a revised edition of their German original; the third volume, destined to conclude the story, is in preparation.
In an attempt to ascertain the origin of the International I went further back in tracing its root than the prevailing view of some historians would allow. Communist historians, in particular, insist that the historical International, known as the First, had only a single forerunner — the Communist League with which Karl Marx was associated. But in fact there were, as the investigations clearly show, a number of working-class associations, aiming at an international brotherhood of the dispossessed, which came into being before the Communist League emerged in the late 1840s and after its demise in the beginnings of the 1850s. They were imbued, like the Communist League, with Socialist ideas which emanated ultimately from the humanitarian ideals of the French Revolution of 1789. The Communist League indeed, before Marx joined it in 1847, scarcely differed in its ideology and social composition from its predecessors and successors among the forerunners of the International. It assumed its historical significance as the first distinctly proletarian forerunner of the historic International only by the programme drafted by Marx in his Communist Manifesto. But although the other forerunners lacked such a concrete Socialist programme, they were guided by precisely the same aim as the Communist League — the establishment of a fraternity of the workers in all countries in their struggle for a Socialist society.
Thus Part One of the present volume, starting with an examination of the significance of the ideas of the French Revolution of 1789, is devoted to the forerunners of the International, their characteristics, beliefs and traditions which became embodied in the historic International. Part Two covers the history of the First International up to the Hague Congress of 1872, and Part Three the history of the Second International up to its collapse at the outbreak of the First World War.
The second volume, starting with an investigation of the deeper reasons of the crisis of the International, narrates the history both of the Socialist and Communist Internationals up to their dissolution during the Second World War. During this period the history of the Labour movement was dominated by the conflict between Bolshevism and Social Democracy. It was over this fundamental difference of ideology that the International split. Each of the two Internationals, formed in the process of this bifurcation, has of course its own history. But the history of the one as well as of the other becomes comprehensible only out of the history of the cleavage of the original International and their struggle as rivals for the leadership of the European working class. In that volume the attempt has been made to present the history of both Internationals in the entanglement of their struggles against and in the reciprocal effects of their actions upon each other.
It is intended that the third volume of this work should cover the period from the end of the Second World War to the completion of the International's first century in 1964.
In the appendices of the present volume I have reproduced two documents of considerable importance. The first is the 'General Rules of the International Working Men's Association', as finalized at the London Conferences in 1871, reflecting the spirit of the organization and providing a rough outline of its conception and aims. The second — the Resolution of the Stuttgart Congress in 1907 on the attitude of the Socialist parties towards war — is essential for the understanding of the internal conflicts on which the Second International foundered. I have further added to these documents a Table of the Congresses and Conferences of the International 1864–1914, and of the officers and members of the Provisional General Council of the First International.
An indispensable source for the history of the First International are the Minutes of the General Council, which may be found in the Inter-national Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. A perusal of these volumes has served to dissipate a good many myths which had accumulated about the history of the International.
My thanks are due to the many colleagues and friends who have read over my manuscript, corrected errors and enriched it greatly by suggestions. I should mention, in particular, Leo Valiani of Milan, author of L'Epoca della Prima Internazionale and Della Prima alla Seconda Internazionale, and my late friend, Werner Blumenberg, Head of the German Department of the Amsterdam Institute, both of whom read the entire manuscript. In addition, several chapters on the First International were read by Friedrich Adler. The chapter on evolutionary and revolutionary Socialism was read by Dr Carl Landauer, a professor at California University and author of the two-volume European Socialism, and by Dr R. P. Morgan, a lecturer at the University of Sussex and author of The German Social Democrats and the First International,1864–72, as well as by the biographer of Karl and Jenny Marx, the late Boris Nikolaevsky, in New York. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the late Professor A. J. C. Rütter, Director of the Amsterdam Institute, and to Miss Marie Hunink, the Librarian, for their generosity and help in enabling me to make use of the rich resources of that library, as well as to my wife Tini, who read the entire manuscript and the proofs of the book with painstaking devotion.
This work is dedicated, in deepest gratitude, to the memory of Friedrich Adler, one of the great figures of the International and also my teacher and friend.
J.B.