Two basic principles, embedded deeply in the Socialist tradition, governed the attitude of the International towards the colonial question. There was, first, the principle of the basic equality of all peoples and races in the sense that all had an equal right to dignity and respect, to freedom and national independence. There was, secondly, the idea of solidarity between the oppressed of all countries from which the International itself had sprung.
The first expression in the European Labour movement of solidarity between the disinherited members of the white and black races appeared in the attitude of the British workers towards the American Civil War of the 1860s. They saw in the war of North against South a war to liberate the Negro people from slavery. They declared overwhelmingly for the North and protested, at public meetings and in the Press, against the plans of the British government to break the blockade on cotton exports from the South, even though the blockade was forcing tens of thousands of Lancashire cotton workers out of employment.[1]
The First International was established in the course of the war a few weeks before Abraham Lincoln, who had become one of the champions of Negro emancipation, was elected President of the U.S.A. for a second term. One of the first things the General Council did was to send an address of congratulations, drawn up by Marx to Abraham Lincoln, 'the single-minded son of the working class' who was destined 'to lead the country through matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world'. The address assured Lincoln of the solidarity of the European workers and their determination to bear 'patiently the hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis', since they had 'understood at once…that the slave-holders' rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labour' and that 'the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class'.
The American Civil War was, in a sense, a colonial war, since it involved the future of the quasi-colonial institution of slavery. The 'Address of the International Working Men's Association to Abraham Lincoln' can therefore be considered the International's first pronouncement on a colonial problem.
However, the modern colonial policy of the great powers, and the aggressive phase in their struggle for colonial possessions, started only in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, and the problem of colonialism, therefore, was a matter for the Second International rather than the First. The London Congress of 1896 demanded, in a resolution proposed by George Lansbury, 'the right of all nations to complete sovereignty', and denounced colonialism as an expression of capitalism. 'With whatever pretexts colonial policies may be justified in the name of religion or civilization,' it continued, 'their sole aim is simply to extend the area of capitalist exploitation in the exclusive interests of the capitalist class.'
Only a few years after the London Congress, however, the first doubts regarding traditional attitudes to colonialism began to be expressed in a number of Socialist parties. The impetus for this change in attitude was given by Britain's war against the Boer Republics in South Africa, which began in 1899 and dragged on until 1902. To the great majority of Socialists throughout the world this was merely a classic example of a capitalist colonial war, in which the British ruling class sought to turn the rich gold-fields of South Africa into a sphere for capitalist exploitation. Both the I.L.P. and the S.D.F. campaigned against the war in the spirit of the London Congress resolution, through public demonstrations and Press propaganda. A section of the British Socialist movement, however, strongly represented in the Fabian Society, welcomed and justified the annexation of the Boer Republics, in a manifesto drafted by Bernard Shaw.[2]
Shaw began his case with a statement about the need to protect the natives of the Transvaal from slavery and extermination at the hands of Boer oligarchy. The well-being of the natives in all colonial countries was the concern of the entire civilized world and not only of the particular white ruling class which happened to be in control. Colonialism could be justified morally only in terms of its civilizing influence. 'A State, large or small,' Shaw wrote, 'which hinders the spread of international civilization must disappear.' Furthermore, control of a territory's natural resources could not be handed over to a single nation without due regard for the interests of all nations. The earth was the common property of the whole of humanity, and the common interests of all in having access to the means of life supplied by nature must have priority over the interests of a nation in which the resources happened to be located.
Shaw concluded that the gold-fields of South Africa should be internationalized and exploited in the interests of all peoples. The ideal solution to the problem of native welfare would be to transfer the territories of the Boer Republic to a federative world state. However, since no world state existed as yet, it was realistic for Socialists to support the annexation of the Boer Republics by a great power, such as the British Empire, since 'a great power must, consciously or unconsciously, govern in the general interests of civilization.'
Shaw's pamphlet aroused a storm of indignation in the British Labour movement. His theory was denounced by the I.L.P. and the S.D.F. as a betrayal of the fundamental principles of Socialism. The majority at a Fabian conference, however, including Sidney and Beatrice Webb, endorsed his attitude, and Robert Blatchford, brilliant editor of the Clarion, the most widely circulated Socialist weekly, repeated Shaw's argument in justifying the annexation of the Boer Republics.
A point of view similar to Shaw's was expounded, at about the same time, by Eduard Bernstein in his book, Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus (1899), which criticized the attitude of German Social Democracy to the colonial question. The discussion arose out of the forced leasing of Kiaochow to Germany in 1897, which caused considerable debate in both Reichstag and Press, and constituted Germany's share of the loot of China in her planned partiion among the European great powers. The Social Democratic party had protested in the Reichstag against this act of imperialism and denounced all colonialism as incompatible with the 'common principles of Social Democracy'.
It was against just these 'common Social Democratic principles' that Bernstein protested. Though he was at first critical of the way in which the bay of Kiaochow had been obtained, he finally approved of the lease on the grounds that it allowed the German Empire 'a decisive voice' in the partition of China. He did not advocate any further colonial acquisitions, but saw 'no reason to assume that such acquisitions were objectionable in themselves.…The important thing is not whether, but how, they are effected.' He defended colonialism as a necessity if the natural resources of the tropics were to be developed. 'Since we enjoy the products of the tropics…there can be no real objection to our cultivating the crops ourselves.' Moreover, 'the right of savages to the soil they occupy' could be recognized only as a conditional right. 'In the last resort, the higher culture enjoys the higher right. It is not the conquest but the cultivation of the land that gives the occupier his historical and legal titles.' He supported this position by a quotation from the third volume of Marx's Das Kapital which declared that: 'Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition.'[3]
Bernstein's views were rejected by an overwhelming majority of the German Social Democratic party. The party laid down the main lines of its colonial policy at the Mainz Congress in 1900. According to the resolution, colonialism sprang 'in the first instance from the insatiable demands of the bourgeoisie to find ever new investment outlets for its continually accumulating capital, as well as from the drive for new markets'. The policy depended 'on the forcible annexation of foreign lands and the ruthless subjugation and exploitation of the indigenous people'. It made 'the exploiting elements' even more savage, and demoralized those 'who strive to satisfy their greed by the most objectionable and even inhuman means'. Against all such 'policies of plundering and exploitation', Social Democracy 'as the enemy of all oppression and exploitation of one people by another would protest as powerfully as possible'. The resolution went on to demand 'that the necessary and desirable cultural contacts between all the peoples of the world should be achieved by means compatible with the preservation of the rights, liberties and independence of those peoples who can be won for modern culture and civilization only by the force of teaching and example'.[4]
Bernstein, however, was not the only one to call for a 'realistic' colonial policy. Though it was rejected by most Revisionists, some of the movement's more respected writers, such as Max Schippel, Gustav Noske, Richard Calwer, Max Maurenbrecher, Ludwig Quessel and Gerhard Hildebrand, supported from Austria by Karl Leuthner, foreign political editor of the Vienna Arbeiter-Zeitung, defended colonialism as necessary for developing the productive resources, extending the civilization and expanding the living-space of the European nations. They stood for the concept of a great German colonial empire.
However, the problem of colonial policy could not be viewed in isolation. It was bound up with the whole question of imperialism, including the arms race between the Great Powers, the growth of international tensions and the danger of armed conflict. The fifth congress of the International, meeting in Paris towards the end of September 1900, decided to deal with the problem of colonial policy together with that of world peace and militarism.
The resolution proposed by H. van Kol from Holland on this item of the agenda rejected colonialism without reservation. It declared that colonial expansion was an inevitable accompaniment of capitalism in its latest phase, imperialism. Imperialism involved the threat of a European war, was a source of chauvinism and imposed increasing burdens on the people through military expenditure. The colonial policy of the bourgeoisie had, for its sole purpose, according to the resolution, 'and increase in capitalist profit and the maintenance of the capitalist system'. In this way it wasted 'the property and blood of the entire working class' and committed 'crimes and cruelties without number against the native inhabitants of colonies subjugated by force of arms'. The resolution called on the workers of all countries to fight against capitalist colonial expansion, to condemn the colonial policy of the bourgeoisie and to put an end to the injustice and cruelty inflicted on the natives, 'victims of capitalism's greed and dishonour'.
The debate on the resolution began with statements from the British delegates about the Boer War, which was still in progress. H. M. Hyndman, chairman of the S.D.F., said that 'as an English Socialist and an inhabitant of the biggest colonial empire in the world', he considered it particularly important to protest, together with the international working class, against the colonial policy of the major powers. Britain's war against the Transvaal filled 'us English Socialists with mourning and shame'. And Quelch declared that, 'to the honour of the British workers', it has proved impossible 'despite all the systematic attempts by capitalist England to corrupt them' to persuade one organized worker, let alone a workers' organization, to express approval of the war. 'The workers,' he said proudly, 'have kept their flag unsullied.'
It was generally felt, however, that it would not be sufficient for Congress merely to denounce colonialism. Richard Géraut, delegate from the Socialist General Council of Guadeloupe, in the French West Indies, proposed that a detailed Socialist programme for the colonies should be worked out, and Congress asked the affiliated parties to give the matter careful study, while also promoting the formation of Socialist parties in colonial territories.
The resolution submitted to the congress by Rosa Luxemburg on world peace and militarism dealt also with the colonial question. Two commissions of the congress, dealing respectively with colonialism and militarism, had met in joint session from the beginning, since Rosa Luxemburg's view was accepted that militarism and colonialism were merely two aspects of a new phenomenon in world politics—a phenomenon whose 'paroxysms had unleashed four bloody wars during the past six years and which threatens the world with a state of permanent war'. Against this danger the working-class parties of the various countries must draw closer together, not only in the everyday struggle against colonialism and militarism but also with regard to the final objective, since 'it is becoming more and more clear', she said, as though with presentiment of the catastrophe that was to break only fourteen years later, 'that the collapse of the capitalist system would take place not through an economic but through a political crisis, resulting from developments in the sphere of world politics'. The workers of all countries must prepare to meet the decisive challenge when it came by international action.
The resolution, which was adopted unanimously without discussion, said that the events since the International had held its previous congress in 1896—the Boer War and the invasion of China by the European Great Powers—had given militarism a new significance. It had become an instrument of policy for colonial expansion, which endangered the normal and peaceful development of society, accentuated rivalry and tensions and 'threatened to bring about a permanent state of war'. The resolution called on all workers' parties in all countries 'to oppose with re-doubled strength and vigour both militarism and colonialism…and to reply to the world alliance of bourgeoisie and governments for perpetual war with an alliance of the workers of all countries for perpetual peace'. It committed Socialist parliamentary groups 'to vote unfailingly against all estimates for military and naval expenditure or for colonial aggression' and called on the Bureau of the International 'to organize a simultaneous and uniform movement of opposition to militarism'.
The Paris Congress of 1900 had requested the member parties to make a study of the colonial problem so as to arrive at a well-considered and viable policy. The first attempt at such a programme came from the colonial commission of the Amsterdam Congress in August 1904. H. van Kol admitted quite candidly that the commission had been unable to agree on many points. 'We must protest against the forcible annexation of colonies,' he said, 'and against all forms of capitalist piracy in colonial areas, since we oppose the atrocities inseparable from such policies, even if we do not consider that it is necessarily bad for a country to be colonized in any circumstances.' In what way, however, were the horrors of colonialism to be in practice alleviated or prevented? Should Socialists try to preserve pre-capitalist conditions in colonial territories, or encourage the development of native forms of capitalism? Kol underlined the dilemma by asking: 'Can we, who defend right and justice, abandon hundreds of thousands to infinite misery, to intellectual and moral degradation, instead of protecting them against capitalism?'
However, the resolution which H. van Kol moved on behalf of the commission avoided the fundamental question which colonialism posed for Social Democracy. He had touched on the question of whether colonialism could be regarded as a blessing or a curse for the people being colonized, whether it was to be opposed in all circumstances or whether its barbarities could be avoided by some form of Socialist colonial policy. The resolution limited itself to pledging the Socialist parties and their parliamentary representatives to oppose all legislation of an imperialist or protectionist character, and to oppose all colonial aggression and all military expenditure for the furthering of colonialist aims. It pledged strong opposition to concessions in the interests of monopolies and plantation-owners and appealed to Socialist parties to denounce publicly all acts of brutality against natives and to demand from their governments specific safeguards for the native peoples against military oppression and exploitation by foreign firms. They should take particular care to see that native peoples were not deprived of their property by force or fraud. Progress in colonial territories must lie in the direction of popular self-government. The resolution demanded, for the peoples of the colonies, 'that degree of freedom and independence appropriate to their stage of development, with the understanding that complete freedom of the colonies must be the ultimate aim'. Finally, the resolution called for foreign affairs to be brought under parliamentary control, so as to counteract 'the private influence of wealthy cliques'.
Before the congress had started to debate the colonial question proper, the colonial commission presented for discussion a resolution from the English delegates on British policy in India. The resolution, which is of some historic importance as an expression of British and International attitudes towards the British Empire, deserves quoting in full. It ran:
Congress recognizes the right of the inhabitants of civilized countries to settle in lands where the population is at a lower stage of development. However, it condemns most strongly the existing capitalist system of colonial rule and urges the Socialists of all countries to put an end to it. The system results in the oppression of the peoples of Africa, Asia, etc., by the culturally advanced nations of Europe, such as France, Britain, Germany, Belgium and Holland. Since England has had most success in subjugating foreign nations, the effects on British India have been correspondingly greater and more formidable.
This gathering of workers' delegates from the entire civilized world has heard from the representatives of England and India how British rule deprives the Indian people of their means of livelihood, how it exploits and robs them and how more than 200 million Indian people are exposed to the most extreme forms of poverty, misery and famine.
Congress calls on the workers of Great Britain to compel their government to abandon its present infamous and degrading colonial system and to introduce the perfectly practicable system of self-government for the Indian people under English sovereignty.
After reading out the resolution, the president, H. van Kol, asked Congress 'to treat with the greatest reverence the statement of the Indian delegate, an old man of eighty, who had sacrificed fifty-five years of his life to the struggle for the freedom and happiness of his people'. He had come to the congress to present the case of 200 million people in a country 'which could be paradise on earth but for the avarice of the white race which had transformed it into an area of misery and distress for the vast majority of the population'. According to the Minutes, the president's words produced an immediate and profound effect on the congress. The delegates rose from their seats 'as an expression of sympathy for the sufferings of the Indian people' and greeted the Indian delegate, Dadhabhai Naoroji, founder and president of the Indian National Congress, with 'tumultuous cheers and applause, lasting for several minutes' as he stepped up to the rostrum.
In the period between the Amsterdam and Stuttgart Congresses, colonial policies had occupied the centre of debate in both the German and Belgian parties.
In Germany it was the risings in their two African colonies—South-West Africa, which, after Germany's defeat in the First World War, was mandated to the Union of South Africa, and East Africa, which, as Tanganyika, became a British mandate—that once again brought colonial problems to the fore. The immediate cause for the rising in South-West Africa was the building of a railway line from the coast to the mining district of Otavi across the grazing lands of the Herero tribe, which had been allocated to the railway concessionaries. After being driven from their grazing-lands the Hereros revolted. The rising spread and, after a year's fighting, was put down by the German colonial administration with exceptional brutality. At a meeting of the Reichstag on 2 December 1905, Ledebour read out an order from General Trotha—who had been sent to South-West Africa to suppress the rising—calling for the Hereros, including the women and children, to be killed on sight. Many thousands of them had been driven into the waterless desert of Omahene, where they perished from hunger and thirst.[5]
The Social Democrats had denounced the atrocities in Parliament and in the Press. When in December 1906 the government asked Parliament for new credits to finance the campaign against the insurgents, the Social Democrats voted against. The Bill authorizing the credits was defeated, when the Centre party voted against it for personal reasons, upon which the government dissolved the Reichstag and unleashed a flood of nationalist and chauvinist propaganda on the nation. In the ensuing election—the 'Hottentot election'—the party suffered a defeat for the first time since 1884. It lost nearly half its seats in the Reichstag, dropping from seventy-nine to forty-three, and while the number of votes rose by over a quarter of a million, the percentage cast for the Social Democrats declined from 32.6 to 29.5. Kaiser William had triumphed and Social Democracy had been 'ridden down'. The Revisionists attributed the defeat to the 'negative colonial policy' of the party and demanded a more 'realistic and positive' approach.
The Belgian Social Democrats faced a colonial problem of a different and more complicated character. The question there was whether Belgium should become a colonial power at all—whether the Belgian state should take over the huge colonial empire which the king had acquired as a private estate.
The origin of the 'Congo Free State' was indeed, as Lafontaine told the congress of the International in Stuttgart, 'without precedent in world history'. It began in 1876 with a conference of geographers and missionaries called by King Leopold II in his private capacity, and it seemed only natural that people concerned with African trade should also be invited to attend what was ostensibly a harmless scientific gathering. The conference set up an 'International Society for the Exploration and Civilization of Africa', whose solemnly declared aim was to win 'the black continent' for Christianity and stop the Arab slave-trade. Two years later the society vanished from the scene. Its place was taken by a commission, set up by Leopold—to which he managed to attach the name of the famous explorer, H. M. Stanley—charged with the expansion of Christian civilization, as interpreted by Leopold. By force and a variety of stratagems he secured concessions from the tribal chiefs, giving him sovereignty over vast areas. To exploit the new kingdom which he had created in the heart of Africa, Leopold founded, in 1882, the International Congo Society and, through his family connections with the European Courts, had the Congo Society recognized as a sovereign state by the Great Powers.
The only concession secured by the powers, under the Treaty of Berlin of 1885, was the right to trade freely with the 'Congo Free State', whose independence had been officially recognized. A year later Leopold nominated himself, with the authority of the Belgian Parliament, 'Head of the State established by the Congo Society', and in his will, drawn up in 1889, bequeathed the 'Congo State' to the Belgian state, apart from a huge 'Crown domain', which was to pass to his own heirs. Meanwhile, Leopold, as absolute ruler of the Congo, has issued a decree annexing all land not under regular cultivation, such as woods, deserts and grazing lands, and all mineral land, as well as subjecting the Congolese in the rubber plantations and mines to a system of forced labour little better than slavery. The resulting uprisings had invariably been bloodily suppressed by the use of native troops.[6]
For a time these hideous events were masked by the impenetrable seclusion of the 'black continent'. However, after 1904, news filtered through concerning the system of Christian civilization which Leopold had installed in Central Africa. The English writer, Edmund Dene Morel,[7], exposed the situation in a number of articles, and particularly in two pamphlets, Leopold's Rule in Africa (1904) and Red Rubber (1906), which changed the course of history. The disclosures were discussed in the British Press and in both British and Belgian Parliaments. Britain and the USA, both signatories to the Treaty of Berlin, protested against the scandal in a joint note. Under moral pressure from the whole civilized world Leopold declared himself ready to transfer his private empire immediately to the Belgian state, in return for a fantastic compensation and except for his 'Royal Estate'.
The draft Bill on the transfer of the Congo appeared before the Belgian Parliament in its final form only in 1906. There was now no more talk of maintaining the 'Royal Estate' as the private property of the royal family, though the Bill continued to provide for a very high level of compensation. But the main question confronting the Belgian Social Democrats was whether, in all the circumstances, they would be justified in voting for annexation. They had denounced the king's appalling régime as a classic expression of capitalist colonialism. Could they now take responsibility for Belgium's becoming a colonial power?
On the other hand, what alternative was there for the Congo? Opinion in the party was divided. It was hardly feasible to propose that the native population, which had hardly advanced beyond the stage of primitive tribalism, should become self-governing. Apart from any other consideration, this would merely hand over the population once again to the mercy of Arab slave-raiders.
A majority in the party came out in favour of transferring power to an international consortium, consisting of all the powers which had signed the Berlin Agreement in 1885. A minority, however, led by Vandervelde, objected that an international régime of capitalist powers would merely perpetuate colonial exploitation, and probably with less restraint than in the case of a single government accountable to a parliamentary assembly. Vandervelde, who had made a special trip to the Congo to find out as much as possible about the position, concluded that the annexation of the territory by Belgium would be the lesser evil, providing, of course, that the administration was subject to parliamentary control and that the rights and liberties of the native population were safeguarded by parliamentary legislation.
However, Vandervelde's proposal that the party should vote for annexation, with the safeguards already mentioned, was rejected by the majority. The decisive argument was that as Belgium was unquestionably a capitalist state, the Belgian government would inevitably pursue a normal capitalist colonial policy. If the party were to vote in support of integration in such conditions, it would only saddle itself with the responsibility of participating in colonial exploitation. But 'the declaration of party principles makes it the duty of every Socialist', the resolution passed by the conference was at pains to emphasize, 'to support all victims of exploitation without regard to race'.
The 'realistic and positive colonial policy' put forward by Vandervelde was incompatible with the thought and feeling of the majority in the party. While no one questioned his moral and intellectual authority, the colonial question brought a majority into conflict with the leadership and for the first and only time they refused to follow him. The resolution passed by Congress abruptly rejected his proposal and declared that Socialist deputies who failed to vote against the annexation of the Congo were 'defying the principles agreed to by congresses of the party and the International'. Vandervelde at once offered his resignation, which, however, COngress declined to accept.
While controversies over colonial policy did not affect the unity of the Belgian party, they led in Italy to a decisive split. From the very beginning the history of Italian Socialism was one of acute internal struggles between the revolutionary and Reformist wings. The Reformists, who captured the leadership of the party in 1902, lost it to the 'Integralists' two years later and won it back again at the congress of 1908, whereupon they resumed the policy of co-operation with Left-Liberal governments embarked on in 1902. At the General Election of 1910 the party scored a considerable victory. They won forty-two seats—a net gain of sixteen—and Giolitti, forming his third government in 1911, offered Bissolati a seat in the cabinet. As in 1903, however, when Turati had been invited to join an earlier Giolitti government, the party declined the offer, while co-operating closely with it in Parliament. A crisis occurred in the late summer of 1911, when the government announced its intention of annexing Tripolitania in North Africa and declared war against Turkey on 9 September.
Since the turn of the century, Italy had regarded Tripolitania as a future colony, which she would acquire without a struggle owing to the disintegration of the Turkish Empire. That Empire, however, received a new lease of life from the Young Turk revolution which broke out in 1908 and resulted in the consolidation of Turkey's rule over her Mediterranean provinces. Italy had now to fight for Tripolitania if she wished to wrest it from Turkey.
The establishment of an Italian colonial empire had been a long-standing demand of the Nationalists. When, on 1 July 1911, the German gunboat, Panther, anchored off Agadir on the south-west coast of Morocco, it became clear to the Italian government that they could not conquer Tripoli without provoking resistance from the major European powers. Kaiser William's 'Panther leap' at the port of Agadir, which had been closed to all nations by the Treaty of Algeciras in 1906, was interpreted by Britain and France as a piece of deliberate provocation and involved the Great Powers in a new Moroccan crisis. In Italy the Nationalists urged the government to take advantage of the confusion and seize Tripoli. In influential Catholic circles, too, the idea of conquering the last Turkish province in the Mediterranean was by no means unwelcome, as a final instalment of the Crusades which had begun more than 800 years earlier. Moreover, the Bank of Rome, which was directed by the 'Friends of the Vatican', had invested considerable sums of money in Tripolitania. The war of conquest in Tripolitania on which the government embarked was also popular in wider circles, including the peasants of the over-populated south, who hoped that the conquest of Tripolitania would open up large fertile areas for emigration.
A few weeks after the declaration of war the Socialist party held its congress in Modena. It was faced with a difficult situation. An overwhelming majority of the party condemned the war outright. Shortly before the outbreak, however, Giolitti had introduced a new franchise under which the electorate was increased from three and a half to nearly nine million. Should the party, in protesting the war, join the opposition to Giolitti? The congress decided to break with the government and vote against war credits, even at the risk of endangering the electoral reform. However, two leaders of the right-wing Reformists, Bissolati and Bonomi, who joined in opposing the war, later voted for the defence budget on the grounds that the war was a *fait accompli* and the nation irrevocably committed.
On the outbreak of war the party, together with the trade unions, called out the workers in a twenty-four-hour strike on 28 September 1911. The break with the government and the proclamation of a general strike reflected the mood of the workers, particularly in the red belt of Emilia-Romagna, Umbria and Tuscany. They saw the war as a frivolous colonial adventure and their anti-war struggles included numerous strikes and attempts to sabotage the movement of troops and munitions, pulling up railway lines and setting fire to stations.
The conflict between this revolutionary trend and the Reformist line of the party leadership came to a head at the congress at Reggio Emilia in 1912. The attack was led by the young Benito Mussolini, editor of a Socialist weekly in his home town of Forli, who had already organized acts of sabotage in the Romagna. In an impassioned speech he charged Bissolati, Bonomi and other defenders of the war with treason to the principles of international Socialism, and demanded that the party expel them and break of all relations with the government. He was completely successful. Bissolati, Bonomi and their followers were expelled, Claudio Treves, Turati's closest colleague, was removed from his post as chief editor of the party's central organ, Avanti, and Mussolini was elected his successor. In an effort to preserve unity, Turati and Treves accepted the congress resolutions. Bissolati and Bonomi, on the other hand, formed a new organization, the Reformist-Socialist party, which was joined by seventeen out of forty-two members of the parliamentary fraction.
The Amsterdam Congress had requested member parties to set up colonial study-groups in an attempt to clarify the issues. As a result, the Stuttgart Congress, meeting in August 1907 to resume the discussion of the colonial question, was faced with exhaustive memoranda from the British, French, Dutch and Belgian parties on the colonial policies of their respective countries.[8] The debate revolved round the question, first posed by H. van Kol at Amsterdam, as to whether colonialism should be rejected out of hand and on principle, or accepted as an inevitable process for opening up the economies and cultures of underdeveloped areas and for developing the productive powers of mankind.
The resolution presented by van Kol on behalf of the majority of the colonial commission once again rejected capitalist colonial policies on principle. But in two preambles this rejection was carefully qualified. It was made clear that, while 'the usefulness and necessity of colonies in general—especially from the point of view of the working class—has been grossly exaggerated', the Social Democrats 'do not reject all colonial policies, in all circumstances, such as those which, under a socialist régime, could serve a civilizing purpose'.
These qualifications provided the main topic for debate, which lasted for three days, one in the commission itself and two at the plenum of the entire congress. The controversy split lal the delegations of parties from colonialist countries—the British, German, French, Belgian and Italian. Kautsky and Ledebour opposed Bernstein and David, Quelch spoke against Ramsay MacDonald, Bracke against Rounanet, Wurm against Pernerstorfer, Karski against van Kol.
Those who opposed the majority resolution rejected all colonial policy as incompatible with the basic principles of Socialism. According to Kautsky, a Socialist colonial policy was a contradiction in terms, since it must necessarily be based on foreign rule, so repudiating the fundamental Socialist concept of the right of every nation to freedom and independence. Even a Socialist colonial régime would represent an alien rule, a benevolent despotism resting on violence and repression.
Was it possible, however, for the world economy to dispense with colonial raw materials? Did not even a capitalist colonial policy develop the productive forces of colonial territories? Must not the colonial peoples pass through a stage of capitalist development before reaching the Socialist goal? These were all questions raised by the advocates of 'positive' Socialist colonialism, such as van Kol, Bernstein and David. David wanted the resolution to state that 'considering that Socialism puts the productive power of the whole world at the disposal of mankind and intends to help all peoples, of all colours and languages, to reach the highest peaks of civilization, Congress sees, in the colonial idea, an essential expression of the Socialist attitude to world culture'.
Congress rejected both the preamble to the commission's resolution and the one sponsored by David. The final resolution, unanimously endorsed, read:
Congress believes that capitalist colonial policies must, by their nature, give rise to servitude, forced labour and the extermination of the native peoples in colonized territories.
The so-called civilizing mission, in terms of which capitalism seeks to justify its colonial policies, serves merely as a pretext to conceal the will to conquer and exploit.
Only Socialism will offer all nations the possibility of developing freely their own forms of culture.
Capitalist colonial policies, so far from fostering the native economies, destroy the natural wealth of the subjugated territories both by enslaving and pauperizing the native peoples and through the murderously destructive wars engendered by such policies. As a result they retard and frustrate the development of trade and the growth of markets for even the industrial products of civilized nations.
Congress condemns the barbarous methods of capitalist colonialism and demands, in the interests of the development of the productive forces, a policy based on peaceful cultural development and one which develops the world's mineral resources in the interests of the whole of humanity.
The resolution committed all Socialist parliamentary groups to oppose the robbery and subjugation of colonial peoples and to fight for reforms which would better their lot, protect their rights and 'do everything possible to educate them for independence'.
For two decades this resolution was to remain the official statement of Socialist anti-colonialism. Only in 1928 did the International adopt, at its Brussels Congress, a new and more concrete colonial programme calling explicitly for self-government and independence.
1. Marx hailed the solidarity of the British workers with the fight against the American slave-owners. The English working class, he wrote, 'has reaped immortal historical honours by its resistance, expressed enthusiastically in mass meeting, against the repeated attempts of the ruling classes at intervention in favour of the American slave-owners, although the continuation of the American Civil War has inflicted frightful misery and deprivation upon a million workers'—Marx-Engels Werke, vol. XV, p. 577.
2. George Bernard Shaw, Fabianism and the Empire, published by the Fabian Society (London, 1900).
3. Bernstein, Die Voraussetzungen…, op. cit., pp. 147–50.
4. For a brief review of the attitude of German Social Democracy to the colonial question, see Karl Kautsky, Sozialismus und Kolonialpolitik (Berlin, 1907), and Gustav Noske, Kolonialpolitik und Sozialdemokratie (Stuttgart, 1914).
5. The General's order on the Hereros read: 'Within the German borders every Herero, with or without a rifle, with or without cattle, is to be shot. I shall not receive any more women or children; they must be driven back to their people or shot. This is my message to the Hereros—von Trotha, Great General of the Mighty Emperor.' (See NOske, op. cit., p. 112.) The number of Hereros killed under the extermination order was estimated at 60,000 out of a total population of 80,000, while those killed in East Africa numbered 70,000 (Handbuch, op. cit., p. 94).
6. Roger Casement, who, when he was British Consul in Nigeria, had been ordered by the British Government to investigate conditions in the Congo, estimated in his report that the population had decreased, in the course of ten years' rule by the Belgian king, by three million.
7. E. D. Morel, a Liberal, joined the I.L.P. in 1914. In 1922, as a member of the Labour party, he was elected to the House of Commons, defeating Winston Churchill.
8. The English memorandum was drafted by H. M. Hyndman, the Dutch by H. van Kol, the French by Paul Louis and the Belgian by Victor Denis, Lafontaine, L. Furnémont and Émile Vandervelde. The memoranda are contained in the collection published by the International Socialist Bureau, Anträge und Beschlussentwürfe nebst Begründungen an den Internationalen Sozialistischen Kongress zu Stuttgart (1907).