Powerful leaders like Bebel and Liebknecht in Germany, Jaurès and Guesde in France, established that vital connection with the workers that was absolutely essential to success.

Although the Second International did not come to life until 1889, six years after Marx's death in 1883, it was even more thoroughly his work than the first had been, because through his educational efforts Socialist organizations had been everywhere founded in connection with labor and were based on Marxian theories in practically every case. Chaos was replaced by unity. How had results been reached before 1889? The strength of the new doctrine of Marxism is its all-inclusiveness and its appeal to self-interest. It proposes a completely new society. It covers distribution as well as production and promises a millennium to the proletariat. If we accept the interpretation of Marxism given by its moderate followers it allows evolution as well as revolution as a method of transforming society. And this moderate or evolutionary and democratic theory is the one followed by the Second International; while the violent, revolutionary undemocratic theory of the dictatorship by a minority of the proletariat is the interpretation of his system supported, with logical force, by Lenin and the Third International.

During the ten or fifteen years before 1889, the situation was being transformed throughout Europe by the formation of national branches of a new party in politics, the Social Democratic Party, based on Marxism, and through the organization of workingmen's unions, imbued with the same ideas. They first took shape in Germany. It was in 1867 that the Social Democratic Party of Germany first went to the polls. The two great leaders of Socialism were Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, who had studied with Marx in London. Bebel was a workingman, a powerful and rugged speaker, and under his influence the trade unions grew in power and became imbued with Socialism. This was between 1862 and 1867. But it was only in 1875 that a United Socialist Party, with the extensive support of a united workingmen's party entered German politics on a large scale, gaining steadily in 1877. Bismarck tried in vain to repress them. The Social Democratic Party secured power and influence over legislation, and gave a model in its organization and methods that was followed in other European countries. Extraordinary attention was paid by the party to educational matters and the rank and file of the workingmen were given an unequalled train

ing that made them able to discuss economic questions with intelligence and to create a distinct class consciousness and unity of purpose and action.

Of France, Hunter, himself a brilliant Socialist, truly said in 1908: "France is the birthplace of nearly all the idealism that gave rise to the modern movement. Ever since the great revolution, the philosophy of Socialism has fascinated some of the most brilliant minds in France; but the fulness of their inspiration and the variation in their tendencies have prevented them from establishing one school." (Op. cit., p. 57.) Before 1871 all groups worked against the government of Napoleon III, under the Old International - the Proudhon anarchists, the Blanqui conspirators, the Marxist working-class political agitators. All fell apart in 1871.

It was Jules Guesde, who, returning to France in 1877, full of the doctrines of Marx, started to capture for Socialism the working-class movement and to organize a political party that should abandon anarchism and conspiracy and have coherent political action. In October 1879 he organized a congress of workingmen at Marseilles, with the motto: "The land for the peasant; the tool for the laborer; and work for all." Out of the confusion of this "Socialist Labor Congress arose a program written by Guesde and Paul Lafargue, Karl Marx's son-in-law, and so the French movement was captured by the Marxians, who alone had a clear program. But soon other French Socialist leaders, especially Brousse, revolted against Marxian dictatorship and gained control everywhere but in the north of France where Guesde remained supreme. Still Guesde was unable to capture the trade-union movement and turn it in favor of political action. When the Confédération Générale du Travail was founded in 1895, as the successor to the oi Federation of Trade Councils of 1884, it decided against parliamentarism and in favor of the general strike as the only weapon. The Frenchmen glory in individual differences of opinion and despise the sheep-like following of cut-and-dried programs by the Germans. A new group of independents was formed led by men who were to loom so largely in French life-Millerand (the present premier), Jaurès (murdered in 1914), Viviani (also premier). This was the position in 1889.

In Italy the Socialist Party from the beginning has enlisted among its practical leaders men of the middle class, especially

intellectual leaders more than any other country. Also it is remarkable for its support on a large scale among the peasant class, who have organized even more thoroughly than the workmen. in their trade unions. Before 1882, however, the anarchist ideas of the Russian Bakunin were more prevalent than the ideas of political Socialism, though both in 1882 and 1885 attempts were made with some slight success to organize workmen into a political party. But practically no progress had been made before 1889.

In England, during the eighties, the Fabian Society was formed, which still remains an influential group of intellectual Socialists, but without much direct influence on the workingmen or on parliament. At about the same time the Democratic Federation was formed under Socialist influence with a practical political program that was to be guided by such well-known labor leaders as John Burns and Tom Mann.

In 1886 the Socialist agitation gained tremendous headway, and Hyndman came into great prominence as leader. In November 1887 came the November uprising called "Bloody Sunday" in London.

As Hunter says: "A general awakening of the working class seemed to be taking place as a result of Socialist activity and 1889 (the year of the founding of the Second International) marks the beginning of a new epoch in English trade unionism— marked by two important successful strikes."

The Belgian movement was very early, but seemed so hopeless for many years that it veered, like the Russian working class, toward anarchism. In 1885 a small beginning of a Belgian Labor Party was made at Brussels. It was a practical movment, weary of the old literary, scholastic organization, objecting at first even to the word "Socialist" though it soon adopted the Socialist program. Vandervelde has well said: "Belgian Socialism, at the conflux of the great European civilizations, partakes of the character of each of them." From the English it adopted selfhelp and free association; from the Germans political tactics and fundamental doctrines, which were for the first time expounded in the Communist Manifesto, and from the French it took its idealist tendencies, its integral conception of Socialism, considered as the confirmation of the revolutionary philosophy (Hunter, p. 135).

The Belgian Labor Party was many sided, with trade unions,

co-operatives with houses of the people, stores and meeting halls; insurance societies; everything in one harmonious organization with its political policy, its press and its propaganda. It was prepared, when 1889 came, to take a leading part in the Second International.

Practically very little progress before 1889 had been made in Scandinavia, in Russia, in Spain, in Austria-Hungary or even in Holland toward the formation of Socialist or labor organizations. There was, to be sure, in Denmark, a Social Democratic organization on a small scale, founded in 1878, and another in Sweden. In Spain a small Socialist Party was formed in 1888 and 1889 under Pablo Iglesias.

The situation, then, when the organization of the Second International was attempted, was brilliant only in spots, except that there were trained leaders in Marxism almost everywhere ready to organize the workers.

The Second International Congress of 1889 took place in Paris, with nearly 400 delegates representing twenty countries. After that, meetings followed thick and fast, promoting more and more the international character of the Socialist movement: at Brussels in 1891, at Zürich in 1893, at London in 1896, important for its discussion of anarchism; at Paris in 1900, and especially at Amsterdam in 1904, when an important resolution on a policy of International Socialist tactics was adopted. At the latter meeting the Internationalism was stressed when the representatives of Japan and of Russia, whose countries were then at war, clasped hands amid the thunderous applause of 450 delegates. The next meeting of the Second International was in 1907 at Stuttgart, the first meeting in Germany. There were about 1,000 delegates representing thirty nations. Then in 1910 a meeting at Copenhagen and one at Basel in 1912.

During these eight years between 1889 and 1907 tremendous progress had been made in the forming of political Socialist parties throughout Europe. Almost everywhere there were splits.

The permanent International Socialist Bureau, which had been established at Brussels, with the Belgian leader Emile Vandervelde as chairman, was transferred later to the Hague, where the Belgium Socialists were put in charge under Camille Huysmans. In Italy the splits were typified more clearly than elsewhere; the Right Wing Reformists led by Turati, the Left Wing Syndicalists led by Labriola, the Integralists of the center, led by Ferri. While

The

in Italy the labor unions still remained weak - weaker even than in France, they increased rapidly in strength throughout northern Europe, bringing the workingman more and more into the Socialist fold and giving him aggressive class consciousness. details will be given later. Through pressure of both kindsby strikes and by parliamentary methods-concessions were continually being secured. Solidarity of interest and action continued to spread the feeling of Internationalism.

Then came the Great War. What was its effect on Socialism? How did the doctrine of anti-militarism stand the inherent urge of national patriotism?

With few exceptions- the most notable, beside that of the American Socialist Party, being that of the Socialist Party of Italy the Socialists put patriotism first.

This led to the temporary disruption of the Second International. It led, also, to the rise of a second, minor current of intransigeant Socialism which began an agitation against the regular Socialist International organization.

Before describing this movement and before giving the attitude of the Socialists in the various countries toward the war, it is necessary to give a picture of the condition of Socialism in each country, and its connection with the growing labor movement during the twenty-five years between the founding of the Second International in 1889 and the outbreak of the Great War in

1914.

The basis of the entire movement being the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, of which a summary has just been given, its complete text is here inserted as an appendix to the chapter.