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MARX, ENGELS, AND MARXISMS

Internationalism Toward
Diplomatic Crisis
The Second International and French,
German and Italian Socialists

Elisa Marcobelli
 Marx, Engels, and Marxisms

Series Editors
Marcello Musto, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
Terrell Carver, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
The Marx renaissance is underway on a global scale. Wherever the critique
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 Elisa Marcobelli

Internationalism
Toward Diplomatic
Crisis
The Second International and French, German and
Italian Socialists
Elisa Marcobelli
University of Rouen-Normandie
Rouen, France

ISSN 2524-7123 ISSN 2524-7131 (electronic)

Marx, Engels, and Marxisms
ISBN 978-3-030-74083-2 ISBN 978-3-030-74084-9 (eBook)
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v
vi SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD

11. Xavier LaFrance & Charles Post (Eds.), Case Studies in the Origins
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 SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD vii

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of Values
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Meeting of Traditions in Global Comparative Philosophy
viii SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD

Stefano Petrucciani, Theodor W. Adorno’s Philosophy, Society, and Aesthetics

Francesca Antonini, Reassessing Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: Dictatorship, State,
and Revolution
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Theory
Tsuyoshi Yuki, Socialism, Markets and the Critique of Money: The Theory of
“Labour Note”
V Geetha, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in India
Xavier Vigna, A Political History of Factories in France: The Workers’ Insubordi-
nation of 1968
Attila Melegh, Anti-Migrant Populism in Eastern Europe and Hungary: A
Marxist Analysis
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João Antonio de Paula, Huga da Gama Cerqueira, Eduardo da Motta e Albuquer
& Leonardo de Deus, Marxian Economics for the 21st Century: Revaluating
Marx’s Critique of Political Economy
Zhi Li, The Concept of the Individual in the Thought of Karl Marx
Lelio Demichelis, Marx, Alienation and Techno-capitalism
Dong-Min Rieu, A Mathematical Approach to Marxian Value Theory: Time,
Money, and Labor Productivity
Salvatore Prinzi, Representation, Expression, and Institution: The Philosophy of
Merleau-Ponty and Castoriadis
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tional and French, German and Italian Socialists
Paolo Favilli, Historiography and Marxism: Innovations in Mid-Century Italy
Terrell Carver, Smail Rapic (Eds.), Friedrich Engels for the 21st Century:
Perspectives and Problems
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 SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD ix

Patrizia Dogliani, A Political History of the International Union of Socialist Youth

Alexandros Chrysis, The Marx of Communism: Setting Limits in the Realm of
Communism
Stephen Maher, Corporate Capitalism and the Integral State: General Electric and
a Century of American Power
Paul Raekstad, Karl Marx’s Realist Critique of Capitalism: Freedom, Alienation,
and Socialism
Alexis Cukier, Democratic Work: Radical Democracy and the Future of Labour
Christoph Henning, Theories of Alienation: From Rousseau to the Present
Daniel Egan, Capitalism, War, and Revolution: A Marxist Analysis
Genevieve Ritchie, Sara Carpenter & Shahrzad Mojab (Eds.), Marxism and
Migration
Emanuela Conversano, Capital from Afar: Anthropology and Critique of Political
Economy in the Late Marx
Marcello Musto, Rethinking Alternatives with Marx
Vincenzo Mele, City and Modernity in George Simmel and Walter Benjamin:
Fragments of Metropolis
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Working Class
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 Acknowledgments

This book is the English translation of the publication of my PhD thesis,

defended at EHESS Paris and FU Berlin in December 2015. I would like
to thank once again and always sincerely my thesis directors, Christophe
Prochasson (EHESS) and Oliver Janz (FU) for guiding me along the
research path and allowing me to complete it. I would like to thank
the Institut Historique Allemand in Paris and its director, who provided
me with the material conditions to carry out the research, and Arndt
Weinrich of the First World War research group, an enlightened guide. I
heartily thank Jean-Numa Ducange for allowing my doctoral dissertation
to become first a book, then even translated into English. I also thank
him for welcoming me into the international socialism research group
EuroSoc, for allowing me to continue researching comfortably even after
my Ph.D. was over and for being always full of ideas, energetic and opti-
mistic. Thanks to Marcello Musto, the editor of this series, for agreeing
to publish this book, and to the always kind Rebecca Roberts for her
important and patient help. It goes without saying, an everlasting thank
you goes to my family in Italy and to my beloved and comfortable small
Italian protective network in Paris.

xi
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
General Introduction 1
Development of the Research 12
Socialism in the Three Countries 19
France 19
Germany 29
Italy 39
Time Frame of the Research 51
Historiographic Framework 54
Sources 62
2 Creating a Sense of Community: The II International
Between 1889 and 1900 67
The II International, Its Practices, Its Opposition to War 67
Paris 1889 75
Brussels 1891 80
Zurich 1893 85
London 1896 87
The First Challenge: The Fachoda Crisis (1898) 91
A “War of Nerves” 91
International Reactions 93
The French Attitude 96
In Germany and Italy 97

xiii
xiv CONTENTS

3 “Doppelkrise” and Shy Reactions 101

The Russo-Japanese War 101
A Conflict Not So Far Away 101
International Socialism and the Conflict: Amsterdam
1904 103
French and German Socialists and the Russian-Japanese War 110
The Reaction of the Italian Socialists 117
The First Morocco Crisis 119
The Tangier Crisis 119
A Slow and Cautious International Response 122
Socialists Confronting the Morocco Crisis 129
In France 130
Reaction to Reaction: Wait-and-See Attitude
of the German Social-Democrats 135
French and Italians Facing the German Attitude 141
After the Crisis 144
An Internationalist Practice: International Inquiry 146
4 Two-Speed Reactions 155
Stuttgart 1907: The Discussion on the War 155
International Tensions in 1908: An ISB Resolution Between
Stuttgart and Copenhagen 161
Copenhagen 1910: General Strike as a Means of Struggle 163
The Second Morocco Crisis and the First International
Reactions 168
The “Jump of the Panther” 170
At the International Level 172
Relations Between Parties: Unity 177
The Jena Congress 182
French Commentaries About Jena 187
Italian Comments to the Jena Congress 189
The Limits of This Unit: French Uncertainties 190
The Limits of This Unit: The Attitude of the PSI 194
The Italo-Turkish War 197
Context and Meaning 197
PSI’s Relations with the International 200
The Italian Socialists Facing the Italian-Turkish War 208
In France and Germany: The Reactions 219
 CONTENTS xv

5 Commitment Against War 229

The Debates on Military Reforms and Socialist Imperialism 229
Military Reforms in the Three Countries 230
Socialist Imperialism 239
Italy and Militarism in France and Germany 244
The Balkan Wars 247
The Conflicts 247
ISB’s Response 249
The Basel Congress of 1912 257
French, German, and Italian Socialists and the Situation
in the Balkans 263
6 Internationalism in Crisis? 267
Before the War 267
An “improbable War” for the Socialists? 268
Socialism Around August 1914 271
At International Level 277
The Outbreak of the War 279
In Italy 279
In France 284
In Germany 286
New Ministers Sembat and Guesde: German and Italian
Reactions 288
The Italian Neutrality 290
Seeking to Convince the Italian Socialists 290
Mussolini and the War 296
Italy Enters the War 301
7 Conclusion 311

Index 317
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

General Introduction
“Abolition of the standing armies and arming of the people”1 : this was
the fourth and last question on the agenda of the first congress of the
Second International, the Paris congress of 1889. It was the subject of
marginal discussions. The 1912 congress in Basel, the last before the
outbreak of the First World War, was an enormous symbolic staging which
the participants used to show their opposition to the war. In the midst of
the Balkan Wars, the only item on its agenda was: “The international situ-
ation and the agreement for action against war”.2 The next meeting, the
10th congress of the new socialist International, was to be held in Vienna
in August 1914. Representatives of the socialist parties are expected to
discuss the various items on the agenda and take the opportunity to cele-
brate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Second International. However,
this meeting did not take place. The First World War broke out at the
beginning of August and the internationalism of the socialist parties was

1 Bureau socialiste international (ed). Les congrès socialistes internationaux. Ordres du

jour et résolutions. In: (1976) Histoire de la II e Internationale. Documents généraux,
vol. 3. Geneve: Minkoff, 1902, 8.
2 “The international situation and the agreement for action against war”. Invitation
to the International Socialist Congress in Basel (24, 25, 26 November 1912)”. Bulletin
périodique du Bureau socialiste international 9, 1912. In: Histoire de la II e Internationale,
vol. 22. Geneva: Minkoff, 1980, 17.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
E. Marcobelli, Internationalism Toward Diplomatic Crisis, Marx, Engels,
and Marxisms,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74084-9_1
2 E. MARCOBELLI

weakened by the declaration of war. In the summer of 1914, the socialist

deputies of the European nations voted in favor of war credits, socialist
activists were called to arms and, like their fellow citizens, went to war
to fight against those who, a few weeks earlier, were still their political
brothers in arms.
What happened between the congress of 1889 and that of 1912 for
the latter to become the great socialist demonstration of opposition to
the war that it was? How did the practical organization and staging of the
congresses change as a result? What role did the members of the French,
German, and Italian socialist parties play in this progression from interna-
tional socialism to the peace movement? And to what extent did relations
between the three parties hinder this process? What role did the succes-
sive international diplomatic crises in the years of activity of the Second
International play? And, finally, what happened between 1914 and 1915?
The events of the summer of 1914, which led both the French social-
ists and the German social-democrats to de facto endorse the entry into
the war of their respective countries, have remained in the memories and
analyzed by historians as the failure and betrayal of the new International,
which quickly became labels for interpreting this series of events: betrayal
of the members of the socialist parties by their own leaders; failure of
the very spirit of the International, born to strengthen the principles of
transnational solidarity of the working class and to help it build common
struggles. And indeed, the words “failure” and “betrayal” are put down
on paper by the members of the socialist parties themselves. Lenin spoke
of them as early as 1915.3
The historiography of the new International has turned these ideas
into a statement. Even if, officially, the International continued to exist
until 1923 and if some socialist representatives will sought to organize
new international meetings, even if restricted ones, during the fighting
(such as the meetings of Zimmerwald and Kienthal), most of the works
dealing with the second socialist International places its chronological end

3 Cf. Vladimir Ilitch Oulianov Lénine. Le socialisme et la guerre. Paris: Éditions sociales
1952 (1915).Karl Kautsky Sozialisten und Krieg. Ein Beitrag zur Ideengeschichte des
Sozialismus von den Hussiten bis zum Völkerbund. Prague: Orbis, 1937.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

in 1914, with the beginning of the war.4 Jacques Droz, in the ambi-
tious Histoire générale du socialisme which he edited between 1972 and
1977, states: “In total, the International failed as an International: just as
the Franco-Prussian War had wounded the First International, just as the
Third International later disappeared in the course of the Second World
War, so the Second International had to recognize in 1914, according
to Kautsky’s atrocious word, that it was not made for wartime”.5 For
James Joll, the causes of this failure, of this “Scheitern der Antikriegs-
bewegung”6 in the words of Wolfgang Kruse, are to be found in the
fact that the International was based on doctrines that were too rigid
and monolithic, unsuited to a more nuanced reality. The failure of the
International is thus, for Joll, the result of the constant divorce between
theory and practice.7 An idea was taken up by Jean-Jacques Becker, who
argues that the problem with the new International is that it had too
ambitious objectives, which led it to bankruptcy.8 One of the tasks that
the socialist International had set for itself, the fight for peace, thus ended
in the most flagrant failure of all its objectives. Annie Kriegel also blames
the failure of the entire International on the failure of the fight against
the war: “From July 31 to August 4, 1914”, the historian states, “the
mechanism on which the workers’ International counted to stop the war
became jammed: the International had to admit defeat. With it, peace and

4 The German historian Agnes Blänsdorf has conducted a different study in this sense, as
she has set herself the goal of analyzing the internationalism of the Second International
for the period 1914–1917. The fact that she chooses not to end her analysis of the
history of the Second International with the outbreak of the war does not prevent her
from dedicating an entire chapter of her work to what she calls the “Zersplitterung
der Zweiten Internationale”, the break-up of the Second International in front of the
beginning of the war. Agnes Blänsdorf. Die Zweite Internationale und der Krieg. Die
Diskussion über die internationale Zusammenarbeit der sozialistischen Parteien, 1914–1917 .
Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1979.
5 Jacques Droz (ed). Histoire générale du socialisme 2: De 1875 à 1918. Paris: PUF,
1997, 583.
6 Wolfgang Kruse. Krieg und nationale Integration. Eine Neuinterpretation des
sozialdemokratischen Burgfriedenschlusses 1914–15. Essen: Klartext, 1993, 29.
7 James Joll. The Second International, 1889–1914. London: Weidenfel and Nicolson,
1995.
8 Jean-Jacques Becker. La IIe Internationale et la guerre. In: Les Internationales et le
problème de la guerre au xxe siècle: actes du colloque, 22–24 novembre 1984 Rome. Milan
and Rome: Università di Milano and École française de Rome, 1997, 9–25.
4 E. MARCOBELLI

socialism”,9 even if she acknowledges that, on the other hand, this insti-
tution had some success: within it, a discourse for peace was born; within
it, the proletariat managed to organize itself in a more systematic way. It
is necessary to qualify these observations: over the years of its existence,
the International has learned to react to international danger. It has put in
place a whole panoply of means to publicly affirm its opposition to war.
In spite of this, and particularly at the level of exchanges between the
representatives of the different national parties, it has nonetheless shown
some ambivalences.
The research undertaken here obviously comes after decades of scien-
tific work on the attitude of the Second International and its represen-
tatives to the danger of the outbreak of war. In the historiographical
debate, two tendencies are discernible: one attaches great importance to
the commitment of the International in the struggle against the war and
explains the failure of the International by its failure in this struggle; the
other frees the International from this responsibility, focusing instead on
its developments, its speeches, its initiatives, independently of its struggle
against the war: in this enterprise, in its capacity to organize itself, to unite
the workers’ movements of the different countries, the International has
not failed. This work lies at the crossroads of these two historiographies:
it studies the life of the International independently of what happened in
1914, but it includes in the analyzes of its development the fight against
the war, while it was still alive. In this sense, it is inspired by the method
of a widespread trend in the most recent historiography of the origins
of the Great War, which, after several decades of wondering about the
outbreak of the war in 1914,10 is now rather wondering how it came to
be in July 1914—as Arndt Weinrich has pointed out.11 This work, then,
is not (only) wondering why the International reacted the way it did just
before the war, but is interested in the path it has taken so far. In this
sense, the struggle of the International against the war does not consti-
tute a failure. Rather, it contributes to a “victory” of the institution, to

9 Annie Kriegel. Aux origines du communisme français. Paris: Flammarion, 1964, 31.
10 Cf. for exemple William Mulligan. The Origins of the First World War. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010. Christopher Clark. The Sleepwalkers. How Europe Went
to War in 1914. London: Allen Lane, 2012.
11 Arndt Weinrich. Grosser Krieg, grosse Ursachen? Aktuelle Forschungen zu den
Ursachen des Ersten Weltkriegs. Francia. Forschungen zur westeuropäischen Geschichte 40,
2013, 233–252.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

the fact that it has managed to create a sense of community based on

its willingness to oppose the war and its capacity to respond to situa-
tions of international danger. A “victory” also because, over the years,
it has become increasingly reactive to situations of diplomatic crisis; but
the crisis of 1914 overwhelmed it and its response was not sufficient.
This element also accords with another trend in the most recent histo-
riography on the origins of the war, strictly related to the one sketched
above, which consists in “relativizing the linearity at least implicit in the
evolution towards war inherent in the numerous structural explanatory
approaches, in favor of a stronger accentuation of the contingency of the
events of 1914”.12
In the 1950s, Milorad M. Drachkovitch, author of one of the only
works specifically devoted to French and German socialists facing the
problem of the war before 1914, analyzed the question through the prism
of failure. Taking up the idea of a failure of the International in 1914,
he researched the way in which French socialists and German social-
democrats dealt with the questions of war and peace. According to him,
it was the “psychological, historical and sociological differences” between
the two countries that were at the root of the socialists’ different attitudes
to the idea of war, which led to the disaster of 1914.13 Naturally, it is diffi-
cult to espouse such a thesis, which explains the reasons for the conflicts
between the two countries by a simplistic collective psychology of the two
peoples. Nevertheless, Drachkovitch’s study remains interesting insofar as
it puts the members of the two socialist parties in parallel and goes back
further in time. Following his example, other studies, going back to the
Franco–German War, attempt to seek the origins of the disintegration of
the International independently of the events of the summer of 1914.
Marie-Louise Goergen, who analyzed the relations between the French
socialist party and German social-democracy from the end of the war of
1870–1871 until the beginning of the World War, wonders whether 1914
was a decisive turning point. According to her, there was real solidarity
between the two parties, but not in the fight against the war, and the

12 Ibid., 237.
13 Milorad M. Drachkovitch. Les socialismes français et allemand et le problème de la
guerre, 1870–1914. Geneva: Droz, 1953, 345–351.
6 E. MARCOBELLI

beginning of the conflict did not change this.14 In Goergen’s thesis, the
second historiographical trend outlined above also emerges: alongside the
dysfunction of the opposition to war, the historian emphasizes that inter-
nationalism has had positive results, but only in areas other than the fight
against war: “In the search for an ‘internationality’ that ultimately proved
illusory, [the socialists] have nevertheless demonstrated a detectable inter-
nationalism in areas where one would perhaps least expect it. For, if there
is failure in the struggle against the war, a certain reality demonstrates – or
so we assume – that the fraternity between French and German socialists
before 1914 is not an empty word”.15 As it will show later, the present
book does not share these conclusions.
The most recent historiography tends to highlight the fact that, in
addition to the discordances, there were also common points between the
parties making up the International. Moira Donald’s work is an example
of this: the historian emphasizes the existence of two different planes
within the International, thus nuancing the thesis of failure. She proposes
two opposing theses, explaining how the experience of the Second Inter-
national would be a failure, but also a success. Certainly, the dimension
of failure is evident in the opposition to the war, but the socialist insti-
tution would on the contrary have achieved positive results in everything
that involved relations between citizens of different countries: communi-
cations, transport, the press…16 We do not fully share her conclusions,
since the opposition to the war gave an important impetus to the devel-
opment of expressions of the International, such as demonstrations or
congresses, for which the struggle against the war was a driving force.
According to Kevin J. Callahan, an American historian, neither the
thesis of the betrayal of the Second International nor that of its failure
makes sense, because both are based on false premises. It cannot be a
failure, because that would imply defining internationalism solely as a

14 Marie-Louise Goergen. Les relations entre socialistes allemands et français à l’époque

de la Deuxième Internationale (1889–1914). PhD in history (supervised by Madeleine
Rebérioux). Paris: Université Paris 8, 1998, 20–21.
15 Ibid., 24.
16 Moira Donald. Workers of the World Unite? Exploring the Enigma of the Second
International. In: Martin H. Geyer and Johannes Paulmann (eds). The Mechanics of Inter-
nationalism. Culture, Society and Politics from the 1840s to the First World War. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001, 177–234. Cf. also Nicolas Delalande. La lutte et l’entraide.
L’âge des solidarités ouvrières. Paris: Seuil, 2019.
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