“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main… any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Hello everyone. Today, we are starting a new series. This series, which will consist of five parts, will cover, in order: The Internationals, Stalinism/Trotskyism, the Spanish Civil War, Che/Fidel, and finally, the self-proclaimed guardian of the world, the USA, and its most recent example, Palestine.
Modern political philosophy, especially 19th and 20th-century leftist thought, is not just about the isolated texts of philosophers. Leftist thought has also embarked on a path of global solidarity to express itself in the field. This idea found its most fervent expression under the umbrella of the Internationals, which aimed to unite the global working class under a single banner.
In this context, the First, Second, and Third internationals are not just periodic and simple political organizations, but ideological battlegrounds where concepts of freedom, state, power, and revolution collide. In this installment, I aim to examine the historical and philosophical backbone of this series on the Internationals.
Starting from the foundational schisms in the First International, we will evaluate the mass mobilization of the Second International, its conflicts between revolution and reformism, and its eventual tragic collapse with the war; from there, we will assess the revolutionary practice of the Third International (Comintern) and the Leninist “weak link” theory.
The First International (1864-1876)
The Socioeconomic Condition of the Working Class
The First International, or the International Workingmen’s Association, was not an organization arbitrarily founded by a few philosophers. The mid-19th century was a period when the Industrial Revolution was ravaging Europe. Millions had migrated from rural areas to cities, working in factories for 14 to 16-hour shifts under conditions unfit for human dignity, often alongside child laborers. Union rights were either non-existent or severely restricted. Basic health services, education, and adequate housing were unavailable. Worse yet, voting rights were held exclusively by property owners.
This was an era of brutal capital accumulation, and the working class was an unorganized mass, crushed under this accumulation, with no right to representation. It was founded in London in 1864, precisely as a result of these needs, aiming to provide the working class with an organization, an identity, an international voice, and a strategy.
“Workers of all countries, Unite!”
The biggest and most clichéd problem of leftist ideologies is their division into factions. We can see this problem even at the very beginning of the journey. When the International was founded in London, it was not homogeneous; it included British trade unionists, French Proudhonists (influenced by anarchism), German communists led by Karl Marx, and Bakuninists. However, the conflict that determined the organization’s fate occurred between these two colossal figures: Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin. This split was not a simple personality clash, but a conflict between two different revolutionary strategies that would become embedded in the DNA of the socialist movement:
- Marx’s Position (Authoritarian Socialism): Marx believed the working class must seize power. The way to do this was either by forming national political parties, participating in elections, and eventually taking over state administration, or by directly seizing power through a revolution and nationalizing the means of production under a “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
- Bakunin’s Position (Libertarian Collectivism): Bakunin was radically opposed to any form of the state. He did not want a central authority, even after a revolution. According to him, the state, regardless of who held it, was inherently an apparatus of oppression and domination. Bakunin warned that the Marxists’ proposal for a “workers’ state” would create a new ruling class, a “red bureaucracy,” which could be even more dangerous than the old one.
When we look back at history from a neutral and safe vantage point today, we can see that Bakunin was proven right. Although we will touch upon this in the Stalin/Trotsky episode, I see no harm in mentioning it here. The communist adventure, which began with a great dream of freedom, suffered incredible wounds due to the delusions of a paranoid. The dictatorship based on high central authority, which Marx advocated, turns its barrel even on its own comrades, even when in the hands of a worker.
“If the revolution does not spread throughout the world, it becomes its own enemy.” – Lev Davidovič Trockij
Returning to our topic, this conflict split the International into “statists” (Marxists) and “anti-statists” (Anarchists/Bakuninists). Bakunin argued that the revolution should not be waged to seize the state, but to destroy it directly. His strategy was not to capture the state through political action, but to build a stateless society from the bottom up, based on a “free federation” of unions, cooperatives, and local communes.
This ideological civil war, combined with the shockwave from the bloody suppression of the 1871 Paris Commune, led to a breaking point. The conflict, which peaked at the 1872 Hague Congress, resulted in Marx and his allies expelling Bakunin and his allies from the International. Marx effectively “saved” the International from falling into Bakuninist hands by moving its headquarters to New York, but in doing so, he also rendered it politically irrelevant. The 1st International officially dissolved in 1876. It had failed. It had finalized the most fundamental and lasting division within the socialist movement: the split between Marxism and Anarchism.
Still, its legacy was immense.
Legacy of the First International
When the First International dissolved, no one thought it wouldn’t return. On the contrary, the idea had transformed from an organization into a “mental virus”: it made people everywhere say the same words, use the same slogans, and sing the same anthems. It inspired the same hopes. The International had consequences in several areas;
- The institutionalization of the trade union movement Compared to before, union movements became more organized and permanent after the 1st International. The fact that workers were not just a commodity, but also a dangerous political force, was demonstrated to the entire world.
- The establishment of a class idea Capital individualizes people, ruling by dividing and conquering. With this organization, the class owned by capital found the opportunity to meet its comrades living under the same conditions, thus forming a global working-class political consciousness.
- Intellectual legacy: Internationalism The International also established a link between national liberation struggles and its own class struggle. Examples include the support for Polish freedom or Irish independence. The real essence, and in my opinion the most important point, is that the fundamental goal of internationalism is not just to defend the rights of workers oppressed under capitalism, but to defend the rights of all oppressed peoples, from South America to Asia, Anatolia, Europe, and Africa. In short, internationalism is the idea of the unity of all peoples under oppression.
- Cultural echoes The “Internationale” anthem was written after the 1871 Paris Commune, but it draws its spirit from the 1st International. On the other hand, it is possible to see the reflections of the Marx-Bakunin conflict in literature, art, and philosophy.
Part 2: The Second International (1889-1916)
The Expulsion of the Anarchists and Mass Mobilization
On the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution, industry in Europe had become much more complex, and the working class was now larger and more established. Unions were strong, strikes were common, and socialist parties had begun to enter parliaments. In this environment, socialists once again sought to organize.
Thus, the 2nd International was founded on July 14, 1899. Marx was dead, but Engels was alive and supported the organization. Furthermore, the International had learned important lessons from the first. Factions would not be allowed. In this context, they drew firm boundaries at the 1896 London Congress and expelled the Bakuninist anarchists on the grounds that they rejected parliamentary political activity. As a result, the International became more homogeneous and transformed into a massive federation of the mass socialist and social democratic parties in Europe—chief among them the German SPD.
The aims of this International were:
- 8-hour workday
- Limitation of female and child labor
- Universal suffrage
- Reduction of military expenditures
- Peaceful international cooperation
We see the most fundamental difference between the 1st and 2nd Internationals in these points. While the 1st International held revolutionary discussions in a more disorganized and free environment, the 2nd International was a structure where parties advanced in a more interconnected way, attempting to achieve socialism by transforming things from within by participating in their national parliaments. Indeed, the biggest ideological split the 2nd International would face emerged from this. How to strike a balance between revolutionism and social democracy became the main problem of the 2nd International.
Revisionist/Revolutionary Ideological Conflicts
Although the Second International learned lessons from the first, it still could not escape sharp ideological differences. This split emerged between revisionism and revolutionism. Four important figures appear before us on this subject: Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Vladimir Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg.
- Eduard Bernstein (Revisionist): Bernstein was the first person to say that Marxist theory needed to be revised. According to him, none of Marx’s predictions (the collapse of capitalism, the disappearance of the middle class, the increasing impoverishment of workers) had come true. He challenged orthodox Marxism in his works like “The Problems of Socialism” and “Evolutionary Socialism.” He was actually an important member of the German SPD and a close friend of Engels, but during his years in exile, he was influenced by pacifist currents and began to question the methods of socialism. According to him, capitalism was not collapsing; on the contrary, it was becoming more flexible and weathering crises more easily. The middle class was not disappearing; rather, it was growing with new job opportunities and white-collar positions. Regarding the living standards of workers, he argued the opposite, claiming that living conditions were improving due to the organization and strengthening of unions. Because of all this, Bernstein said: If capitalism is not inevitably collapsing, and if workers’ living conditions can be improved through reforms, then it is not rational to wait for the great revolutionary collapse. His proposed new strategy was evolutionary socialism. He aimed to reach the socialist ‘heaven’ by revising conditions through democracy rather than revolution. In this context, he strictly opposed ideas like the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” seeing the key to progress in the democratic struggle of cooperatives and unions. “The goal is nothing, the movement is everything.”
- Karl Kautsky (Orthodoxy/Center): Kautsky, AKA the “Pope of Marxism,” was one of the most important figures in the SPD. Especially after Engels’s death in 1895, he was regarded as the party’s most prominent and respected Marxist theoretician. Kautsky had an ideology caught between revisionism and revolutionism. He fiercely opposed revisionism and Bernstein’s ideas that Marx was wrong. Therefore, he thought the party should defend its revolutionary identity. However, Kautsky’s way of interpreting Marxism is criticized as deterministic and fatalistic. According to him, the collapse of capitalism from its own crises is inevitable. For this reason, he argued that socialists should wait for the day capitalism destroys itself, rather than forcing a revolution. During this waiting period, socialists could organize, educate people, and gain power in parliament. Although this is a revolutionary mindset, it is also a passivist idea. And for this, he was heavily criticized by his comrades at the time, and was even called a “renegade” by Lenin. We will talk about this shortly.
- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Revolutionary Left/Bolshevik): Among these four important figures, Lenin is the actor who most shaped 20th-century history. He is the person who took Marxist theory and transformed it into a revolutionary plan, a strategy for power, and a state model. Lenin, like Luxemburg, advocated for revolution, but he was strictly against the idea that it should be spontaneous. In his work “What Is to Be Done?”, he argued that the working class, on its own, could only develop “trade-union consciousness,” and that revolutionary consciousness must be given to it by a “higher intellect” (or vanguard). This higher intellect could not be a broad, legal party like Kautsky’s SPD. This party had to consist of people who had dedicated their lives to the revolution, who were well-educated. It had to organize qualified and daring people rather than the broad masses of society. The revolution could only be possible with this “vanguard party.” Lenin also answered the question of why the revolution would come from countries that had not completed industrial development, rather than those that had. In his work “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,” he argued that capitalism had now passed into the stage of imperialism, that it was making incredible profits by exploiting other peoples of the world, and therefore the revolution had to begin in other countries that lacked the resources to suppress it—that is, at the “weakest link” of the imperialist chain, in the countries located at the periphery of the “cell.” In this context, the peoples crushed under the pressure of imperialism, both from within and without, would be victorious in the revolution. These two thoughts (the vanguard party and the weakest link of imperialism) are Lenin’s most important contributions to Marxism, and the combination of these thoughts constitutes Marxism-Leninism.
Rosa Luxemburg (Revolutionary Left): Of the four characters we’ve discussed, the theorist whose story is the most tragic, and whom I personally embrace the most, is Rosa Luxemburg. Luxemburg was an unwavering revolutionary. She saw Marxism not as a dogma, but as a living, breathing tool of thought that developed through the actions of the masses. Throughout the 2nd International, she fiercely opposed revisionism. She argued that reforms were necessary, but could never be an alternative to socialism. For her, reforms were the most important apparatus for preparing the people for revolution; they were useful tools rather than a goal. She regarded Bernstein’s path not as postponing the revolution, but as abandoning it. She criticized Kautsky’s path as too passive and bureaucratic. Luxemburg’s most important thesis was the “spontaneity of the masses” and the “mass strike.” The party was very afraid of actions independent of itself. According to them, everything had to proceed under strict control and discipline. Luxemburg, however, argued that these actions were dynamic structures that developed spontaneously from the people’s own experiences, and that trying to control them was meaningless. She believed that the party should not be composed of people telling others what to do; rather, party members should be within these actions, learning from them. To her, the SPD and the party bureaucracy were a brake on the revolutionary energy of the people. Furthermore, Luxemburg was a staunch internationalist. In the “Junius Pamphlet,” which she wrote while in prison, and her book “The Accumulation of Capital,” she argued that the First World War was not a defense of the “fatherland,” but a war started by capitalist states to re-divide the world. In this context, she described the SPD’s “yes” vote on war credits as the greatest betrayal, and Kautsky’s abstentionist and centrist stance as cowardice. “Krieg dem kriege!” (War against war!) Finally, I want to mention Rosa Luxemburg’s dramatic end. In 1919, during the revolutionary wave that emerged in Germany after the war was lost, she was arrested while she was a leader of the German Communist Party (KPD), which she co-founded. She was tortured and murdered by right-wing paramilitary Freikorps units—tragically, with the approval of the SPD, which was then in government. Her body was thrown into a canal in Berlin.
Now, we come to two important tests the Second International faced: the Stuttgart Congress and the First World War.
- The Problem of Colonialism and Nationalism (Stuttgart Congress – 1907): At the congress, while the condemnation of colonialism (imperialism) was being discussed, the right wing of the parties argued that there could be a “socialist” version of colonialism for “civilized” countries to “develop” “primitive” peoples. The left wing, led by Lenin and Luxemburg, condemned this view and narrowly managed to pass a resolution stating that imperialism was an inseparable part of capitalism. This was the first serious signal of the “nationalist” vein within the parties. Another reflection of this nationalist vein was related to the approaching storm. War was on the horizon, and it was unclear what stance the communist parties would take. If war broke out, should the parties support their own national governments, or should they defend international working-class solidarity? At the congress, a joint decision was reached that the parties would act in unison, that the war would be prevented no matter what, and that if an opportunity arose, it would be used to overthrow capitalism.
- The War Problem (First World War): When the First World War broke out in August 1914, all these decisions remained up in the air. The first blow of betrayal came from the International’s largest party, the SPD. They voted “yes” on the war budget in parliament in the name of “defending the fatherland.” Following them, the French socialists and other parties also supported their own governments. National chauvinism triumphed over International Worker Solidarity. This showed that the 2nd International had de facto ended. The revolutionary minorities who opposed the war condemned this betrayal, which they called “social chauvinism.” This minority would later form the nucleus of the cadre that would establish the 3rd International and carry out the October Revolution.
The Third International (Comintern) (1919-1943)
Let’s get to the 3rd International. In the previous section, we talked about Lenin’s ideology and Rosa Luxemburg’s criticisms of the October Revolution. Therefore, I think it’s pointless to go over it again. What I will talk about regarding the 3rd International will be its general political structure and philosophy, rather than the ideologies of important figures. Because we have already discussed Lenin, and I will get into the Stalin and Trotsky issue in the next article. So let’s begin.
The 3rd International is the first and—sadly, the last—international where the revolution had succeeded and the organization was represented by a state. The sole reason for the 3rd International’s existence was that the previous one had ended in an unbelievable betrayal, and a clean slate was necessary. Its goal was to bring together the real revolutionary parties from the wreckage of the 2nd International to achieve world revolution.
But like every international, the 3rd International, or Comintern, had learned from its predecessors’ mistakes. It was now directly subordinate to the Soviet state and was far more authoritarian than the other internationals. The rigid structure of the Comintern was formalized with the “21 Conditions.” Many socialist parties from Europe wanted to join the Comintern, but Lenin wanted to cleanse the revisionists from within them.
Some of these 21 conditions were:
- All parties will take the name “Communist Party”
- Party programs will be approved by the Comintern
- Parties will be reorganized according to Lenin’s “Democratic Centralism” model
- Parties will organize both legally and illegally (the vanguard party ideology)
- They will enter parliament not for reform, but to destroy it from within
- All decisions are binding; parties that do not obey the executive committee will be expelled.
As a result of all this, the fundamental split in leftist ideology emerged here: Social Democrats (remnants of the 2nd International) and Communists.
So how did the Comintern end? First, the revolutionary attempts in Germany (the Spartacist uprising), Hungary, and Italy failed. After Lenin’s death in 1924, the Comintern fell under Stalin’s absolute control. Stalin shelved the idea of “World Revolution.” In its place, he brought the idea of “Socialism in One Country.” From then on, the goal of the Soviet Union was not to instigate world revolution, but to protect the Soviet Union. Subsequently, Stalin dissolved the Comintern in 1943 as a goodwill gesture to the Allies.
Since we will talk about Stalin and Trotsky in detail in the next episode, I am not dwelling on this topic much.
To sum up, the history of the Internationals shows us the fundamental ideological splits and betrayals very clearly. It’s like a good summary of why communism cannot solve the world’s problems or why it cannot succeed.
However, I prefer to look at it from a different perspective. Nearly two centuries have passed since these concepts emerged, and despite minor reforms, the world’s colonialist, imperialist oppression has not changed. Still, a very small part of society takes the biggest slice of the pie. Even in our own country, undocumented refugees are put to work, forced to live 20 people to a tiny apartment for exorbitant rent. Despite all this, they still cannot escape the wrath of the money-grubbers, and some are murdered by being burned alive, with no price paid by the perpetrators. The only thing left of that oppressed person is a single passport photo. Children are still being put to work. Those child laborers are still dying in work accidents.
As my favorite poet, İsmet Özel, says:
Ben inanırım ki yaşamak berrak bir gökte çocuklar aşkına savaşmaktır.
( I believe that to live is to fight for the sake of children under a clear sky.)
In this context, I believe that even if I am certain to lose, it is honorable to strive for a more just world for people to live in. If we succeed, how wonderful. See you in the second part.
Adios.
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