“No! no!” cried Frodo. “The Council laid it upon me to bear it.”
“It is by our own folly that the Enemy will defeat us,” cried Boromir. “How it angers me! Fool! Obstinate fool! Running wilfully to death and ruining our cause. If any mortals have claim to the Ring, it is the men of Númenor, and not Halflings. It is not yours save by unhappy chance. It might have been mine. It should be mine. Give it to me!”
If we could categorize historical settings into different “types”, I would probably say my favorite type of setting is one in which ideologies and social movements meet violently with existing economic and social realities. Under this categorization would be most revolutions, military, social, or industrial, as well as historical moments such as the one I intend to center my project on.
The Second International was an organization tying together the different Marxist political parties of the world (though primarily Europe) together; the organization held Congresses in which a unified ideological platform across parties was debated and established. A crucial part of this platform was internationalism and antimilitarism; from the perspective of socialist theorists, it made no sense for workers to die in battle against their fellow proletarians for the benefit of industrialists and aristocrats. By the outbreak of the First World War, parties affiliated with the Second International were the largest or second largest parties in the majority of continental Europe, though in almost all cases they were excluded from government.
While outright preventing the war would have been immensely difficult given their lack of direct political power, the Second International’s constituent parties were bound by the 1912 Congress to not vote for declarations of war or funding bills for said wars. Despite this, the vast majority of elected officials in belligerent countries voted not just for the original declarations of wars, but for funding for the war for severals years after. Socialist parties formed wartime coalitions with centrist and right-wing parties, and promised to prevent strike action and undue criticism of the war effort. While counterfactuals aren’t terribly useful, it is hard not to note that given that massive strike action and mutinies were crucial in eventually forcing German capitulation in 1918, it is likely that socialist collaborationism meaningfully lengthened the war. The near universal betrayal of one of the Second International’s core principles proved too much for the fellowship, which shattered during the war into separate organizations composed of pro- and anti-war leftists. These political descendants then continued the quest to throw capitalism into Mount D-er, rather, the dustbin of history.
At the core of what I want to investigate in my project is the internal conflict faced by persons associated with the Second International in the leadup to the First World War. In part this will be the conflict faced by leftists between their belief in class solidarity and internationalism and their conscious or unconscious belief in the ideals of nationalism and patriotism, and in part the material conflict faced by politicians between ideological purism and the need to engage successfully in electoral politics. In terms of what I know will definitely be in the project, I intend to analyze the existing conflicts over antimilitarism before, during and after the 1912 Congress, as well as conduct some in depth research on particularly interesting figures that might help illustrate the larger work. In particular, Jean Jaurès, the committed anti-militarist leader of the largest French socialist party, who was assassinated days before the outbreak of the war by a revanchist Frenchman; also Georges Weill, SPD member of the German Reichstag for Metz, who scandalized Germany by signing up for the French Army shortly after the outbreak of the war. If possible I’d like to strike a balance between looking at prominent intellectuals and politicians like Rosa Luxemburg with the views and opinions of everyday people who supported Second International parties. These may be difficult to source in English translation but I think it’s worth the try, as the motivations of the two groups were likely different and shouldn’t be grouped together.
Given this “core” topic and timeframe, that being the failure of antimilitarism at the start of the First World War, I want to expand the project both chronologically and topically. The more historically obvious expansion would be to look at the end of the war and the impact of the Bolshevik revolution, particularly with regards to the reasons figures on both sides of the antimilitarist split had for either supporting or opposing the Bolsheviks and their methods and/or platform. From my limited knowledge, the earlier anti-war faction tended to support the Bolsheviks and the pro-war faction tended to oppose them; looking at the reasons why this was the case would be a logical extension of the core of the project.
That being said, a more interesting expansion would be to construct the project as a comparative study of the Second International’s internal conflict with regards to antimilitarism with a very similar conflict, occurring around the same time, with regards to anti-colonialism. In my preliminary research for this project, I have found that while the Second International was formally opposed to colonialism, there was extensive internal debate over the nature of that anti-colonialism, and in some cases, the necessity of such a doctrine at all. This seems to represent a similar conflict, this time between socialist doctrines of racial egalitarianism and anti-imperialism and the notions of European racial or cultural superiority that were pervasive in Europe at the time, as well as ideals of nationalism and patriotism.
Also worth investigating would be the nature of the Second International as a de facto whites-only organization, as the only non-European member parties were located in the United States, Argentina, and Uruguay. The vast majority of participants, politicians and civilians alike, had limited to no interaction with colonized peoples. It occurs to me now that this aspect might be worth comparing to the physical and linguistic barriers faced by ordinary members of International-affiliated parties when considering their ability to directly meet with and relate to their ostensible brethren in other European countries. While it might be outside the temporal scope of this project, it’s worth considering that while no Second International party directly “betrayed” the anti-colonial ethos in the same way as took place with antimilitarism, this may simply be because no Second International party led a government of a colonial power prior to its dissolution. In the post-war period, formerly affiliated parties came to power in countries such as France and the Netherlands, and refused to begin the de-colonization process or to give colonial subjects equal political rights; this could be seen as a comparable betrayal to that of the July Days of 1914.
To conclude, and to tie my last post to this one, I am very tempted to take on the more ambitious comparative project with anti-colonialism. My only worry is that I will find myself unable to do both antimilitarism and anti-colonialism justice and end up not investigating either as deeply as they deserve; the Second International is well attested to in both primary and secondary sources so there is likely no “bottom” to how deeply a committed student could investigate certain aspects of it (ignoring the time limitations). That being said, I think if I plan the project out correctly, this could be some of the most interesting and, hopefully, best work I have done at St. Andrews.
Lucius, I like this. And my suggestion is: stick with anti-colonialism. Focus on the International and its views on colonial wars and conflicts. My knowledge is limited on this but my guess is there is more fresh and novel ground than on 1914, anti-war. A full comparison might be tempting but also tricky given our time constraints and word limits.