Chapter VI: The Labour Party’s Adoption of Socialism

4. THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTIC PROGRAMME

The First International—The Old Second International—The
International Labour Charter of 1919—The New Second
International—The Geneva Resolutions on Socialism of 1920—The
Second International and Bolshevism—The Third or Moscow
International.

The First International

It is important to note the connection before the war between the Labour Patty and International Socialism. As far back as September 28, 1864, the First International was formed in St. Martin’s Hall at the corner of Long Acre and Endell Street, the site now occupied by Messrs. Odhams and used for the publication of _John Bull_. That organization lived under circumstances of great vicissitude as an international centre of socialistic thought until it received its death-blow through the collapse of the Commune In Paris in 1871. Its interesting career is described in Mr. R. W. Postgate’s book, _The Workers’ International_, and in _The Two Internationals_, by Mr. Palme Dutt.

The Old Second International

The Second International dates from the Paris Socialist Conference of 1889, but was not constituted in its later form of a Central International Socialist Bureau until 1913. In 1914, it included twenty-seven countries with a membership of twelve millions; to it the Labour Party was affiliated. It naturally fell into a state of suspended animation during the war. Unsuccessful attempts were made at Zimmerwald (1915), Kienthal (1916), and at Stockholm (1917), to revive the Second International. Later, a Conference with the same object in view was held at Berne in February 1919, where various Socialist and Labour bodies assembled to further its revival and also to deal with a number of political and industrial questions. This Conference was promoted by Messrs. Arthur Henderson, Emile Vandervelde and Albert Thomas. It passed an important resolution on “Democracy and Dictatorship,” part of which was in the following terms:

“The Conference hails the great political revolutions which,
in Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany, have destroyed the old
regimes of imperialism and militarism and overthrown their
Governments.

“The Conference urges the workers and Socialists of these
countries to develop democratic and republican institutions
which will enable them to bring about the great Socialist
transformation. In these momentous times, when the problem of
the Socialist reconstruction of the world is more than ever
before a burning question, the working-classes should make up
their minds, unanimously and unmistakably, about the method of
their emancipation.

“In full agreement with all previous Congresses of the
International, the Berne Conference firmly adheres to the
principles of Democracy. A reorganized society more and more
permeated with Socialism, cannot be realized, much less
permanently established, unless it rests upon triumphs of
Democracy and is rooted in the principles of liberty.

“Those institutions which constitute Democracy—freedom of
speech and of the press, the right of assembly, universal
suffrage, a government responsible to Parliament, with
arrangements guaranteeing popular co-operation, and respect for
the wishes of the people, the right of association, etc., these
also provide the working-classes with the means of carrying on
the class-struggle.

“Owing to certain recent events, the Conference desires to make
absolutely clear the constructive character of the Socialist
programme. True socialization implies methodical development in
the different branches of economic activity under the control
of the democracy. The arbitrary taking over of a few concerns
by small groups of workers is not Socialism, it is merely
Capitalism with numerous shareholders.

“Since, in the opinion of the Conference, effective Socialist
development is only possible under democratic law, it is
essential to eliminate at once any method of socialization
which has no prospect of gaining the support of the majority of
the people.

“A dictatorship of this character would be all the more
dangerous if it were based upon the support of only one section
of the working-class. The inevitable consequence of such a
regime would be the paralysis of working-class strength through
fratricidal war. The inevitable end would be the dictatorship
of reaction....

“It calls upon Socialists throughout the world to close their
ranks, not to deliver up the peoples to international reaction,
but to do their utmost to ensure that Socialism and Democracy,
which are inseparable, shall triumph everywhere.”

The International Labour Charter of 1919

The Berne Conference formulated an International Labour Charter which was afterwards submitted to the Council of Versailles for inclusion in the Treaty of Peace, and was, to a considerable extent, incorporated in Part XIII. The preamble of this Charter is important and reads thus:

“Under the wage-system the capitalist class endeavour to
increase their profits by exploiting the workers in the
greatest measure possible by methods which, if unchecked,
would undermine the physical, moral and intellectual strength
of the present and future generation of workers. They impede
the development and even endanger the very existence of
Society. The tendency of Capitalism to degrade the worker can
only be completely checked by the abolition of the capitalist
system of production. Meanwhile, the evil can be considerably
mitigated, both by the resistance of organized workers and by
the intervention of the State. By these means, the health of
the workers can be protected and their family life maintained.
They make it possible for them to obtain the education
necessary to enable them to fulfil their duties as citizens in
a modern democracy.

“The degree in which Capitalism is restricted varies to a
very great extent in the different States. Through the unfair
competition of backward countries, these differences endanger
labour and industry in the more advanced States. The adjustment
of national differences in the legal protection of labour by
a system of international labour legislation has long been
a pressing need. It has been rendered doubly urgent by the
terrible upheavals and awful destruction of the vital forces of
the people brought about by the war. At the same time, however,
the war is bringing about the possibility of satisfying this
need by the formation of a League of Nations, which now seems
certain. The Berne Conference demands that the League of
Nations, as one of its primary tasks, shall create and put into
execution an International Labour Charter.”

At Berne a Permanent Commission was appointed to revive and draw up a new constitution for the Second International. This Permanent Commission, which included Messrs. Henderson, Stuart-Bunning and Ramsay MacDonald of the British Labour Party, met at Amsterdam in April 1919, to continue that work. There was also a “Committee of Action” appointed to deal with certain executive matters, on which Messrs. Henderson, Stuart-Bunning and Ramsay MacDonald were also placed. It was this Committee of Action which went to Paris to interview the “Big Four” on various international questions, including the insertion of the Labour Charter in the Peace Treaty, and issued a manifesto on May 11, 1919, after the Peace Terms were handed, on May 7, to the German delegates, stating that “this peace is not our peace.”

The New Second International

At Lucerne, in August 1919, the Permanent Commission finished the drafting of the new constitution of the Second International, and arranged for a General International Socialist Conference to be held at Geneva in 1920, to adopt it. That Conference took place in July of that year. An invitation dated April 10, 1920, was sent out to all Socialist and Labour Parties subscribing to, _inter alia_, the following principle:—“(1) The political and economic organization of the working-class for the purpose of abolishing the capitalist form of society and achieving complete freedom for humanity through the conquest of political power and the socialization of the means of production and exchange, that is to say, by the transformation of capitalist society into a collectivist or communist society.” The invitation, after mentioning a number of socialistic questions to which the attention of the Conference at Geneva would be directed, concluded in these words:—“Convinced of the necessity of a great effort to ensure unity on the basis of the traditional principles of the class-struggle and with a view to international action ... we invite you to attend the Geneva Conference.”

At the Geneva Conference the constitution of the Second International was fixed; its declared purposes are as follows:

“1. The political and economic organization of the
working-class for the purpose of abolishing the capitalist
form of society and achieving complete freedom for humanity
through the conquest of political power and the socialization
of the means of production and exchange, that is to say, by the
transformation of capitalist society into a collectivist or
communist society.

“2. The international union and action of the workers in
the struggle against jingoism and imperialism and for the
simultaneous suppression of militarism and armaments, with the
object of bringing about a real League of Nations, including
all peoples master of their own destiny, and maintaining world
peace.

“3. The representation and defence of the interests of
oppressed peoples and subject races.

“These principles find three forms of expression in the
working-class movement, each at different stages of
development, but each necessary; the political, the industrial,
and the co-operative. These must, as autonomous bodies,
continue to strengthen their national influence and their
international unity, and, at the same time, as their ultimate
aims are common, and as they are aspects of one great world
movement, they should take every opportunity for joint action
in an internationalist and revolutionary spirit for the
maintenance of the world’s peace.”

The Geneva Resolutions on Socialism of 1920

A number of resolutions were also passed, and those which relate to “Socialization” are worthy of careful study; they were the draft of the British Labour Party’s representatives and were in the following terms:

“SOCIALIZATION.—By Socialization we understand the
transformation from ownership and control by capitalists to
ownership and control by the community of all the industries
and services essential for the satisfaction of the people’s
needs; the substitution, for the wasteful production and
distribution with the object of private profit, of efficient
production and economical distribution with the object of the
greatest possible utility; the transformation also, from the
economic servitude of the great mass of the actual producers
under private ownership, to a general participation in
management by the persons engaged in the work.

“The continuous and rapid growth of monopolistic control of
industry by Capitalism increases the power of private owners
to manipulate the prices of all the necessaries of life, thus
reducing consumers to despair. On the other hand, there is the
growing unwillingness of organized labour any longer to support
a system of production which keeps them in subjection and does
not even enable them to raise effectively their standard of
life. The consequent intolerableness of Capitalism renders
every day more urgent the reconstruction of industry on the
lines of Socialization.

“Socialization will proceed, step by step, from one industry
to another, according as circumstances in each country may
permit. Objectionable as private profit-making enterprise is
to Socialists, they will refrain from destroying it in any
industry until they are in a position to replace it by a more
efficient form of organization. Such a gradual process of
Socialization excludes, in general, expropriation of private
ownership without compensation; not only because it would be
inequitable to cause suffering to selected individuals, but
also because a process of confiscation would disturb capitalist
enterprise in industries in which Socialization was not
immediately practicable. The funds required for compensation
will be derived from taxation of private property, including
capital levies, income-tax and death duties, and the limitation
of inheritances for the benefit of the State.

“In a community of highly developed economic life, with an
extensive population largely aggregated in urban centres,
Socialization takes three main forms—namely, national,
municipal and co-operative.

“For instance, whatever may be provided for the administration
of agriculture, the ownership of land should be national,
provision being made for the maintenance and security of
peasant cultivators, wherever such exist. Other industries of
supreme national importance, such as the transport system, the
generation of electricity and mines, should also be national.
But the management of a large number of industries and services
will be in the hands of the municipalities and other local
authorities, and federations of these, not only the provision
of water and gas and the distribution of electricity, but also,
in some countries, the provision of food, clothing and housing.
The production and distribution of household supplies of every
kind will form, for the most part, the sphere of the consumer’s
co-operative societies.

“Industries which have not yet arrived at a state of
concentration at which they are suitable for Socialization, or
in which, for other reasons, Socialization is not immediately
practicable, will be subjected to control by the community,
with a view to effecting economies and improvements in
production and distribution, fixing prices, and ensuring
prescribed conditions of employment.

“It is important to notice that, in the large measure of
individual freedom that will be characteristic of a Socialist
community, the adoption of the principle of Socialization does
not include agricultural production by individual peasants
of the nation’s land, or by independent craftsmen working on
their own account, or by artists of any kind, or by members of
the brain-working professions—provided always that they do not
exploit the labour of other persons. On the other hand, the
principle of Socialization excludes the ownership of natural
resources or of the instruments of production in the large
scale primary industries by individuals or associations of
persons of any kind, together with the dictatorship of any
person or group over the industry in which they work.

“It is the function of the community as a whole to exercise
control over the prices of commodities, and to provide whatever
new or additional capital is required from time to time for
Socialized industries.

“ADMINISTRATION OF SOCIALIZED INDUSTRIES.—A principle of the
greatest importance in Socialization is that control must be
separated from administration. The control will be exercised
by the popularly elected national assembly. The organ of
administration in each industry or service must be entirely
separate and distinct from those of the political government.

“THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIES.—Each industry or service will require
an organization appropriate to its special circumstances. As
a general type it is suggested that a national industry or
service should be provided with

“(_a_) A national board to be composed of representatives of:

“(1) the workers concerned in the industry;

“(2) the management (including the technicians);

“(3) the consumers and the community as a whole.

“(_b_) Where considered necessary, also district councils for
appropriate regional areas, to be similarly composed;

“(_c_) Works’ committees for each factory, mine or other
establishment.

“In each national industry there will have to be separate
machinery for collective bargaining between the management
on the one hand, and each distinct vocation engaged in the
industry or service on the other.

“There should accordingly be a Joint Board for each vocation
that has separately organized itself, whether in a trade union
or a professional association. Each Joint Board should be
composed in equal numbers of representatives of the management
and representatives of the trade union or professional
association concerned.

“The Right to Strike—that is to say, to refuse collectively
to continue to serve—cannot be denied to any man or woman
consistently with freedom. When it is no longer a question
of resisting the profit-making capitalist, but merely of
obtaining from the community as a whole equitable conditions of
employment and a proper standard of life, it may be expected
that the public opinion of the community as a whole will be
accepted as decisive.

“MUNICIPAL SOCIALIZATION.—The large part of the industries and
services of each community which will be in the hands of the
local authorities will be directed by the popularly elected
councils of the several localities, with participation in
the management of their own services by representatives of
the workers by hand or by brain. In municipal administration
of industries and services there should be the same kind of
machinery of Joint Boards for collective bargaining as in the
national industries.

“THE POLITICAL SYSTEM OF SOCIALISM.—The progressive
disintegration of the capitalist system, which has been
increasingly taking place during the years of war, and not less
during the years of peace following the war, makes it ever more
urgent that Labour should assume power in society. In the term
Labour we include not merely the manual working wage-earners,
but also the intellectual workers of all kinds, the independent
handicraftsmen and peasant cultivators, and, in short, all
those who co-operate by their exertions in the production of
utilities of any kind.

“1. It is an essential condition of this assumption of power
by Labour that its ranks should be sufficiently united and
that it should understand how to make use of the power in its
hands.

“2. Whilst the Congress repudiates methods of violence and all
terrorism, it recognizes that the object cannot be achieved
without the utilization by Labour of its industrial as well
as its political power, and direct action in certain decisive
conflicts cannot be entirely abandoned. At the same time, the
Congress considers that any tendency to convert an industrial
strike automatically into political revolution cannot be too
strongly condemned.

“3. The Socialist Commonwealth can come into existence only by
the conquest by Labour of governmental power. The main work
of a Labour Government will be to adopt, as the fundamental
basis of its legislation and administration, both Democracy and
Socialization.

“Socialism will not base its political organization upon
dictatorship. It cannot seek to suppress Democracy; its
historic mission, on the contrary, is to carry Democracy to
completion. The whole efforts of Labour, its Trade Union
and Co-operative activities, equally with its action in the
political field, tend constantly towards the establishment of
Democratic institutions more and more adapted to the needs of
industrial society, becoming ever more perfect and of higher
social value.

“It is to-day the forces of Labour that, in the main, ensure
the maintenance of Democracy. Socialists will not allow
factitious minorities, taking advantage of their privileged
positions, to bring to naught popular liberty. Inspired by the
great traditions of past revolutions, Socialists will be ready,
without weakness, to resist any such attacks.

“4. The franchise for a Socialist Parliament must be universal,
applying with absolute equality to both sexes, without
exclusions on grounds of race, religion, occupation, or
political opinions. The supreme function of Parliament is to
represent all the popular aspirations and desires from the
standpoint of the community as a whole. It will deal with
defence against aggression from without or within. It will
be in charge of the property and also of the finances of the
community.

“It will make the laws, and administer the public business. The
Ministers in charge of the various departments will be chosen
from among its members; and the government of the nation will
be its Executive Committee.

“But it will be free to delegate particular powers and duties
to any of the other organs of the community hereinafter
mentioned, in order to secure the greatest possible
participation of those personally engaged in each branch of
social life. It will be for Parliament to safeguard not only
the interests of the general public of consumers for whose
representation on special boards and councils it will provide,
but also the interests of the community as a whole in future
generations.

“5. It will be for Parliament to determine the general lines
of social policy and to make the laws; it will decide to what
industries and services the principle of Socialization shall
be applied and under what conditions; it will exercise supreme
financial control, and will decide upon the allocation of new
and additional capital. In the last resort, it will exercise
the power of fixing prices.

“6. In the development and expansion of the productive life
of the community, a large part will be played by the various
organizations formed according to the productive occupations
in which every healthy person will be engaged. Thus,
provision must be made, in the manner hereinafter described,
for the participation in the administration or service of
representatives of all the different grades of workers, by hand
or by brain, engaged in that particular industry or service.
At the same time, each vocation, whether of workers by hand
or of workers by brain, desires to regulate the conditions
of its vocational life, whatever may be the industries or
services among which its membership will find itself dispersed.
Each distinct vocation may therefore group itself in a
professional association, to which functions of regulation, of
investigation, or of professional education may be entrusted by
Parliament.

“7. The organizations into which those engaged in the various
industries and services will group themselves, whether trade
unions or professional associations, may be made the basis of a
further organ of social and economic life.

“Alongside Parliament it may be desirable that there should be
a National Industrial Council, composed of representatives of
the various organizations of trades and professions into which
the persons belonging to each occupation may voluntarily group
themselves. Such a National Industrial Council would be free
to discuss and criticize, to investigate and to suggest, and
to present to Parliament any reports on which it may decide.
Parliament may, from time to time, delegate to the National
Industrial Council the drafting of measures applicable to
industry as a whole, or of the regulations to be made under the
authority of a statute.”

The Second International and Bolshevism

The British Labour Party was asked at the Geneva Conference to undertake the responsibility of inviting all national Socialist and Labour bodies not represented at Geneva to join like itself the Second International. An appeal was sent out signed in December 1920, by Messrs. A. Henderson, on behalf of the Labour Party, J. H. Thomas, and Harry Gosling, on behalf of the Trades Union Congress, and Ramsay MacDonald, as British International Secretary. This letter declared the position of the Second International and also of the British Labour Party in regard to Bolshevism in the following terms:

“The great difficulty which confronts International Socialism,
however, is the division of the movement into two camps as a
result of the Russian Revolution of November 1918. Bolshevism
tried to establish, not only over Russia, but over every other
country in the world, the method of seizing political power
by armed force, holding that power by the same means and
changing the whole economic structure of society by decree
and suppression. Since its first success in Russia, it has
somewhat modified its position, and at the present moment in
this country, it is informing its adherents that those who
decry political methods are traitors to the cause of Communism,
but that political action should be used solely to prove the
abortiveness of the institutions which are to be captured.
Obviously, such a compromise with the unclean thing is bound
to defeat itself and will only make candidates who pursue such
a policy ridiculous in the eyes of electors. It is political
and revolutionary futility of the simplest kind. We do not
wish, however, to argue out the matter. The policy may be more
suitable to some countries than it is to ours, but obviously
every Socialist who has any international instinct at all will
see that an International based upon Moscow principles can
never represent more than the smallest and least influential
fraction of the Socialist movement in the various countries.
The Second International has, therefore, rejected Bolshevism as
the basis of its existence.

“Moreover, the attempts made by Moscow to control national
organizations not only in general Socialist policy, but in the
details of their own national work, must prevent every such
organization with any self-respect and any sense of national
freedom from putting itself under such a yoke.”

The following statement as to the foundation upon which a Socialist International should be constituted is also important:

“There must be no doubt as to the basis upon which a
Socialist International has to be built. It must secure to
each Socialist group freedom to work in accordance with its
own means towards its Socialist goal; there must be common
determination to bring Socialism about; it must be prepared
to give international support to all national strivings for
liberty and self-government in ways determined by the nations
themselves; it must in no way reject (as is now being attempted
in some quarters) but unequivocally support the democratic
method as that proper to the countries that have already
gone through their political revolutions, and that have been
put in possession of the political weapon by reason of the
insurrectionary movements of their proletariat in days gone by.”

The Third or Moscow International

The Second International may accordingly be now regarded as re-established, if not re-created, and the interesting speculation is the extent to which it will secure the allegiance of Socialist parties throughout the world as against the appeals of the Third International or Moscow “Red” International. This latter deserves a short description. In January 1919, just before the meeting of the Berne Conference, and shortly after the Peace Conference at Paris had commenced, a wireless invitation to the first Communist International Congress at Moscow was sent out in the name of the Russian Communist Party, which was the name adopted by the Russian Bolsheviks or Majority Social Democrats after the Revolution of 1917. The Bolsheviks desired to distinguish themselves clearly from Socialist or “social democratic” parties which, in various belligerent countries, had supported their respective Governments. They took the name from the Communist League for which Marx and Engels drew up the famous Communist manifesto which they were commissioned to draw up in November 1847, at the Congress of Communists in London. Lenin, in his book, the _State and Revolution_, draws special attention to the term “communist” as being more scientifically correct than the term “social democrat” and endeavours to prove his point by quotations from the manifesto. Following the lead of Moscow the various revolutionary Socialist parties throughout the world have discarded their Socialist appellations and called themselves Communists. One ought, therefore, to realize that the term “Communism” has now taken on a new and different meaning from its earlier significance. To-day Communism means the principles of Marxian revolutionary Socialism and a scheme of social and industrial organization constructed on those principles which are peculiar to the Bolshevik regime in Soviet Russia. In his admirable little book, the _Two Internationals_, which deals with the complex subject most clearly and with very full documentation, Mr. R. Palme Dutt very properly says that “care must be taken to distinguish this sense of Communism from the sense in which it has been more generally used in this country, namely, (1) the Communist Anarchism of Kropotkin, (2) the conception of the abolition of all personal property, (3) decentralization under a system of loosely associated local communes. Communism corresponds rather to what is often referred to as ‘scientific socialism,’ only with a special emphasis on its revolutionary aspect.”

The First Communist International Congress was held at Moscow in March 1919. It is called the Third International or Communist International; its constitution will be found in the _Labour International Handbook_, 1921, page 190. Shortly stated its purposes are the overthrow of capitalism, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the International Soviet Republic; the complete abolition of classes and the realization of revolutionary Socialism. Twenty-one conditions of membership, together with instructions for its members, are laid down, some of which are peculiarly illuminating as to Communist principles. Condition 3 says that “the class-struggle in almost every country of Europe and America is reaching the threshold of civil war. Under such circumstances the Communist can have no confidence in bourgeois laws. They should create everywhere a parallel illegal machinery which at the decisive moment will do its duty by the party and in every way possible assist the revolution. In every country where, in consequence of martial law or other exceptional laws, the Communists are unable to carry on their work lawfully, a combination of legal and illegal work is absolutely necessary.”

The Communist Party of Great Britain is affiliated to the Third International, but the Independent Labour Party of this country, although it seceded from the Second International, refused to join the Third International, and published a scathing criticism of Bolshevism or Communism which appeared in the _Labour Leader_ of December 18, 1919. The Independent Labour Party is affiliated to yet another International, the body known as the Vienna International or the “Two and a Half.”

I have set out these details in order to show the nature and the extent of the home and international socialistic programme which the Labour Party has pledged itself, if given the opportunity, to carry into operation.