12 - The Second International: 1889–1914

Summary

‘The Internationale/Will be the human race’. When Eugène Pottier wrote the refrain of his famous Internationale in 1871, the prospects for socialists looked rather bleak. The Paris Commune had just been crushed, and a persecuted and divided International Workingmen’s Association was already losing momentum a few years before its final collapse. But by the time Pierre Degeyter set Pottier’s words to music in 1888, a new period was underway. Just a few months later, in July 1889, the founding congress of the organization known to history as the ‘Second International’¹ was held in Paris. After several abortive initiatives across the 1880s, in 1889 delegates from numerous countries met to form a new international that would rally the forces of socialism, initially within Europe alone. But there were already signs of the divisions to come: indeed, there were two competing meetings in Paris, with one (under the sway of British delegates) upholding a more gradualist perspective, and the other (centred on the German social democrats) more of a revolutionary, Marxist one. These latter soon prevailed, when a reunification congress was held in Brussels in 1891.²