forces in a rising against the criminal bourgeoisie, the socialist parties took up separate stands, each under the banner of its “own” bourgeois government. The war began with the direct support of the socialist parties; the leaders of these parties turned their coats and betrayed the cause of socialism. The Second International died an ignominious death.
It is interesting to note that, only a few days before the betrayal, the socialist press and the leaders of the socialist parties were holding forth against the war. Gustave Hervé, for example, the traitor to French socialism, wrote as follows in his newspaper “La Guerre Sociale” [The Class War, subsequently rechristened Victory]: “We are to fight in order to save the tsar’s prestige! . . . How delightful to die in so glorious a cause!” Three days before the outbreak of war, the French Socialist Party issued a manifesto against it, and the French syndicalists wrote in their journal, “Workers! If you are not cowards, protest!” The German social democrats held numerous great meetings of protest. The memory of the resolution passed at the Basle international congress was still fresh, a resolution to the effect that in case of war all possible means must be employed “to incite the people to revolt and to hasten the collapse of capitalism.” But within a day or two these same parties and these same leaders were insisting upon the need for “the defence of the fatherland” (this meaning the defence of the robber State of their “own” bourgeoisie). In Austria the “Arbeiter Zeitung” [Worker’s Gazette] actually declared that the workers must rally to the defence of “German humanity”!
In order to understand the inglorious collapse of the Second International, we must study the development of the working-class movement prior to the war. Before this conflict, capitalism in Europe and the U.S.A. had largely owed its development to the frantic plunder of the colonies. The loathsome and sanguinary aspects of capitalism were here displayed with exceptional clearness. By brutal exploitation, by