A History of Socialist Thought and Movements
Pre-Marxist Socialism
While pre-Marxist socialism began organizing workers, intellectuals developed theories offering social and political alternatives to contemporary society. Many of these theories constitute what’s called utopian socialism, contrasting with Marx and Engels’s scientific socialism. Early socialist theories drew heavily from Enlightenment ideas and Romanticism. Moral considerations often overshadowed capitalism’s negative impacts, focusing on ideal societies without exploitation or injustice.
Robert Owen, influenced by Rousseau, believed goods’ value depended on labor invested in production. Owen implemented reforms including children’s education, higher wages, reduced working hours, and incentive systems, achieving remarkable economic success. Saint-Simon, a nobleman with liberal views, proposed rational industrial development to resolve social conflicts. He advocated applying technological advancements and having scientific elites lead organizations to provide widespread social welfare. He denounced private property as a source of inequality. His famous work, What is Property?, famously asserts that “property is theft.” His criticism of institutions and anti-authoritarian stance foreshadowed anarchism.
In 1836, German exiles in Paris founded the League of the Righteous, a radically egalitarian organization. Eleven years later, it became the League of Communists, aiming to abolish private property.
Marxism
Marx and Engels considered their theories scientific socialist doctrines, unlike the utopian socialists’ moralistic approaches. Their ideas are known as scientific socialism. While the term might seem pretentious, mid-19th-century positivism and realism led to socialist theories rooted in economic analysis and objective descriptions of class conflict.
Friedrich Engels (1820-95), son of a wealthy textile manufacturer, understood modern industry. Karl Marx (1818-1883) had a strong academic and philosophical background, associating with the Young Hegelians, a leftist group among Hegel’s disciples. Their collaboration produced a new socialist theory—Marxism—with significant philosophical and political impact.
The Communist Manifesto, commissioned by the Communist League in 1847 and published the following year, argued that history is a history of class struggle. It analyzed bourgeois society, predicting the proletariat’s emancipation, the bourgeoisie’s demise, and a classless society. Written as propaganda for the 1848 revolutions, it urged workers to organize and act politically to defend their interests and gain power.
Marx and Engels engaged in politics through trade unions. Marxism initially spread among workers with the idea that workers needed an independent political party separate from bourgeois parties. This concept formed the basis of socialist parties in the late 19th century. Historical circumstances led some toward revolutionary seizure of power, others toward gradual state conquest through peaceful means. Marxism significantly influenced both revolutionary and socialist parties.
The International Workingmen’s Association (IWA)
The 1860s saw new social theories, particularly those with a more radical bent, and labor organizations converge. This led to the ambitious International Workingmen’s Association (IWA), also known as the First International. Founded September 28, 1864, in London, it included delegates from various labor organizations. The provisional committee comprised members from Britain, Germany (including Marx), France, Italy, Switzerland, and Poland—trade unionists, Chartists, and socialists of various stripes, including Proudhon, much to Marx’s chagrin.
Marx’s influence was immediate. He wrote the inaugural manifesto and statutes, emphasizing worker self-emancipation and political struggle to seize power and transform society. The International strengthened working-class consciousness. National associations formed across Europe, grouping local chapters. The IWA spread rapidly, encompassing traditional tradespeople, industrial workers, laborers, and peasants. It included diverse opinions on the labor movement’s direction.
National differences and the social base created ideological diversity. French Proudhonists favored peaceful, gradual evolution, rejecting insurrection, worker political participation, and state intervention. Marx’s followers were more radical, advocating strikes, political participation, and legislation like the 8-hour workday and child labor abolition. The IWA’s first congress saw clashes, with Marx prevailing against Proudhon. However, more violent conflicts between Marx’s and Bakunin’s supporters weakened and divided the organization.
The Anarchist Origins
Anarchism’s theoretical and practical foundations emerged from Bakunin’s work, building on earlier individualist and libertarian thought. Bakunin (1814-76), a Russian aristocrat exiled to Siberia, became anarchism’s leading figure. His profound disagreements with Marx shaped IWA activity (1869-72). Marxists prioritized political struggle through workers’ parties, while anarchists rejected central organization and political action, opposing all forms of state. They believed in spontaneous revolutionary insurrection to eliminate the state and replace it with a free collective federation. They didn’t see industrial workers as the sole revolutionary force, supporting all oppressed groups.
Anarchism found fertile ground in agrarian and some industrialized societies. Bakunin joined the IWA in 1868. His ideological clashes with Marxists were evident at the Basel Congress, where institutional policies were rejected by Bakunin’s supporters. Marx advocated for distinct workers’ parties opposed to liberal and republican parties. Anarchists rejected political parties, focusing on unions. In the late 19th century, some anarchists used terrorism against authorities; others favored direct action against employers through general strikes.
The Paris Commune and the First International’s Dissolution
The Paris Commune (March-May 1871), though brief, was the first workers’ government. France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War created a power vacuum. The Second Empire’s government fled to Versailles, sparking a democratic and socialist revolution in Paris. District elections formed a commune assembly, exercising people’s power, led by radical groups. After fierce battles, the Third Republic’s troops brutally repressed the Commune, executing thousands.
The Commune’s defeat affected the IWA. Marx attributed the failure to a lack of a coherent political program and organization. Bakunin saw the spontaneous popular movement as a virtue. Their clash at the Hague Congress led to Bakunin’s expulsion. Alarmed governments suppressed the IWA, leading to its dissolution in 1876. However, the labor movement largely followed Marx’s approach, establishing socialist workers’ parties to participate in national politics.
The Creation of Socialist Parties
The years 1875-1914 saw the rise of Marxist-oriented socialist parties across Europe. In 1879, Pablo Iglesias led the founding of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). In 1875, the merger of two German labor organizations created the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), a model for other socialist parties. Its network of associations, cooperatives, housing, and cultural centers formed an alternative working-class society.
The Rebuilding of the International
Shared characteristics among socialist parties and nostalgia for the IWA led to the Second International, founded in 1889 during the Paris Universal Exhibition and the French Revolution’s centenary. It was a flexible federation resolving the IWA’s divisions (party autonomy and anarchists’ exclusion). In 1896, it accepted organizations supporting parliamentary activity. It was a confederation of socialist parties accepting the democratic system. International meetings influenced public opinion. The International Socialist Women’s Secretariat, led by Clara Zetkin from 1907, linked socialism and women’s emancipation, establishing International Women’s Day (March 8) in 1911.
The Second International’s founding congress established May 1, 1890, for workers to demand the 8-hour workday. May Day became a symbol of international labor solidarity. By the early 20th century, the Second International was influential. Despite its image, doctrinal and policy differences existed. Some parties’ parliamentary success and social gains led to revisions of Marx’s revolutionary theory. This “socialism in liberty” contrasted with revolutionary socialism, as advocated by Russian leaders who maintained a revolutionary Marxist approach under Tsarist rule.
The Second International had two main trends: a revolutionary minority leading to the Russian Revolution and other insurrections, and a reformist majority supporting socialist parties’ continued political and social action.