International Society for Socialist Studies
The International Society for Socialist Studies (IGSS) ( International Society for Socialist Studies ) from 1956 to about 1960, a left-wing socialist association for exchange of ideas and international contacts in the tradition of the British Fabians . The declared aim was to revive socialist thinking beyond the two power blocs .
Strategy, positions, failure
According to Christoph Jünke, the IGSS is the first organization of the New Left . It was founded in Paris in March 1956 on the initiative of the British historian George Douglas Howard Cole . Cole was elected President and the French historian Ernest Labrousse , one of Michel Rocard's secretaries , was Vice-President . The Dutch publicist Frits Kief played an important role in maintaining contacts between the various national IGSS sections . A German section was constituted in Wolfsburg on October 21 and 22, 1956 , with Viktor Agartz as its chairman . In addition to other left-wing socialists , Gerhard Gleißberg was also a member of the board of the German section, which was supported in journalism by the Andere Zeitung .
The IGSS objective should serve the production and distribution of pamphlets as a basis for joint discussion to develop a contemporary socialist basic program. The IGSS understood socialism as an international movement that rejected racist and national discrimination, colonialism and imperialism. Socialism is more than a welfare state and aims at the complete elimination of class differences, the cooperation of peoples and the establishment of a classless society. Socialists are opponents of war and all power blocs. The first publication of the German IGSS section was the brochure A new commitment to world socialism by its President GDH Cole. This was followed by brochures by Leo Kofler and Viktor Agartz.
The context of the discussion fell apart after a few years, the IGSS program was too general, the interests of the different sections (in the Netherlands there were two with incompatible positions) were too different. At first the IGSS failed in West Germany. The founding of the German section was overshadowed by the KPD ban of August 17, 1956, and there were strong reservations from left-wing socialists such as Fritz Lamm and other authors of the magazine Funken , who did not want to endanger their influence in the SPD and the organizational proximity to avoid Viktor Agartz. After the treason trial against Agartz in 1957, which despite acquittal had made him the persona non grata of West German domestic politics, the German section ceased its activities. GDH Cole died in 1959, so the IGSS had lost its central figure of integration and disintegrated in the early 1960s.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christoph Jünke : Forays through the red 20th century. Hamburg 2014, p. 111.
- ↑ This and the following information is based, unless otherwise indicated, on: Gregor Kritidis, Left Socialist Opposition in the Adenauer era. A contribution to the early history of the Federal Republic of Germany , Hanover 2008, pp. 393–401.
- ↑ Christoph Jünke: The left re-formation 1954/55 and their failure 1957/58 , in: Socialist Hefts for Theory and Practice , No. 11, Cologne, September 2006 ( online version )
- ↑ Christoph Jünke: The left re-formation 1954/55 and their failure 1957/58 , in: Socialist Hefts for Theory and Practice , No. 11, Cologne, September 2006.