League against Imperialism

This article is about a leftist organization in the 1920s. For the Maoist organization in the 1970s, see League Against Imperialism .

The League Against Imperialism was a cross-border organization. It was built under the leadership of the Communist International (Comintern) by Willi Munzenberg , the chairman of the International Workers' Aid (IAH), and aimed at spreading the revolution of the proletariat by supporting the freedom struggles of nations affected by colonialism .

In 1925 the League against Colonialism was founded in Berlin . With the help of the IAH, this was anchored worldwide and had its greatest success in February 1927 with the Brussels Congress against colonial oppression and imperialism . A sharp left turn in the Comintern's course made it difficult for the Socialists to remain among the members from 1929 onwards, so that the league became meaningless from then on.

Origins

The name was provided by Chinese communists in Moscow, who had already set up a league there in 1924 for the fight against imperialism . China was also the scene of a widespread revolt against foreign companies that began in Shanghai with the strike on Japanese textile factories and the deployment of British troops in 1925. The brutal crackdown on the movement sparked outrage in the West, where liberals widely found in the colonies the most visible place for the unrestrained exploitation of people by others.

After the worst distress of the post-war period in Germany was alleviated, Willi Munzenberg and his IAH had capacities free for a China campaign, which on August 16, 1925 led to a congress Hands Off China in the Berlin Herrenhaus. A year later, the German branch of its new establishment, called the League against Colonial Abominations and Oppression , announced that it would hold an international conference. Munzenberg's campaign in China, run by Chiang Kai-shek's Soviet adviser Mikhail Borodin , worried the British government.

Brussels Conference

Émile Vandervelde , Secretary of the Second International , had just become Foreign Minister in Belgium and was unable to refuse the request for permission made by Munzenberg's confidante Louis Gibarti after it had been accepted not to discuss the Belgian Congo and to name the delegates to be expected to the State Security Service. The Paris press was outraged by this approval.

Jawaharlal Nehru and Motilal Nehru supported the idea of ​​the congress, whereupon the initially negative attitude of the Comintern in Moscow overturned. It was hoped that there would be encounters with Labor members and opportunities for indirect, inconspicuous influence on British politics. Henri Barbusse was won over to chair the secretariat of the Congress Bureau. The decision of who could be invited was made by Marcel Rosenberg , an official of the Soviet Foreign Office.

Jawaharlal Nehru was probably the most famous participant, with him came the journalist AC Narayanan Nambiar , who was still the Indian ambassador in Bonn . Messali Hadj , leader of the North African Star came, and Mohammad Hatta , leader of the Indonesian freedom movement Sarekat Islam . Mexico had ambassador Ramón P. de Negri promote the league in Berlin and gave the congress generous financial support. 37 countries were represented with 134 organizations sending 174 delegates. In addition to Bearbusse, Romain Rolland , George Lansbury , Upton Sinclair , Albert Einstein , Madame Sun Yat-sen , JD Nehru and Maxim Gorki were elected honorary members of the Presidium. Edo Fimmen acted as chairman of the meeting and was instrumental in bringing about the congress and the founding of the league.

League delegates who returned to the territory of "their" colonial powers experienced the full measure of oppression: Indians were arrested by the British on arrival and the Senegalese Lamine Senghor was imprisoned in France and died there of tuberculosis. Julio A. Mella , a representative of the League in Mexico and a trade unionist, was murdered in Cuba.

Reservations with the socialists

The League branch in Great Britain published The Anti-Imperialist Review quarterly , a paper that was also published in German and French translation. Fenner Brockway took over the chairmanship of the Executive Committee from Lansbury when it was elected Labor Chair. Brockway promoted the League to the socialists, denied claims that communist organizations were their financiers, and said that of the £ 1,700 cost of Congress, only £ 30 were raised by communists. In fact, Munzenberg had settled everything with a satisfied Ossip Pyatnitsky . For the Second International, Friedrich Adler was right about the presumed communist initiators and he considered the league to be a new " united front maneuver ". Otto Wels attacked Brockway in a speech, and the Briton finally renounced his league positions in order to remain as ILP chairman in the Second International.

From the split in the Kuomintang to the end of the league

The Chinese strike movement was able to record the success of the occupation of Shanghai in March 1927, driven by Borodin, the left wing of the Kuomintang wanted to bring about conditions based on the Bolshevik model, while Chiang Kai-shek, in the interests of the bourgeois national revolutionaries, not only opposed it, but a massacre among the communist party functionaries ordered.

Instead of being ensnared, the socialists in the league now experienced violent attacks from the communists. The break occurred on July 21, 1929 at a congress in Frankfurt am Main . ILP member James Maxton, Hatta, Fimmen and Nehru left the anti-imperialist league - the latter had to put up with the accusation of betraying the cause of the liberation of the Indian people from the yoke of British imperialism.

literature

• Babette Gross : Willi Munzenberg. A political biography. In: Series of the quarterly books for contemporary history. No. 14/15, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1967, pp. 196-210
• Benedikt Stuchtey: Review of: Daniel Brückenhaus : Policing Transnational Protest. Liberal Imperialism and the Surveillance of Anticolonialists in Europe, 1905-1945. New York: Oxford University Press 2017. ISBN 978-0-19-066001-7 ;