International Working Group of Socialist Parties

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The International Working Group of Socialist Parties (also known as the “Vienna International” or, as a disparaging phrase from the Stalinist Comintern functionary Karl Radek, “Two and a Half International”) was an international organization of socialist parties with the sole aim of reuniting the international labor movement that had drifted apart after the founding of the Third International . According to Leninist terminology, the working group was assigned to the rejected centrism .

prehistory

At the beginning of the First World War , the majority of the members of the Second International voted, contrary to the resolutions of the last socialist congresses, for the war credits of their countries and otherwise cooperated with their governments (see also Burgfriede ). It was the fatal blow for this International. During and towards the end of the war, members drew different conclusions. After his successful October Revolution, Lenin saw the time had come with his own international, sworn to the revolution, to take advantage of the collapse of parts of the old order and to finally help the revolutionary forces achieve a breakthrough. He planned to found a new international .

The members of the old Second International met again in Bern for the first time after the war in February 1919 and agreed to found a new International, but allowed themselves to be persuaded by the Austrian delegation leader Friedrich Adler to postpone this establishment in order to avoid the Bolsheviks under Lenin to slam the door to reunification.

history

Shortly after Adler's return from Bern, Lenin founded the Third International , which was to be based on the model of the communist parties of the Soviet Union with their dictatorship of the proletariat . At Adler's suggestion, the Austrian Social Democratic Labor Party left the Second International and was looking for allies to try to reunite the two currents of the labor movement. They met in Vienna on February 27, 1921, and delegates from 20 political parties came together. a. those of the German USPD , the Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière (SFIO), the Independent Labor Party (England), the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland , the Independent Socialist Party (Romania) and the Austrian Social Democratic Labor Party (SDAP). In April 1921 the Spanish PSOE was to join. The participants agreed that there had to be not just one, but several paths to socialism, so that both sides had to cut back on their maximum ideas. The aim was to prepare a joint congress for all three groups with subsequent reunification in line with the Austromarxist topos of integral socialism . It was decided to give the Viennese group the name “International Working Group of Socialist Parties” (IASP). The chairman of the IASP actually succeeded in gathering representatives of all three major groups on April 2, 1922 in Berlin for the preliminary conference of a world congress. However, it soon became apparent that the opposites could not be bridged. The IASP dissolved, returned to the Second International and together with it founded the Socialist Workers' International in Hamburg in May 1923 .

The chairman of the IASP was the Austrian Friedrich Adler from the SDAP . The IASP published the "News of the International Working Group of Socialist Parties".

Official names of the IASP in other languages:

  • Union des Partis Socialistes pour l'Action Internationale (French)
  • Unione dei Partiti Socialisti per l'Azione Internazionale (Italian)
  • International Working Union of Socialist Parties (IWUSP)

Since the IASP was dominated by German-speaking parties, the German abbreviation IASP is also frequently used internationally.

literature

  • Herbert Steiner: The International Working Group of Socialist Parties (II 1/2. International) 1921–1923 . In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement . 1/1991, Berlin 1991, pp. 13-24.