Anti-Hyndman: The Struggle Against Militarism in the pre-1914 British Socialist Movement
Articles
Anti-Hyndman: The Struggle Against Militarism in the pre-1914 British Socialist Movement
Articles

Anti-Hyndman: The Struggle Against Militarism in the pre-1914 British Socialist Movement

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Through a historical analysis of the struggle against the militarism of Henry Hyndman in the pre-WWI British socialist movement, Lawrence Parker demonstrates the ways in which the informal, moral authority of the Second International was capable of making significant interventions in the politics of its national constituent parties. 

Membership card of the Social Democratic Federation, designed by William Morris.

Introduction

This article will argue through the example of intra-party struggle around disarmament in the British socialist movement in the run-up to 1914, the Second International exercised a distinct moral authority over its activists. With the practical and moral collapse in 1914 of major parts and players of the Second International with the onset of imperialist war, there was a gap between professed political commitments and their realization. Nevertheless, the Second International’s ethical power cannot be dismissed as a nullity, particularly when it comes to its anti-militarist left-wing.

Mike Taber has argued: 

No mechanism existed for implementation of the [Second] International’s decisions, even after the 1900 creation of the International Socialist Bureau [ISB] as the movement’s executive body. Resolutions were often not put into practice. In the derisive words of the early communist movement, the Second International functioned essentially as a ‘mailbox’ [Grigorii Zinoviev’s phrase]. Such an appreciation was undoubtedly exaggerated and unfair, given that parties of the Second International regularly carried out important internationally coordinated actions during this period. It should be recognized, however, that these actions were generally organized on a party-to-party basis, without any real central control or coordination, even compared to that of the General Council of the First International decades earlier.1

Rajani Palme Dutt, theoretician of the ‘official’ Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), offered an iteration of Zinoviev’s idea (albeit rendered in the English form of ‘post office’), stating that neither the Second International executive or the ISB “attempted to fulfill any role of international leadership, nor had they any authority over the national parties.” He added: “At the most it attempted a moral intervention in favor of socialist unity, where there was a division of parties in one country.”2 Dutt was very careful in his analysis of the Second International and generally sought to follow Lenin’s argument around tracing its precise contradictions (i.e. a growth in breadth accompanied by increasing opportunism, as in Lenin’s 1919 article ‘The Third International and its place in history’),3 but this was clearly a case of a pudding being over-egged. 

In fact, one can find plenty of evidence illustrating the authority of the Second International and its pronouncements over British activists up to 1914. As Dutt implied, this was often cast in a moral form (through appeals by left-wing militants to previously agreed politics of the Second International), but this had profound practical consequences for the Marxist left in the intra-party struggles within organizations such as the SDP/BSP, which eventually split with its social imperialists in 1916, some of its activists being thus set on the road to forming the CPGB. The long tussle over armaments was essentially the pre-history of such developments. Indeed, Dutt’s critique relies precisely on abstracting the idea of the Second International’s moral authority from its material relations; the structures and actions embedded in such authority. Post offices take some practical organizing. One, of course, cannot theorize this ethical power without abstracting and isolating it as a factor to rationalize its precise social relations. But such ethical power shouldn’t be marooned on a remote methodological island and treated as a mere appearance that had no history; or something that emerged from nowhere and nothing. 

This isn’t to suggest that there was merely a linear development from the BSP and its activists into the CPGB; indeed, there was a split in the former when a group around Edwin Fairchild and Henry Alexander broke away after the decision to affiliate to the Third International.4 Neither do I want to get into the solemn historical tomfoolery of declaring one political group or certain activists as the ‘true’ progenitors of British Bolshevism, which is usually based on pretending historical actor/s have the same politics as those of contemporary sects.

There are also problems with the implied alternative that lurks behind these types of critiques of the Second International as a loose and disaggregated federation that exerted only an occasional ethical pull on its adherents. This was clear as far back as 1921. Then, CPGB leader Tom Bell discussed the third congress of the Comintern and its recently agreed ‘Theses on the organizational structure of the communist parties and the methods and content of their work.’ Bell said: “The Third International, unlike the Second or Two-and-a-half International, is not a mere post office. It is an organized militant machine for struggle against international imperialism.”5 Despite a brief nod to the possibility of some national autonomy, it becomes obvious this is a militaristic model of organization. Formal democracy is simply equated with the bureaucracies of power and passivity seen to be inherent in the Second International. However, Bell’s alternative of “democratic centralization,” presaged on the idea of “a strong leadership ready for war and capable of adaptability,” and that the “worst form of undisciplined conduct” was “to hinder or break the unity of the common front,” is very obviously the over-centralized model that helped produce the bureaucratization of the Comintern and subsequent micro-imitators in Trotskyist/Marxist-Leninist oil-slick internationals.6 This alternative to the Second International has decisively failed in the 20th and 21st centuries.7 

However, in countries such as Britain, the authority of the Comintern among its activists was usually organized around a strong ethical imperative where it was generally believed, wrongly, that Stalin and the Soviet Union were an effective leadership in the struggle for communism. This had material consequences, when, for example, the CPGB, in the main, swung behind the idea that the Second World War was imperialist in 1939. Dutt admitted as such when he was trying to rationalize the Soviet Union’s 1943 liquidation of the Comintern: “The removal of external organizational forms of expression of international communist unity and discipline only increases the importance of the voluntary self-discipline of all communists and communist parties in maintaining unity, cooperation and common understanding between communist parties and fidelity to the obligations of international working-class solidarity.”8 Note Dutt’s phrase “increases the importance” i.e. this was something that had already emerged in the 1920s and the 1930s. 

Both the Second and Third internationals took this form of voluntary self-discipline allied to either relatively decentralized or over-centralized bureaucracies and both ended in disaster during world war. While we should reject hypostatized binary choices around these models, it is highly unlikely that it will be possible to dispense with voluntary self-discipline as an important mediatory factor in future proletarian organization. 

To that end, the moral authority of the Second International, illustrated by the British anti-imperialist left between 1909-14, should not be treated as a mere accoutrement of institutional failure. If it is treated in such a fashion, then it must be asked as to why on earth leading figures of the post-Second International left insisted on reviving what Lenin called in summer 1915 “the now forgotten ideals of genuine socialism.”9 As Taber has argued: “… Lenin and Luxemburg never renounced the resolutions the Second International had adopted. Quite the contrary. During the years of the First World War, for example, they constantly referred to the best of these resolutions – particularly the resolutions on militarism and war – to illustrate the extent to which the Second International’s majority leaders were violating these resolutions in practice.”10 Indeed, Lenin was clear in 1915 that the internationalist solidarity of the Second International hadn’t quite collapsed, drawing attention to “revolutionary social-democratic elements” in Germany, Russia, Scandinavia, the Balkans, Italy, Britain (part of the British Socialist Party), France, and the Netherlands. He added: “To rally these Marxist elements, however small their numbers may be at the outset; to reanimate, in their name, the now forgotten ideals of genuine socialism, and to call upon the workers of all lands to break with the chauvinists and rally about the old banner of Marxism – such is the task of the day.”11 To some degree, Lenin’s optimism about the future was presaged on the fact that the Second International had nurtured such elements with their continuing commitment to its anti-war ideals. 

Hyndman and Social Imperialism

This article primarily deals with, in its British context, the organization known as the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) prior to 1908; the Social Democratic Party (SDP) from 1908-11; and the British Socialist Party (BSP) from 1911. These organizations were to some extent dominated politically and financially by Henry Hyndman, founder of the SDF and an important figure in the development of Marxism in Britain.12 This article covers the period in which Hyndman’s influence began to wane after his faction supported British imperialism in the First World War. He and his faction were forced out of the BSP by its anti-war left in 1916, forming the small National Socialist Party. Hyndman retained control of Justice after the 1916 break, an important British socialist publication, which went back to the days of the SDF.  

Lenin wrote and took sides with the SDP/BSP anti-militarist left on several occasions, noting in 1911 that “liberals of all countries, Russia included, are rejoicing and laughing now at the sight of the predominance of opportunism in the British labor movement.”13 Lenin took exception to the actions and arguments of Hyndman. In the former’s words of 1913: “Hyndman has got it into his head that Germany is threatening to crush and enslave Britain and that socialists should, therefore, support the demand for a ‘proper’ (i.e., strong) navy for the defense of Britain! Socialists in the role of supporters of a ‘strong’ navy – and this in a country whose navy helps enslave and plunder in the most shameless, feudal manner the three-hundred millions of India’s population, tens of millions of people in Egypt and other colonies.”14

This wasn’t an isolated occurrence on the part of Hyndman. As far back as 1881, one can find him musing on an idea that has long since crossed over into the neo-liberal lexicon: noble British (‘or English’ in Hyndman’s rendering) interventions on the side of democratic forces, leveraging, in this 19th century instance, its naval power: 

Lying apart from the continent of Europe, and practically free from the risk of invasion, we can not only shelter men who are driven from their country for mere political offences, but we can rightfully stand forth at the critical moment on behalf of those who at present think that England must necessarily range herself on the side of a conservatism which has come to be revolutionary. Each nation, doubtless, must work out its own social troubles; but a combination of despotisms can only be met and overcome by a combination of peoples. The true alliances for England in the future are the democracies of Europe, and her real strength is on the sea.15

When Hyndman reached a second round of biographical writings in 1912, this standpoint had become focused on what one of the chapters called ‘The German menace.’ In response to German militarism, Hyndman “advocated the permanent maintenance of a [British] fleet sufficiently powerful to secure our domination of the narrow seas under all circumstances, and the safety of the trade routes so far as this may be achieved.”16 Like all good social imperialists, Hyndman denied he was in any way chauvinist, stressing his admiration for the German working class and German Social Democracy.17 He also tried to square this with the pronouncements of the Second International, in recognition of the latter’s ideological pull and to add political gravitas to his claims. Hyndman argued: “We would give up armaments, sweep away militarism, and put an end to competition in all countries upon the grounds of economy in its widest sense, as well as of humanity. But at present, things being as they are, we have decided at all international congresses that, as we are internationalists and not anti-nationalists, a national citizen army in each nationality to be used for its own defense is desirable.”18

Friedrich Engels had characterized Hyndman back in 1883 as “an arch-conservative and… extremely chauvinistically minded.”19 In a similar vein, Engels told Karl Kautsky in 1884 that Hyndman was “a petty and hard-faced John Bull, possessing a vanity considerably in excess of his talent and natural gifts.”20 So, Hyndman’s propensity to British chauvinism, clearly present in his attitude to the British navy, had been noted by others. 

Fierce intra-party debates, all publicly reported in the pages of Justice, sprung up over Hyndman’s militarism in 1909, 1910, and 1912 (the latter provoked by Hyndman’s biography that appeared in the same year). These debates followed a familiar pattern of Hyndman exploding into print on the topic of the ‘German menace,’ aided and abetted by the lead columns of Justice; followed by a furious open correspondence as party members and branches strove to dissociate themselves from Hyndman’s rank social imperialism. The debate from 1910 will serve as the main example of such disputes. 

Resolutions against standing armies and in favor of the general arming of the population had been agreed to by the Second International in 1889, 1893, and 1907. For Hyndman, the British navy stood in the place of such a citizen army, “as, being dependent for six-sevenths of our food on foreign countries we could be starved out… and because conscription or compulsory service not being adopted here, the country is liable to sudden and partially successful attack even by an inferior force, should the mastery of the narrow seas pass from us temporarily.”17

Some of Hyndman’s critics thought this parallel between Second International-advocated citizen armies and the British navy was absurd. Edwin Fairchild, a member of the SDP’s Central Hackney branch, a hotbed of rebellion against Hyndman’s social imperialism, argued in 1910: “The British navy cannot take the place of a citizen force, inasmuch as it cannot be used against the governing class; its units are beyond the scope of the civil law in time of peace, and it is entirely removed from the sphere of public control. Therefore, it is a very serious matter for the [SDP], or one of its members, to be opposed, on this point, to the opinion of the socialist party throughout the world.”21 As with Hyndman, the party left appealed to the authority of the international on this disputed point.

One might ask why Hyndman, as at least a formal admirer of German Social Democracy, would not expect his German comrades to play a role in dealing with the militarism of its own governing class. In fact, Hyndman was thoroughly defeatist in relation to the idea that “German Social Democrats could check any determined act of hostility against either England or France.”22 He added: “This latter theory I never believed for a moment. But I asked [August] Bebel and [Paul] Singer and others point-blank at Brussels whether anything could be done by them if a serious attempt were made, by socialists in France and England, to check any counter hostile move… They told me plainly ‘no’: that at the first call to arms they would be unable to check mobilization, though, as in [the Franco-Prussian war of] 1870, they would be prepared to run great risks by way of protest. What might happen later nobody could foretell.”23

Hyndman and Militarism

In July 1910, Hyndman had again exploded into print on the naval issue in the pages of the bourgeois Morning Post, where he argued that “socialists of all people ought to be the last to run any risk of allowing Prussianized Germany to become dominant in the North Sea and the Channel.”24 Justice then received a deluge of critical comments and complaints from around the SDP. Several branches, mostly in the London area, wrote in to dissociate themselves from Hyndman’s views.25

Many oppositionists drew attention to the fact that Hyndman had stepped outside the political boundaries of the Second International, demonstrating that the latter’s anti-militarism had taken hold of political imaginations. Therefore, John Askew argued that Hyndman’s Morning Post missive would “bring him a more than unpleasant quarter of an hour at the [1910 Copenhagen congress of the Second International], since his letters amount to nothing more nor less than a throwing overboard of the entire principles of international socialism, at least as understood and practiced by the socialist parties in the various countries.”26 Similarly, William Morgan argued: “As a party to the international congress the English [sic] Social-Democracy is bound by its rulings, and comrade Hyndman, in his capacity as leader in the English [sic] party, is bound among others. It therefore behoves him as a leader to see to it his declarations are in conformity with international socialist policy. On this question he has failed to do so.”17 Zelda Kahan, of Central Hackney branch, said: “… we… have a right to expect that as a leader of the Social-Democratic Party [Hyndman] should not use his name and position to defend and advocate a policy [that] is contrary to the spirit of every socialist organization of any note.”27 Clearly, the notion of being in an international that was aligned with sister socialist organizations and that had distinct principles on issues such as armaments and war had an impact on Hyndman’s opponents in Britain and partly facilitated their opposition. 

The SDP’s right and left both drew upon their German comrades in support of their arguments. The editors of Justice first quoted an article from the German SPD’s Vorwärts newspaper before running it in full.28 This became another point of controversy in Justice as Theodore Rothstein, also of Central Hackney branch, drew attention to a note that the editors of Vorwärts appended to a critique of Robert Blatchford (who had produced a series of Daily Mail articles in December 1909 that also chauvinistically dwelt on the topic of the ‘German menace’) on July 13 that Hyndman would have obviously been reluctant to print in Justice (although it was produced in Rothstein’s correspondence).29 The Vorwärts note read: “Hyndman has thought it fit and proper to publish in the conservative and imperialist Morning Post a confused article on the need of increased naval armaments as against the ‘German menace.’ Hyndman declares his views to be personal. We, however, are of the opinion that such views, by the mere fact of being held, place those who profess them outside every and any socialist party.”30

However, one can see why Hyndman and Justice were keener to reproduce a Vorwärts article arguing against German rearmament. This obviously drew on some of the more historical arguments about the evolution of British imperialism previously made by Karl Kautsky. His argument from 1898 was that with a 19th century dominance of industrial capital, Britain became an international promoter of free trade, or Manchesterism.31 Kautsky thus became relatively blind to the negative reality of Britain’s world dominance and imperial power.32 These ideas were present in the Vorwärts article. It said: “If the German government refuses [to reach an agreement with the British]… the fate of the Liberal government is sealed, and then also the era of free trade, which is defended by a great portion of the English [sic] bourgeoisie, with praiseworthy determination, will have reached its end.”33 The piece added that “we salute the English people as one of the first civilized nations of the world” although it did look forward to the day when “in both countries the war-cry shall be heard against the lords of the Earth on this and on the other side of the Channel.”17

Kahan chastised the editors of Justice for using the arguments of Vorwärts in the manner that they did: 

You give a quotation from… Vorwärts [that] you say upholds all you and Hyndman have said, because it attacks German imperialist policy. This would have been a quite fit and proper thing to do had anyone denied that Germany does aim after such dreams… What we say is that if Germany is a tiger England is a lion, and that in any quarrel between them both are to blame. The duty of Social Democrats in each country is to try and tame or at least keep in check its own wild beast, and the way to do that is, not to fan popular resentment against the other country by continually harping upon the sins and shortcomings of the would-be enemy, but by pointing out the faults of our own government, to get the people to force on them a peaceful and less-provocative policy. Our German comrades understand this; they therefore make light of England’s blame in this matter and attack their own government for all they are worth. We, on the other hand, play directly into the hands of the jingoes by helping to throw stones and dirt at the German beast, as though England were a poor, white, innocent, wronged little lamb.34

Whatever the merits of Kahan’s argument on the socialist internationalist principle of the ‘main enemy is at home’ and her refusal of Hyndman’s chauvinism, she was not quite right in suggesting that Vorwärts was only making light of British imperialism to attack its ‘own’ government; the idea of downplaying British dominance was, unfortunately, embedded in some of Kautsky’s previous arguments on imperialism. But the dispute in the SDP was becoming ever more internationalized and this process continued into the Second International’s Copenhagen congress in August and September of 1910. 

As Hyndman supporter Harry Quelch wryly noted in a Justice editorial immediately after the congress, German SPD member Georg Ledebour “took the opportunity the occasion offered to animadvert on our defense of British naval supremacy in the present circumstances.”35 In fact, Ledebour was particularly scathing about the attitude of the British movement in general, both Independent Labour Party (ILP) and SDP, during the congress debate on armaments. 

The ISB, the permanent organization of the Second International, declared to the congress that it would support “all socialist organizations in their fight against militarism by furnishing them with the necessary data and information, and will, when the occasion arrives, endeavor to bring about united action,” confirming the anti-militarist thrust of a previously agreed resolution at the 1907 Stuttgart congress.36 To this, Édouard Vaillant and Keir Hardie proposed what would become a rejected amendment around using a general strike as one of the means to “prevent and hinder” war.37 This sparked Ledebour’s comments about the British delegation on the congress commission on arbitration and disarmament. For example, he mocked the ILP’s Bruce Glasier for thinking that wars were caused by “the savage animal instincts of man” rather than by capitalism.38 “Such a sentiment,” he stated, “must be attributed to… youthful innocence and would doubtless find favor in a Young Men’s Christian Association.”39

Ledebour denied that the general strike advocated by Vaillant and Keir Hardie had any universal application, before unveiling an attack on the standing of the whole British delegation. He said: “I read in Justice… I presume from the pen of my old friend Quelch, that ‘we demur [object] to the abolition of the right of capture [of naval vessels]’. I deny to those who demur to the abolition of this kind of piracy the moral right to advocate here the general strike.”17 This point of controversy had been raised by Kahan, who queried whether Justice’s support for the right of capture (i.e., something that clearly favored a much-stronger British naval force) had been a “misprint.”34 An editorial note read: “There was no misprint. The opinion has been expressed many times in our columns… War is war, not a game of chess.”17

Ledebour denounced Labour Party members who were arguing for the general strike tactic while their parliamentary representatives were voting for armaments. He said: “You, [Ramsay] MacDonald and your party, are ‘practical politicians’; so practical that you lose sight of principles. By what right do you take it upon yourselves to commit other people to the general strike against war when you do not in your own country take up the same anti-militarist position as the socialist party in all other countries? So long as you vote the budget, and thereby the arming of the British soldiery, you cannot come to us with more far-reaching proposals.”40 Under pressure from the left, Hardie said that the Labour Party did not accept the arguments put forward in Justice or the opposition to the reduction in the British navy’s strength that had been put forward by the likes of Blatchford and Hyndman; it was against war and militarism. But in a manner that rather underlined the criticism being made of ‘practical politicians,’ Hardie also implied that Ledebour’s hostility to the British Labour Party actions in voting through a budget full of ‘military estimates’ was because the latter didn’t understand tactics and his views were thus a leftover from an anti-parliamentary phase of socialism.17 Jack Jones spoke for the SDF and his speech tended to paper over his party’s divisions in stressing anti-war unity, and was soft on Hyndman’s views.41 Jones said: “The party as a whole must not be held responsible for all the expressions of individual members.”42

In one sense, there is clearly an element of ‘mailbox’ about all this, given that although socialists could strongly imply that the words of Hyndman put him outside the movement, he remained in situ until 1916, when he was defeated in the BSP. However, the movement was being thoroughly educated in socialist principle and Ledebour’s contextualization of Hyndman’s reactionary diatribes amid the woes of the ILP’s pacifism and the pro-militarist actions of Labour members of the British parliament was cutting. Principle and debate (i.e., messages and discourse) cannot be dispensed with and, too often, the implied alternative to this Second International culture is non-debate and an atavistic sense of ‘action’ presided over by sect sergeant-majors: at best, warmed-over early Comintern; or, at worst, warmed-over ‘official’ communism of the Stalin years and beyond. It turns out that the ‘mailbox’ is important if the letters inside it reflect a genuine debate around principle. 

Similarly, on the potential expulsion of those who had fallen foul of the international’s anti-militarism: Hyndman was clearly a recidivist in terms of his social imperialism and far gone on his road but, on the other hand, it was important for the German SDP and the British SDP/BSP left-wing to address the rank and file of the ILP and the broader movement on the errors of its leadership. The latter being inside the International meant that a trough of British ‘ethical/practical’ politics could be dissected and combatted. Ledebour denied the British delegation a “moral right” to propose anti-militarist actions to the International given its record. But while that might be read as an unfortunate concession to ILP ‘ethics,’ such denials had practical educative consequences that reverberated far into the future.

Another facet of these debates that also shouldn’t be treated as a mere accoutrement of Second International failure is the polite tone involved in some of the British debates. For example, Kahan wrote of Hyndman in August 1910: “It is sad enough to think that the teacher whom we all love and admire so much should have fallen into such a morass.”34 This tone of debate continued into the SDP’s congress of April 1911. A Justice editorial noted that “in all discussions there was an entire absence of acrimony and bitterness and a display of good feeling.” This took on a slight political edge when the editorial also commented on the “sharpest differences of opinion” combined with the rather hopeful assessment that such differences “were neither wide nor deep.”43 Similarly, in the report on the congress debate, Kahan, who moved a Central Hackney resolution that “called upon the organization, its executive organ, and individual members to combat with their utmost energy… the demands for additional armaments,” was said to have “delivered an extremely able speech.”44 (This resolution, and Kahan’s speech in support, were commented on approvingly by Lenin in 1911.)45 Hyndman’s supporters weren’t always so charitable and Kahan herself was the object of a slur by Victor Fisher, who referred to her as “Fräulein Zelda Kahan” (i.e. pro-German) in January 1913.46 Despite her apparently polite tone, the politics of Kahan’s intervention in 1911 were noticeably sharp: “… the English [sic] navy was kept to maintain the empire. Never had the SDP made a bigger and more terrible mistake than in identifying the party with the jingo warmonger – they had placed themselves outside the international movement.”47

Looking back in 1968, Zelda Kahan-Coates gave some indication of her feelings around the tone of political debate when she remembered attending a conference of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in Brotherhood Church, Dalston in May 1907: “I sat in the gallery as a visitor, listening to the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks who sat in a body on opposite sides of the hall. The discussions were so furious, they attacked one another so fiercely, using the most insulting words, that I was really astounded.”48 Of course, later in her ‘Leninist’ narrative, Kahan-Coates pictures Lenin as correcting her in a fatherly manner when she voices some of this surprise. But it is obvious that back in 1910-11, the young Zelda Kahan hadn’t adopted this furious tone of debate (still being badly mimicked by sect leaders to this day) without any noticeably deleterious effect on the sharp political differences being expressed. Sometimes, politeness and an even tone pays dividends, while, on other occasions, the type of mockery that Ledebour inflicted on British socialists in 1910 is the order of the day.

This politeness did not endure inside the BSP. When the, by now, anti-war majority was able to defeat Hyndman’s pro-war clique in the BSP’s 1916 congress, there is evidence that the social imperialists were given the bird on their exit from the party. An editorial in Justice (which stayed under the control of Hyndman’s faction after the split) complained: “Booing is scarcely a dignified way of expressing disapproval of sentiments or action, and those who act in that fashion are not likely to be regarded as serious advocates of a greater change than any that has taken place in human society… ‘Greybeards’ would never be applied jeeringly to those who have devoted years of service to the socialist cause by anyone possessing the slightest sense of responsibility.”49 Hyndman’s complete collapse into chauvinism and the erosion of his political influence meant that tactical politeness could no longer serve the left’s purposes.  

Conclusion

We began this article with Dutt’s claim that the Second International exercised no real authority over its sections or activists. This case study from Britain partially undermines that view: when combatting militarism, activists on its left consistently drew upon the agreed positions of the international and stated that figures such as Hyndman had put themselves outside its fraternity; while Hyndman also attempted, less successfully, to invoke the authority of the international. German and Russian socialists commented upon and intervened in debates in the British party, and this spilled over into international congresses. 

It is true that the international had only a moral authority over its constituent parts, in line with Dutt’s argument that it only really made moral interventions (albeit that such interventions were important in procuring the unity of socialist forces in countries such as France). However, it is doubtful that any proletarian organization, militarized or non-militarized, could function without being mediated by such moral authority. This was also a socialist morality mediated by organization: the journals, congress meetings, and branches in which the debate over Hyndman’s fallacies sprung into life. It spawned an opposition that in Britain eventually defeated Hyndman and his cronies, moving some BSP members towards the formation of the CPGB in 1920. These are very practical, real-world consequences. Some Second International sections and their leaders collapsed in 1914 with disastrous consequences for the world movement but some of its principled anti-militarism lived on in new forms that contained some of the promise of the old.

 

 

Liked it? Take a second to support Cosmonaut on Patreon! At Cosmonaut Magazine we strive to create a culture of open debate and discussion. Please write to us at CosmonautMagazine@gmail.com if you have any criticism or commentary you would like to have published in our letters section.
Become a patron at Patreon!
  1. Quotations have original emphasis unless stated otherwise; M Taber (ed.) ‘Introduction’ Under the socialist banner: resolutions of the Second International 1889-1912 Chicago 2021 p5.
  2. RP Dutt The Internationale London 1964 p122.
  3. VI Lenin ‘The Third International and its place in history’ in Collected works Volume 29 pp305-313.
  4. Edwin Fairchild (1874-1955) was a long-term member of the SDF and a conscientious objector during the First World War. He became chairman of the BSP after the departure of Hyndman’s supporters in 1916, resigning in 1919 when it sought affiliation to the Third International.
  5. T Bell ‘Party organization’ The Communist September 17 1921. This is from a three-article series by Bell on party organization in the light of the Comintern’s third congress of that year.
  6. Ibid; T Bell ‘On party organization’ The Communist October 8 1921.
  7. A note of caution on this point: the Comintern never actually achieved its ultra-centralized aspiration. In countries such as Britain, ‘Bolshevization’ of the CPGB was partly offset by some of the remnants of a more democratic culture. I argue this point more fully in Communists and Labour – The National Left-Wing Movement 1925-1929 London 2018.
  8. Dutt op cit p284.
  9. VI Lenin ‘Socialism and war’ in Collected works Volume 21 p328.
  10. Taber op cit p8.
  11. VI Lenin ‘Socialism and war’ op cit.
  12. Henry Hyndman (1842-1921) was originally a conservative before converting to Marxism and leading the SDF and its successors.
  13. VI Lenin ‘Conference of the British Social-Democratic Party’ in Collected works Volume 17 p178.
  14. VI Lenin ‘British Socialist Party conference’ in Collected works Volume 19 pp93-94.
  15. H Hyndman England for all London 1881 pp191-192.
  16. H Hyndman Further reminiscences London 1912 p393.
  17. Ibid.
  18. Ibid p395.
  19. Engels to August Bebel August 30 1883 cited in ‘Marx and Engels on the British working-class movement 1879-1895’ Labour Monthly September 1933.
  20. Engels to Karl Kautsky June 22 1884 cited in ‘Marx and Engels on the British working-class movement–II 1879-1895’ Labour Monthly October 1933.
  21. ‘Social-Democrats and a big navy’ (correspondence) Justice August 27 1910.
  22. Hyndman Further reminiscences op cit p397.
  23. Ibid; August Bebel (1840-1913) was a famous German socialist politician and writer. Paul Singer (1844-1911) was an organizer of the German SPD and a co-chairman of the party along with August Bebel.
  24. Hyndman’s letter was reproduced in Justice August 20 1910.
  25. Namely branches in Bethnal Green, Brixton, Camberwell, Enfield, Finsbury, Pollokshaws, South West Ham, St George’s and Whitechapel. See Justice August 6, August 13, August 20 and September 17.
  26. Justice August 6 1910; Askew (1869-1929) was a British writer and translator, translating some of Karl Kautsky’s works from German to English.
  27. Justice August 20 1910; Zelda Kahan (1886-1969) was born in Russia, moving to Britain at a young age. She was a member of the SDF/SDP and its BSP successor. She subsequently joined the CPGB and, as Zelda Kahan-Coates, was the author of various books on the Soviet Union and its relations with the world.
  28. Justice August 13 1910; Justice August 20 1910.
  29. Theodore Rothstein (1871-1953) was a Russian socialist who had joined the SDF in 1895 and positioned himself on the left of the party. He played a significant role in the formation of the CPGB and served as an ambassador for the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Robert Blatchford (1851-1943) was a socialist campaigner and founder of The Clarion newspaper. In later life he become attracted to spiritualist ideas.
  30. Cited in Justice August 27 1910.
  31. Called ‘Manchesterism’ after the apparent geographical location of its birth.
  32. K Kautsky ‘Past and recent colonial policy’ in Karl Kautsky on colonialism London 2013 pp66-72.
  33. Cited in Justice August 20 1910.
  34. Justice August 20 1910.
  35. H Quelch ‘The Copenhagen congress’ Justice September 10 1910; Harry Quelch (1858-1913) was a founder member of the SDF and the editor of Justice. Georg Ledebour (1850-1947) was a journalist and a member of the Reichstag, 1900-18. In 1931, he joined the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany (SAPD), a split from the SPD.
  36. ‘The international congress’ Justice September 10 1910; See ‘Militarism and international conflicts’ Taber op cit pp103-105.
  37. ‘The International congress’ op cit; Édouard Vaillant (1840-1915) was a French socialist elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1893 who supported the French effort in the First World War. Keir Hardie (1856-1915) was a Scottish trade unionist who became a founder member of the ILP and the Labour Party.
  38. Bruce Glasier (1859-1920) was a Scottish socialist politician who was opposed to the First World War.
  39. ‘The international congress’ op cit. Glasier subsequently rebutted Ledebour’s charge at the congress.
  40. ‘The international congress’ op cit; Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937) was a member of the ILP who later became prime minister of the first minority Labour government in 1924.
  41. Jack Jones (1873-1941) was a trade-union organizer in the National Union of General Workers. He joined Hyndman’s National Socialist Party (NSP) split from the BSP in 1916. He became an MP for the NSP in 1918, in the Silvertown constituency, London, taking the Labour Party whip in 1919.
  42. ‘The international congress’ op cit.
  43. ‘Our 31st annual conference’ Justice April 22 1911.
  44. ‘The 31st annual conference’ Justice April 22 1911. This article is not to be confused with the editorial at the previous footnote.
  45. VI Lenin ‘Conference of the British Social-Democratic Party’ in Collected works Volume 17 pp173-178.
  46. Justice January 4 1913; Victor Fisher (1870-1954) had joined the SDF from the Fabian Society. He led a 1915 right-wing split from the BSP, the Socialist National Defence Committee, as a result of his social imperialism. Fisher was clearly angry after resigning from the BSP’s national executive when the left won a resolution on the issue of national defense that Kahan had moved.
  47. ‘The 31st annual conference’ op cit.
  48. Z Kahan-Coates ‘Memories of Lenin’ Labour Monthly November 1968.
  49. ‘The BSP conference – and after?’ Justice April 27 1916.