For members who were not at the event, members of Workers Voice covered the First International and the Second International. I’ll try to do a very broad outline below, but you can check out the slides and handout here.
The next event is this Sunday, April 12th, from 10AM - 4PM at the Odd Fellows building.
The First International established the principle that the working class must emancipate itself. The Second International showed how far the working class could take that principle in practice: they had mass parties, unions, newspapers, schools - a real political home for millions of people. But when World War I came, most of these same organizations and parties broke - at the decisive moment they sided with their own ruling classes.
We have had discussions about this often: the Second International failure was rooted in workers falling into the trap of adopting to the parliamentary system, bureaucratic interests, class collaboration, and falling back on gradual gains while failing to keep in mind a revolutionary strategy.
Rosa Luxemburg was brought up often in the presentation about the Second International. Her argument was not against fighting for immediate gains, but that those gains must be fought for in a way that preserves confidence of the masses in a revolutionary strategy. The problem is not reform struggles, but when reforms become the whole horizon that we are struggling for. And when there are critical moments in history, the working class is not prepared to hold to a revolutionary line.
Rosa Luxemburg also mattered in a direct and personal way to many in the room. Women in attendance, who did not have a lot of previous knowledge about the left’s history, responded to Rosa’s clarity and authority in a movement otherwise dominated by men. One participant said that hearing Rosa’s voice made clear that women in our movement should speak without shame or hesitation.
Personally, this reinforced the need for more 101 materials. Political theory matters, but people need more than abstract arguments. They need to learn about real people engaged in real struggles that still feel close to our own. That kind of material can connect people to the history of the workers’ movement and give them a sense that they have a place within it. At a time when many people feel a loss of belonging, purpose, and direction, as institutions like church, family, and community have weakened, that connection to a larger historical tradition can help meet a real need.
But this has relevance to WCU’s more direct work as well. We are not in a position to imagine a revolutionary rupture that lets us bypass the constraints of present-day politics and economics. A recent interview with Steve Hall by Daniel Tutt (https://youtu.be/mXdwNl9mvas) helped clarify that for me. Today, many on the left have gone too far in the opposite direction, where we only speak about revolution and avoid speaking directly about some of the issues that shape working-class life: cost of living, insecure work, rent and bills, collapsing public services, and the decay of social life in working-class communities. We especially have a hard time talking about crime, drugs, immigration, and disorder, since there is a (false imo) belief that speaking concretely about those issues means conceding ground to the right. Yet when the left refuses to speak to these conditions, the right fills that space with resentment and nationalism.
But when we refuse to think seriously about how to govern in the present, we leave that difficult task to progressives whose politics has not been able to meet it. Any government that tries to improve working-class life while remaining within capitalism faces the power of finance: bond markets, capital flight, currency pressure, and the ability of investors to punish reforms by creating a crisis of confidence. Even modest redistributive programs run into these forms of class power, which present themselves as neutral or technical, and progressives struggle to organize the working class against them. When we cede this terrain, socialists are absent from the effort to chart a different path, and the failure of progressive politics leaves the far right as the only force many people see as an alternative.
I know this can sound like an argument to return to the point where the Second International failed. But that failure does not mean the broader strategy is impossible. It means the warnings Rosa Luxemburg gave have to be taken far more seriously.