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CHAPTER I

Origin and Development of Socialist and Labor Movements in Europe

The most important questions of the day are Socialism and Labor. The men who are leading in both these fields of thought and action are quite aware of their international character. The American public is not. It must be educated to see that every big movement on the other side has its parallel in the United States, and that they are so closely interlocked and so governed by the same group of men that we cannot ignore the European situation. Otherwise our people cannot understand the centralized strategy behind the action. It cannot realize the tremendous forces at work nor the crises present and impending. It cannot measure the significance, for example, of the presence and free action in this country of Martens and Nuorteva, nor the meaning of simultaneous strikes here and in several European countries of the men who control the loading and unloading of ships and general trade and commerce, nor the meaning for America of the establishment in Holland of a base for International Communist propaganda by the Soviet government of Russia on behalf of the Third International, with sub-bureaus in the United States.

For this reason the present report aims to give a brief review of the rise of Socialism, of its spread in various countries, of its fundamental principles and accomplishments; to give also a sketch of the Labor movement and its connection both with Socialism and with more constructive ideas of industrial reform. It will describe the International side of these movements, which took shape in the First International; succeeded, after a short interval of preparation, by the Second International which is still in existence, now fighting for its life against the more destructive recent Soviet creation, the Third (Moscow) International.

The situation in each country, leading up to present conditions, will then be separately reviewed, in the fields of both Socialism and Labor. Only then will the connection between the European situation and our own be studied and the intensive propaganda of revolutionary forces in our country be outlined.

Several things must be borne in mind if we would understand Socialism and Labor in Europe as distinguished from America. In the first place there is a small matter of terminology. When

we read of the Social-Democratic Party in Germany, or in the Scandinavian or Balkan countries, it must be understood that this is the name adopted by the Socialist party whenever a political branch was established. All Social-Democratic or SocialDemocratic Labor parties are Socialist parties. Only very recently, since the rise of the Bolsheviki, have groups of extreme Socialists, in breaking away from the regular party, called themselves Communists. Also practically all the Social-Democrats of Europe are followers of Karl Marx. There is no other system of philosophic and practical Socialism now being followed and applied.

The next and far more important point is that in considering the European situation we cannot pigeon-hole Labor by itself and Socialism by itself, as we can in the United States, in the case of organized labor of the American Federation of Labor type; nor as we also can in the case of Australia, where Labor has always been comparatively free from Marxism or any other form of doctrinaire socialism.

Throughout Europe, and to a large extent in Great Britain, Socialism and Labor must be bracketed. It is easy to study, in the Scandinavian countries, for instance, how the Socialist-Democratic Party fostered the establishment and extension of the trade unions, or vice-versa; and how the responsibility for the movements in the interest of the working classes was harmoniously divided between the two elements. The Social-Democratic Party took charge of the political and the trade unions took charge of the economic side of the struggle, and the campaigns were planned together by the leaders of the two groups.

In other countries like mercurial and individualistic France, there is an ebb and flow of collaboration, according to whether moderates or extremists are in power. The Confédération Genérale du Travail, even though it is Syndicalist, was more in sympathy with the moderate Socialism of Albert Thomas and Renaudel than it now is with the present dominant Bolshevik Party of Loriot, or even with the more moderate Longuet.

In Spain the Syndicalists and Socialists are at odds, but largely because the Spanish people are not yet sufficiently educated to really master the ideas of Socialism. In Italy, on the contrary, the people have had a long education in all these ideas and long practice in handling them, and notwithstanding the outspoken Bolshevism of the official Socialist Party, it has the almost solid backing of the big labor organizations and trade unions of the

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