The International Socialist Peace Movement on the Eve of World War I Revisited: The Campaign of “War against War!”and the Basle International Socialist Congress in 1912

Abstract

International socialism's campaign of peace on the eve of World War I mobilized up to one million European workers to protest against the insanity of a European bloodletting. Yet the skewed image of “all” Europeans rallying to their fatherland in a patriotic frenzy is alive and well. The knowledge of this expansive peace movement largely has been marginalized and its nature misunderstood or interpreted ideologically. This article revisits the peace crusade of international socialism on the eve of World War I so that its size, complexity, and accomplishments can be appreciated fully. Instead of emphasizing the divisions and weaknesses of the movement—the conventional approach—the article attempts to describe and to explain how European socialist parties were able to stitch together an expansive international peace movement in spite of ideological, legal, and logistical challenges. The article starts with a brief overview of the peace activism of the Second International from 1889 to 1912 and then focuses on the spectacular antiwar campaign of “War against War!” and its concomitant International Socialist Congress of Basle in the autumn of 1912 to demonstrate three points: first, to shed new light on the peace movement of international socialism; second, to explain how the 1912 antiwar campaign informed socialist peace strategies on the eve of World War I (and thereby to dispel the myth of “war celebration” among Europe's working classes); and finally, to consider briefly the importance of this history for peace activists of today.