The Labour and Socialist International and ‘the Colonial Problem’: Mobilisation by Necessity or Force, 1925–1928

Abstract

This chapter address how the Labour and Socialist International (LSI, 1923–1940) approached and analysed colonialism and imperialism as global structures in the 1920s. Focusing on the work of the LSI Colonial Commission, it discloses how the LSI categorised the question as ‘the colonial problem’, which overlapped with transnational discussions involving class, race and capitalism as global oppressive structures, and that liberation could not be achieved before the colonies had reached a higher social and political level. Combatting the challenges of other actors, the Communist International and the League Against Imperialism, the LSI was forced to mobilise a policy on the colonial question, a process that partly culminated at the Third International LSI Congress in Brussels in 1928, partly with the publication of the book The Colonial Problem.