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The Main Features of Economic
and Social Development
in the Capitalist Countries

p The last three decades of the nineteenth century saw the rapid development of capitalism which had by now asserted itself in many more countries (South-East Europe, North and South America, Japan, to a certain extent in China). Capitalist production was making great strides in the leading capitalist countries, towns continued to grow rapidly and communications greatly improved. Momentous changes took place in the course of a single generation.

p The end of the nineteenth century came to be known as the "steel age”, for metal was coming to take the place of wood on an increasing scale. From 1870 to 1900 steel production multiplied 56 times over! Other branches of metallurgy also advanced rapidly. Technological innovations and growing demand also spurred on the engineering industry. By the end of the century the world’s rail network had expanded tremendously, totalling 500,000 miles as opposed to 140,000 miles at the end of 1870. In the nineties, in a number of towns horse-drawn trams were replaced by a new invention—electric trams. Electricity was now made wide use of in industry, transport and communications. At the end of the century the telephone became an everyday amenity just as the electric telegraph had become slightly earlier.

p Concentration played an important part in industry, trade and banking by this time. Large enterprises were now ousting medium and small ones in the course of ever livelier competition. During world economic crises, which occurred at regular intervals, approximately once every ten years, large enterprises started " swallowing up" petty producers faced with ruin. In many spheres of economic life powerful firms and monopolies—large banks, trusts and joint-stock companies—grew up. Monopolies of this type 501 gradually started to play a leading role in their particular spheres of banking and industry.

The capitalist development of the latter part of the nineteenth century was of a relatively “peaceful” variety. No major revolutions or wars on a continental scale took place during its last thirty years. Of course, there were various revolutionary outbreaks among the oppressed peoples and a continuous chain of "little wars”, such as the wars of colonial plunder against the peoples of Asia and Africa, but from the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune of 1871 up until the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) and the Russian Revolution of 1905, the world saw no major upheavals. However, contradictions were building up in the capitalist world and their ultimate explosion was inevitable. The economic and political development at this period proceeded at an uneven rate.

The German Bourgeois-Junker Empire

p After German unity had been achieved in 1871, the country’s economy made rapid headway. The five thousand million francs wrested from France by way of war indemnities after the FrancoPrussian War gave an important stimulus to German industry. By the end of the century German industry had overtaken France’s in both its growth rate and level of development and in some spheres had overtaken that of Britain as well. By this time Germany was one of the world’s leading industrial powers and in some spheres, such as the chemical industry and electrotechnology led Europe, far outstripping countries where capitalism had taken root much earlier. German agriculture was also rapidly assuming a capitalist character: large Junkers’ estates were transformed into regular grain and meat factories.

p However all this economic achievement did not imply any social progress. Germany was still one of the few states in Europe which had not experienced a successful popular revolution, and this factor was to leave its mark on the whole of the subsequent development of the country, its people and its national tradition.

p The new, semi-absolutist empire was of a distinctly militarist type led by reactionary Prussia and its Hohenzollern rulers. The nobility, Junkers and military had not lost any of their former economic and political privileges, and continued to play the dominant role in the country’s affairs.

p For twenty years—up until 1890—the German Empire’s domestic and foreign policy were in the hands of Chancellor Bismarck. This cunning and unscrupulous politician was eager to promote the interests of the country’s thriving capitalism. He built 502 up the country’s military might and by means of complex diplomatic manoeuvres strove to secure for Germany a decisive voice in European affairs. He went all out to consolidate German unity under Prussia and the House of Hohenzollern, and saw the country’s most formidable enemy to be one within its borders, namely the working class. Between 1878 and 1890 he applied his AntiSocialist Law banning the activities of the German Social-Democrats and forcing them to go underground. This however did not daunt the German working class, and the Social-Democrats, led by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, closed their ranks and attained a still higher level of political awareness. Contrary to the hopes of the German reactionaries, the party’s influence in the country did not decline but grew still more powerful. In 1890 the Anti-Socialist Law was lifted, which implied a serious defeat for Bismarck and a victory for the German working class.

The new emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II (1888-1918), was determined to have the last say in all state affairs, and Bismarck was left with no choice but to resign from office. In this new reign however, the militarist aspect of German policy showed no signs of abating. The 1890s saw still further progress in German industry. The aspirations of the German capitalists became more ambitious as the country’s economic strength came more and more to the fore. The ruling class started talking of a transition to "policies on a world scale" and Germany hastened to join in the race for colonial possessions overseas, and to build up a navy. Wilhelm II was all in favour of this policy of the "mailed fist" and his militaristic empire started making undisguised preparations for a world war.

The Beginning of Britain’s Decline

p Meanwhile Britain, who had led the rest of the Western world for preceding one and a half centuries was clearly starting to lose her former supremacy during the last thirty years of the nineteenth century.

p Britain still possessed an enormous colonial empire which provided her with a source of untold riches and continued to constitute the main pillar of her power. She also possessed the world’s largest merchant marine and war fleet and enormous capital resources deployed throughout the world. Yet, at the same time, Britain no longer had the industrial monopoly which she had held on to so successfully up until the earlier part of the nineteenth century. The United States had already overtaken her in volume of industrial output, and Germany was now ahead of her in some spheres, while as far as her rate of industrial growth was 503 concerned, Britain had by now been outstripped by a number of younger capitalist states.

p The ruling classes in Britain strove to consolidate their country’s position in the world by further extending her colonial empire. At the end of the ’70s Britain waged a war of extermination against the Zulus of South Africa, which enabled her to seize large territories. At the same period she also waged a long colonial war against Afghanistan, whose people succeeded in safeguarding their independence. In 1882 Britain occupied Egypt and virtually brought her to her knees. A few years earlier, by means of diplomatic manoeuvres, Britain had succeeded in wresting Cyprus from the Turks, annexing it in 1878. The Sudan was captured in the 1880s, and Burma was annexed on January 1, 1886. The British colonial empire went on extending its frontiers, bringing suffering and hardship to the subject peoples of Africa, Asia and Oceania, who were being bled dry by the British colonialists.

p The Irish question was to remain one of the main sources of political controversy throughout this period: the enslaved people of the "Emerald Isle" continued an undaunted struggle against its English oppressors.

p During the last third of the nineteenth century political power in Britain fluctuated between two bourgeois parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives. The Liberal leader William Gladstone (1809-1898), four times Prime Minister, was a past master at political compromise and skilful rounding-off of political corners. The Conservative leader Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) went in more for flamboyant gestures particularly in the sphere of diplomatic intrigues and manoeuvres, and enjoyed playing with fire. In essence, the policies pursued by these two parties had much in common: both the Liberals and the Conservatives defended the interests of the British big bourgeoisie, landowners and colonialists. However, in order to maintain the wealthy classes’ domination of the country’s affairs at a time when workers and their families constituted the vast majority of the population, both the Liberals and the Conservatives were obliged to gradually introduce a certain number of democratic and social concessions. During the 1870s much important new social legislation was passed: primary education was extended to be made compulsory in 1880, trade unions were legalised, new laws were passed for the protection of child labour, and under the Public Health Act of 1875 public health authorities were set up throughout the country. The Third Reform Bill of 1884 extended suffrage, doubling the male electorate.

p These partial concessions which the ruling classes found themselves obliged to make were the indirect result of the political 504 activity of the British working class. At the end of the last century the trade unions were the main organisations of the British proletariat. Only in the ’80s did socialist organisations begin to emerge in the British labour movement, and even these were small and had little influence. In 1893, the Independent Labour Party was set up with Keir Hardie (1856-1915) as its leader. This party put the political struggle of the proletariat before all else, yet it too proved ill-equipped to become a militant revolutionary organisation of the British proletariat.

p The British workers of this period organised frequent largescale strikes, but in the late nineteenth century this strike movement, in comparison with Chartism, was definitely lacking in militant ardour. One of the important reasons for this was the fact that by this time the bourgeoisie had built up for itself a reliable bastion of support in the shape of the "workers’ aristocracy”, consisting of the better-paid stratum of skilled workers.

Of course, not all sections of the proletariat succumbed to the same extent to the influence of the bourgeoisie, yet in the ranks of the organised workers’ movement—the Trade Unions, the Independent Labour Party and the Co-operative Movement—the influence of the bourgeoisie was reflected in opportunist ideology and tactics.

France Under the Third Republic

p After the humiliating defeat in the war with Prussia, entailing the loss of the two industrially developed provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and the payment of an enormous (for that period) war indemnity of five thousand million francs, France’s economic development suffered a severe setback. More than half the population was still engaged in agriculture. Medium and small enterprises continued to play a large part in industry and it was only in the 1890s that new industries based on the latest technological innovations started to grow up. Concentration was to proceed most rapidly of all in banking: a number of French banks succeeded in gaining control over enormous capital, which however was not fed into economic development. In search of still larger profits the French capitalists preferred to export their capital overseas, above all in the form of government loans. By 1890 French capital exports overseas already totalled 20,000 million. This represented a serious drain on the country’s economy and held back its development. At the same time, the capitalists were receiving large dividends. This export of French capital was of a marked usurious character.

p After the defeat of the Paris Commune, a wave of harsh reaction set in. Communards were shot, deported to the colonies 505 or imprisoned, and the military tribunals were not disbanded until 1876. France was officially a republic, but a republic that lacked all semblance of republican principles, a "republic without republicans" or "conservative republic”, as it came to be known, which was led by the reactionaries who had drowned the Commune in a bloodbath. It was not until 1875 that a constitution providing the republic’s legal foundation was finally adopted by the National Assembly, possessing no legal power and only by a majority of one. In many respects the Third Republic was less democratic than the First or Second.

p It was only at the end of the 1870s that the republican order was finally firmly established, after various monarchist conspiracies had been foiled. But even in this "republicans’ republic”, which was the fruit of the proletariat’s and working people’s struggle, power was concentrated in the hands of a narrow circle of bourgeois republicans. During the years of struggle after the defeat of the Commune, the leaders of the bourgeois republicans Leon Gambetta (1838-1882) and Jules Ferry (1832-1893) promised the people a broad programme of reforms. Yet once they were in power they only put part of these reforms into practice, administering them in "small doses" spaced out over long intervals. In 1880, an amnesty for the Communards was decreed, and the beginning of the ’80s saw the introduction of compulsory primary education, legalisation of the trade unions, and the guaranteeing of freedom of the press. These reforms were significant, but did not go far enough to satisfy the working people. The workers also opposed the policy of colonial annexation, which the bourgeois government encouraged to further its own interests. In 1881 France annexed Tunisia, and after a cruel war lasting from 1883 to 1885 Vietnam was added to the French possessions in Indochina. In the 1880s and 1890s French colonialists seized Madagascar and vast territories in Equatorial and North-West Africa.

p In 1879-1880 a Workers’ Party was established in France which was headed by the valiant fighters for socialism Jules Guesde (1845-1922) and Paul Lafargue (1842-1911). Guesde and Lafargue were pupils and followers of Marx and turned frequently to him and Engels for advice, and the party’s stand was basically Marxist.

p Side by side with this party, however, a number of other, nonMarxist parties also emerged in the French labour movement: the Blanquists, the Possibilists (an openly opportunistic party) and the Allemanists. Anarcho-syndicalists enjoyed wide influence in the French trade union movement. This disunity and lack of homogeneity in the French labour movement weakened the position of the proletariat and reduced its ability to influence other sections of the working people.

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p Making the most of this situation, the ruling circles of the bourgeoisie not only refused to carry out any more reforms but even embarked on a course openly hostile to the forces of democracy. The 1890s saw a rapprochement between the bourgeois republicans and the monarchists. Both groups chose to forget their former differences and extended the olive branch to each other, brought together by their common aims, namely those of opposing democracy in home policy and drawing maximum profits from colonial plunder in foreign policy. Business magnates, the military and the upper clergy gradually closed their ranks in a united reactionary bloc.

The 1890s were distinguished by a tense struggle between the forces of reaction and democracy. Leading French writers fought side by side with the working class in the ranks of the democratic movement: they included such outstanding figures as Emile Zola (1840-1902) and Anatole France (1844-1924). Gradually, in the course of the struggle the forces of democracy began to gain the upper hand, and reaction to make concessions. Yet the French bourgeoisie, which by this time had so much experience behind it, took determined steps to prevent a decisive victory for the Left, and by means of cunning manoeuvring succeeded in bringing about a split in their opponents’ ranks. In 1899 a bourgeois government under Waldeck-Rousseau was formed, in which the Socialist Alexandre Millerand was offered a post. His acceptance was approved of by the socialist Right wing but criticised by the Left wing. The resulting confusion in the ranks of the socialist movement undermined the role of the democratic camp as a whole.

Rapid Capitalist Development
in the United States

p After the end of the Civil War the United States entered a period of rapid economic development. Within a brief period she was to become one of the most economically advanced states in the world. In 1860 the United States had occupied fourth place among the nations in volume of industrial output but by 1894 she already led the world, having left the other capitalist countries far behind. Railways crossed the length and breadth of the country, and enormous cities such as New York, with its population of several million, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco grew up with a speed unlike anything Europe had ever seen. Driving out the Indian tribes from their traditional homelands as they went, the American farmers settled the vast fertile lands of the West. The large open spaces and the shortage of labour encouraged the wide introduction of machinery. The United States 507 soon attained an unparalleled level of mechanisation in all spheres of production.

p The abolition of slavery after the Civil War removed the last major obstacle to all-out capitalist development, and led to unbridled economic expansion. The latter also possessed its negative side. The fierce free-for-all of capitalist competition and the ruthless pursuit of wealth became firmly established patterns of American life. The most rapacious among the money-makers, who were prepared to indulge in any roguery, deception and crime, amassed enormous fortunes. It was by methods such as these that the great American magnates like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Morgan and Gould accumulated their wealth. The fine American writers of the period, Mark Twain (1835-1910), Jack London (1876-1916) and O’Henry (1862-1910), exposed this cruel world of violence, deception, crime and the desperate rat-race which had taken shape in the flourishing New World republic.

p Another aspect of this rapid development of American capitalism with its concomitant evils was the cruel exploitation and racial discrimination practised against workers of "non-American descent"’. Immigrant workers and American-born Chinese, Japanese and mestizos from countries of Latin America, and above all Negroes, were subjected to conditions a great deal worse than those the Yankees enjoyed. They did more work for considerably less pay than American workers, and were deprived of elementary human rights. As early as 1881 a law was introduced in Tennessee forbidding Negroes to travel in the same railway coaches as whites. Later discriminatory laws were introduced in other southern states and Negroes were deprived of virtually all political rights and reduced to the status of “second-class” citizens.

In this way the United States of America, the country with the most advanced technology and highest industrial growth rates became a land where lawlessness and barbaric discrimination against a considerable section of the population based exclusively on the colour of one’s skin became the order of the day.

Capitalist Development in Japan

p The bourgeois revolution, or the Meiji Restoration of 1867-1868, paved the way for comparatively rapid capitalist development in Japan. Feudal disunity and patterns of landownership were now a thing of the past and large-scale enterprises started springing up everywhere. Under pressure from the peasantry, which continued to protest against vestiges of feudal practices, the ruling circles of the country found themselves obliged to introduce a 508 series of agricultural reforms. A reform introduced in 1872-1S73 recognised land tenure as the right of those who in practice owned it, which meant that those whose right of tenure was already hereditary became the owners of the land they worked, while those that rented it on a temporary basis lost their rights to ownership. Mortgaged lands became the property of those who oifered mortgages on them. This reform brought important advantages to landowners and rich peasants, merchants and money-lenders to whom the peasants had previously mortgaged their land. The peasantry lost their rights of ownership to about a third of the land they had formerly owned. Common land—including woods, pastures and meadows—was made the property of the Emperor, which made him the most powerful landowner in the country. The owners of small peasant holdings, already up to their eyes in debt and now burdened with increased land taxes, soon found themselves unable to keep the lands they had acquired by the new reform, and became tenant farmers bereft of any property rights. Their lands became the property of the large landowners and rich peasants, on whom they soon became dependent for a livelihood.

p This meant that capitalist development was held back in agriculture, which retained a semi-feudal character. It also accounted for comparatively slow capitalist development in industry during the first years after the reform. Yet, as the bourgeoisie came to play a more important role in the country’s affairs, the government began to give more active encouragement to industrial enterprise, investing considerable capital in the construction of new factories. In the 1890s the first monopolies appeared in Japan, developing on the basis of trading houses of long standing that had been in existence since feudal times.

p Industrial development brought the usual growth of the working class. The first trade unions appeared in Japan at the very end of the nineteenth century. Their emergence was promoted by the Society for the Organisation of Workers’ Trade Unions, headed by progressive workers and intellectuals, with Sen Katayama (1859-1933) as president. In 1898 the first May Day demonstration was held in Japan.

p In an effort to hold back any further advance of the labour movement, in 1900 the government issued a "Law on the Maintenance of Order”, which banned strikes. Faced by police persecution, a number of trade unions curtailed their activity, but 1901 saw a new wave of protest. Progressive intellectuals and leaders of the labour movement such as Katayama, Kotoku and Kawakami came to the conclusion that it was vital to set up a socialist workers’ party. The Social-Democratic Party was officially founded on May 20th of that year. The party’s programme only 509 acknowledged legal methods of struggle and regarded the campaign for universal suffrage as its main task. In addition, it called for cuts in the army, dissolution of the Upper Chamber, and general elections. The government immediately declared the party illegal.

p Japanese imperialism, from the time it first emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, was of a militaristic feudal character, since the country’s monopoly capitalism was still enmeshed in an intricate network of pre-capitalist feudal production relations. Feudal anachronisms in the country’s political life were reflected in the tremendous influence exerted by military and landowning circles, various absolutist features, the weakness of the parliamentary system, the predominance of representatives of the military in the state apparatus and in the fact that the masses were deprived of all political rights.

p Japanese ruling circles spared no funds for the building up of a well-equipped army. Korea was one of the main targets against which the aggressive plans of the Japanese militarists were spearheaded at this period. With this prey in view, Japan attacked China in 1894 and quickly defeated her giant neighbour. This military success and the large war indemnity China was forced to pay provided a powerful stimulus for capitalist development in Japan. The victory over China also gave rise to an unbridled wave of chauvinistic propaganda. Ruling circles started devising all sorts of plans for colonial expansion, propagating ideas for the creation of a "Great Japanese Empire" including Korea, the north-eastern provinces of China, Mongolia and Eastern Siberia. The Japanese bourgeoisie saw tsarist Russia, which was also aspiring to expansion in China and Korea, as its main rival in the struggle for supremacy in Asia.

p Assured of support not only by Britain, with whom Japan had concluded a treaty in 1902, which was spearheaded against Russia, but also by the United States, Japan attacked Russia in 1904. Progressive Japanese workers like their Russian counterparts were well aware that this war was being fought to promote the interests of the bourgeoisie while it was destined to bring nothing but hardship and privation to the working people of both countries. At a congress of the Second International held in Amsterdam in August 1904, Plekhanov and Katayama greeted each other as friends. However, the workers’ organisations were not strong enough at that time to bring any pressure to bear on the respective governments, and the war went on. Russia suffered humiliating defeat in this war against the Japanese militarists. In order to quell the revolution at home and maintain internal order at all costs, the tsarist government was obliged to conclude the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, which granted the Japanese considerable 510 concessions. Southern Sakhalin was ceded to Japan; as a result. Russia was deprived of her only Pacific port. Communications with the Russian territories, Kamchatka and Chukotka, also came under Japanese control.

p The Treaty of Portsmouth substantially altered the balance of power in the Far East for some time to come. Japan was now acknowledged as a Great Power. Yet the treaty did not satisfy the appetites of the Japanese militarists, or dampen the aggressive mood of the landowners and the bourgeoisie. In 1906 the Japanese militarists persuaded the government to adopt a more ambitious programme for enlarging the army and navy.

p After the Russo-Japanese War the Japanese bourgeoisie, whose power had been consolidated as a result of the victory, promoted rapid development of the country’s economy and especially industry. Between 1905 and 1913, 3,800 million yen were invested in the economy, 46.8 per cent of this sum being spent on industrial development. This investment soon reaped impressive results: pig iron production increased from 145,000 tons in 1906 to 243,000 tons in 1913, steel production over the same period rose from 69,000 tons to 255,000 tons and the power industry developed apace to supply the necessary energy for the country’s rapid industrialisation. Concentration of production and capital made rapid strides at this time and the country’s economy came to be dominated more and more by powerful concerns such as Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Yasuda. The volume of Japan’s foreign trade also rose impressively from 606 million yen’s worth of goods in 1903 to 1,361 million yen’s worth in 1913.

p By this time Japan’s rate of economic growth had overtaken that of many of the other capitalist countries. Exploitation and plunder of the peoples of Korea and Southern Manchuria and of the local peasantry and workers made possible this rapid development of Japan’s capitalist economy. Apart from workers employed at state enterprises (each of which employed less than 10 workers), Japan’s industrial labour force rose from 526,000 in 1904 to 916,000 in 1913.

p The Russian revolution of 1905 was to have important repercussions in Japan. On September 5, a mass meeting was held in Tokyo and major skirmishes took place between the police and the crowd. This meeting was followed by a wave of workers’ protests in the months and years that followed. In 1906 railway workers, miners and workers from the arsenals of Kure and Tokyo, tramdrivers and conductors in Tokyo, Osaka and Kobe and other towns came out on strike.

p The socialist movement also grew more active. In February 1906, the socialist party was restored and was now led by Katayama, Sakai, Nishikawa and Mori. The party founded the 511 newspaper Hikarl (Light) replaced in 1907 by Heimin Shimbun (The People’s Newspaper). The party organised a number of mass meetings and demonstrations. In February 1907 the party was banned and shortly after Heimin Shimbun was closed down.

p In July 1908 a government came to power that was led by Katsura and worked in direct collaboration with the military. The formation of this new government marked the beginning of a wave of cruel police persecution against the progressive leaders of the labour movement. In 1910 a charge was trumped up against one of the leaders of the socialist party, Kotoku, and 24 of his followers. Twelve of the defendants were executed including Kotoku, and the remainder were sentenced to hard labour. Despite these reprisals, on December 11 of that year a large strike of the Tokyo transport workers was organised by Sen Katayama.

Japan continued all this while to build up her army, improve its equipment and to strengthen its hold in the Far East. In 1910 the Japanese government forced the Korean King to abdicate in favour of the Emperor of Japan. On August 22, 1910, this act was formally ratified in a treaty which made Korea a Japanese colony. Active expansion on the part of the Japanese in Asia led to strained relations between Japan and the United States.

The Foreign Policy of the Great Powers

p At the end of the nineteenth century the leaders of the Great Powers were eager to talk about peace. Their utterances at that period were enough to create the impression that a new era in relations between the Great Powers was about to dawn, when war would be condemned and paths to peaceful agreements would be sought. In actual fact, however, appearances were never more deceptive. All the fine talk about peace was merely a mask for active preparations for war. The contradictions between the Great Powers, far from diminishing, were steadily increasing. By the end of the century, all the Great Powers were pursuing a policy of active colonial annexation. Britain and France were competing with each other in their efforts to gain control of Egypt and in the plunder of South-East Asia, North-West and Equatorial Africa, while Britain and Russia had crossed swords in Central Asia. German colonial seizures in Africa and Asia had aroused displeasure among the “club” of established colonial powers. A keen struggle was being waged between Britain and the United States for domination in Latin America. The fight for the largest share in the colonial plunder gave rise to incessant conflict.

p Relations between the Powers also deteriorated as a result of conflicting interests in Europe. The Treaty of Frankfurt of 1871 512 which had bereft France of Alsace and Lorraine had sown seeds of bitter antagonism between France and Germany. Fearing France’s thirst for revenge and her efforts to find allies, Germany, who by this time had overtaken France in the arms race, deliberately provoked various diplomatic incidents. Bismarck and the German military sought to deliver another crushing blow at France before she gained new allies and was ready to declare war again. Russia, who saw in France a natural counterweight to the alarming growth of German military might, sought to obstruct the plans of the German militarists for a new war against France.

In 1877 a war broke out between Russia and Turkey, which resulted in the liberation of Bulgaria from Turkish rule. This war also contributed to the growing tension between the Great Powers, in particular between Russia and Britain and Russia and AustriaHungary. At the Congress of Berlin held in 1878, because of the positions adopted by Britain and Austria-Hungary supported by Germany, Russia found herself obliged to renounce many of her claims. As a result Austria-Hungary took advantage of the situation to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina, while Britain made off with Cyprus.

The Creation of Armed Camps

p In this new situation Bismarck hastened to conclude a militarypolitical alliance with Austria-Hungary (October 7, 1879). The Dual Alliance, as it is known, was directed against Russia and France. In May 1882, the Dual Alliance became the Triple Alliance, when, making capital out of the indignation of the Italian bourgeoisie at France’s seizure of Tunisia, German diplomats succeeded in persuading Italy to join. This Triple Alliance was the first military-political bloc to be set up in Europe. Although its initiators referred to it as "The Peace League" in practice it was an aggressive military grouping led by Germany and set up in order to promote the latter’s aspirations to European and world domination.

As an answer to the Triple Alliance, between 1891 and 1893 an alliance between Russia and France was negotiated, which meant that Europe was now divided into two large hostile camps. For a time Britain was content to remain aloof from these two groupings, hoping to exploit the differences between the two to further her own ends. Soon however, the rivalry between Britain and Germany for world domination was to emerge as one of the major issues in international politics.

513

The Mounting Tide of Militarism

The end of the nineteenth century, although it was to see no wars in Europe, was marked by a sharp acceleration of the arms race. The Great Powers vied with one another on the size of their military budgets, military and naval construction and the expansion of their armed forces. In most of these countries voluntary systems of recruitment were replaced by compulsory military service, and there was wide-scale modernisation of military equipment. Britain and Germany, and to a lesser extent Russia, France, Japan, Italy and the United States, were building up their fleets, on which great hopes were pinned in the days before the aeroplane came on the scene. The conclusion of the two military alliances served to accelerate the arms race still further and both camps started openly preparing for war.

The Mounting Class Struggle in the Capitalist Countries

p Although no major revolutionary upheavals had taken place in Europe since the Paris Commune, class contradictions far from decreasing had grown much deeper by the turn of the century.

p In the course of a long and tenacious struggle the working class had succeeded in wresting a number of concessions from the bourgeoisie. The working day was shortened and some improvements in working conditions and wage increases were introduced. These measures were not sufficient to satisfy the workers, whose living conditions in most capitalist countries were as hard as before. Working days were anything between 10 and 14 hours and in some branches of industry still longer, while a large number of production processes were intensified. Crises and growing unemployment robbed workers and their families of all sense of security, they were obliged to live from one day to the next with the constant threat of unemployment and hunger hanging over them. The rapid growth of the urban population at this period brought in its wake higher rents and led to an increase in food prices and the cost of living in general, thus rendering hard-won wage increases valueless. With the exception of the privileged sector of skilled workers, the real wages of the great mass of industrial workers grew smaller rather than larger towards the end of the century. The proletariat protested against this state of affairs by means of strikes, unemployment marches and political demonstrations. Large strikes swept Britain, the United States, France, Germany and Italy at various junctures during this period, in particular during the 1880s.

p The rapid growth of large-scale industry led to the ruin of petty producers who found themselves unable to compete with 514 their powerful rivals. Craftsmen, artisans and small traders floundered and went bankrupt. A process of stratification was to be observed in the ranks of the peasantry. The numerically small stratum of rich peasants held their own and prospered, while the chronic agrarian crisis at the end of the nineteenth century brought severe privations to almost all other groups of the peasantry.

p Meanwhile the national liberation movements of the oppressed peoples also grew more active, not only in the countries of Asia and Africa, where a new chapter in the liberation movement had begun, but also in the developed capitalist countries. The Poles struggled against tsarist Russia, the Kaiser’s Germany and AustriaHungary in order to restore their national independence. The 515 Irish were still stubbornly insisting on home rule. The Negroes in the United States, who were treated as social outcasts, sought means of gaining their due social rights. The Finns also started to fight for their national independence. Hungarians, Czechs and Yugoslavs were still languishing under the yoke of the Hapsburgs.

p Important bourgeois-democratic reforms were long overdue in a number of capitalist countries. The majority of European states at this time were still monarchies and semi-absolutist regimes continued to flourish in Germany and Austria-Hungary. Nowhere in the world had women yet succeeded in gaining political rights and in the majority of the capitalist countries there still existed property and other franchise qualifications; the vast mass of the working people were still without the right to vote.

The class struggle of the working people, the national liberation movements of the subject nations and the campaign for democratic freedoms all made up a common tide of opposition v.hich served to deepen class antagonisms. The class contradictions which were rapidly accumulating at this period were clearly about to explode to the surface.

The Founding of Workers’ Parties.
The Second International

p The main organising force that united the ranks of the underprivileged and discontent was the working class. During the last three decades of the nineteenth century the proletariat attained a new maturity, which found expression in the creation of new, workers’ parties.

p In 1883 the great leader and teacher of the working class, Karl Marx, died. Yet the revolutionary teaching which he had bequeathed the working people—Marxism—continued to gain more and more followers: it gradually superseded the naive Utopian teachings that had preceded it and was to become the main ideology of the working class.

p The workers’ parties which came into being during the 1870s and ’SOs^were in the main Marxist parties. In 1875 the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany was set up, and in 1877 the Socialist Labour Party of America; in 1879-1880 the French Workers’ Party was set up and in 1883 the Emancipation of Labour Group in Russia; in 1888 a Social-Democratic Party was founded in Austria, in 1889 in Switzerland and Sweden and in 1891 in Bulgaria. The founding of these workers’ parties marked an important step forward in the development of the organised labour movement.

p Now that many countries already possessed their own independent workers’ parties, naturally the question arose as to how 516 best to unite them on an international footing so that they could fight for the common cause more effectively. On July 14th, 1889, on the centenary of the French Revolution the Inaugural Congress of the Second International was opened in Paris. An important role in the preparation and creation of the Second International was played by Marx’s friend and associate, Frederick Engels.

p In the early years of its activity, the Second International remained a basically proletarian organisation, upholding in the main Marxist positions, although opportunist tendencies were to be observed in some of the Social-Democratic parties and the International as a whole from the very outset. At this early stage the Second International accomplished a great deal that was extremely positive. At its first congress in 1889 a resolution was adopted to have May 1st celebrated as International Labour Day by the workers of all countries to demonstrate their proletarian solidarity.

p Means of combating militarism and preventing war were discussed in detail at the congresses of the Second International. In its resolutions, the International branded the militaristic policies pursued by the governments of the capitalist world and called upon socialists to vote against war credits in parliament and to carry on a consistent campaign against the bourgeois social order. The fight against militarism and war was now regarded as one of the working class’s main tasks.

The Second International did some very useful work in its discussion and elaboration of tactics to be pursued by the proletariat and of whether or not socialists should use the legal parliamentary platform to promote their cause and their role in the trade unions. It was vital for the proletarian parties to have a competent grasp of the intricate art of political struggle, master the methods necessary in legal political campaigning during “peace” time, in order to make adequate preparations for the major class battles that were already imminent. At this stage, however, there were already misguided voices to be heard in the International’s ranks, and sometimes unfortunate decisions were adopted. This could all be traced to the rising opportunist tendencies that were taking shape in the labour movement. The bourgeoisie was going all out to split the working class, buying the support of the industrial “aristocracy” and driving a wedge between it and the main body of the proletarian movement. At the turn of the century it was the "workers’ aristocracy" that constituted the main bastion of opportunism and reformism in the labour movement. Yet the International succeeded in carrying out its most important task despite this friction: it played an important part in the preparation of the proletariat and its parties for the imminent class battles of decisive importance.