1914 split with Social Democrats?

[Broletariat]

I think I've seen it referenced before or something, can anyone give me a breakdown and some perspective on what happened and why.

[RED DAVE]

Basically, the Social Democrats in the major European countries supported the entry of their governments into WWI. This was a betrayal that is hard to comprehend.

However, the Bolsheviks, in Russia, opposed the war and split with the Social Democrats.

RED DAVE

[Zanthorus]

I think I've seen it referenced before or something, can anyone give me a breakdown and some perspective on what happened and why.

The initial movement which formed itself on the basis of Marx and Engels' ideas had called themselves 'Social-Democrats' (Despite protestations from Marx and Engels' due to the previous history of the term and it's association with the 'Social-Democrats' who had joined as a minority in the Second French Republic in the events leading up to the supression of the June days rebels) and formed parties in most of the major European capitalist countries which had quite substantial followings from the working-class. As you may or may not be aware, the Bolsheviks were originally formed in a dispute over the definition of a party member at the second congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. These parties were all internationaly affiliated to what was called the 'Second International'.

At least according to the formal resolutions of the SI's congresses, the Social-Democratic parties were committed to organising the working-class against the efforts of their native bourgeoisie's to mobilise workers to fight imperialist wars. However, at the outbreak of World War One, some initial vacillation aside (The British Labour Party actually initially opposed the war, but when the news came in that Germany had invaded some country or other, I think maybe the Balkans, the majority of Labour MP's ended up supporting the war) they all supported their respective bourgeoisie's in the slaughter. This led to anti-war minority eventually splitting in the 1918-19 period and forming the Communist International (The Bolsheviks and the International Socialists of Germany split in 1914).

For further reading you can check out:

The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis of German Social-Democracy by Rosa Luxemburg (http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/junius/index.htm)

The War and the International (The Bolsheviks and World Peace) by Leon Trotsky (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1914/war/index.htm)


However, the Bolsheviks, in Russia, opposed the war and split with the Social Democrats.

Not entirely accurate. The International Socialists of Germany (Later the International Communists of Germany, then the KPD Left and finally moving on to form the KAPD) consisting of figures like Fritz Wolfheim and Otto Ruhle, also split with the SPD early on and opposed the war. Lenin even wrote about them:


A very great defect in revolutionary Marxism in Germany as a whole is its lack of a compact illegal organisation that would systematically pursue its line and educate the masses in the spirit of the new tasks; such an organisation would also have to take a definite stand towards opportunism and Kautskyism. This is all the more necessary now, since the German revolutionary Social-Democrats have been deprived of their last two daily papers: the one in Bremen (Bremen = Burger-zeitung), and the one in Brunswick (Volksfreund), both of which have gone over to the Kautskyists. That the “International Socialists of Germany” (I.S.D.) group alone remains at its post is definitely clear to everybody.- Lenin, On the Junius Pamphlet