het Proletariaat en de oorlog

Samenvatting

In modern historiography, the time period just before the First World War is often forgotten. Central to this period is the socialist peace movement of the Second International. This organisation stood for internationalism, as opposed to military conflict on a European
scale. This paper questions why the Second International could not oppose the First World War, and how the organisation would collapse as a result. Sourcing from three featured conferences (in 1907, 1912, and 1914), this paper shows that the idealistic attitude of the Second International was mostly symbolic, due to the ambivalence of theoretical and practical measures as a result of internal disagreements. With the conference of Basel in 1912, the Second International acquired optimistic self-assurance in the opposition to war. But as a result of changed theoretical perspectives on capitalism, and the death of a prominent socialist-pacifist in 1914, the Second International could not mobilise against the First World War and collapsed.