International Socialist Congress, Paris 1900

The 5th International Socialist Congress of the Second International era was held in Paris from September 23 to 27 in Paris. It was originally supposed to be held in Germany in 1899, but difficulties with the German authorities prevented this.

The Congress is notable for establishing the International Socialist Bureau, the permanent organization of the International, as well as with dealing with the questions of the socialist attitude toward reformism and colonialism.

On reformism, the Congress specifically addressed the question of socialists entering bourgeois governments. In 1899 the socialist Alexandre Millerand had taken a ministerial position in the French government of Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, alongside the Marquis de Galliffet, who had led the suppression of the Paris Commune. Karl Kautsky proposed a compromise resolution to the effect that the entry of a socialist into a bourgeois government was not a normal but a transitional and exceptional emergency measure, and that Millerand's action was not a matter of principle but of tactics, acceptable if it had the mandate of his party. The resolution was adopted by a vote of 29–9 over Jules Guesde’s demand for unconditional condemnation of ministerialism.[1]

Delegations
Country # of delegates Notes
Germany 57 Representing the Social Democratic Party
Great Britain 95
Austria 10
Bohemia 2
Bulgaria 3
Belgium 37 Representing the Belgian Workers Party
Denmark 19
Spain 4 Representing the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and the Unión General de Trabajadores
United States 6
France 600 Representing the French Workers' Party, Revolutionary Socialist Party (France), Federation of the Socialist Workers of France,
Netherlands 9
Norway 1
Hungary 1
Italy 15
Poland 20
Portugal 1 (represented by Jean Jaurès)
Romania 1
Russia 24
Ireland 3
Argentina 1
Sweden 3
Switzerland 10

Resolutions

The Congress passed resolutions on the following:

  • creating a committee to establish permanent institutions of the International, what would become the International Socialist Bureau and secretariat
  • international labor legislation
  • international peace and militarism
  • the organization of the proletariat, expropriation of the bourgeoisie and socialization of the means of production.
  • colonial policy
  • universal suffrage
  • the general strike
  • trusts
  • May Day
gollark: It would be important to make it reasonably easy to add and update packages.
gollark: Well, it would be less useful if there wasn't a good central repo too.
gollark: "Search packages" is `pacman -Ss [whatever]`, "install" is `pacman -S [whatever]`, "update repos and update all packages" (it is apparently unsafe to update only individual packages) is `pacman -Syu`.
gollark: You pick a "subcommand" with a capital-letter flag like `-S` (sync, which seems to be a fancy word for "Install packages"), `-Q` (query information aboud stuff) and then pass extra flags to configure how that works.
gollark: > what's a pacman-like CLI?Arch Linux (btw I use that) has a neat package manager called `pacman`.> what counts as package updating support?Updating packages without breaking things horribly, including not overwriting user-edited (config) files.> and library interface as in an API you can use from scripts?Precisely.

References
  1. J. Lenz, The Rise and Fall of the Second International (1932) p. 45.
  • Haupt, Georges La Deuxième Internationale, 1889-1914: étude critique des sources, essai bibliographique
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