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

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The Internationalisation of the Labour Question

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements ((PSHSM))

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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.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    NND Project 63316, Pentagon Papers, Vietnam and the US, 1940–1950, “Ho Chi Minh: Asian Tito?”: 200.

  2. 2.

    See Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment. Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), for an in-depth depiction of Nguyen Ai Qouc’s ambition and failure to meet US President Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919.

  3. 3.

    Social History Portal (SHP), document P/72a, Entwurf zu einem Friedensprogramm des Holländisch-skandinavischen Komitees, 10.10.1917, https://socialhistoryportal.org/stockholm1917/documents.

  4. 4.

    Ralph M. Goldman, The Future Catches Up: Selected Writings, Volume I (San Jose: Writers Club Press, 2002): 50.

  5. 5.

    Akira Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkley: University of California Press, 2002): 29. See further in Julius Braunthal, History of the International, Volume 2: 1914–1943 (New York: Praeger, 1967); Marcel van der Linden, Workers of the World. Essays Toward a Global Labor History (Leiden: Brill, 2008); and Alexander Vatlin, Die Komintern. Gründung, Programmatik, Akteure (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 2009).

  6. 6.

    Akira Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013): 11.

  7. 7.

    International Institute of Social History (IISH), Labour and Socialist International Archives, ARCH01368.57, 22, Amendments, Lagrosillière, Brussels, August 1928, https://search.IISH.amsterdam/Record/ARCH01368.

  8. 8.

    Labour and Socialist International, The Colonial Problem: Material Submitted to the IIIrd Congress of the LSI, Brussels, August, 1928 (Zurich: LSI, 1928): 5; IISH ARCH01368.244/34, Meeting of the Executive of the LSI, April 1926.

  9. 9.

    Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea, 1815 to the Present (New York: Penguin Books, 2013): 148.

  10. 10.

    Sandrine Kott, “Towards a Social History of International Organisations: The ILO and the Internationalisation of Western Social Expertise (1919–1949),” in Internationalism, Imperialism and the Formation of the Contemporary World, eds. Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and Joseé Pedro Monteiro (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018): 37.

  11. 11.

    League of Nations, Slavery Convention, signed at Geneva, 25.9.1926.

  12. 12.

    “The Resolution on the Colonial Problem,” in The Colonial Problem… (1928): 196.

  13. 13.

    For the LAI, see Fredrik Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries Nor Utopian Dreamers”. Willi Münzenberg, the League Against Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925–1933 (Åbo: Åbo Akademi University, 2013, doctoral dissertation. Published as vols. I–II, Lewiston: Queenston Press, 2013); Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI, Moscow) 542/1/3, 10-11 (Confidential) Letter from the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), author: Manabendra Nath Roy, Moscow, to Willi Münzenberg, Berlin, 29.5.1926.

  14. 14.

    Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries Nor Utopian Dreamers”: 2–4.

  15. 15.

    Louis Gibarti (Hrsg.), “Manifesto,” in Das Flammenzeichen vom Palais Egmont. Offizielles Protokoll des Kongresses gegen koloniale Unterdrückung und Imperialismus Brüssel, 10–15 Februar 1927 (Berlin: Neuer Deutscher Verlag, 1927): 246, 250. Das Flammenzeichen… was the official record of the Brussels Congress, issued by the LAI in June 1927, published through Willi Münzenberg’s publishing company. It is still the crucial account of the Brussels Congress.

  16. 16.

    Mazower, Governing the World: 166.

  17. 17.

    Jonathan Derrick, Africa’s ‘Agitators’. Militant Anti-colonialism in Africa and the West, 1918–1939 (London: Hurst & Company, 2008): 248–249.

  18. 18.

    Talbot C. Imlay, The Practice of Socialist Internationalism: European Socialists and International Politics, 1914–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018): 234.

  19. 19.

    IISH ARCH01368.24/1, Proposed Agenda for the International Socialist Congress, 1925.

  20. 20.

    Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries Nor Utopian Dreamers”: 66–67; IISH, ARCH01368.3033/19-20, To the Executive of the Communist International, Zürich, 4.7.1925.

  21. 21.

    Martin Thomas, The French Empire Between the Wars: Imperialism, Politics and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005): 214–215. The Communist Party of France (PCF) instigated large-scale protests across the country in support of Abd el-Krim’s Rif War against French imperialism, something that furthered a political divide between radicals, socialists and communists in France.

  22. 22.

    IISH ARCH01368.29/2, Resolution on Morocco, Marseille, August 1925.

  23. 23.

    IISH ARCH01368.30/1, The Colonial Question, Marseille, August 1925.

  24. 24.

    LSI, The Colonial Problem (1928): 5; IISH ARCH01368.244/34, Meeting of the Executive of the LSI, April 1926.

  25. 25.

    Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries Nor Utopian Dreamers”: 91–95, 113. Münzenberg’s article had, in fact, been co-authored with Nikolai Bukharin, the latter giving advice on the argumentation of the text.

  26. 26.

    IISH ARCH01368.1676/7-8, Letter from Adler, Zurich, to Gillies, London, 19.1.1927.

  27. 27.

    IISH ARCH01368.1676/7-8, Letter from Adler, Zurich, to Gillies, London, 19.1.1927.

  28. 28.

    IISH ARCH01368.258/16, Report of the Secretariat to the Meeting of the Executive, Paris, 12.2.1927.

  29. 29.

    IISH ARCH01368.267/10 (Draft) Workers and Socialists of all Countries!, February 1927.

  30. 30.

    IISH ARCH01368.267/11-15 (Draft) Independence of the Chinese Portal Service, 1927.

  31. 31.

    IISH ARCH01368.284/1, Letter from Brockway, London, to Adler, Zurich, 8.4.1927.

  32. 32.

    IISH ARCH01368.284/1-2, Letter from Adler, Zurich, to Brockway, London, 13.4.1927.

  33. 33.

    IISH ARCH01368.1702/9-10, Letter from Brockway, London, to Adler, Zurich, 22.4.1927.

  34. 34.

    Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries Nor Utopian Dreamers”.

  35. 35.

    IISH ARCH01368.284/3-4, Letter from Gibarti, Cologne, to Brockway, London, 21.8.1927.

  36. 36.

    IISH ARCH01368.284/2-3, Letter from Brockway, London, to Adler, Zurich, 30.8.1927.

  37. 37.

    IISH ARCH01368.284/5-7, A. Fenner Brockway, “The Coloured Peoples’ International,” The New Leader, 26.8.1927.

  38. 38.

    IISH ARCH01368.278/17, For the meeting of the Executive of the LSI, September 1927.

  39. 39.

    IISH ARCH01368.291/25, Protokoll, Brussels, 11–12.9.1927.

  40. 40.

    IISH ARCH01368.284/15-17, For the meeting of the Executive of the LSI, September 1927.

  41. 41.

    IISH 285/1, Z.74, Fragebogen, 1927.

  42. 42.

    IISH ARCH01368.785/52, Circular letter from the LSI secretariat, Zurich, to affiliated parties of the LSI, 22.10.1927.

  43. 43.

    IISH 285/1, Z.74, Fragebogen, 1927.

  44. 44.

    A detailed outline of the LSI analysis and its consequences are given in Petersson, “We Are Neither Visionaries Nor Utopian Dreamers”: 189–195.

  45. 45.

    IISH ARCH01368.2623/155, Letter from Adler, Zurich, to Abramovitch, Berlin, 7.1.1928.

  46. 46.

    IISH ARCH01368.786/3, Invitation from the LSI Secretariat, Zurich, to the members of the LSI Colonial Commission, 12.1.1928.

  47. 47.

    IISH ARCH01368.786/6, Letter from the LSI Secretariat, Zurich, to the Secretariat of the Socialist Party of America, 4.2.1928.

  48. 48.

    IISH ARCH01368.786/11-12, For the meeting of the LSI Colonial Commission, Vliegen, February 1928.

  49. 49.

    IISH ARCH01368.787/3, Letter from Adler, Zurich, to Gillies, London, 7.3.1928.

  50. 50.

    IISH ARCH01368.786/13-14, Zur Sitzung der Exekutive der SAI, 25.2.1928.

  51. 51.

    IISH ARCH01368.787/15-17, C.59/28. Reply of the Belgian Delegate, to the LSI Colonial Commission (received) 10.4.1928; IISH ARCH01368.787/23-24, C.61/28. Report to the LSI Colonial Commission by Alsing Andersen, Copenhagen, 3.3.1928.

  52. 52.

    IISH ARCH01368.787/27, C.70/28. To the Members of the LSI Colonial Commission, Zurich, 11.5.1928; IISH ARCH01368.787/32-35, Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society. Short memorandum on the proposed land trust for the natives of Kenya colony, [undated].

  53. 53.

    RGASPI 542/1/29, 58, Leipziger Volkszeitung: “Kolonialpolitik und Sozialismus,” 8/6-1928. The article was collected by the LAI’s International secretariat in Berlin and dispatched to Comintern headquarters in Moscow.

  54. 54.

    RGASPI 542/1/28, 40, Letter from Münzenberg, Berlin, to Bukharin, Moscow, 22.6.1928. The draft was enclosed in a letter to Bukharin, and Münzenberg asked for advice on the article’s outline and content.

  55. 55.

    IISH ARCH01368.53/7, Rede des Genossen Vandervelde, Brüssel, August 1928.

  56. 56.

    Speech to the Third Congress of the LSI, Morris Hillquit, Brussels, 6.8.1928.

  57. 57.

    “Socialist Congress,” Malaya Tribune, 6.8.1928: 9.

  58. 58.

    “Den andra internationalen,” Dagens Nyheter, 16.8.1928: 3.

  59. 59.

    IISH ARCH01368.57/5-6, Draft resolution: The Colonial Problem, ILP, Brussels, August 1928.

  60. 60.

    IISH ARCH01368.57/12-14, Motion of the Colonial Commission, Brussels, August 1928; IISH ARCH01368.57/17, Amendments handed by Comrade Cramer (Holland), Brussels, August 1928.

  61. 61.

    IISH ARCH01368.57/22-23, Amendments: Joseph Lagrosillière, Brussels, August 1928.

  62. 62.

    IISH ARCH01368.57/26, Amendment Abramovitch, Brussels, August 1928.

  63. 63.

    IISH ARCH01368.57/48-53, Motion of the Colonial Commission, Brussels, August 1928.

  64. 64.

    IISH ARCH01368.57/61, Kurze Notizen, Brussels, August 1929.

  65. 65.

    IISH ARCH01368.57, 22, Amendments, Joseph Lagrosillière, Brussels, August 1928.

  66. 66.

    LSI, The Colonial Problem (1928): 13, 15.

  67. 67.

    LSI, The Colonial Problem (1928): 106.

  68. 68.

    IISH ARCH01368.789/4, Letter from Adler, Zurich, to the Parties affiliated to the LSI, 7.8.1930. Members of the commission were Arthur Wauters from Belgium, Jean Longuet from France, Charles Roden Buxton from Great Britain, Charles G. Cramer from the Netherlands, Palestinian Ch. Arlosoroff, Abramovitch representing Russia, and Frank Crosswaith and Harry W. Laidler from the United States.

  69. 69.

    IISH ARCH01368.790/3-7, Exposé, vorgelegt der konstituierenden Sitzung der SAI Kolonialkommission, Ch. G. Cramer, Vienna, 29.7.1931.

  70. 70.

    British Labour Party, The Colonial Empire (London, October 1933).

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  1. Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland

    Fredrik Petersson

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  1. Institute for History, Leiden University, Leiden, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands

    Stefano Bellucci

  2. Department of History, Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland

    Holger Weiss

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Petersson, F. (2020). The Labour and Socialist International and ‘the Colonial Problem’: Mobilisation by Necessity or Force, 1925–1928. In: Bellucci, S., Weiss, H. (eds) The Internationalisation of the Labour Question. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28235-6_6

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