Failure of Second International
All his life Engels had been an incurable optimist and ever saw the imminence of the revolution. This is seen throughout his letters to Sorge in the latter years of his life. In 1895, the year of his death, he wrote enthusiastically of the progress made by the Socialist parties of all countries and of his hopes of the International.
From its first foundation Engels had hoped very great things from the Second International. And he had reason to do so at the time.
One could not have foreseen then, that all its fine international sentiments and phrases would fall together like a pack of cards on the first war cry of the capitalist masters of the world. The Second International fell on the outbreak of war, because it had outlived its time. It had grown to be a body of comfortable representatives of, on the whole, safe and comfortable Socialist movements. It represented very largely a parlour socialism which had become fairly respectable. The First International had fallen because the Socialist parties of which it had been composed had outgrown their then narrow international connection and required a period to develop nationally before they could again unite into a fuller international organisation: the First International fell because its sections were not yet sufficiently developed nationally. Similarly, the Second International fell because it was not sufficiently developed internationally for the growing national Socialist parties, and the needs of the times. It lacked international organisation, enthusiasm, ideals, and consciousness.
A friend of the writer of these lines, an old Russian exile, and, theoretically, a good Marxian to wit, once told her in confidence (as the friend in question is now dead—luckily he died after the outbreak of revolution in Russia, and lived to go back to his native country and to see it with his own eyes—there can be no objection to mentioning what he said now) that although he worked in the movement, although he did all he could by pen and mouth to advance Socialism, in his heart of hearts he had little faith in the realisation of Socialism within measurable distance. He worked as he did more out of habit and because he could not bring himself to avow his feelings to his Socialist friends. Now and again he was buoyed up by hope, but on the whole he had little faith. At the time one could assume that this was an exception—that it was merely a mood brought on by pessimism due to the miserable economic position of the friend in question—for the life of a poor Russian exile in London or America was no sweet one. But we can now see that in reality this was no exception, that what this man brought himself to avow to a particular friend, was what a large section of the Second International consciously or unconsciously felt. The movement had outgrown the revolutionary ardour of its youth.
The members of the Second International Socialist Bureau, more successful materially than this comrade, continued to talk about revolution, but in their heart of hearts they did not believe in it.
