# The Internationals The organized attempts to unite labor and revolution across borders: the First through Fourth Internationals and the union federations that outlived them. *This story part of: Production and labor* ## 28 September 1864 — Founding of the First International Workers and radicals meeting at St Martin's Hall in London found the International Workingmen's Association, with Karl Marx drafting its founding documents. It was the first attempt to unite the world's labor movements. ## 18 March 1871 to 1871 — Paris Commune Parisian workers and national guardsmen seize the city and govern it as a revolutionary commune for ten weeks before French government troops crush it in the Bloody Week. Marxists later treat it as the first attempt at working-class rule. ## 2 September 1872 — The Hague Congress and the Marx-Bakunin split At the First International's congress in The Hague, Marx and Engels secured the expulsion of the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and moved the General Council to New York. Bakunin's supporters rejected the decisions and met separately at Saint-Imier, formalizing the break between Marxist socialists and anarchists. Each side blamed the other for wrecking the International. ## 15 July 1876 — Dissolution of the First International A small conference in Philadelphia formally winds up the International Workingmen's Association, whose General Council had been sidelined in New York since 1872. The anarchist wing carried on separately for a few more years. The first attempt at a world labor body had lasted twelve years. ## 14 July 1889 — Founding of the Second International Socialist and labor parties from twenty countries found the Second International at a congress in Paris on the centenary of the Bastille's fall. It established May Day and International Women's Day before splitting over the First World War. ## 1 May 1890 — The first International Workers' Day Following a call from the Second International's founding congress, workers across Europe and the United States demonstrate on 1 May for the eight-hour day. The date honored the American movement whose 1886 strikes led to the Haymarket affair in Chicago. May Day became the labor movement's annual day of protest and, in many countries, a public holiday. ## 14 August 1904 — The Amsterdam Congress and the revisionism debate The Second International's Amsterdam congress rejects the revisionism associated with Eduard Bernstein, who argued that socialism could arrive through gradual reform rather than revolution. It also condemned socialists joining bourgeois cabinets, after the French socialist Alexandre Millerand had taken a ministerial post. The votes papered over a deep divide between reformist and revolutionary wings. ## 18 August 1907 — The Stuttgart Congress and the war question The Second International's Stuttgart congress adopts a resolution committing socialist parties to work against militarism and war. An amendment pressed by Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Julius Martov added that, should war break out, socialists should use the resulting crisis to hasten the fall of capitalism. How far parties would actually resist a war was left unresolved. ## 24 November 1912 — The Basel Manifesto against war An extraordinary congress of the Second International, convened in Basel Cathedral as the Balkan Wars raised fears of a wider conflict, issues the Basel Manifesto. It warned governments that a European war would be met by the united resistance of the working class. Two years later most of the same parties backed their own nations in the First World War. ## 4 August 1914 — The collapse of the Second International When the First World War begins, most socialist parties rally behind their own governments rather than opposing the war as they had pledged. The German Social Democrats' vote for war credits on 4 August 1914 became the symbol of this reversal. The International split along national lines and effectively ceased to function, a betrayal in the eyes of antiwar socialists such as Lenin. ## 5 September 1915 — The Zimmerwald Conference Antiwar socialists from both warring camps meet secretly in the Swiss village of Zimmerwald and issue a manifesto calling for a peace without annexations. A minority known as the Zimmerwald Left, led by Lenin, argued instead for turning the imperialist war into civil war and revolution. The gatherings became a seed of the later Communist International. ## 4 March 1919 — Founding of the Communist International At a congress in Moscow convened by Lenin, revolutionaries from around the world vote to establish the Third International, the Comintern, to promote world revolution under Bolshevik leadership. ## July 1919 — Founding of the International Federation of Trade Unions Trade union federations meeting at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw found the International Federation of Trade Unions, the main interwar body of organized labor, known as the Amsterdam International. ## 6 August 1920 — The Twenty-One Conditions of the Comintern The Communist International's second congress adopts twenty-one conditions for membership, demanding that parties accept strict Bolshevik discipline, break with reformist leaders and call themselves Communist. The terms forced socialist parties across Europe to split, most famously the French party at Tours later that year. The rules cemented Moscow's control over the world communist movement. ## 27 February 1921 — Founding of the Vienna Union Socialist parties that rejected both the reformist Second International and Moscow's Twenty-One Conditions found the International Working Union of Socialist Parties in Vienna. Critics nicknamed it the Two-and-a-Half International for its middle position. It lasted only two years before merging into a reunited social democratic body. ## 21 May 1923 — Founding of the Labour and Socialist International At a congress in Hamburg the revived Second International and the Vienna Union merge to form the Labour and Socialist International, the main body of social democratic parties between the wars. It stood apart from the Communist International throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The organization was shattered by the spread of fascism and the Second World War. ## 3 September 1938 — Founding of the Fourth International Followers of Leon Trotsky, meeting secretly near Paris, found the Fourth International as a revolutionary socialist rival to Stalin's Comintern. ## 15 May 1943 — Dissolution of the Communist International Stalin dissolves the Comintern as a wartime gesture to his Western allies, ending the organization that had directed communist parties worldwide for 24 years. ## 3 October 1945 — Founding of the World Federation of Trade Unions Trade union centers from 56 countries, including Soviet and Western unions, found the World Federation of Trade Unions in Paris. Cold War splits soon left it aligned with the communist bloc. ## 22 September 1947 — Founding of the Cominform Meeting in Poland, the Soviet Union and eight communist parties found the Communist Information Bureau to coordinate their policy at the start of the Cold War. Widely seen as a partial revival of the Comintern that Stalin had dissolved in 1943, it expelled Yugoslavia in 1948 after Tito's break with Moscow. It was quietly dissolved in 1956. ## 7 December 1949 — Founding of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions Non-communist unions representing nearly 48 million workers break from the WFTU and found the ICFTU in London, the main Western international labor body of the Cold War. ## July 1951 — Founding of the Socialist International Social democratic parties re-found their world organization at a congress in Frankfurt, adopting the Frankfurt Declaration and reviving the tradition of the prewar Labour and Socialist International. ## 1 November 2006 — Founding of the International Trade Union Confederation The ICFTU and the World Confederation of Labour merge at a founding congress in Vienna to create the ITUC, the world's largest trade union federation. ## 22 May 2013 — Founding of the Progressive Alliance Social democratic and labor parties launch the Progressive Alliance as a looser global network, with several members distancing themselves from the Socialist International amid disputes over some of its members. The move reflected the fading of the old idea of a single, disciplined socialist International. The two bodies now coexist, and the once-central dream of a united workers' movement has largely dispersed.