From its onset, the labour movement developed an internationalist
perspective, challenging the foreign policies of their own waring
bourgeoisie. In Marx’s inaugural address at the First International in
1864, he argued that the fight for a foreign policy based on morals and
justice ”forms part of the general struggle for the emancipation of the
working classes”. The Second International, with mass social democratic
parties across Europe, famously collapsed after most member parties
supported the war machines in their own countries and the mass slaughter
of WWI. After the successful workers’ revolution in Russia in 1917, the
Third International was founded to oppose the war, support national
liberation struggles of colonised peoples and to organise the world
revolution. It was officially disbanded in 1943, after many of its
leading members were purged and executed under Stalinist terror. In
reaction to Stalinism, Trotsky founded the 4th International
in 1938 – it was never to gain mass support and later split into various
factions. The seminar dives into the history of the different
Internationals, using many primary documents from the conferences. What
lessons can be learnt from the history of the international relations of
the labour movement for the 21st Century? In the age of Globalisation, what kind of internationalist and transnational cooperation is developing today?