Berne International
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The term Berne International refers to the skeleton continuation, formally called the International Socialist Commission (ISC) of the socialist Second International after the latter's break-up due to World War One. It was based in Berne (the capital of Switzerland).
When World War One began, most members of the Second International supported their national governments in the conflict, betraying the principles of international working class solidarity that had animated the International. This led to a break between the "social patriotic" and reformist right-wing leaderships of the parties (see social democracy), on the one hand, and anti-war elements, on the other. The latter included pacifists, the revolutionary left, and "centrists" who vacillated between reformist and revolutionary positions. After a Vorkonferenz (preparatory conference) at Berne in July 1915, the anti-war groups came together in September 1915 at Zimmerwald, near Berne in neutral Switzerland, in an International Socialist Conference. The Conference was chaired by Robert Grimm of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland. The Conference met again in Kienthal in April 1916. The centrist current, known as the Zimmerwald Centre, of which Grimm was a leading member, were dominant at both meetings. The centrists, notably Clara Zetkin also dominated the International Women’s Socialist Conference concerning the attitude to be adopted towards the war in March 1915 in Berne.[1]
The Swiss delegates took on the task of maintaining the organisation of the International.
After the war, veterans of the Second International called for its restoration. They called a conference, known as the Berne conference, at Berne from February 3 to February 10, 1919. The conference debated the status of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. The majority of delegates, led by Karl Hjalmar Branting of the Swedish Social Democrats, welcomed the revolution, but were critical of the path taken by the Bolsheviks after the revolution, while a minority, led by German Social Democrats Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein, were critical of the revolution itself. A third faction, to the left, led by French socialist Jean Longuet were more pro-Bolshevik and advocated the new international not taking a position on it. The Berne conference undertook to send a delegation to Moscow to investigate the question, including Kautsky, Rudolf Hilferding and others, but the delegation never went.[2]
During the First Congress of the Third Communist International, the Berne conference was criticized by Lenin, in particular its support of imperialist intervention and war in Soviet Russia, who described it as a "yellow international".[3]
The remnants of the Second International who had met at Berne in 1919 met again in Lucerne in August 1919 and Geneva in July 1920. This last meeting officially relaunched the Second International. The centrists, however, did not join it, and went on to form the International Working Union of Socialist Parties (IWUSP), known as the "Two-and-a-half International". The IWUSP met in Berne in December 1920 and was formally launched in Vienna in February 1921. The two finally merged in 1923 to form the Labour and Socialist International.
- Note: After the break of the anarchists from the majority First International at its Hague Congress (1872), an alternative libertarian First International, known as the Anarchist St. Imier International was formed. This held its 1876 congress in Berne, sometimes known as the Berne Congress, and by the anarchists as the Eighth Confress of the First International.[4]
