Resolutions Adopted at the International Socialist Workers and Trade Union Congress, London, 1896¶
Core Argument¶
The 1896 London Congress of the International Socialist Workers and Trade Union Congress codified a series of resolutions that sought to define the strategic and democratic character of the international working-class movement at a moment of intensifying imperialist expansion and political reaction. The core argument of these resolutions is that the working class must pursue its emancipation through a unified, political struggle for state power, rejecting both narrow trade-union economism and any accommodation with capitalist colonialism or national oppression.
The Congress adopted a precise definition of “political action,” specifying that it encompasses all organised forms of struggle aimed at conquering political power and using the legislative and administrative institutions of the state for working-class emancipation. This formulation directly counters the anti-parliamentary or purely industrial conceptions of struggle then current in certain anarchist and syndicalist circles. The resolution on suffrage demands universal adult suffrage, equal voting rights for every adult, runoff voting, and the use of initiatives and referendums at both state and district levels — a clear assertion that the fight for democratic reforms is integral to the socialist project, not a distraction from it.
On the national question, the Congress declared its support for the full right of all nations to self-determination, expressing solidarity with workers suffering under “military, national or other absolutism.” This resolution calls on workers in oppressed nations to join the international ranks of class-conscious workers to fight capitalism, not to seek separate national solutions. The resolution on women’s emancipation states unequivocally that the liberation of women is inseparable from the liberation of the working class, demanding that women organise politically alongside men.
The most pointed polemic appears in the resolution on colonial policy. The Congress declares that whatever “religious or civilising pretexts” may be advanced, the sole purpose of colonialism is the expansion of capitalist exploitation in the exclusive interests of the capitalist class. This directly refutes the apologetic narratives of imperialist powers that claimed a civilising mission, and implicitly rebukes those sections of the European labour movement that had begun to entertain support for colonial expansion as a means of securing raw materials or markets. The resolutions received near-unanimous support, indicating a broad consensus among the assembled socialist and trade union delegates on these fundamental questions of strategy, democracy, anti-imperialism, and internationalism.