Red Clydeside: A history of the labour movement in Glasgow 1910-1932

Literature

The Collapse of the Second International, 1918

by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Lenin's tract on the Second International was first published in 1916, and this copy, published by the Socialist Labour Press, is a good example of the dissemination and publication of socialist literature by Glasgow based socialists during the Red Clydeside period.

The Second International was the body that represented the socialist and social democratic parties of all European countries. At its Basle Conference of 1912, the Second International resolved to oppose by all means, including general strike and civil war, the attempt to throw the peoples into a senseless world war.

However, at the outbreak of war in 1914, the leaders of social democracy in nearly all countries rallied to the support of their own ruling class in the first world war, splitting the International.

Source: Bissett Collection, Glasgow University Special Collections