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Rudolf Hilferding and the Application of the Political Economy of the Second International*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Harold James
Harold James
Affiliation:
Peterhouse, Cambridge
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Extract

The Second International's socialism saw itself as a moral force. That moral force served to maintain a precarious balance between politics conducted perforce within a national framework, and an internationalist rhetoric; between politics which in practice worked within an established system, and a theoretical rejection of that old society. The First World War broke one part of this precarious balance by demonstrating the impotence of the organized working class in stopping an imperialist conflict; but another pillar of marxist orthodoxy, economic dogma, remained for the marxist parties of the post-war world. That pillar was unshaken by the collapse of societies and politics in Central Europe; it held up an intellectual elite in the world of post-war socialist politics.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 1981 , pp. 847 - 869
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

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70 See, for an example, IfZ ED93/18, meeting on 2 Jan. 1932.

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