The growth of socialist parties after 1871 was phenomenal. (See “Evaluating the Evidence 23.3: Adelheid Popp, the Making of a Socialist.”) Neither Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Laws nor his extensive social security system checked the growth of the German Social Democratic Party, which espoused radical Marxism even though it sought reform through legal parliamentary politics. By 1912 the SPD had millions of followers — mostly people from the working classes — and was the largest party in the Reichstag. Socialist parties grew in other countries as well, though nowhere else with such success. In 1883 Russian exiles in Switzerland founded the Russian Social Democratic Party, and various socialist groups were unified in 1905 in the French Section of the Workers International. Belgium and Austria-Hungary also had strong socialist parties.

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As the name of the French party suggests, Marxist socialist parties strove to join together in an international organization, and in 1864 Marx himself helped found the socialist International Working Men’s Association, also known as the First International. In the following years, Marx battled successfully to control the organization and used its annual international meetings as a means of spreading his doctrines of socialist revolution. He enthusiastically endorsed the radical patriotism of the Paris Commune and its terrible struggle against the French state as a giant step toward socialist revolution. Marx’s fervent embrace of working-class violence frightened many of his early supporters, especially the more moderate British labor leaders. Internal tensions led to the collapse of the First International in 1876.

Yet international proletarian solidarity remained an important objective for Marxists. In 1889, as the individual parties in different countries grew stronger, socialist leaders came together to form the Second International, which lasted until 1914. Though only a federation of national socialist parties, the Second International had a great psychological impact. It had a permanent executive, and every three years delegates from the different parties met to interpret Marxist doctrines and plan coordinated action. May 1 (May Day) was declared an annual international one-day strike, a day of marches and demonstrations. Prosperous elites and conservative middle-class citizens feared the growing power of socialism and the Second International, but many workers joined the cause.