Vienna Union (Two-and-a-Half International)

Founding

The Vienna Union was created at a conference held in Vienna, Austria, on 27 February 1921. It was founded by centrist parties that had left the Second International: they criticized that body but did not establish a different orientation of their own. Ten parties took part, among them the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), the Independent Labour Party (ILP), the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland, the Social Democratic Party of Austria, and a faction of the Romanian socialist movement. The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party joined in April 1921, followed by the Maximalist faction of the Italian Socialist Party. The organization was built around Central and Western European parties; Julius Martov, of the internationalist wing of the Russian Mensheviks, was associated with it, and Austromarxism was a strong influence. The Austrian Social Democrat Friedrich Adler became its secretary, and Otto Bauer was another of its prominent figures.

Between the Second and Third Internationals

The Vienna Union was set up by parties that affiliated neither with the reformist Second International nor with the Comintern (the Third International). They criticized the other two for what they saw as dogmatism and for failing to take account of the particular political situation in each country, and they made the unification of the two Internationals their goal. This is the origin of the nickname 'Two-and-a-Half International'. Its official German name was the International Working Union of Socialist Parties (Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft Sozialistischer Parteien).

The Berlin Conference and the Merger

A Conference of the Three Internationals met in Berlin from 2 to 5 April 1922, with delegations from the three international bodies, but unity was not achieved and the Comintern withdrew from the talks. On 24 September 1922 the USPD, one of the Vienna Union's main component parties, merged in Germany with the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which belonged to the Second International camp. Discouraged by the intransigence of the Comintern, the Vienna Union merged with the reconstituted Second International at a joint congress in Hamburg in May 1923 to form the Labour and Socialist International. Some parties, such as the Federation of Romanian Socialist Parties, refused to join the new body.