Two-and-a-half International

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Also known as "Second and a half International".

The common name for the international federation of socialist parties that positioned themselves between the reformist Second International and the pro-Moscow Third International. It most commonly refers to the International Working Union of Socialist Parties or "Vienna International", formed in Vienna in February 1921 by "centrist" socialist parties that had left the Second International but were unwilling to join Lenin's Third International. Its leaders were Victor Adler, Otto Bauer and L. Martov. The British Independent Labour Party was a member. In May 1923 they reunited with the Second International to form the basis of what is now the Socialist International.

In the 1930s, a similar effort was made to create an interntional between the reformism of the Second and the Stalinism of the Third, was the the London Bureau of left-wing socialist parties, formed in 1932, which included included some of the same member parties as the Vienna International, such as the British Independent Labour Party, as well as the French PSOP and Spanish Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). This was sometimes also called the "Two-and-a-half International" but more frequently the "Three-and-a-half international".

Two-and-a-half International

Further reading