The Berne Conference formulated an International Labour Charter which was afterwards submitted to the Council of Versailles for inclusion in the Treaty of Peace, and was, to a considerable extent, incorporated in Part XIII. The preamble of this Charter is important and reads thus:
“Under the wage-system the capitalist class endeavour to increase their profits by exploiting the workers in the greatest measure possible by methods which, if unchecked, would undermine the physical, moral and intellectual strength of the present and future generation of workers. They impede the development and even endanger the very existence of Society. The tendency of Capitalism to degrade the worker can only be completely checked by the abolition of the capitalist system of production. Meanwhile, the evil can be considerably mitigated, both by the resistance of organized workers and by the intervention of the State. By these means, the health of the workers can be protected and their family life maintained. They make it possible for them to obtain the education necessary to enable them to fulfil their duties as citizens in a modern democracy.
“The degree in which Capitalism is restricted varies to a very great extent in the different States. Through the unfair competition of backward countries, these differences endanger labour and industry in the more advanced States. The adjustment of national differences in the legal protection of labour by a system of international labour legislation has long been a pressing need. It has been rendered doubly urgent by the terrible upheavals and awful destruction of the vital forces of the people brought about by the war. At the same time, however, the war is bringing about the possibility of satisfying this need by the formation of a League of Nations, which now seems certain. The Berne Conference demands that the League of Nations, as one of its primary tasks, shall create and put into execution an International Labour Charter.”
At Berne a Permanent Commission was appointed to revive and draw up a new constitution for the Second International. This Permanent Commission, which included Messrs. Henderson, Stuart-Bunning and Ramsay MacDonald of the British Labour Party, met at Amsterdam in April 1919, to continue that work. There was also a “Committee of Action” appointed to deal with certain executive matters, on which Messrs. Henderson, Stuart-Bunning and Ramsay MacDonald were also placed. It was this Committee of Action which went to Paris to interview the “Big Four” on various international questions, including the insertion of the Labour Charter in the Peace Treaty, and issued a manifesto on May 11, 1919, after the Peace Terms were handed, on May 7, to the German delegates, stating that “this peace is not our peace.”
The New Second International
At Lucerne, in August 1919, the Permanent Commission finished the drafting of the new constitution of the Second International, and arranged for a General International Socialist Conference to be held at Geneva in 1920, to adopt it. That Conference took place in July of that year. An invitation dated April 10, 1920, was sent out to all Socialist and Labour Parties subscribing to, inter alia, the following principle:—“(1) The political and economic organization of the working-class for the purpose of abolishing the capitalist form of society and achieving complete freedom for humanity through the conquest of political power and the socialization of the means of production and exchange, that is to say, by the transformation of capitalist society into a collectivist or communist society.” The invitation, after mentioning a number of socialistic questions to which the attention of the Conference at Geneva would be directed, concluded in these words:—“Convinced of the necessity of a great effort to ensure unity on the basis of the traditional principles of the class-struggle and with a view to international action ... we invite you to attend the Geneva Conference.”
At the Geneva Conference the constitution of the Second International was fixed; its declared purposes are as follows:
“1. The political and economic organization of the working-class for the purpose of abolishing the capitalist form of society and achieving complete freedom for humanity through the conquest of political power and the socialization of the means of production and exchange, that is to say, by the transformation of capitalist society into a collectivist or communist society.
“2. The international union and action of the workers in the struggle against jingoism and imperialism and for the simultaneous suppression of militarism and armaments, with the object of bringing about a real League of Nations, including all peoples master of their own destiny, and maintaining world peace.
“3. The representation and defence of the interests of oppressed peoples and subject races.