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 FFabianism / Fabians - Members of the reformist and opportunist Fabian Society, formed by a group of British bourgeois intellectuals in 1884. The society took its name from the Roman General Fabius Cunctator (the "Delayer"), famous for his procrastinating tactics and avoidance of decisive battles. The Fabian Society represented, as Lenin put it, "the most finished expression of opportunism and liberal-labour politics." The Fabians sought to deflect the proletariat from the class struggle and advocated the possibility of a peaceful, gradual transition from capitalism to socialism by means of reforms. During the imperialist world war (1914-18) the Fabians took a social-chauvinist stand. First International - The Communist League was the first international communist organization of the proletariat founded under the guidance of Marx and Engels in London early in June 1847. Preparatory to the foundation of the League, Marx and Engels did much to weld together the socialists and the workers of all lands both ideologically and organizationally. In the early part of 1847, Marx and Engels joined the secret German society The League of the Just. At the beginning of June 1847, a League of the Just congress took place in London at which it was renamed The Communist League while its former hazy slogan "All Men Are Brothers" was replaced by the militant internationalist slogan of "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!" The aims of The Communist League were the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the abolition of the old bourgeois society based on class antagonisms, and the establishment of a new society in which there would be neither classes nor private property. Marx and Engels helped to work out the programmatic and organizational principles of the League; they wrote its programme -- the Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in February 1848. The Communist League played a great historical role as a school of proletarian revolutionaries, as the embryo of the proletarian party, and was the predecessor of the International Working Men's Association (The First International). It existed until November 1852, its prominent members later playing a leading role in the First International. The First International Workingmen's Association was the first international tendency that grouped together all the worlds workers parties in one unified international party. The First International was the first international organization of the proletariat, founded by Karl Marx in 1864 at an international workers' meeting convened in London by English and French workers. The foundation of the First International was the result of many years of persistent struggle waged by Marx and Engels to establish a revolutionary party of the working class. Lenin said that the First International "laid the foundation of an international organization of the workers for the preparation of their revolutionary onslaught on capital," "laid the foundation for the proletarian, international struggle for socialism" (V. I. Lenin, The Third International and Its Place in History. See present edition, Vol. 29). The central, leading body of the First International was the General Council, of which Marx was a permanent member. In the course of the struggle against the petty-bourgeois influences and sectarian tendencies then prevalent in the working-classmovement (narrow trade unionism in England, Proudhonism and anarchism in the Romance countries), Marx rallied around himself the most class conscious of the General Council members (F. Lessner, E. Dupont, G. Jung, and others). The First International directed the economic and political struggle of the workers of different countries, and strengthened their international solidarity. A tremendous part was played by the First International in disseminating Marxism, in linking-up socialism with the working-class movement. When the Paris Commune was defeated the working class was faced with the problem of creating, in the different countries, mass parties based on the principles advanced by the First International. "As I view European conditions," wrote Marx in 1873, "it is quite useful to let the formal organization of the International recede into the background for the time being" (Marx to F. A. Sorge. September 27, 1873). In 1876 the First International was officially disbanded at a conference in Philadelphia. Freikorps - Set up in Germany by the old Army Command and paid by the government War Ministry, they were used by the Social Democrat Noske in 1919 to crush the revolution; they were right-wing mercenaries, led by Imperial officers. The Freikorps murdered Luxemburg and Liebknecht. Hitler took the Swastika from their insignia, and the SS the Death's Head. French Revolution of 1789 - Revolutionary movement that shook France between 1787 and 1799 and reached its first climax there in 1789. Marked the end of the ancien régime in France with the end of the absolute monarchy under Louis XVI. This was the classic example of the Bourgeois Revolution. Back to the Glossary of Marxist Terms
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