ABSTRACT
When the Russian Communists set up the Third International in 1921, in what they believed to be a revolutionary situation in Europe, they imposed 21 conditions on wouldbe member parties, including the expulsion of their reformist wings. Many left-wing socialists, who despised the social democratic Second International for its record in the recent war, were unwilling either to break openly with the Communists or to accept their harsh discipline. Predominant in many continental socialist parties, especially in Austria and pre-fascist Italy, these ‘maximalists’ set up their own organisation (promptly dubbed the 2½ International) in Vienna. Their watchword was ‘no enemies on the Left’, and their hallmark was their ambivalence about the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois state. They did not plan it or directly preach it, but they would not repudiate those who did. They emphasised that their socialist objective took priority over the preservation of bourgeois democracy, their vocabulary was full of the rhetoric of class war and revolution, and their policies often implied the existence of a revolutionary situation; but —unlike their right-wing enemies—they made no serious effort to prepare for a violent clash with the other side, feeling confident that its defeat would inevitably be ensured by the inexorable march of history.
