Socialist Organizing in the Military - The "Golden Years" (Late 19th-Early 20th Centuries)

The Socialist/Communist Parties of the 1st, 2nd & 3rd Internationals had anti-war organizing among soldiers & sailors as one of their major "anti-militarism" tasks. Little is known about this history, its problems and effects, in the contemporary U.S. anti-war movement. Most of the problems involved in GI organizing during the Vietnam war and after were a replay of issues already encountered in the late 1800s-early 1900s. Foreknowledge of these experiences would have better prepared later GI organizers and mitigated some of their problems. This talk will cover this early, primarily European episode. Presenter: Al Sargis, Coordinator of the Friedrich Engels Institute of Marxist War & Military Analysis.