The Imperialism Debate in the Second and Third Internationals

This paper will address the vicissitudes of internationalism between the Second and Third International by opening up the question of how the central members of the socialist Internationals conceived of imperialism? How was imperialism thought of as a problem of specific to the post-1848 world? And how was imperialism distinct from what came to be called the colonial question? What propelled the Indian liberals such as Dadabhai Naoroji and, later, radicals such as M. N. Roy and Virendrnath Chattopadhya into the ambit of imperial, international, and internationalist politics? How might we today reframe, for instance, the radical M. N. Roy’s meeting and debate with Bolshevik anti-imperialism in the second, but effectively founding congress of the Third International? How do these moments in the history of anti-imperialism become distorted into the near ubiquitous nationalism of the present?