Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), the leading party in the "Socialist International" for many decades, is talking about leaving the "International".
Both Mubarak's NDP in Egypt, and Ben Ali's RCD in Tunisia, were until their downfall members of the "Socialist International".
An article by SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel in the liberal Frankfurter Rundschau points out the obvious, that the Socialist International is irrelevant, that it is no longer a "voice for freedom", that many member parties should be expelled from it, that it is embarrassing that parties such as Mubarak's or Ben Ali's only got expelled after they were deposed at home...
Formally the "Socialist International" traces its history back to the Second International, founded in 1889, which included Frederick Engels, August Bebel, Jean Jaures, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky and many others among its leading members. In fact that International collapsed in 1914, when most of its member parties backed their "own" bourgeois governments in World War One.
Reassembled after 1918, it still had something of the character of an association of (now clearly reformist) workers' parties, but for many decades now it has swollen its ranks by including parties like the NDP and RCD.
http://www.fr-online.de/politik/meinung/keine-kumpanei-mit-despoten/-/1472602/7705378/-/index.html and http://www.fr-online.de/politik/internationale-soll-reinen-tisch-machen/-/1472596/7716010/-/index.html.
Comments
guenter is right
...the question is why it's taken the SPD so long to either notice these things or to discover that they are actually politically bad (even for them).
Instead of funding the SI, the SPD seems to want to concentrate on the "Party of European Socialists", the grouping of social-democratic and Labour parties in the EU and European Parliament.
was it ever a "voice of freedom"?
that it is no longer a "voice for freedom",
-was it ever? the "socialist" international organised the counter-revolution in portugal 1975, the "socialist" party of soares, which didnt excist before, was an artificial construct of the german SPD, the whole thing repeated "germany 1918".
-the SI had a conference in peru, the same year when a socialdemocratic governm, member of SI, shot 400 prisoners from a guerilla group in the neck in jail. and willy brandt said, that only terrorists ask critical quests about it
-the SI didnt protest when the turkish socialdemokrats went to coalition with the fascists "grey wolfes"
and so on, and so on!