Yellow socialism

Yellow socialism was the name applied to a form of revisionist socialism which became prominent in the early twentieth century prior to World War I as an alternative to Marxism or "red socialism". Yellow socialists rejected class struggle, the general strike and revolutionary socialism in general.

The term was coined by a former member of the French Socialist Party, Pierre Biétry, in 1904 when he founded the "Fédération Nationale des Jaunes de France" (National Federation of Yellows), a right wing socialist group that rejected Marxism and class struggle and labour militancy. Over the next two decades revolutionary socialists would deride all "revisionists" as "yellow socialists" whether they accepted the label for themselves or not.

In the United States yellow socialism was associated with the business unionism of Samuel Gompers (and thus described as "yellow unionism").

Yellow socialists and yellow unionists were criticised by more radical socialists for their concessions to nationalism and occasional engagement in chauvinism such as opposition to immigration (for supposedly flooding the labour market and reducing wages or denying jobs to native-born citizens) as well as utilisation of racism or anti-Semitism.

In Europe it became associated with the Socialist and social democratic parties who supported their own states during the war rather than taking an internationalist position against the conflict.

However, the "Berne International" (or "Two-and-a-half International') which met at Zimmerwald in 1915 is also described by Lenin as "yellow socialist", despite its opposition to the war, for its rejection of revolutionary socialism. After the war the term "yellow socialilsm" fell into disuse in favour of the term "social democrat" which previously had applied to all socialists but which Leninists rejected after the October Revolution.