The Internationale

Also known as Internationale

left-wing anthem

AI overview

"The Internationale" is a revolutionary song composed in 1871 that became the anthem of socialist and communist movements worldwide. It matters because it expressed the aspirations of working-class movements for solidarity and social change, and its enduring popularity reflects its significance as a symbol of left-wing political ideology across generations and countries.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

"The Internationale" is an international anthem that has been adopted as the anthem of various anarchist, communist, socialist and social democratic movements. It has been a standard of the socialist movement since the late nineteenth century, when the Second International adopted it as its official anthem. The title arises from the "First International", an alliance of workers, which held a congress in 1864. The author of the anthem's lyrics, Eugène Pottier, a member of the French branch of the organisation, attended this congress. Pottier's text was later set to an original melody composed by Pierre De Geyter, a member of the Parti ouvrier français (French Workers Party) in Lille in industrial northern France.

Lyrics

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “The Internationale” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.