International Working Union of Socialist Parties

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The International Working Union of Socialist Parties (also known as 2½ International or the Vienna International) was a political international for the co-operation of socialists. IWUSP was founded on February 27 1921 at a conference in Vienna, Austria by ten parties, including the USPD, SFIO, Independent Labour Party (Britain), Social Democratic Party of Switzerland, Independent Socialist Party (Romania), and SPÖ. In April 1921, the Spanish PSOE joined.

The founders of IWUSP were parties that saw neither the reformist Second International nor the pro-Moscow Third International as alternatives for affiliation. IWUSP criticized the other two Internationals for what it perceived to be dogmatism, and meant that more consideration should be given to the particularities of the political situation in each country. It worked for the unification of the Second and Third Internationals. From 2 to 5 April 1922 a meeting was held in Berlin with delegations from the three different international bodies to discuss a merger, but unity could not be achieved and the Comintern withdrew from the talks.

In Germany on September 24 1922, the USPD, one of the main components of IWUSP, merged with the SPD, a member of the Second International. Discouraged by the intransigent position of the Communists, at the joint congress with the Second International held in Hamburg in May 1923 IWUSP merged with it to form the Labour and Socialist International. Some, such as the Independent Socialist Party (Romania) refused to join the new body.

The secretary of IWUSP was the Austrian Friedrich Adler of the SPÖ; other prominent members were Victor Adler, Otto Bauer and L. Martov. The IWUSP was heavily influenced by Austromarxism. It published Nachrichten der Internationalen Arbeitsgemeinschaft Sozialistischen Parteien (News of IWUSP).

In the 1930s, a similar effort was made to create an interntional between the reformism of the Second and the Stalinism of the Third; the London Bureau of left-wing socialist parties.

Since the IWUSP was heavily dominated by Germanic parties, the German abbreviation IASP was commonly used.