"It is an organization of Socialist Parties and labor organizations, meeting periodically in international conferences. In order to be eligible for membership, an organisation must meet the following test, adopted by the International Congress of Paris, 1900. "Those admitted to the International Socialist Congresses are: "1. All associations which adhere to the essential principles of Socialism; namely, Socialization of the means of production and exchange, international union, and action of the workers, conquest of public power by the proletariat, organized as a class party. "2. All the labor organizations which accept the principles of the class struggle and recognize the necessity of political action, legislative and parliamentary but do not participate directly in the political movement. "This definition includes every Socialist Party and propaganda organization in the world and it further takes in those enlightened unions that recognize the need for political action. It excludes conservative unions that do not yet admit the soundness of the principles of the class struggle." The First International was thoroughly Marxian and revolutionary. According to "The Revolutionary Age," April 12, 1919, it accepted the revolutionary struggle against capitalism and waged that struggle with all the means in its power. It considered its objective to be the conquest of power by the revolutionary proletariat, the annihilation of the bourgeois state, and the introduction of a new proletarian state, functioning temporarily as a dictatorship of the proletariat. The First International collapsed after the Franco-Prussian War. The Second International was formed at Paris in the year 1889. Its tendencies were much more moderate than those of its predecessor. "The Revolutionary Age," April 12, 1919, criticises it for being "conservative and petty bourgeois in spirit," and states that "it was part and parcel of the national liberal movement, not at all revolutionary, dominated by the conservative skilled elements of the working class and the small bourgeoisie. It was hesitant and compromising, expressing the demands of the 'petite bourgeoisie' for government ownership, reforms, etc." In 1900 an International Socialist Bureau was established at Brussels for the purpose of solidifying and strengthening the work of the Second International and for maintaining uninterrupted relations between the various national organizations.