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Introduction: The Legacy Despite certain claims later on, neither the French Communists nor the Socialists had a single, unambiguous position on the colonial question prior to World War II. Viewed against a long and complex, sometimes contradictory tradition, the colonial policies adopted by the French Left during the First Indochinese War (1945-1954) become more understandable, if not necessarily more justified in the eyes of some people. Writing before the main wave of nineteenth century European imperialism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in their fragmentary texts on the subject, unequivocally condemned colonialism for being an extension of capitalist exploitation. Essentially, they believed that most non-European civilizations were less advanced and that the independence of the colonies could only follow the victory of the European proletariat. Yet, Marx and Engels also gradually perceived that convulsions overseas might help stimulate revolutions in the Metropole, that certain colonial peoples might be able to take the lead in emancipating themselves and, skipping the capitalist stage of development, might move right on to socialism. They generally supported nationalist movements in Poland and Ireland and were sympathetic to anti-European reactions in India and China. (1) The Socialists of the Second International (1889-1914) were much more involved in the colonial issue, but also more divided. A number of Socialist "revisionists" held that colonialism economically benefitted European workers and was a necessary tutelage for the "backward races." They proposed a progressive and humanitarian "Socialist colonial policy." More traditional Marxists countered that colonialism degraded peoples, whoever practiced it, and was fundamentally injurious to the interests of the European workers, and that, therefore, Socialists had a duty to emancipate the colonial peoples. The traditionalists prevailed in theory, but the Second International became basically revisionist in practice on the colonial question.