Abstract
This chapter reviews the literature on socialist internationalism and the Socialist International and makes the case for re-evaluating the subject in light of the conceptual innovations of recent historiography. It argues for studying the international socialist movement as a peculiar transnational political network, challenging the methodological nationalism and national exceptionalism in the traditional historiography of European social democracy. Some hypothetical ways through which transnational transfers and contacts influenced the development of national parties are described, including negotiations to achieve a stringent definition of democratic socialism, regular contacts and exchange of views, the attraction of the British Labour Party as a model, and the generational turnover. Specifically, the concept of ‘internationalisation of domestic quarrels’ is introduced to assess the relationship between factional struggle and international contacts. The research also embraces the approach of new political history to assess the role of language, culture and performance in high politics.
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Notes
- 1.
I. Silone (2002) ‘Missione europea del Socialismo’, in N. Novelli (ed.), Per Ignazio Silone (Firenze: Polistampa), 91–92 (originally published in 1947). A. Philip (1950) Le socialisme et l’unité européenne: réponse a l’exécutif de Labour Party (Paris: Mouvement socialiste pour les états-unis d’Europe), 15. In every chapter, translations from a non-English document or publication are by the author of the book and responsibility thereof.
- 2.
J. Polasky (1995) The Democratic Socialism of Emile Vandervelde: Between Reform and Revolution (Oxford: Berg), 235.
- 3.
Quoted in S. Fedele (2001) ‘Il laburismo nell’emigrazione antifascista’, A. Landuyt and G.B. Furiozzi (eds), Il modello laburista nell’Italia del Novecento (Milano: Franco Angeli), 105.
- 4.
R. Steininger (1979) Deutschland und die Sozialistische Internationale nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, Darstellung und Dokumentation (Bonn: Neue Gesellschaft). J. Braunthal (1980) History of the International, Vol. 3, World Socialism 1943–1968 (London: Gollancz). E.H. Carr (1982) The Twilight of Comintern, 1930–1935 (London: Macmillan), 94f; 424–427.
- 5.
D. Sassoon (2010) One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century (London: Tauris), 210.
- 6.
F. Furet (1981) Interpreting the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 190–193.
- 7.
G. Devin (1993) L’Internationale Socialiste: histoire et sociologie du socialisme internationale: 1945–1990 (Paris: Presses de la Fondation national des sciences politiques), 202. G. Devin (1996) ‘L’internationalisme des socialistes’, in M. Lazar (ed.) La gauche en Europe depuis 1945: invariants et mutations du socialisme européen (Paris: Presses de la Fondation national des sciences politiques), 413–414.
- 8.
T.C. Imlay (2014) ‘“The Policy of Social Democracy is Self-Consciously Internationalist”: The German Social Democratic Party’s Internationalism after 1945’, The Journal of Modern History, 86, 1, 81–86. T.C. Imlay (2016). ‘The Practice of Socialist Internationalism during the Twentieth Century’. Moving the Social, 55, 17–18.
- 9.
A. Iriye (2013) Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 10–17.
- 10.
W. Kaiser, B. Leucht, M. Gehler (2010) ‘Transnational Networks in Regional Integration: Historical Perspectives on an Elusive Phenomenon’, in W. Kaiser, B. Leucht, M. Gehler (eds), Transnational Networks in Regional Integration: Governing Europe 1945–83 (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 1–2; 10–11.
- 11.
W. Kaiser (2009) ‘Transnational Networks in European Governance. The Informal Politics of Integration’, in W. Kaiser, B. Leucht, M. Rasmussen (eds), The History of the European Union: Origins of a Trans- and Supranational Polity 1950–72 (New York: Routledge), 14–15.
- 12.
O. Rathkolb (2010) ‘Brandt, Kreisky and Palme as Policy Entrepreneurs: Social Democratic Networks in Europe’s Policy Towards the Middle East’, in Kaiser, Leucht, Gehler, Transnational Networks in Regional Integration, 152–175.
- 13.
K. Steinnes (2014) The British Labour Party, Transnational Influences and European Community Membership, 1960–1973 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner). M. Broad (2017) Harold Wilson, Denmark and the Making of Labour European Policy (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press).
- 14.
M. Gehler (2010) ‘Geschichte vergleichender Parteien–Außenpolitik und Mitgliedschaft in der Europäischen Union: SPÖ und ÖVP in internationalen Organisationen und transnationalen Netzwerken 1945–2005,’ Moving the Social, 43, 7–46.
- 15.
P. Van Kemseke (2006) Towards an Era of Development, The Globalization of Socialism and Christian Democracy: 1945–1965 (Leuven: Leuven University Press).
- 16.
M. Di Donato (2015) I comunisti italiani e la sinistra europea: il PCI e i rapporti con le socialdemocrazie (1964–1984) (Roma: Carocci). M. Di Donato (2015). ‘The Cold War and Socialist Identity: The Socialist International and the Italian “Communist Question” in the 1970s’, Contemporary European History, 24, 2, 193–211.
- 17.
C. Salm (2016) Transnational Socialist Networks in the 1970s: European Community Development Aid and Southern Enlargement (London: Palgrave Macmillan).
- 18.
K. Misgeld (1984) Sozialdemokratie und Aussenpolitik in Schweden: Sozialistische Internationale, Europapolitik und die Deutschlandfrage 1945–1955 (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag).
- 19.
Throughout the book, ‘Labour Party’ without any other adjective refers to the British Labour Party; the Dutch Labour Party and the Norwegian Labour Party are referred as PvdA and DNA.
- 20.
T. Insall (2010) Haakon Lie, Denis Healey and the Making of an Anglo-Norwegian Special Relationship 1945–1951 (Oslo: Oslo Academic Press).
- 21.
M. Drögemöller (2008) Zwei Schwestern in Europa. Deutsche und niederländische Sozialdemokratie 1945–1990 (Berlin: Vorwärts Buch).
- 22.
P. Sebastiani (1983) Laburisti inglesi e socialisti italiani: dalla ricostituzione del Psi(up) alla scissione di Palazzo Barberini (Roma: Elengraf). A. Varsori (1988) ‘Il Labour Party e la crisi del socialismo italiano (1947–1948)’, Socialismo Storia. Annali della Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini e della Fondazione di Studi Storici Filippo Turati, 2, 159–211. I. Favretto (1996) ‘La nascita del centrosinistra e la Gran Bretagna, Partito socialista, laburisti, Foreign Office’, Italia Contemporanea, 2, 5–44. I. Favretto (2006) ‘The Wilson Government and the Italian Centre-Left Coalition: Between “Socialist Diplomacy” and Realpolitik, 1964–1970’, European History Quaterly, 36, 3, 421–444. L. Nuti (1999) Gli Stati Uniti e l’apertura a sinistra, Importanza e limiti della presenza americana in Italia (Roma-Bari: Laterza).
- 23.
Imlay, ‘The Practice of Socialist Internationalism during the Twentieth Century’, 20.
- 24.
Kaiser, ‘Transnational Networks in European Governance’, 15.
- 25.
C. Tilly (1984) Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York: Russell Sage Foundation), 62.
- 26.
Devin, ‘L’internationalisme des socialistes’, 430.
- 27.
L. Rapone (1999) La socialdemocrazia europea tra le due guerre: dall’organizzazione della pace alla Resistenza al fascismo, 1923–1936 (Roma: Carocci), 22.
- 28.
Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism, 210. Also, L. Hamon (1983) ‘L’Internationale Socialiste depuis 1945 et la tradition des internationales ouvrières’, in H. Portelli (ed.), L’Internationale socialiste (Paris: Les Éditions Ouvrières), 19.
- 29.
Imlay, ‘“The Policy of Social Democracy is Self-Consciously Internationalist”’, 120. D. Orlow (2000) Common Destiny: A Comparative History of the Dutch, French, and German Social Democratic Parties, 1945–1969 (New York: Berghahn Books), 145.
- 30.
S. Pons (2014) The Global Revolution: A History of International Communism, 1917–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 29–30.
- 31.
‘Mr Denis Healey’s speech at the Italian Unification Congress,’ The National Archives, Kew, FO 371/79301–Z8223.
- 32.
A. Panebianco (1988) Political Parties: Organization and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 33–46.
- 33.
Devin, L’Internationale socialiste, 347–348
- 34.
P. Heumos (2004) ‘Einleitung’, in P. Heumos (ed.), Europäischer Sozialismus im Kalten Krieg: Briefe und Berichte 1944–1948 (Frankfurt: Campus), 37.
- 35.
C. Collette (1998) The International Faith: Labour’s Attitude to European Socialism, 1918–39 (Aldershot: Ashgate), 89.
- 36.
Entry, 23 May 1957, R. Crossman (1981) The Backbench Diaries of Richard Crossman (London: Cape), 597.
- 37.
G. Stedman Jones (2016) Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion (London: Allen Lane), 475.
- 38.
E. Jousse (2007) Réviser le marxisme? d’Edouard Bernstein à Albert Thomas: 1896–1914 (Paris: L’Harmattan),119; also 164–167.
- 39.
S. Berger (1994) The British Labour Party and the German Social Democrats, 1900–1931 (Oxford: Clarendon), 245.
- 40.
Polasky, The Democratic Socialism of Emile Vandervelde, 243.
- 41.
However, the opinion of electors and rank and file was always the first concern of socialist leaders, as their power in the party and in national politics depended on them.
- 42.
Salm, Transnational Socialist Networks in the 1970s, 16.
- 43.
J. Lawrence (2003) ‘Political history’ in S. Berger, H. Feldner, K. Passmore (eds), Writing History: Theory and Practice (London: Hodder Arnold), 184.
- 44.
S.P. Kramer (1984) Socialism in Western Europe: The Experience of a Generation (Boulder-London: Westview Press).
- 45.
K. Mannheim (1970) ‘The Problem of Generations’, Psychoanalytic Review, 57,3, 378–400.
- 46.
Stenogramme, 8 June 1947, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Socialist International, 235.
- 47.
Lawrence, ‘Political history’, 185–187; 192–195. D. Craig (2010) ‘“High Politics” and the “New Political History”’, Historical Journal, 53, 2, 453–475.
- 48.
R. Crowcroft (2008) ‘The “High Politics” of Labour Party Factionalism, 1950–5’, Historical Research, 81, 214, 679–709.
- 49.
S. Pedersen (2002) ‘What is Political History now?’, in D. Cannadine (ed.) What is History Now? (Basingstoke: Palgrave), 45.
- 50.
R.P. Formisano (2001) ‘The Concept of Political Culture’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 31, 3, 424.
- 51.
G. Stedman Jones (1983) Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History 1832–1982 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 19–24. L. Black (2001) ‘Popular Politics in Modern British History’, Journal of British Studies, 40, 3, 431–445.
- 52.
L. Black (2003) ‘“What Kind of People are you?” Labour, the People and the “New Political History”’, in J. Callaghan, S. Fielding, S. Ludlam (eds) Interpreting the Labour Party: Approaches to Labour politics and History (Manchester University Press), 23–26.
- 53.
Stedman Jones, Languages of Class, 94.
- 54.
D. Bachmann-Medick (2016) Cultural Turns: New Orientations in the Study of Culture (Berlin: De Gruyter), 86. J.C. Alexander and J.L. Mast (2006) ‘Introduction: Symbolic Action in Theory and Practice: The Cultural Pragmatics of Symbolic Action’, in J.C. Alexander and J.L. Mast (eds) Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual (Cambridge: Cambridge University press), 3.
- 55.
S. Berger (1995) ‘European Labour Movements and the European Working Class in Comparative Perspective’, in S. Berger, D. Broughton (eds), The Force of Labour: The Western European Labour Movement and the Working Class in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Berg), 245–248. S. Berger, H. Nehring (2017), ‘Series Editors’ Preface’, in Salm, Transnational socialist networks in the 1970s, xii.
- 56.
In British culture, ‘Continent’ and ‘Continental’ usually refer to Western Europe excluding Britain and Scandinavia. Though vague, the term is used throughout the book with this meaning.
- 57.
S. Berger (2003) ‘Comparative History’, in Berger, Feldner, Passmore, Writing History, 161–165. H.-G. Haupt, J. Kock (2009) ‘Comparison and Beyond: Traditions, Scope, and Perspectives of Comparative History’, in H.-G. Haupt, J. Kock (eds), Comparative and Transnational history: Central European Approaches and New Perspectives (New York: Berghahn Books), 1–5.
- 58.
H. Kaelble (2009) ‘Between Comparison and Transfers – and What Now? A French-German Debate’, in Haupt, Kock, Comparative and transnational history, 33–38. Berger, ‘Comparative History’, 169–171. M. Juneja, M. Pernau (2009) ‘Lost in Translation? Transcending Boundaries in Comparative History’, Haupt, Kock, Comparative and transnational history, 109.
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Costa, E. (2018). Introduction. In: The Labour Party, Denis Healey and the International Socialist Movement. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77347-6_1
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