Contingency in the Historical Process

Abstract

Abstract The various strategies discussed in preceding chapters were, for the most part, regarded as pathways toward a non capitalist, democratic and socialist order. United fronts, radical pianism and popular fronts were widely considered to be means to obtain this socialist goal. It was that aspect of these strategies which caught the attention of contemporaries and which ensured the meteoric rise of these novel propositions to positions of national and international prominence. This was most unabashedly so in the case of united fronts and pianism. Both pathways to social change were regarded, quite often explicitly, as clearly identifiable socialist projects. In the case of popular fronts, I argue, this was less decidedly so. Here, a gulf began to emerge between the popular identification of popular fronts as a socialist project, the “popular front in combat,” and the views of popular fronts as an exercise of power rather than “the conquest of power,” prevalent among the upper levels of the party hierarchies associated with this scheme. Much of the attention of historians of Europe’s Left has hitherto been devoted to the communist tradition, and the radical achievements of European social democrats have been neglected in the process. Partially responsible for this case of historical amnesia, of course, has been the prevailing view of social democracy as a gradualist and steadily moderating political force, a view encouraged by, among others, post-World War II social democracy itself. By contrast, I argue that the driving force behind these strategies for social change was continental European social democracy. To be sure, not all Continental social democrats identified with this socialist project at that time, and not all supporters of this socialist project were social democrats. Yet, by 1934, a majority of Continental social democrats favored a path of radical societal change, and they were by far the most numerous Continental political force on the working-class Left.