Forging a Peripheral Inter-nationalism: The Argentine Socialist Party’s Relationship with the Internationals (1889–1940)

This chapter explores the functions of a specific political network in the context of the Socialist International (SI) between 1973 and 1983.1 At its core this network consisted of three social democratic politicians: Willy Brandt, chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany between 1969 and 1974 and SI president between 1976 and 1992;2 Bruno Kreisky, Austria’s federal chancellor between 1970 and 1983; and Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden from 1969 to 1976 and again from 1982 to 1986. Previous studies have underlined the importance of this ‘triumvirate’3 within the SI but even biographical accounts4 have left the dense mesh of relations that developed between the three protagonists largely untouched. This is not to say that these three did not also form close personal relationships outside the triumvirate with other high-ranking SI members. Brandt, for instance, made it repeatedly clear that French politician Francois Mitterrand was as close to him as either Kreisky or Palme.5 What was unique about those three politicians, however, was the high reciprocity of their mutual esteem and political affinity. In an early publication they tried to draw attention to the symbolic significance of their collaboration.6 For them, the SI functioned as an institutionalized transnational clearing house of networks of social democratic and socialist parties and movements, whose tradition dates back to the Second International created in Paris in 1889.

The Socialist International (SI), the worldwide forum of the socialist, social democratic, and labor parties, actively looked for a solution to the Jewish-Palestinian conflict in the 1980s. At that time, the Israeli Labour Party still was the leading political force in Israel, as it had been historically since the foundation of the country. The Labour Party was also an active member of the SI. The Party’s leader, Shimon Peres, was one of its vice-presidents. At the same time, the social democratic parties were the leading political force in Western Europe. Several important European leaders, many of them presidents and prime ministers, were involved in the SI’s work. They included personalities such as Willy Brandt of Germany; former president of the SI, Francois Mitterrand of France; James Callaghan of Great Britain; Bruno Kreisky of Austria; Bettini Craxi of Italy; Felipe Gonzalez of Spain; Mario Soares of Portugal; Joop de Uyl of the Netherlands; Olof Palme of Sweden; Kalevi Sorsa of Finland; Anker Jörgensen of Denmark; and Gro Harlem Brudtland of Norway—all of whom are former vice-presidents of the SI. As a result, in the 1980s, the SI in many ways represented Europe in global affairs, despite the existence of the European Community (which did not yet have well-defined common foreign policy objectives).

In examining the practice of socialist internationalism, this book has sought to combine three fields of historical scholarship (socialism, internationalism, and international politics) in the aim of contributing to each one. The contribution to the first area, socialism, is perhaps the most obvious. Contrary to numerous claims, socialist internationalism did not die in August 1914 but survived the outbreak of war and afterwards even flourished at times. Indeed, during the two post-war periods, European socialists worked closely together on a variety of pressing issues, endowing the policymaking of the British, French, and German parties with an important international dimension. This international dimension was never all-important: it rarely, if ever, trumped the domestic political and intra-party dimensions of policymaking. But its existence means that the international policies of any one socialist party cannot be fully understood in isolation from the policies of other parties. The practice of socialist internationalism was rarely easy: contention was present and sometimes rife. Equally pertinent, idealism could be in short supply. Often enough, European socialists instrumentalized internationalism for their own ends, whether it was Ramsay MacDonald with the Geneva Protocol during the 1920s or Guy Mollet, who hoped to discredit internal party critics of his Algerian policy during the 1950s. Nevertheless, the attempts to instrumentalize socialist internationalism underscore the latter’s significance. After all, such attempts would be inconceivable unless socialist internationalism meant something to European socialists....

The Schuman Plan to “pool” the coal and steel industries of Western Europe has been widely celebrated as the founding document of today’s European Union. An expansive historiography has developed around the plan but labor and workers are largely absent from existing accounts, even though the sectors targeted for integration, coal and steel, are traditionally understood as centers of working-class militancy and union activity in Europe. Existing literature generally considers the role coal and steel industries played as objects of the Schuman Plan negotiations but this article reverses this approach. It examines instead how labor politics in the French Nord and Pas-de-Calais and the German Ruhr, core industrial regions, influenced the positions adopted by two prominent political parties, the French Socialist and German Social Democratic parties, on the integration of European heavy industry. The empirical material combines archival research in party and national archives with findings from regional histories of the Nord/Pas-de-Calais, the Ruhr, and their local socialist party chapters, as well as from historical and sociological research on miners and industrial workers. The article analyses how intense battles between socialists and communists for the allegiance of coal and steel workers shaped the political culture of these regions after the war and culminated during a mass wave of strikes in 1947–1948. The divergent political outcomes of these battles in the Nord/Pas-de-Calais and the Ruhr, this article contends, strongly contributed to the decisions of the French Socialist Party to support and the German Social Democratic Party to oppose the Schuman Plan in 1950.

Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America

While most areas of party history had received some attention by the late 1920s, at least one had been very little investigated. This concerned the role of the Bolsheviks in the international socialist movement before 1914. The reasons were various. In the first place, questions involving other socialist parties (with the exception of the Polish parties) had occupied only a small part of the Bolsheviks' time in the pre-war period. Lenin and his followers had been a minor and rather distant section of the Second International, whose leaders tended to regard with both perplexity and disapproval the internecine disputes between Russian Marxists. It is true that Lenin was one of the two Russian members of the International Socialist Bureau, and unlike the other, Plekhanov, a not inactive one.1 And the Bolsheviks did at times make significant contributions to debates within the International—as at the Stuttgart Congress in 1907.2 But from the major controversies which occupied the International they generally stood aside. There was thus no obviously distinctive role which they had played in international socialist affairs before the outbreak of war.

This article examines the underexplored role of the Spanish Socialist Party of the Interior (PSI), later the Popular Socialist Party (PSP), in the transnational struggle against Francoism and the democratisation of Spain. Moving beyond the dominant historiographical focus on the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, it investigates how the PSI–PSP forged a robust international network – particularly with the Socialist International (SI) – through a distinct strategy of informal diplomacy. The study’s central aim is to highlight the originality and effectiveness of the PSI–PSP’s communicative tactics, which blended official channels with informal, academic and personal connections, in navigating Cold War–era political dynamics. Anchored in the conceptual frameworks of informal diplomacy, multi-track diplomacy and new diplomatic history, the article situates the PSI–PSP’s initiatives within broader debates on soft power and the role of non-state actors in international relations. Methodologically, it relies on a wide range of primary sources, including unpublished internal documents from the personal archive of the former secretary general of the party, international archives and oral history interviews with former PSI–PSP members. Press sources are also utilised to triangulate key events and statements. The article aims to demonstrate that while the PSI–PSP ultimately failed to gain formal recognition from the SI, its informal diplomatic practices yielded significant symbolic and practical outcomes. It concludes by arguing for a reconceptualisation of transnational socialist networks, emphasising the indispensable role of informal relations in shaping the institutional and political architecture of European social democracy during Spain’s transition to democracy.

This article considers a neglected aspect of twentieth century European socialism: its internationalism. After each of the two world wars European socialists devoted considerable energy to reconstituting an international socialist community, the concrete manifestation of which was the creation of the Labour and Socialist International in 1923 and of the Socialist International in 1951. Animating this community was a collective commitment to the practice of socialist internationalism — to working together to define shared responses to pressing international issues. After 1918 and again after 1945 this collective commitment would eventually wane, sapping international socialism of its dynamism. In examining the case study of disarmament after 1918, the article suggests that the practice of socialist internationalism itself was partly responsible for this waning commitment. The experience of working together fostered the nationalisation of socialist internationalism, as each party increasingly sought to define its position on its own, independently of other socialist parties.

The Japan Socialist Party (Nihon Shakaito) (JSP) was the most important socialist party in post‐World War II Japan. From 1955 to 1993, under the so‐called 1955 system, it was the largest opposition party to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Ideologically, it advocated Marxism and pacifism for most of its existence, and was one of the most leftist parties affiliated with the Socialist International.

Abstract: This paper examines the connection between the political, ideological and discursive development of the Portuguese Socialist Party (PS) and the party’s international relations during the Carnation Revolution (1974–1975). Specifically, it sheds new light on how the PS received and assimilated the support, pressures and influences from two ideologically diverse European socialist parties: the French Socialist Party (PSF) and the British Labour Party. The main argument is that PS received differing and sometimes contradictory influences from its European counterparts, despite the fact that these counterparts collaborated within the Socialist International. These diverging influences came from PSF on the one hand, and the main European social democrat parties and governments on the other. The PS found inspiration in the ideological renewal of the PSF in the early 1970s, especially their strategy of the union of the French left and the concept of autogestion (selfmanagement). However, the PS was influenced in the political realm by the European social democrats, who worked towards preventing the possibility of a communist takeover in Portugal. These influences had an impact on the public discourse, political behaviour, and ideology of the PS, which helps to explain the disjunction between the radical discourse and the moderate political practice of the Portuguese Socialists.

The features of the creation and activities of international left associations in the first third of the XXth century are analyzed, the features of the activities of the Second International on the eve andduring the First World War are clarified, the ideological contradictions between the Social Democratic parties in this period are characterized. The reasons for the splits in the Second International are highlighted; the processes that preceded the formation of the Third International (Communist International) and the Workers’ Socialist International are characterized. The reasons for the separation in the Second International, the processes of the formation of the Third International (Communist International) and the Workers’ Socialist International are investigated, and the organizational structures of the Comintern and the Workers’ Socialist International are compared. It is noted that after the October Revolution in Russia, the Bolsheviks increasingly influenced the world left movement. Promoting the ideas of the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, at the initiative of V. Lenin, they formed the Third International, uniting the communist parties. After the formation of the Comintern, a number of left-wing socialist parties severed relations with the International. The centrist parties rejected the conditions of the Bolsheviks, since the mid-1920s. They united around two centers: the Second International (London) and the Vienna 2½ International.

Unlike neoliberalism, [the] new financial architecture recognises the limits of a disembedded global economy. Yet, rather than seeking to rein in the forces of liberalisation by re-embedding intern...

The Party of European Socialists (PES) was founded in The Hague on 9 November 1992. Its roots can be traced back to the Socialist International (SI), of 1950, and even to the First International of 1864. More recently, the PES is the present incarnation of two organizations linked to the first institutions of the European Communities: the Socialist Group in the Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), established in June 1953; and the Liaison Bureau of the Socialist Parties of the European Community, established in April 1957 between the SI parties in the Communities. In June 1957, the Liaison Bureau decided that only delegates from its member parties could sit in the Socialist Group in the European Parliament (EP). This set the preceden

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the role that the Socialist International (SI) and western European Social democratic parties had during the Portuguese democratisation process in the mid-1970s, and how it impacted on the “modus operandi” of the SI in other areas of the world, namely in Latin America. This will be done by focusing on the role that some socialist and social democratic European parties played during the 1970s. In this case, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) is particularly relevant, as it was the leading party in the support to the Portuguese socialists, something that was part of its strategy of engagement with the democratisation of Southern Europe. The Portuguese democratisation process also taught significant lessons for the European socialists. Understanding the importance of having good contacts within the political oppositions as a way for easing the influence of regime change, the Socialist International parties developed strategies of supporting the sister-parties from other dictatorships. This is particularly clear when we observe the Socialist International’s activity in the second half of the 1970s. Clearly influenced by Willy Brandt’s Presidency and his beliefs on the North–South dialogue, the SI will develop a strategy of establishing close contacts with several parties in Latin America. Iberian leaders Mario Soares and Felipe Gonzalez, the highest examples of the success of international party solidarity, were important assets in this strategy.

The Socialist International (SI) today represents undoubtedly the strongest international political movement with 19 member parties in government and a total of 22 parties either sharing government responsibility. In order to isolate and analyse the different components of the SI and its member states' approaches to democratisation, this chapter utilises Magen and McFaul's “logics of influence”. Material incentives entail both threats of punitive measures and promises of positive rewards. The aim is to alter the cost-benefit calculations of domestic leaders, in order to encourage democratic reform in the target state. The SI is a worldwide organisation of social democratic, socialist and labour parties. While the European social democratic parties all embraced strategies that utilised the manipulation of material incentives, they did not always agree on which strategies or how to employ them. One of the conflicts centred on whether or not they should make financial aid to Portugal contingent on a certain political development.