The Polarization of European Society, 1918–1939

Abstract

Wandering between two worlds, – one dead, The other powerless to be born. Matthew Arnold, Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. Gramsci 1971: 276 During the expansion of industrial capitalism in Europe, attempts to maintain or eradicate restrictions on political rights and economic opportunities generated minority and class conflicts at home; efforts to secure protected markets abroad in lieu of developing internal markets generated imperialist conflicts abroad. These conflicts generated tensions that produced, in 1914, a massively destructive regional war. During the interwar years, struggle between left and right in Europe was carried on in a more or less continuous round of violent strikes, demonstrations, riots, and street fighting, as well as coups, rebellions, and revolutions. As a result, over the course of the nineteenth century, the domestic and international relations of European states became increasingly polarized. Before that, Europe had developed, over the course of several centuries, a three-fold social class structure: an upper class of noble landowners and administrators, a peasantry, and, set off from both of these by law (e.g., in Germany) or by custom (e.g., in England and France), an urban commercial and professional middle class.