European socialism between militant and parliamentary democracy: a pan-European debate, 1945–8

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes how the question of democracy divided the post-war European socialist parties. Contrary to conventional historiographical wisdom, it demonstrates that the socialist conversion to the classic liberal model of elections, parliaments and constitutions was hardly a self-evident or uncontested affair. To this end, it focuses on two sets of parties that adopted widely divergent attitudes to parliamentary democracy. On the one side, the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party and the French Socialist Party considered free and fair elections, sovereign parliaments and constitutional checks and balances sacrosanct. On the other, the Italian Socialist Party and the Polish Socialist Party believed that elected parliaments did not necessarily reflect the popular will, meaning that constitutional boundaries could justifiably be overstepped in the struggle for socialism. With this pan-European approach, the article not only brings to light the many parallels across the two emerging geopolitical blocs but also suggests that socialist attitudes towards the concept of militant democracy were less straightforward than historians have assumed. In fact, it shows that the experience of dictatorship and war had seen the four parties move in opposite directions on the question of ‘democratic self-defence’ or the use of anti-democratic means against (supposed) enemies of democracy.

KEYWORDS:

• Parliamentary democracy
• militant democracy
• socialist parties
• Eastern and Western Europe
• political reconstruction after World War Two
• international socialist movement
• transnational history

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Patrick Pasture and Idesbald Goddeeris for providing feedback on an earlier version of this article. I am also obliged to the two anonymous referees for their helpful and insightful comments. I am especially grateful to the German Historical Institute in Warsaw, the Society for the Study of French History, and the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies for helping to fund the archival research that provided the basis for this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Such accounts were challenged for the first time a little over a decade ago in: Conway, “The Rise and Fall,” 68.

2. Corduwener, “Democracy as a Contested Concept;” Conway and Depkat, “Towards a European Discourse.”

3. Müller, Contesting Democracy, 146–50.

4. Corduwener, The Problem of Democracy, 13–14.

5. In his standard work on the history of the European Left, Geoff Eley associates the post-war era primarily with a lost struggle for more radical and participatory forms of democracy. Yet he attributes the swift resumption of parliamentary “politics as usual” chiefly to returning socialist and communist leaders. Eley, Forging Democracy, 270–3.

6. Berger, “Democracy and Social Democracy,” 26–27; Orlow, Common Destiny, 45.

7. This was what Karl Loewenstein, the interwar German social democrat and the spiritual father of the concept of militant democracy, had urged democracies to do when faced with anti-democratic opponents. Loewenstein, “Militant Democracy.”

8. Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism, 132.

9. See e.g. Bergounioux, “Socialisme français;” Sabbatucci, Il riformismo impossibile.

10. I have elaborated on the argument that we cannot properly understand post-war Europe without looking across the Iron Curtain in: De Graaf, Socialism across the Iron Curtain.

11. See for this approach for example Berman, The Primacy of Politics, 177–99.

12. I have dealt with these concepts in greater detail in: De Graaf, “Old and New Democracy.”

13. To quote the famous prediction that Léon Blum, the interwar leader of the SFIO and France’s first socialist Prime Minister, made upon his return to France in 1945. See: Blum, Le Socialisme.

14. Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester, Labour Party Archives (LPA), International Department, International Socialist Conference 1946–1947, Box 3.

15. On conservative and/or Christian democratic attitudes towards popular and parliamentary sovereignty see: Marco Duranti, Conservative Human Rights Revolution; Müller, “Towards a New History.”

16. Archiwum Akt Nowych, Warsaw (AAN), Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (PPS), XXVI Kongres, 235/I-12, fo. 196.

17. AAN, PPS, Centralny Komitet Wykonawczy (CKW), 235/III-6, fo. 25.

18. Lelio Basso, “Per una coscienza democratica,” Avanti!, August 29, 1945.

19. AAN, PPS, XXVI Kongres, fos. 131, 269.

20. That is at least what SFIO Executive member Léon Boutbien concluded on the basis of what he had “seen and heard” at the January 1948 PSI congress. Centre d’Histoire Social, Paris, Fonds Marceau Pivert, 559/AP/42.

21. AAN, PPS, CKW, 235/III/2, fo. 53.

22. Basso, “Per una coscienza.”

23. Pietro Nenni, “Il ‘ni’ della Democrazia Cristiana,” Avanti!, July 13, 1944.

24. Quoted in: Heumos, Die Konferenzen, 58.

25. Quoted in: Orientamenti. Bollettino di commento e indirizzo politico, January 18, 1948, p. 27.

26. The protocols of the congress are available at: http://62.210.214.184/cg-ps/documents/pdf/cong-1945-08-11.pdf (last consulted: June 15, 2018).

27. LPA, International Department, International Socialist Conference, 1946–47, Box 3.

28. Zpráva o činnosti Československé sociální demokracie k XXI řádnému sjezdu v Brně 14.-16. XI. 1947, Prague 1947, XXV.

29. The protocols of the congress are available at: http://62.210.214.184/cg-ps/documents/pdf/cong-1946-08-29.pdf (last consulted: June 15, 2018).

30. Narodní Archiv, Prague, Fonds Bohumil Laušman (FBL), Karton 34.

31. Office Universitaire de Recherche Socialiste, Paris, Archives du Parti Socialiste SFIO, Compte rendu des débats du Comité Directeur, 1944–1969 (CD SFIO), April 23, 1946.

32. CD SFIO, June 4, 1946 and October 22, 1947.

33. Archiv Národního Muzea, Fonds Zdeněk Fierlinger (FZF), Karton 40.

34. CD SFIO, February 20, 1945.

35. Archiv ČSSD, Prague (AČ), Fond 71, Karton 182, fos 309–312; International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Archief Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA), Box 2680; AAN, PPS, Wydz. Zagraniczy, 235/XIX-118, fos. 1–9.

36. AAN, Akta Henryka Wachowicza, Sygnatura 8.

37. Pietro Nenni, “Il terzo ladrone”, Avanti!, February 2, 1945.

38. Quoted in: Heumos, Die Konferenzen, 71.

39. Basso, “Socialismo europeo (1),” Quarto Stato, September 15, 1946.

40. AAN, PPS, CKW, 235/III/2, fo. 58.

41. Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome, Fondo Pietro Nenni (FPN), Busta 88, Fascicolo 2193. The document does not make clear which foreign representative had made this statement, but it will very likely have been delivered by a foreign socialist (as the post-war socialist parties still tended to send fraternal delegates to most congresses of their European sister parties).

42. AČ, Fond 71, Karton 182, fo. 310.

43. AAN, PPS, Wydz. Zagraniczy, 235/XIX-35, fos. 5–6.

44. The protocols of the congress are available at: http://62.210.214.184/cg-ps/documents/pdf/cong-1947-08-16.pdf (last consulted: June 15, 2018).

45. Všeodborový Archiv, Prague, Fonds KOR 1945–1960, Karton 1, Inventory Number 16.

46. AČ, Fond 71, Karton 112, fo 93.

47. The protocols of the congress are available at: http://62.210.214.184/cg-ps/documents/pdf/cong-1944-11-09.pdf (last consulted: June 15, 2018).

48. Zpráva o činnosti, XLII; FZF, Karton 42.

49. Centre d’Histoire des Sciences Po, Paris, Fonds Daniel Mayer (FDM), 1MA 7.7.

50. See for example the report drawn up by Koos Vorrink, the Dutch delegate at the Romanian fusion congress. Archief PvdA, Box 2286.

51. Quoted in: Steininger, Deutschland und die Sozialistische Internationale, 285–98.

52. Quoted in: Heumos, Die Konferenzen, 124.

53. AAN, Akta Stanisława Szwalbego, Box 13.

54. FPN, Busta 87, Fascicolo 2190.

55. AČ, Fond 71, Karton 112, fo 91.

56. Protokol XX. manifestačního sjezdu Československé sociální demokracie, Prague 1946, pp. 119–20.

57. See note 26.

58. For the debate on defending democracy within the interwar SFIO and various other Western European socialist parties see: Horn, European Socialists, 117–36.

59. The Law on the Defence of the State, enacted with ČSSD support in 1936, was credited as the most elaborate peacetime attempt at democratic self-defence by Karl Loewenstein. On the efforts to fight off the extremist threat in interwar Czechoslovakia see: Capoccia, Defending Democracy, 71–107.

60. V. Sajus, “Hospodářská demokracie a nová šlechta,” Cíl, August 15, 1947, pp. 486–8.

61. Zpráva o činnosti, IX.

62. See note 29.

63. Archief PvdA, Box 1314.

64. AAN, PPS, Wydz. Zagraniczy, 235/XIX-43, fos. 4–5.

65. Le Populaire, November 25, 1947.

66. AČ, Fond 71, Karton 117, fo 93.

67. FBL, Karton 34.

68. FDM, 1MA 13.1.

69. “Aims and Tasks of Democratic Socialism” available at: http://www.socialistinternational.org/viewArticle.cfm?ArticleID=39 (last consulted: June 15, 2018).

70. Wrona, System partyjny w Polsce, 237; Sabbatucci, Il riformismo impossibile.

71. De Graaf, “The Golden Age,” 126–9.

72. See e.g. Dietrich Orlow, “Delayed Reaction,” 88.

73. Corduwener, “Democracy,” 201.

74. Müller, Contesting Democracy, 148.

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Jan De Graaf

Jan De Graaf is a postdoctoral researcher at the KU Leuven (Belgium). He is currently working on a four-year research project (funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders) entitled: ‘Europe on Strike: Wildcat Strikes as a Pan-European Phenomenon, 1945–1953’. He obtained his PhD from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a comparative thesis of the socialist and social democratic parties in post-war Czechoslovakia, France, Italy and Poland. A revised and extended version of that thesis will be published by Cambridge University Press in early 2019 under the title Socialism across the Iron Curtain: Socialist Parties in East and West and the Reconstruction of Europe after 1945.