The Practice of Socialist Internationalism examines the efforts of  British, French, and German socialist parties to cooperate with one  another on concrete international issues. Drawing on archival research  in twelve countries, it spans the years from the First World War to the  early 1960s, paying particular attention to the two post-war periods  (1918 to the late 1920s and 1945 to the mid-1950s), during which  national and international politics were recast. During these years,  European socialists operated simultaneously in national and  transnational spaces, and the book explores the ways in which these two  spaces overlapped. In addition to highlighting a neglected dimension of  twentieth-century European socialism, it provides novel perspectives on  two related subjects: the history of internationalism and the history of  international politics. Scholars of internationalism focus either on  state or on non-state actors (INGOs), but socialist parties constituted  something of a hybrid: rooted more firmly in national politics than most  INGOs, they were also more self-consciously internationalist than state  actors. Just as importantly, European socialists sought to forge a new  practice of international relations, one that would emerge from their  collective efforts to work out ‘socialist’ approaches to pressing issues  of European politics such as post-war reconstruction, European  integration, and decolonization. While the extent of their success is  debatable, the efforts of European socialists to identify distinct  approaches act as a spotlight, illuminating obscure yet vital aspects of  an issue.

The Practice of Socialist Internationalism: European Socialists and International Politics, 1914–1960 PDF

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