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A Decade of Research on the Second International: New Insights and Methods 185 Kevin J. Callahan A Decade of Research on the Second International: New Insights and Methods Laura Polexe: Netzwerke und Freundschaft: Sozialdemokraten in Rumänien, Russland und der Schweiz an der Schwelle zum 20. Jahrhundert, Göttingen: V & R, 2011, 270 pp., ISBN: 978-3-89971-807-2 (hardcover). Sebastian D. Schickl: Universalismus und Partikularismus: Erfahrungsraum, Erwar- tungshorizont und Territorialdebatten in der diskursiven Praxis der II. Internationa- le 1889 –1917, St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2012, 561 pp., ISBN/EAN: 9783861105213. Pierre Alayrac: L’Internationale Au Milieu Du Gué: De L’Internationalisme Socialiste Au Congrès de Londres (1896), Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2018, 224 pp., ISBN: 978-2-7535-7459-5. Horst Lademacher: Die Illusion vom Frieden: Die Zweite Internationale wider den Krieg, 1889 –1919, Münster/New York: Waxmann, 2018, 658 pp., ISBN: 978-3- 8309-3840-8 (hardcover). Elisa Marcobelli: I’Internationalisme à L’Épreuve Des Crises: La deuxième Internationale et les Socialistes Français, Allemands et Italien (1889 –1915), Rouen: arbre bleu éditions, 2020, 341 pp., ISBN: 9791090129092. In 2009, Patrizia Dogliani, one of the foremost scholars of international socialism, published an important essay on the state of historical research in the field of socialism and internationalism, spanning the time from the First International until the col- lapse of eastern European Communism. Reviewing scholarly production in England, France, Germany, and Italy, Dogliani ascertained that few researchers were engaged in the history of international socialism. With a sense of regret, Dogliani set out to “ask about this strange phenomenon of disappearance.”1 Whether that was a function of 1 Patrizia Dogliani: Socialisme et international, in: Cahiers Jaurès 191:1 (2009), pp. 11 –30, p. 12. Beyond this review, Dogliani has also recently written a book chapter on socialist internationalism: Patrizia Dogliani: The Fate of Socialist Internationalism, in: Glenda Sluga/ Patricia Clavin (eds.): Internationalisms: A Twentieth Century History, Cambridge 2017, pp. 38 –60. After Dogliani’s piece, two more insightful historiographical reflections soon DOI: 10.13154/mts.63.2020.185-199 Moving the Social · 63 (2020) · p. 185–199 © Klartext Verlag, Essen, ISSN 2197-0394 (online) 186 Kevin J. Callahan the collapse of Soviet Communism and the sense, as Fukuyama put it, (erroneously in retrospect) the “End of History” had come2, or the rise of neo-liberalism or simply preoccupation with new fields of history — race, gender, ethnicity and cultural stud- ies — is unclear. Dogliani was certainly not alone over concern of what the future of labour history might portend.3 Partially in response to the challenge in labour history, Marcel van der Linden successfully spearheaded efforts to globalize working-class his- tory to move scholarship away from its Eurocentric roots.4 A decade later since Dog- liani’s impactful historiographical synthesis it is worthwhile to reassess her findings, as expressed in her statement: “L’Internationalisme est mort. Vive l’internationalisme!”.5 To what extent is research on international socialism still rare? Are scholars revisiting old questions and/or offering methodological innovations and new findings? Are there still areas of deficit on the research agenda? The purpose of this essay is to offer an overview of some recent scholarship on in- ternational socialism and some thoughts and reflections on the state of the historiog- raphy. The focus here must limit itself to the Second International and monographic studies, yet these findings might parallel research trends on the First International and the Internationals following the First World War.6 The main takeaway is that there is indeed renewed interest, albeit somewhat scattered, in international socialism at the time of the Second International and these innovative studies will hopefully pave the way for fruitful scholarly production in the years to come.7 Collectively, both in appeared in the same journal. Gilles Candar: Socialisme et International(e), Militants et Historiens, in: Cahiers Jaurès 203:1 (2012), pp. 49 –61 and Emmanuel Jousse: Une Histoire de l’Internationale, in: Cahiers Jaurès 2014:2, pp. 11 –25. 2 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, New York, 1992. 3 See, for example: Marcel van der Linden (ed.): The End of Labour History?, in: Internation- al Review of Social History 38 (1993) or Jürgen Kocka: Losses, Gains and Opportunities: Social History Today, in: Journal of Social History 37:1 (2003), pp. 21 –28. 4 Karl Heinz Roth (ed.): On the Road to Global Labour History: A Festschrift for Marcel van der Linden (Historical Materialism 148), Chicago/Illinois 2017. 5 Patrizia Dogliani: Socialisme et international, in: Cahiers Jaurès 191:1 (2009), pp. 11. 6 For updated research on the First International, see Fabrice Bensimon/Quentin Deluermoz/ Jeanne Moisand (eds.): “Arise Ye Wretched of the Earth”: The First International in a Global Perspective (Studies in Global Social History 29), Leiden/Boston 2018. For the Labour and Socialist International through 1960, see: Talbot C. Imlay: The Practice of Socialist Interna- tionalism: European Socialists and International Politics, 1914 –1960, Oxford 2018. For an insightful overview on the ‘First and Half International’, see: Steven Parfitt: Constructing the Global History of the Knights of Labor, in: Labor: Studies in Working-Class History 14:1 (2017), pp. 13 –37. 7 Limiting the scope of this review to books, one should not overlook the sizeable number of articles and country-level books that suggest renewed interest in specific aspects of the International. Some examples are: Meral Ugur Cinar/Kursut Cinar (eds.): The Second Inter- national: The Impact of Domestic Factors on International Organization Dysfunction, in: A Decade of Research on the Second International 187 historical approach and key findings, this body of literature constitutes a revisionist school to the existing historiography. Highlighting first some aspects of the conven- tional historiography will help contextualize the exciting research conducted over the past decade. Most research on the Second International occurred from 1945 until 1989 or during the Cold War.8 The three standard synthetic studies appeared at this time. George Douglas Howard Cole’s mammoth two-volume work on the Second Inter- national examined the ideological positions of socialist thinkers and leaders and na- tional labour and socialist organizations.9 In contrast to Cole’s encyclopedic work, Julius Braunthal covered the history of the First and Second Internationals together. More than Cole, Braunthal gave a sympathetic account of socialist leaders, parties and ideological confrontation.10 James Joll’s influential book The Second International, 1889 –1914 provided a concise and highly critical account of the Second Internation- al, with particular attention on the negative role German socialism and its ideological rigidity ostensibly played in the international socialist movement.11 Similar to Cole and Braunthal, Joll’s focus was largely on congress debates and ideological discord: the struggle between Marxists and anarchists, revisionism versus orthodox Marxism, and socialism and nationalism. The strength of Joll’s work was spotlighting the national idea in socialist thought and bringing attention to the French-German dynamic of the Socialist International. Alongside these classic accounts, numerous scholars examined the inability of international socialism to prevent the First World War. Although in- dividual studies varied in certain aspects, taken as a whole, most scholarly production during the Cold War tended to be preoccupied with two issues: the so-called ‘failure’ (or sometimes less harshly expressed collapse) of the International in August 1914 to prevent war and relatedly socialist disunity and weakness.12 The failure argument boils down to socialists embracing national unity over internationalism in 1914. The Political Studies 62:3 (2014), pp. 1 –17; Marc Mulholland: ‘Marxists of Strict Observance’? The Second International, National Defense, and the Question of War, in: The Histori- cal Journal 58:2 (2015), pp. 615 –649; Marcus Morris: The General Strike as a Weapon of Peace: British Socialists, the Labour Movement, and Debating the Means to Avoid War before 1914, in: Labour History Review 83 (2018), pp. 29 –53. Morris’s article gives a com- prehensive list of recent scholarship on English Labor and international politics, note 7. 8 For an in-depth treatment of this literature, refer to Dogliani as cited. 9 George Howard Douglas Cole: A History of Socialist Thought: The Second International 1889 –1914 (volume III, part I and II), 2 vols, London 1956. 10 Julius Braunthal: Geschichte der Internationale, Hannover 1961. 11 James Joll: The Second International, 1889 –1914, London/Boston 1974. 12 I have shared some of these observations — with more detail and exhaustive bibliography — in: Beyond the Cultural Turn?: Revisiting “Old” Labour History through the Example of the Socialist International, in: David Mayer/Jürgen Mittag (eds.): Interventions: The Impact of Labour Movements on Social and Cultural Development, Leipzig 2013, pp. 149 –168. 188 Kevin J. Callahan ideological conflict and weakness argument stresses socialist powerlessness and inef- fectiveness in the face of the August 1914 crisis. The predominant focus on ideological conflict also traced the origins of the socialist schism between Social
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