fairly easily on a spectrum according to just how much control of the economy,
and just how much equality, are seen as necessary or desirable. To some extent
this coincides with the more broadly usedleft/rightspectrum, on which, for
example, the BritishLabour Partyused to be seen as only mildly left or
socialist, and theParti Communiste Franc ̧aisvery far to the left, and very
socialist. An alternative principle for differentiation would be the extent to
which a basically Marxist ‘economic determinist’ view is taken, as opposed
simply to a fairly untheoretical demand for a more just and equal society, with
more state impact on the economy. In this sense, for example, the Social
Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the earliest socialist party in Europe,
started far to the left, and became less socialist, more right wing, in the late
1950s when it officially gave up Marxism and became a ‘reformist’ party
acceptable even to the conservative CDU/CSU in the grand coalition gov-
ernment of 1966–69.
With the collapse of a genuine revolutionary left after thedemocratic
transitionsin Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and the dominance in
the West ofmonetaristeconomic theory, even in nominally socialist and
social democratparties, there seems no way for a European socialist party to
be more than reformist, nor for it to have a theoretically sharply distinguishable
position.
Socialist International
The Socialist International is one of the inheritors of the internationalist
movement amongcommunistandsocialistparties in the late 19th and early
20th centuries (see international socialism). Before the October 1917
Russian Revolution there was no very clear-cut distinction between socialist
and communist movements, with varying degrees of revolutionary conscious-
ness to be found under both labels. Common to both movements was a
commitment to international working-class solidarity, with a general accep-
tance that the nation-state was a bourgeois contrivance to manipulate the
proletariat. However, after 1917 the revolutionary element became dominant
and the international movement was re-created as the Communist Interna-
tional (also known as Comintern or the Third International, which existed
only until 1943) in 1919, with very strict membership rules designed to ensure
that all national member parties supported revolution rather thanparliamen-
tary socialism. In Western Europe this resulted in many splits in formerly
united socialist or communist parties, and a rival,gradualistor parliamentary,
movement was created in 1923, initially called the Labour and Socialist
International, which traced its origin through the Second International back
to the creation of the First International in 1864. Suspended during the war,
the movement was refounded in 1951 as the Socialist International. Its
Socialist International