European socialism at a crossroads: debates on the national question and social revolution in the Second International

Abstract

This article aims to reinterpret the relationship started in the Second International between the national question and the class struggle, suggesting that the causes of the triumphant position in 1914 are to be sought in the years before the outbreak of war. The analysis of key texts about nations and nationalities produced before and during the Great War by the most influential theorists of European socialism can capture the full significance of how this situation shaped the socialist concept of “social revolution”, which was inextricably crossed by the socio-political nature granted to the proletarian masses and to their intervention practices