International Group of Democratic Socialists

Last updated

International Group of Democratic Socialists (German : Internationale Gruppe demokratischer Sozialisten, often nicknamed as Kleine Internationale) was a Stockholm-based discussion group and study circle of social democrats, active from 1942 to 1945. Participants included Willy Brandt, Alva Myrdal, Gunnar Myrdal and Bruno Kreisky. The group focused largely on discussions of rebuilding post-war Europe.

Contents

Formative stage

Foreign citizens were not allowed to engage in political activities in Sweden. However, in June 1942 a group of Norwegian exiles set up their study group in Stockholm. By October 1942 the couple Gunnar Myrdal and Alva Myrdal had joined the group. During its existence the International Group of Democratic Socialists gathered participants from 14 countries. [1] As of 1942, it had some sixty members from different socialist parties from Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, France, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary. [2] A working committee consisting of Hilding Färm (secretary of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League), Inge Scheflo (Norwegian trade unionist), Fritz Tarnow (German trade unionist) and Ernst Paul (chairman of the Brotherhood of Sudeten German Social Democrats) organized the meetings of the study group. [2]

Peace committee

In November 1942 a committee was set up to elaborate a common peace plan for post-war Europe. [2] Paul was the chairman of the committee, Brandt (who was a member of both the Norwegian Labour Party and the German socialist diaspora) its secretary. [2] Other members of the committee were Gunnar Myrdal (Sweden), Ole Jödahl (Sweden, foreign affairs editor of Aftontidningen and Tiden), Martin Tranmæl (Norway), Tarnow, Vilmos Böhm (Hungary), István Szende (Hungarian, member of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany), Jiří Jakerle (head of the Club of Czechoslovak Socialists), Maurycy Karniol (lawyer, representative of the Polish Socialist Party in Scandinavia), Jules Guesde (Press Attaché of the Stockholm delegation of the French Committee of National Liberation) and Bruno Kreisky (chairman of the Club of Austrian Socialists in Sweden). [2] [3] [4] The International Group of Democratic Socialists hoped that peace in Europe would be achieved in different ways that the Treaty of Versailles, seeking to strengthen cooperation in post-war Europe. [1]

Legacy

Through the participation in the study group Myrdal became a political mentor of sorts to Brandt and Kreisky, who went on to lead governments in Germany and Austria respectively. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alva Myrdal</span> Swedish sociologist and politician

Alva Myrdal was a Swedish sociologist, diplomat and politician. She was a prominent leader of the disarmament movement. She, along with Alfonso García Robles, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982. She married Gunnar Myrdal in 1924; he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1974, making them the sixth ever married couple to have won Nobel Prizes, and the first to win independent of each other.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stockholm School (economics)</span> School of economic thought (1930s)

The Stockholm School is a school of economic thought. It refers to a loosely organized group of Swedish economists that worked together, in Stockholm, Sweden primarily in the 1930s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruno Kreisky</span> Austrian diplomat and chancellor (1911–1990)

Bruno Kreisky was an Austrian social democratic politician who served as Foreign Minister from 1959 to 1966 and as Chancellor from 1970 to 1983. Aged 72 at the end of his chancellorship, he was the oldest Chancellor after World War II. His 13-year tenure was the longest of any Chancellor in republican Austria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jan Myrdal</span> Swedish writer (1927–2020)

Jan Myrdal was a Swedish author known for his strident Maoist, anti-imperialist and contrarian views and heterodox and highly subjective style of autobiography.

The League of Democratic Socialists was an Austrian political party formerly affiliated with the World Socialist Movement (WSM).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gunnar Myrdal</span> Swedish economist and sociologist (1898–1987)

Karl Gunnar Myrdal was a Swedish economist and sociologist.

International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organizations was an international organization of socialist youth, formed in 1934. It functioned as the youth wing of the London Bureau.

BDS may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gustav Möller</span> Swedish politician

Gustav Möller was a prominent Swedish Social democratic politician, credited as the father of the social security system and the Welfare state, also called Folkhemmet. He was a Member of Parliament in 1918-1954 and Member of the Government in 1924–26, 1932–36 and 1936–51.

Folkhemmet is a political concept that played an important role in the history of the Swedish Social Democratic Party and the Swedish welfare state. It is also sometimes used to refer to the long period between 1932 and 1976 when the Social Democrats were in power and the concept was put into practice, but also works as a poetic name for the Swedish welfare state. Sometimes referred to as "the Swedish Middle Way", folkhemmet was viewed as midway between capitalism and socialism. The base of the folkhem vision is that the entire society ought to be like a family, where everybody contributes, but also where everybody looks after one another. The Swedish Social Democrats' successes in the postwar period is often explained by the fact that the party managed to motivate major social reforms with the idea of the folkhem and the national family's joint endeavor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Neumann</span>

Hans Neumann was a founding member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socialist International</span> Political international

The Socialist International (SI) is a political international or worldwide organisation of political parties which seek to establish democratic socialism. It consists mostly of social-democratic, socialist and labour political parties and organisations.

<i>Crisis in the Population Question</i>

Crisis in the Population Question was a 1934 book by Alva and Gunnar Myrdal, who discussed the declining birthrate in Sweden and proposed possible solutions. The book was influential in the debate that created the Swedish welfare model.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erik Gottfrid Christian Brandt</span> Swedish politician (1884–1955)

Erik Gottfrid Christian Brandt, called Brandt i Söderby in Parliament, was a Swedish politician and a deputy in the Riksdag (parliament) from 1938 to 1943.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Union of Socialist Youth</span> International youth non-governmental organization

The International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY) is an international youth labor organization, whose activities include publications, support of member organizations and organization of meetings. Then named the Socialist Youth International, it was formed at the 1907 International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart as the youth wing of the Second International.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isaiah Sol Dorfman</span> American lawyer

Isaiah Sol(omon) Dorfman was an American labor lawyer and an Office of Strategic Services agent.

Ernst Paul (1897–1978) was a Sudeten German Social Democratic politician and journalist.

Stefan Szende was a Hungaro-Swedish political scientist, politician, journalist and writer who during the Nazi years became an anti-fascist resistance fighter and a victim of the concentration camp system.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Walter A. Jackson (2 July 2014). Gunnar Myrdal and America's Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938–1987. University of North Carolina Press. p. 174. ISBN   978-1-4696-2060-2.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Karl Ludwig Guensche; Klaus Lantermann (1977). Kleine Geschichte der Sozialistischen Internationale. Verlag Neue Gesellschaft. pp. 113–114. ISBN   978-3-87831-248-2.
  3. Klaus Misgeld (1976). Die "Internationale Gruppe demokratischer Sozialisten" in Stockholm 1942 – 1945. Almquist und Wiksell. p. 54. ISBN   978-91-554-0377-5.
  4. Helmut Müssener (1974). Exil in Schweden: politische und kulturelle Emigration nach 1933. C. Hanser. p. 235. ISBN   978-3-446-11850-8.