# Gilles Vergnon, *Changer la vie ? Le temps du socialisme en Europe de 1875 à nos jours*

Paris, Gallimard, 2024, 592 p.

Michele Di Donato

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OpenEdition
Journals

**Electronic version**

URL: https://journals.openedition.org/histoirepolitique/20557

DOI: 10.4000/13j70

ISSN: 1954-3670

**Publisher**

Centre d'histoire de Sciences Po

**Electronic reference**

Michele Di Donato, "Gilles Vergnon, *Changer la vie ? Le temps du socialisme en Europe de 1875 à nos jours*," *Histoire Politique* [Online], Books reviews, Online since 20 March 2025, connection on 13 February 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/histoirepolitique/20557; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/13j70

This text was automatically generated on February 13, 2026.

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Gilles Vergnon, *Changer la vie ? Le temps du socialisme en Europe de 1875 à nos jours*

Paris, Gallimard, 2024, 592 p.

Michele Di Donato

REFERENCES

Gilles Vergnon, *Changer la vie ? Le temps du socialisme en Europe de 1875 à nos jours*, Paris, Gallimard, 2024, 592 p.
1. Writing a history of European socialism is not an easy task for a single author, to say the least. The last major efforts at producing such syntheses date back to the early 2000s (Geoff Eley)¹ or the mid-1990s (Donald Sassoon).² These highly influential works, in fact, lumped together the history of socialist, social democratic, and communist parties and movements under the common label of the ‘Left’ –a definition that, by the turn of the century, encompassed communist parties seemingly on a path of quasi-terminal decline alongside socialist and social democratic ones that were experiencing an unexpected surge in popularity. This auspicious trend for the non-communist left, however, did not last long. Having undergone their own ‘great transformation’ –to borrow the title of another study published in the same period³– socialists and social democrats saw a general deterioration of their political fortunes, and subsequent studies could not help but centre on the issue of the ‘crisis and challenges’ they were facing.⁴

2. Single-volume narrative histories of socialism have been similarly scarce in the French language over the last few decades.⁵ With the exception of Fabien Conord's survey, explicitly didactic and aimed at an undergraduate audience, one must again look back to the mid-1990s and the works of Alain Bergounioux, Gérard Grunberg, and Gerassimos Moschonas.⁶ Gilles Vergnon's *Changer la vie ?* is, therefore, an especially welcome contribution. Vergnon –emeritus at Sciences Po Lyon and a researcher at the *Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône-Alpes* (LARHRA)– has successfully distilled both classic and more recent historiography into a relatively compact and highly readable volume, which is set to become a key reference for those seeking an up-to-date overview of the subject.

3. Vergnon's study spans 150 years, going from the founding of the major European socialist parties (with the 1875 Gotha Congress of German Social Democracy serving as a milestone) to the present day. Mostly following a chronological structure, it is organised in four parts. The first section covers the period from 1875 to the turning point of World War I, tracing the consolidation of the socialist movement around national parties, which in turn formed an international organisation –i.e. the International, with a capital I. Readers will find introductions to the formation and development of socialist, social democratic, labour and workers' parties in various European countries, as well as chapters focusing on the most important debates and controversies of the time. Domestically, socialists discussed the relationship between reforms and revolution, the possibilities and limits of parliamentary strategies, the opportunities and risks of governmental participation. Internationally, the most pressing issues had to do with the colonial question and, especially, war –how to

Gilles Vergnon

Changer la vie ?

Le temps du socialisme en Europe
de 1875 à nos jours

INFORMATION
HISTOIRE
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analyse its origins and relation to capitalism, how to prevent it, and how to stop it should it eventually erupt. Looming behind all this was a critical tension between the trend towards the nationalisation of the socialist parties– their integration into national political systems and societies –and their internationalist and revolutionary calling.

4 This tension, as is well known, would lead to the collapse of the International after the outbreak of World War I. The book offers a balanced account of the socialists' attitude in 1914 –the reasons for « *ce qu'on peut difficilement ne pas qualifier d'échec du socialisme* » (p. 132) are examined against the backdrop of the global evolution of the movement, and especially of the majoritarian views on the subject of 'national defence'. After 1918, a new phase began, in which revolutionaries regrouped mostly outside the socialist ranks, and reformists took the upper hand within the movement. Accordingly, the second part of the book deals not only with the 'great schism' between communism and social democracy, but also with the first experiments in government and the multifaceted 'discovery of the State' by the socialists during the *entre-deux-guerres*. Be it under the guise of the broken promises of the Weimar Republic, the disappointing governmental experiences of the British Labour Party, the achievements and failures of the Popular Front in France, or the first inklings of what later became a well-structured 'model' in Scandinavia, the 1920s and 1930s saw socialists getting closer to the 'engine room' of the State (that is, when they were not repressed by the mounting Fascist movements). Vergnon aptly quotes the Belgian socialist leader Émile Vandervelde pointing out the difference « *entre l'outlaw socialiste que j'étais, que nous étions tous, avant la guerre, et le ministre que je devins par la suite* » (p. 204).

5 At the same time, the author notes, it took another world war for this turn to become irreversible. It would be an overstatement to say, with Léon Blum, that socialists were, in 1945, maîtres de l'heure. As Vergnon convincingly argues, one should distinguish the short-lived postwar 'radical moment' from a more solid 'social democratic moment' that lasted until the 1970s-1980s. The latter, which went beyond the electoral fluctuations of socialist parties, encompassed an ideological consensus that allowed for the establishment and preservation of the socio-economic measures that shaped European mixed economies and welfare states. This development went hand in hand with yet another ideological renewal of European socialism –a more far-reaching compromise with welfare capitalism epitomised, in public memory, by the 1959 Bad Godesberg Conference of the German SPD. While the author does engage with the context of the Cold War, more attention could have been given, in this context, to the entwinement between these developments and the active effort, promoted by American and European actors, at building a shared liberal political culture as a counterpart to the Atlantic community that was taking shape in the economic, political, and military fields. The socialist attitude towards European integration, instead, is examined in a separate, and highly informative, chapter.

6 With an approach that differs from most recent research, Gilles Vergnon begins the fourth and final section of the book, dedicated to the ‘time of doubts’, not in the turmoil of the 1970s, but rather, more classically, with the post-1989 ‘reunification of Europe’. This, one has the impression, is to account for the season of electoral success that involved the French and Southern European socialist parties during the 1980s, à *contretemps* vis-à-vis the global erosion of the postwar model that was by then already underway. The history of the renewal of the centre-left in the 1990s –in the years of
Tony Blair's Third Way and Gerhard Schröder's *Neue Mitte* – is thus reconnected to the broader history of socialism, and treated, with its achievements and failures, as a stage in a long-term trajectory, rather than dismissed as a historical aberration.

The book ends on a cautious note. In spite of the general trend towards political and electoral decline, the history of European Socialism remains unfinished: although much weakened, the Party of European Socialists still forms the second largest group at the European Parliament, and socialists continue to participate in a diminishing but not negligible number of national governments. Vergnon's account avoids bold interpretative claims, let alone prophecies about the future. Still, readers are provided with a very clear picture of the historical trajectory of a political force marked by its interactions with capitalism and democracy.

In conclusion, it can be useful to go back to a consideration the author makes at the outset of his narrative. Socialism, he argues, is an eminently European phenomenon –a crucial distinction from its communist offshoot, which, from its origins, had a global vocation. Born in Europe, socialism has become embedded in the continent's political framework, to the point of being considered by many as a component of a distinctive European identity –especially when viewed from outside and in contrast to perceptions of the US model in the 'neoliberal age'.⁷ One is left to wonder what this means for its future, in an era when the place of Europe in the global arena seems to be shrinking.

## NOTES

1. Geoff Eley, *Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000*, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002.

2. Donald Sassoon, *One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century*, London - New York, I.B. Tauris, 1996. Sassoon has since published updated editions of the book, with new introductions (most recently in 2024).

3. Gerassimos Moschonas, *In the Name of Social Democracy: The Great Transformation: 1945 to the Present*, London, Verso, 2002.

4. See, most recently, Marc Lazar (ed.), *Left: crisis and challenges of the European Left (end of Twentieth century - 2020s)*, Annali della Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2024.

5. See however edited volumes such as Marc Lazar (dir.), *La Gauche en Europe depuis 1945: Invariants et mutations du socialisme européen*, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1996; Razmig Keucheyan, Jean-Numa Ducange, Stéphanie Roza (dir.), *Histoire globale des socialismes, XIXᵉ-XXIᵉ siècle*, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2021.

6. Fabien Conord, *Les gauches européennes au XXᵉ siècle*, Paris Armand Colin, 2012; Alain Bergounioux, Gérard Grunberg, *L'utopie à l'épreuve: le socialisme européen au XXᵉ siècle*, Paris, Éditions de Fallois, 1996; Gerassimos Moschonas, *La social-démocratie de 1945 à nos jours*, Paris, Montchrestien, 1994.

7. Gary Gerstle, *The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era*, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2022.
AUTHORS

MICHELE DI DONATO