Neosocialism was apolitical faction that existed inFrance andBelgium during the 1930s and which included severalrevisionist tendencies in theFrench Section of the Workers' International (SFIO). During the 1930s, the faction gradually distanced itself from revolutionaryMarxism andreformist socialism while stopping short of merging into the traditional class-collaborative movement represented by theRadical-Socialist Party. Instead, they advocated arevolution from above, which they termed as a constructive revolution. In France, where they had been influenced by the Belgians, this brought them into conflict with the Socialist Party's traditional policy of anti-governmentalism and the neosocialists were expelled from SFIO. Some of its promoters looked favourably onfascism and becamewartime collaborators during theoccupation of France, while others joined theFrench Resistance and were promoters of the reforms in the post-war period, such asdirigisme (dirigism), territorial planning, andregionalism.
In the wake of theGreat Depression, a group of parliamentary deputies led byHenri de Man in Belgium (the leader of theBelgian Labour Party's right-wing and founder of the ideology ofplanisme, i.e. planism, referring toeconomic planning) and in France byMarcel Déat andPierre Renaudel (leader of the SFIO's right wing),René Belin of theGeneral Confederation of Labour, and the Young Turk current of the Radical-Socialist Party throughPierre Mendès France argued that the unprecedented scale of the global economic crisis, and the sudden success ofnational-populist parties across Europe, meant that time had run out for socialists to slowly pursue either of the traditional stances of the parliamentary left: gradual progressivereformism or Marxist-inspired popular revolution. Instead, influenced by de Man's planism, they promoted a "constructive revolution" headed by thestate, where a democratic mandate would be sought to developtechnocracy and aplanned economy.[1]
This approach saw great success in the Belgian Labour Party in 1933–1934, where it was adopted as official policy with the support of the party's right (De Man) and left (Paul-Henri Spaak) wings, although by 1935 enthusiasm had waned.[2][3] Such ideas also influenced thenon-conformist movement of the 1930s on the French right. Earlier in 1930, Déat publishedPerspectives socialistes (Socialist Perspectives), a revisionist work closely influenced by de Man's planism. Along with over a hundred articles written inLa vie socialiste (The Socialist Life), the review of the SFIO's right-wing,Perspective socialistes marked the shift of Déat from classicalsocialism to neosocialism. Déat replacedclass struggle withclass collaboration and national solidarity, advocatedsocial corporatism as a model of organisation, replaced the Marxistsocialist mode of production withanti-capitalism and supported a technocratic state, which would plan the economy and in whichparliamentarism would be replaced by politicaltechnocracy.[4]
The neosocialist faction inside of the SFIO, which included the senior party figures Déat and Pierre Renaudel, was expelled at the November 1933 party congress, partly for its admiration forItalian fascism, and largely for its revisionist stances: the neosocialists advocated alliances with the middle classes and favoured making compromises with the bourgeois Radical-Socialist Party to enact the SFIO's program one issue at a time. After having been expelled from the SFIO, Déat and his followers created theSocialist Party of France – Jean Jaurès Union (1933–1935); by the close of 1935, the emergence of thePopular Front had stolen the thunder for much of the neosocialists' tactical and policy proposals, and the Jean Jaurès Union merged with the more traditional class-collaborativeIndependent Socialists andSocialist Republicans to form the smallSocialist Republican Union. Within the General Confederation of Labour, neosocialism was represented by Belin'sSyndicats (thenRedressements)'s faction.[citation needed] On the other hand, de Man's planism influenced the left wing of the progressive-centrist Radical-Socialist Party, known as Young Turks (among them Mendès-France).
At first, the neosocialists remained part of the broader left. Déat led his splinter party into theSocialist Republican Union, a merger of various revisionist socialist parties, and participated in thePopular Front coalition of 1936. Disillusionment in democracy eventually caused many neosocialists to distance themselves from the traditional left and call for more authoritarian government. After 1936, many evolved toward a form of participatory and nationalistic socialism, which led them to join with thereactionary right and support the collaborationistVichy regime duringWorld War II (e.g. Déat,Paul Faure,Adrien Marquet, and Barthélemy Montagnon). For instance, Belin and Déat (who founded the collaborationistNational Popular Rally) became members of the Vichy government, and Déat's neosocialism was discredited in France after the war.[citation needed] Others (e.g. Henry Hauck,Max Hymans,Paul Ramadier, andLouis Vallon) joined the Resistance; Ramadier becamePrime Minister of France in the postwar period and enacted the reforms of the new French Republic including voting in favour of theMarshall Plan, whileMax Bonnafous was Minister of Agriculture and Supplies from 1942 to 1944 in the Vichy government but later joined the Resistance, for which he obtained a pardon.