Socialist movements were absorbed into national parties before seizing power.

Evidence

WHEN A MOVEMENT, international in organization, all-comprehensive in its ideological scope, and global in its political aspiration, seizes power in one country, it obviously puts itself in a paradoxical situation. The socialist movement was spared this crisis, first, because the national question—and that meant the strategical problem involved in the revolution—had been curiously neglected by Marx and Engels, and, secondly, because it faced governmental problems only after the first World War had divested the Second International of its authority over the national members, which everywhere had accepted the primacy of national sentiments over international solidarity as an unalterable fact. In other words, when the time came for the socialist movements to seize power in their respective countries, they had already been transformed into national parties. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 894

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the imagined community of the nation concept from Anderson — the pre-emption of internationalist solidarity by nationalism is a key mechanism in the reader’s scaffolding module.